 We'll now call to order the regular meeting of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. It is October 25th, 2022 at 9 a.m. Clerk, will you please call the roll? Supervisor Friend? Here. Coonerty? Here. Caput? Supervisor Caput. Supervisor Caput? Roll call. Oh, I'm sorry. Here. Great. McPherson? Here. And Koenig? Here. Thank you, Chair. You have a quorum. Thank you. We'll now have a moment of silence followed by a pledge of allegiance. Any member of the Board wish to recognize anyone during our pledge of allegiance? Or sorry, a moment of silence. Yes, Supervisor Coonerty? Yeah, just two folks that I want to take a moment to recognize. First is Peter Prendle, who was both an educator, a small business owner, and a real leader in our community. He passed, and we want to wish his family all our sincerest thoughts and prayers. Wonderful, wonderful man, really dedicated to Santa Cruz and his family. The other one is Jerome Fardet, known to many as Jerry the Barber, really fun character, wonderful guy, a fixture in the community, and made every haircut a lot of fun, and was a good author as well. So please keep both of them in your minds. Thank you. Well, yeah, if I may, I'll recognize David Trevino, a friend of mine who passed away a month ago, and they had his celebration of life last Sunday. And anyway, he was in the Army, and he was 72 years old. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, Mr. Chair, I just want to recognize Diane Wolfson, a tremendous family, the Wolfson family here. She passed away recently. She was a tremendous public servant and guided to many organizations, in particular, Omega New and some of the others that gave so many hundreds of thousands of dollars to scholarships to our young students here, and she was just a wonderful woman. Just like to recognize her and remember her and our thoughts and prayers, and to the best of the Wolfson family. Thank you. We'll hold these friends and community members in our hearts. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. To do the flag, the United States of America. To the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. CEO Palacios, do we have any additions or deletions to the agenda today? Yes, we do have one change, item number seven on the regular agenda. Attachment A, packet page 18, is replaced with the correct logo. Thank you very much. Thank you. To the board member, wish to remove an item from the consent agenda to the regular agenda. Seeing none, we'll proceed with item five, public comment. Any person may address the board during this period. Speakers may not exceed two minutes in length. And individuals may speak only once during public comment. All public comments must be directed to an item listed on today's consent agenda, closed session agenda, yet to be heard on regular agenda or a topic not on the agenda that is within the jurisdiction of the board. Or members may all take actions or respond immediately to any public communication presented regarding topics not on the agenda but may choose to follow up later. Gary, Richard Arnold has to do with integrity of the vote. We have a Tweedledum, Tweedlede, two different political parties and no matter who you vote for, you get a global ony. You get a politician that's pro-Red China, as I've mentioned many times, these people involved here locally with the Panetta machine. Also, Charles Munger, whose products for Walmart, 680% of the product come from Red China. They've ganged up on democracy in the state of California and effectively got rid of the progressive party, the American party, the Libertarian party, et cetera. And that was funded by Munger. That initiative came from him. Munger's also been buying up Republican central committees under the spirit of democracy. Comments to items within the jurisdiction of the Board of Supervisors. I'm sorry you're intervening me. That's a violation of my free speech. Vote integrity has to do with the people that are buying off the politicians and I can name some here today. I'm talking about Tom Campbell, who's managing Liz Lawler's campaign. He's a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He came out very strongly against the Republican party. As did Jim Reed, the council member who is endorsed by the Republican Central Committee. He was the city manager while the courts were looking at the police stand down while Republican voters were messed with. We also know that you had two supervisors here threatening people at the grains. Various members of the Republican committee are sponsored by these Munger mail outs. As a person's running against Gail. As a supporter who attended a communist celebration at the Loudon Nelson Center on the son of the KGV recruiter was there. So we really don't have a choice between those two globalists. The Republican Central Committees do not have two thirds of their members available online and one third not even mentioning their name. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Arnold. Morning, my name is James Ewing Whitman. Craig Cabot, you were missed last week. That was amazing. I don't even know what to say, except maybe if I were behind the scenes at Bohemian Grove, might have been something similar to what I witnessed last week in this room. You know, about one of the many consent agenda items about the digital wallet in the 1299 pages, 113 to 115, you know, you guys are just really following scripts. I don't really expect anybody to believe what I'm saying. You should do your own research, but software was created in October of 2000 that could affect the digital voting machines. We do not have voting security whatsoever. I could be very specific, but what's the point? So let's see, what to say. You know, I was listening to something this morning and I thought it was very factually accurate. Mike Adams was interviewing Karen Kingston again. This is not new information about what's in these MNRA vaccines, but I like this, the Fosse plea. I am a genocidal sociopath. I wish I wasn't looking at so many people that seem to appear to be that way by what they're doing. I didn't stand for the Pledge of Allegiance because under maritime law, any flag that has a fringe around it is a captured flag. I don't know when exactly our constitution was completely destroyed, but I believe it was on February 23rd, 1871, when the Organics Act was acted and that created corporate personhood. Any city, state, county, you guys are corporations. The people that you support are your stockholders and it's not generally the people by what you guys present. This is a shirt I got, Watsonville Ivy League Schools. I don't have any more time to comment, but it's nice to see you here. Thanks. Good morning, board supervisors, Chair Koenig, Michael Beaton, Director of General Services. I'm here today to introduce to your board, Megan Riley, who has been appointed to the position of Deputy Director of General Services. Megan comes to the county with an extensive educational background, with a bachelor's degree in history from Loyola College, a master's degree in management, from the Naval Postgraduate School, and a law degree from Monterey College of Law. Coupled with her educational endeavors, Megan possesses over 32 years of experience in the public sector. She has continuously advanced throughout her career in public service, holding positions such as budget analyst, controller, Executive Director of Business Services, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Business Officer, and most recently the Deputy Superintendent of LA Unified School District. Megan and her husband, Bill, are residents of Santa Cruz County, and we are honored to have her leadership and experience join our team and the county family. With that, I would like to turn over the microphone over to Deputy Director Riley for a few comments. Thank you, Michael. Good morning, board of supervisors. My name is Megan Riley, as you so heard. I just want to express my deep appreciation and excitement about joining the County of Santa Cruz. It has been a dream of mine to come back to our home in Santa Cruz, where the beautiful redwoods are here and wonderful expression of joining a government entity, such as the county that protects our communities in such ways. I have such a deep appreciation, especially after the last three years that we've gone through the role that the county plays in maintaining the highest standards of professionalism and protection for our community members. So thank you so much, day two, and I am ecstatic, and my husband is even happier than I am to be back in Santa Cruz. So thank you, and I just wanted to say hello. Thank you and welcome Deputy Director Riley. It's our work static to have you and look forward to all the good work you get up to. Hi, good morning, thank you. My name is Greg Cotton. I'm a local Marine biologist, and I'd like to, we have come to one of the most important environmental and cultural moments and at least a generation or more. A sand and gravel mine that threatens the most important ceremonial sacred site of the indigenous community that you represent is threatened. The Sergeant Corey in the Santa Cruz mountains is over the border of the Santa Cruz County line, but it threatens the Pajaro River watershed wildlife corridor arteries for the Santa Cruz, Diablo and Gavilan mountain ranges. It only uses a hundred year floodplain in its plan, and the processing site is in the Pajaro River floodplain. It will produce profits for San Diego Corporation as much as 15 jobs and sand that no one asked for. Every major environmental and political organization stands with the tribe. This is our local Standing Rock issue, and we need to voice and join the protection of the site, the permit, which will put several pits, hundreds of feet deep in the Santa Cruz mountains and is in the final stages of public review. The tribe has gone to the United Nations for support to stop us from allowing this crime against humanity. It will be a crime against humanity, but we need to prove that we're better than that on the central coast. Public review ends on November 7th. Please pass this resolution as soon as possible. Commissioner Coonerty, thank you for your excellent letter and support of this. I brought materials from your constituents as well as the tribe and the Santa Cruz City Council resolution that passed unanimously here to share with you today to move this process forward. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Cotton. Hello, my name is Byers, and there's an item on your agenda today around Citizens' Assemblies and Democratic Lotteries, and I wanted to convey that a representative body of people selected by a lottery to deliberate the housing issue, that that is currently the best option to achieve majority consensus. The usual approach consists of self-selected groups or politician appointed committees at best, I'm really out of breath, at best these groups lack diversity and imagination. At worst, they create slanted, one-sided recommendations, which in turn creates more distrust and division. That kind of division and distrust is the exact opposite of government responsibility and opposite of for the public good. We now know that there is a far better process on the table. Selecting a group of people at random, much like jury selections, ensures a body free from political or party politician bias. I was an observer in Petaluma when they used a Citizens' Assembly to address a contentious issue in their municipality, and I'd be happy to talk about my observations one-on-one or with an invitation to speak with more time. Municipalities all over the world, not just recently in Petaluma or ancient Greece have practiced a version of sortition or Citizens' Assembly's democratic lotteries. For now, you are being introduced or maybe even reintroduced to the best option for public buy-in. Creating a Citizens' Assembly to have people from all walks, regions, and housing circumstances in life to come together, deliberate, sincerely hear and be heard by the other to reach a kind of community agreement. This civic process is intentionally built for the public good, not individual or privileged group, and it's the best option we have. Thank you. Thank you, Byers. Good morning, supervisors. I'm Bruce Holloway from Boulder Creek. I wanna talk about the election and Boulder Creek Recreation and Park District. On your consent agenda, you have a bunch of appointments to elected boards, candidates who were unopposed in this current election. Well, two years ago, this board appointed two people, a couple of people to the BCRPD Board of Directors. One of them announced her resignation at the board meeting last Wednesday night. And what happened is that she received her ballot and did not find measure T on her ballot. And when she inquired, she realized that she didn't live in the district. Now actually, the board member who resigned was a replacement for a board member that you appointed two years ago. So when I thought about it later, I realized that office should have been on the ballot right now for a two-year term because she replaced someone who was elected to a four-year term in 2020. Even if she had lived in the district, she should have been on the ballot this year. So the board of directors failed to call an election and I just wanted to make you aware that section 1004 of the elections code gives you the authority to call an election since their board neglected to do so. And then also I wanna mention that there's another member of the board that was appointed in 2020 who currently lives in Bonnydoon. He's registered to vote in Bonnydoon. He was at the board meeting last Wednesday night and it was clear from the video that he's living in Bonnydoon and it's not qualified to be a director of VCR PD. So I- Thank you, Bruce. Seeing no one else here in chambers, is there anyone on Zoom? Yes, sure, there is. Calling user one, you can unmute yourself. Previous speakers and please follow the advice of Mr. Klob. What I'd like to share is an article the implementation of the QR code for absolute control by Peter Kronig. And this talks about digital technology and very much related item 16 of the digital wallet, which I think should be abandoned. This is transcribed from the German. You can access it by globalresearch.ca which is Canada or the script from KLA-TV. Peter Kronig, same spelling as the chair of the board here worked as an economist at the World Bank for over 30 years and has implemented water projects in developing countries on various continents. And he states he's an economist and geopolitical analyst and try as best as possible to reflect the ever-changing today's and respect to analyze tomorrow's situations. In other words, to connect the dots, the dots between COVID, the Ukraine war, the reset, the QR code that is becoming more and more a true step towards the industrial revolution, that's in quotes by Klaus Schwab, giving to another part to ensure what the West, especially the United States has always wanted is control of the largest and richest country in the world, Russia. With by far the most mineral reasons. Rafa Sonnenfeld, your microphone is now available. Yes, good morning, supervisors. The county has a plan for thousands, or I'm calling regarding the housing element update process. The county has to plan for thousands of new homes, 4,634 to be exact. And the deadline to certify this plan for the state is December 31st of next year. If the county doesn't have an adopted certified housing element on that date, we will not only lose eligibility for millions of dollars of affordable housing funds, but our local zoning and general plan will no longer be in effect for any project that proposes at least 20% affordable housing units. And the county will have no legal authority to reject those projects. We're already seeing this happen in Santa Monica and Redondo Beach, where over 10,000 new homes have been proposed, which must be approved in those cities, despite not being in conformance with those cities zoning. But our county's current timeline to adopt a compliant housing element, which according to your agenda packet, the county's not even proposing to do a study session until the end of next year, assures we will be in the same position as those cities. I urge the county to plan for a more aggressive approach to achieving a compliant housing element by December 31st of next year. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Sorenfeld. Kyle Kelly, your microphone is now available. There we go. Hey, thank you all. This is Kyle Kelly. Also calling about, sorry, I was just making sure my mic was working there. Also calling about the housing element. You know, there's actually four grants. I mean, it actually extends beyond affordable housing grants that we would lose access to if we don't have our housing element certified on time. And I know for this county, they'll want robust public process for getting it done. And I don't think people realize that delaying is actually gonna cause a lot more building later. When they could actually just do the planning, get the grants, get things done and kind of just follow state law. So I'm just advising as I think some of the jurisdictions within our county are actually on target or ahead. Right now, city of Santa Cruz and the city of Watsonville are both likely to complete their housing elements on time. Scotts Valley, Capitola and the county of Santa Cruz are currently off mark right now and will be subject to the builder's remedy and loss of funds from the state if they don't get moving more quickly. I'm just pointing this out as just kind of a factual piece. There's like a part of me that kind of looks forward to if cities fail to meet their standards, then we deal with the builder's remedy and we could see much bigger projects going up. But I think it's of the benefit to constituents to just get the plans done, get them done on time and delivered well. Thank you very much. Bye. Thank you, Mr. Kelly. We have no more speakers on Zoom. Go ahead. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Becky Steinbrenner. I'm a resident of rural Aptos. I want to bring to you and the public a draft Santa Cruz County fire code ordinance. It's a 21-page document, your board, and the public will see for the first time, I'm told November 15th. I was able to obtain this 21-page draft at a central fire district board meeting when it was on the agenda, but the draft was not in the agenda. Staff was kind enough to give me a copy and it is now on the central fire website in their community risk reduction area. I'm concerned about this because this is a new way the county will adopt their fire codes. All of it will be done before you. The public will not see it until the agenda goes up. Central fire board will not see it until it goes up. They did not approve it. They did not even see it. And I'm concerned about this process because there are a lot of major changes in it that will affect rural residents like me and the CZU people. Speaking of the CZU fire survivors, I again ask that your board demand that county fire conduct an after action review for the 2020 CZU lightning fire complex that has never been done. I listened last night to the wonderful Prospect Heights Firewise meeting where they had several officials, including you, Chair Koenig, and there had been a review of the DeLavier fire. And out of that came great improvements. And here we are as a county with the largest fire in the county and county fire department. Volunteers and staff have not been consulted and there is no after action review for the CZU fire. That is unacceptable and we need to do it right now. Please. Thank you. All right, if there are no further public comments, I'll return it to the board for action on the consent agenda. Are there any comments? And Mr. Chair, on the consent agenda, I wanted to comment on a few items regarding item number 36, the Veterans Village in Ben Lohman. I wanna thank the county personnel and project partners in this effort to provide 20 housing units to veterans and their families. It's a remarkable project, an important one, and one that has broad community support in the San Runes Valley in particular and throughout Santa Cruz County. On item number 40, the county service area has seven expansion. The county project team that's been working on this, fine-tuning this proposal for many months, I wanna thank them for their efforts, including representatives from community development and infrastructure, CDI, Environmental Health and the CAO. This is a huge undertaking that we're going about, one that carries significant environmental, economic and recovery goals. The need for this goes back more than 25 years in Boulder Creek to fix overdrafted septic systems and now with the tighter state regulations and the need to rebuild after the fire, it's even more important that we have these options. We're quite hopeful that the state will fund the big share of this project, which has already garnered support in the federal level, thanks to our ongoing, outgoing I should say, Congresswoman Anna Eshoo. I look forward to the study session in January and to delve more into the specifics of this project in the future. Also, the written correspondence speaking of Anna Eshoo, who we honored at our meeting last week, I wanted to note that her recent letter to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, once again, requesting a resolution to the county's unreimbursed expenses that are in the millions of dollars from the CZU Lightning Fire. We appreciate her ongoing effort. I know she's going to stick with it, even though she, after this election in November, she will not be representing the North County of Santa Cruz, but will be represented by Jimmy Panetta, will be an excellent representative. And I can assure you, he is well aware of this need for Santa Cruz County to fund the recovery of that from the fire. So I just want, those are a couple of comments that I wanted to make. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Anyone else? Supervisor Cabot? This is for items, not all of them here, Chair. For consent agenda. Items on the consent agenda. Right. All right, Supervisor Friend. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd just like to briefly comment on item 16, which is the, well, actually I have two brief comments, but item 16, which is the digital wallet pilot appreciation for the county administrative staff that's been working on this in particular, Ms. Benson, who's taken a leadership role in this in our ISD team. I'm very excited to see this pilot move forward. I'm very excited to see some of the things that have already been constructed as possible. Items to include into the wallet, including some of the work with the Sheriff's Office Parks, Environmental Health and our planning team. I would like to encourage county staff as we move forward in light of the recent state legislation passage. I think that the real equity element of the wallet will be that allowing critical and vital records to be included. I recognize the in perpetuity concerns of county staff. I'll say though that we can't, obviously what we can say is that the digitization of records and in particular technology expansion is not going to become any less over time. So I think preparing for that makes more sense than not. And I wouldn't share the same concern about, I know that the board letter doesn't say it's not going to happen, but just raises this red flag about the possibility of how this would be maintained over time. Well, you know, we're in a world that this kind of change is going to continue to happen. And I think that we should find ways to meet people where they are. In particular, members in our community that generally don't engage with government in a traditional way. Those that use this kind of technology are disproportionately low income in our community. It's disproportionately those in South County. And I think that we should find ways to ensure that they have access to these vital records moving forward. Also for younger generations, they're going to use this kind of technology. So I'm fine with the pilot program starting as proposed, but I'd like to see this transition into vital records sooner than later because I do believe that that really will be one of the greatest case studies for this. But this is a really is a very forward thinking and groundbreaking component that the county is doing. And I appreciate the work of all the county staff that's exploring this possibility. The last thing is just an item 38, speaking of equity, the continued investment in the South County Service Center, continued appreciation. Two county staff has taken a lead on this. This has been a priority for both Supervisor Caput and myself that these services be available for South County residents. And by the way, that our employees don't have to do a commute and continue to clog up highway one as we are responsible for that as well. This board, a really true appreciation to you, the chair, Supervisor McPherson and Supervisor Cooner, you've never wavered on your investment in the South County Service Center and making sure that those services are available for South County residents and our employees that live down there. So just a lot of appreciation that investment in equity for South County. Thank you, Supervisor Friend. I'll just add some comments for a few items here. On item 17, the progress report on a Santa Cruz like me want to thank the CAO's office for presenting us with this. And I think it just is important to remember that we are seeing consistent underrepresentation from South County, from Latinos, renters, youth and people with disabilities on our county commissions and in our public engagement process in general. And I'll speak a little bit more about it as we get to item eight, but I do think there's an incredible opportunity here to take a different tack and correct some of that lack of representation that we've seen in the past. On item 20, accepting improvements for 1080 MLIN HVAC and lighting project. I just want to thank General Services for all their work on this project. You know, it's having, having toured the MLIN campus and the freedom campus. It's clear it's a challenge to maintain our county buildings. We just do not have enough money for, for maintenance. But this product is a great example of what we can do when we do take care of our existing infrastructure. And 1080 is really looking fantastic. That goes for item 29 and the near completion of suite D at the freedom health campus as well. Excited to see that open up and the expanded services for clients there. I also want to thank on item 29 HSA or congratulate them on filling all 23 full-time employee positions there. I know that was, I'm sure not easy in the present environment. It's great to see you'll be able to expand client services. And then finally on item 27, increasing our agreement with Janice of Santa Cruz by $3.5 million for the addition of peer support services, recovery, housing, and expanded service. Just want to thank Janice for everything they do for our community. And it's great to see this expanded services in our community. And that's all I have. So if there are no further comments, I'm looking for a supervisor cap it. All right, yeah, go ahead. Item 37, who's the plan? I'm sorry, supervisor cap it. Your microphone's not on. I'm sorry. Yes. Item 37 approved plans for the cost estimate of 500 Westridge Drive. This project for South County will have services in many areas for the county, for people from South County, so they don't have to drive from Watsonville or in the unincorporated area, all the way to Santa Cruz to get things done. It'll allow them to be closer to the county government and also it will take a significant amount of traffic off of Highway 1 going to and from South County to Santa Cruz. So anyway, it's a great project. So December 8th, I guess it's opening up for bid to convert the Westridge property into a county facility. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. So there are a motion on the consent agenda. I'll move the recommended actions. Motion by Supervisor Kennedy, second by Supervisor McPherson to adopt the consent agenda. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk roll call vote, please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Caput. McPherson. Aye. And Coney. Aye. We have a vote. Thank you. The consent agenda being passed will proceed with item seven to consider a report on recycling and solid waste long-term planning process, direct community development and infrastructure to return on or before October 17th, 2023, with a recycling and solid waste long-term planning report, adopt resolution supporting the trash caucus initiative and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the Deputy CAO, Director of Community Development and Infrastructure. And for a report on this item, we have Casey Colasa, our recycling and solid waste services manager and Bill Hawksford, Department Administrative Analyst. Please take it away. I believe both you can turn on your mic there with the gray button on the base of the mic. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Koenig and members of the board for the opportunity to share some highlights with the County Recycling and Solid Waste Services. Recycling and Solid Waste Services is responsible for all aspects of waste management, which includes preparing for the closure of the Buena Vista landfill, designing a transfer facility, replace it before it closes, as well as operations and maintenance of the Buena, excuse me, it's Buena Vista landfill and the Ben-Loman transfer station. We are regulated by state environmental laws, including the most recent Climate Action Bill SB 1383. This slide and the next slide that we're gonna share were completed during a study session a few years ago with our consultant HFNH, where we mapped out how we were going to accomplish our goals of waste diversion, given the legal trends and changing economic climates. Our vision for the future of solid waste and diversion in Santa Cruz County takes into consideration the values and aspirations of the community. We all want to live in a community that we can be proud of, a community that is innovative and a leader in promoting sustainable environment. While we've been planning for a transfer station to be co-located with a compost facility at the Buena Vista landfill, we have also been looking at the potential for alternatives to composting, such as waste to energy technologies such as gasification or even the potential for an anaerobic digester. Both of those types of technologies would help with items that are truly not compostable in a compost facility, such as compostable foodware and cups. In fact, we may want to look at revising our biodegradable packaging ordinance to exclude these items, as they will not compost in the timeframe of most commercial composting programs. SB 1383 implementation began in January of this year, and its primary goal is to reduce methane gas from the atmosphere. The number one contributor of methane gas to our atmosphere is open landfills that leak methane from rotting organics that turn into methane is leaked into the atmosphere. Food waste is now being diverted from landfills in every jurisdiction in the state. Our program allows curbside customers to use their existing green organics carp to dispose of food waste. All food and food related items are currently accepted, except for raw meat and compostable foodware. Outreach and education is being conducted by both county and greenway staff and while enforcement by the state has already begun, fines will not be issued and for non-compliance to jurisdictions until January of 2024. Another aspect of 1383 is to collect edible food before it actually becomes waste. The amount of food insecurity in California is staggering. We're lucky in Santa Cruz County that we have the nation's second ever food bank and in California it was the first. They are a great partner and they're actually helping the county as well as all four cities in helping us to fulfill the requirement of food recovery. SB 1383 requires a group effort by many government agencies. It's not just about diverting food from the landfill. There is also a procurement requirement to purchase materials made from diverted organics such as compost and biofuels which would involve the county's purchasing and fleet departments. We need to have places to use these products such as our public parks and other county facilities. We have already been in discussions with our environmental health department regarding their assistance with inspections at food establishments and other food businesses to help ensure compliance with SB 1383. And as we've been saying to this board for many years that the end of life is coming pretty soon to the point of a landfill. In fact, we've been planning for an earnest to ensure that we continue to have a local facility for residents to dispose of their waste and recycling. This board recently held a protest vote for a new solid waste infrastructure and closure charge. In June, after proper notice of the hearing went out to all affected parcel owners indicating how they may protest and when the hearing would take place. We received few protests and the charge pass was placed on the 2022 parcel tax bill that just recently was mailed out. This charge will pay for the design and construction of the new transfer facility as well as a co-located compost facility at the point of this landfill. Construction is planned in such a way that the facilities will be completed before the landfill is closed. And while we have been saving for the closure of the landfill for some time, a recent new inflation factor estimate was provided to the county and this new infrastructure charge does include the remaining of the closure costs and we will be fully funded with the closure fund before the landfill closes. Legal dumping, as all of you know, is a big problem not just in Santa Cruz County but in the entire state of California. Our green waste franchise actually includes three bulky items set outs per customer per calendar year and the number of bulky items collected increased each year since we began the program in 2018. And in 2021, a total of 4,463 items were disposed of properly through this program. We partner with many community organizations that help to keep our community clean and yet we still see illegal dump sites throughout the county. With this board's direction, we have been looking into various cameras that we can use that will utilize infrared technology in the hopes that we will help us deter and hopefully catch people engaging in illegal activity so that we can help to deter more people from doing this. We're also discussing with the downtown streets team the potential for a hotspot crew and that can roam to all hotspots throughout the county. Five days a week, they'd be rotating through the various districts. We've also obtained a grant through Caltrans that we can utilize to clean up litter and legal dumping on the state right of ways. Another funding source to support the illegal dumping program is the recently passed single use cup charge. The charge did begin on July 1st, 2022. And the county will start beginning to collect half of that 25 cent charge beginning on January 1st, 2023. We hope to use this funding for all aspects of litter cleanup as well, especially on both private and public places. As we all know, there's places like along the M-Line campus right now. Another form of illegal dumping that we feel complaints from quite often is that of people poaching or people using other people's carts without their permission. Much of these complaints are coming from areas where we have cluster collection points. We are working with Greenways to help to resolve this issue by working towards reducing the amount of cluster collection points throughout the county. Greenways was recently able to purchase two smaller collection trucks that can traverse the small, narrow, non-publicly maintained roads that are common in the rural areas of the county where the cluster collection points are predominant. With more vehicles, they could begin to offer similar services to customers that currently have to utilize these cluster collection points. And outreach and education is ongoing from county and Greenway staff of all the services, waste reduction and recycling programs to the county residents to inform them of all of these services. As part of the board letter and today's report is a relatively new initiative led by local citizens called trash talkers. This group meets monthly with other local organizations to address illegal dumping issues throughout the county. They are starting with issues in the South County and plan to expand countywide in the future. Attached to the board letter and shown on the slide is the trash talkers logo. Since the work of this group fits in well with the county's strategic plan element to protect natural resources, the county intends to help support the group's website and help with placement of their logo through the community in order to raise awareness and rally support to make Santa Cruz County the cleanest county in the state. We now ask the board to take the recommended actions to accept and file the recycling and solid waste long-term planning progress report and recommendations on zero waste planning, direct the department of community development and infrastructure to return on before October 17th, 2023 with the recycling and solid waste long-term planning progress report and to adopt resolution supporting the trash talkers initiative and direct county staff to offer support and assistance to the citizen led beautification effort. Thank you for your time and we welcome your questions. Thank you, Mr. Hoxford. Their comments or questions from members of the board. Provisor McPherson. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for that presentation. And I want to thank you for the update. I know this has been going on a long time. We've been talking about the brain with the landfills lifeline for many, many years. And the county has been a leader in the solid waste and recycling issues for years. And I appreciate the efforts to continue this long-term planning related to our landfills. To that end, the policy questions and future cross pertaining to the closure or reuse of the Buena with the landfill are really far reaching, I believe. And so I think it's imperative for the board and the public to have a detailed understanding of that situation. I am prepared to, and I of course want to hear from other board members, but to support the recommended actions of number two and three today, but the first recommended action to approve the long-term zero waste planning needs. I believe needs more consideration than we are able to give it today. For example, we have no information in this report on the CEQA alternatives that might be analyzed and which is according to the significant future and the cost of the close of the refill. Costs that will be borne by the county and the ratepayers for many, many years. So I would like the board, especially considering the fact that we're also going to have two new members in a matter of months or the first of the year to have additional time to ask clarifying questions on that and have a clearer understanding of the staff assumptions and to gather more information from the community development and infrastructure department and to endorse in the next steps. So that would be my proposal, but I'd really like to hear the comments first before formally making that motion. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Okay. Supervisor Caput. Thanks a lot for your report. You guys have been doing a lot of work getting ready for different projects for the county. And I see your department moving up as far as a priority department in the future. You're going to get more attention. You're going to get more oversight. The environment is a key thing for the future of everybody. And the younger generation is very in tune to the environmental projects. I guess one of the things we have to be very careful about is protecting our ocean. I guess if we lived in Nevada or East all the way to Virginia, we wouldn't be so concerned about it. But we're right here on the ocean. And what's the critical... I know plastic is a very confusing thing. What is recyclable? What is not? What to throw away in the garbage? What to throw away in the recycle? You have all those, especially with the takeout now after the pandemic, or the black food trays, plastic food trays, are they recyclable? I know clear is, and some of the plastics were not recyclable. Yeah. Good morning. I'm a community colossal recycling and solid waste services manager. So yeah, you're correct. There are many types of plastics. Green waste recovery has assured us that they can recycle them. They just require them to be cleaned and dry. They can be placed in the blue recycle cart or bin, and they will sort through them and find markets where they can be recycled. But there are a lot of different types of plastics. Some are more valuable to recycle than others. There is some work, maybe for extended producer responsibility legislation to have the plastic industry be more responsible about creating recycle markets for that and making it easier to recycle. But it is definitely a big issue. There are a lot of single use plastic items and recycling bin. Okay. And then there was a part in there about the education part. The public is very willing to participate. I think one of the key things is if we go into any fast food establishment, I know some of them have recycle bins. They have garbage bins, compost bins. Most of them don't though. So we really have to get business on our side. How do you envision getting businesses to be more cooperative on this? We have county staff, and also Greenways Recovery has outreach and education staff that go out and visit businesses to help them improve their recycling and have adequate capacity. That is something we acknowledge. There is a lack of front of house or front of business carts or whatever bins for separating recycles for the customers of fast food restaurants to use. So that is something we need to improve on, but we have that in the works. Yeah. And one other area that kind of interests me is plastic does, it breaks down into smaller and smaller tiny particles, right? And then when it gets in the ocean, the fish eat it, it gets in the food. I understand it even gets in the clothes washer, the dishwasher and all that. Does it ever break down completely? Or does it just get smaller and smaller and keep floating out there? I assume maybe and eventually it will break down or metabolize and get deconstructed. But yeah, it's at a microscopic level, so you're right. All the marine life can ingest it and pass it on and we could eventually eat the fish that would have small bits of microplastic. I know it's a big issue. You're correct. It's in our wastewater. It passes through the wastewater treatment plants. We have a clothing that when it's washed, little bits of plastic fibers come off. So it's definitely an issue and it's being studied. And yeah, you're correct that it doesn't break down in a reasonable timeframe. It's out there for a long time. Right. And how's it going? Last question with China. Are they not taking like before? Or are they getting less and less cooperative? There being a lot more choosing about the material they import into Recycle, that has put a lot of pressure on the whole entire country, especially the West Coast, who ships a lot of recyclable material to China. I think it has spurred some innovation and maybe some local recycling options, but it definitely had a big effect on the recycling market for our franchise already to utilize. Thanks a lot. And you guys, I think, like I said, they're going to be a key department in the future and move right up the priority list. Okay. Thanks. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. Thank you both for this report. I was really struck by the organics piece of it. And I had no idea that nearly 50% of residential waste is organics. Of course, that becomes one of the top producers of methane in our state, which is an extremely potent greenhouse gas. And 80 times is, in the short term, more warming impacts than CO2, which is incredible. So we definitely have our state colleagues to thank for passing SB 1383 and looking forward to its impact. I'm just curious, with the eight years of anticipated lifespan left at Buena Vista, is that accounting on the elimination of organics from the waste stream, or would that have to be factored in still? Yeah, that would factor in the reduction of organics. I mean, we've been reducing our antics for decades now. The yard waste and yard trimmings would waste, but now with the addition of removing food and our improvement going forward with that, it should extend the life of landfill. Most food breaks down in the landfill. It's like an anaerobic digester, so it doesn't really take up a lot of space, but it does produce methane. And we're required by state law to stop, to reduce the amount of organics going into our landfill. Got it. So the eight-year life expectancy is, if we get the organics, I mean, when we get the organics out of the waste stream. And if it weren't for SB 1383, we'd be looking at whatever, three to five years or something much shorter. It would be slightly shorter. Yeah. Okay. Another question is, I mean, closure of one of the landfill, I understand it can be pretty expensive. What are you guys currently budgeting for in terms of the money that we've saved? And what's the budget for the closure costs today? Our current closure fund balance is approximately $8 billion that we have that we've been saving for many years. And with the new infrastructure charge, it takes into, it does take into consideration our new inflation rate. The 1993 rate was, we started with a beginning balance of about $6.6 million, I believe, of what it was getting in inflation factors. And the new inflationary estimate went from, we were looking at about $10 million in today's dollars, and it jumped up to 16 million. And that extra amount of cost is, was factored into the new infrastructure charge. So we'll be saving a lot more per year to once we've started receiving that funding. And we know by the time that we actually do get to the closure cost, that we will be fully funded at that $16 million level. And closure, you know, there's multiple ways to do it, but it all, we're looking now with our, we're looking more that we're going to be doing more of a lot of clay. We have to bring a lot of clay and a lot of fresh dirt to actually help to seal it, not just trucking costs alone. And that's where that extra costs are coming in. Okay. So you're saying you're currently expecting closure costs to be about $16 million? $16 million. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I've heard it can be extremely expensive to, you know, get closure past state and federal agencies and that, you know, it could even be in the tens of million, I mean, maybe even more north of $50 million. So I think that's a number that I'm really interested in seeing us drill down into and having some certainty about. And I think it's sort of at the heart of some of McPherson's concerns as well. We've been working with our landfill consultants, Geosyntec, who know that landfill, probably better than a lot of people. They've been consultants for more than a decade. And they, they're the ones that have, that gave us the new estimate. And they were on the conservative side. So they estimated on the high side, and it's a little bit more than $16 million. I'm using that as just a rough number. But that in today's dollars is the current estimate by the professional people that would know what it should cost to close. Okay. Thank you. Supervisor Friend. Yes, Mr. Chair. I just, well, I appreciate the presentation. I'm actually a little bit, I could use some clarity on what Supervisor McPherson's actually asking for here, or maybe Director Machado could help with this. Because, I mean, today it looks like a report, kind of a plan to move forward on some of the zero waste recommendations. Meaning I didn't really see this as sort of a high risk item to just kind of move forward today. So if I could get clarity, Supervisor McPherson exactly why you want to yank the first part out of the recommended actions, maybe a little bit more succinctly. And then we could see with the professional staff here, whether there's some of those issues could be addressed as opposed to coming back. It also seemed that approval of things like this helped them move along, march along on the grant and funding side. And so I think that it's useful for us to be considerate of that timeline too. But if you could just maybe provide some explanation, that'd be helpful. Yeah, I can do that. It's really the info. I think we need more information of the SEQA alternatives in particular. I think that's going to be a key point of it. I know we've been looking at this for a long time. But I think that that's important. And also because we're going to have two seated supervisors and that's going to be impactful. This is at least eight years away. But I think that they would be wise to have, let them have some input into it too. But I think it's more the SEQA alternatives that the issue that I'm concerned about. All right. I mean, look, I mean, one of us is in my district. Ben Lowman's in your district and we're not going anywhere. So I mean, the two new supervisors, I appreciate we're going to have, but I don't really see that as relevant. On the SEQA side, I mean, it's project specific. I mean, so when the time comes, but, but perhaps Director Machado can, can provide some clarity on the SEQA alternatives component. Yeah, please, Director Machado. All right. Thank you. Good morning, Matt Machado, Director CDI. Just to get into the details a little bit more. We are preparing SEQA documents now and we're hoping to release a notice of preparation in the coming months. And we're looking at alternatives, both for the organics and for transfer stations of the future as part of the closure action. I think the most critical piece that requires a lot of alternative consideration is the organic processing. And I can share with you that we're looking at those all terms now and we'll process them through the SEQA document. Some of those all terms include looking to partner with our neighbors down in the marina landfill in their compost facility, looking at constructing our own compost facility, looking at some innovative ideas to convert directly to energy. And I recall having a bit of this conversation in front of your board recently about waste energy type, you know, anaerobic digestion or gasification. There are a lot of different processes. So we hope to flush all those out through a SEQA process in the coming months as part of our alternative consideration. And so I would assure the board that we will get to that. It's a requirement of SEQA and a requirement of proceeding with all these efforts, actually capital efforts and policy efforts as we go forward. So hopefully, you know, that may answer it or we can discuss more. So answer any questions that you may have. I appreciate that. We all want to get at this as quickly as possible and all, but I think why not? I'm looking at the first part of next year that we can answer some of these questions or have more of the data before us. So that's, I think it's worth the wait that we've waited so long and that's why I'm just requesting it. I don't want a specific date on it, but I think it'll be the first part of 2023. Okay. Thank you. Are there any member of the public who should address us on this item? Please approach the podium. Good morning, Becky Steinbrunner. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson, for honoring CEQA and making sure that it stays with us in this process because that is the intent of CEQA, that it is in place and that the alternatives are thoroughly examined before things are approved publicly. So thank you. I appreciate that very much and I agree with you. I heard the presentation talk about being cameras in hotspot. I remember that this board approved doing that a few years ago recently within the last four or so. So I want to know if that was not done or if they were not effective or what happened because the board did approve using cameras in hotspots because of this dumping problem. I would like some information on some of the larger waste generators like the Santa Cruz County Fair that how is it going with their composting? I volunteer there a lot and I know that there are the yellow bins but I know that they're not being used very well. And so how is that transition going there as sort of a litmus test for this program in our county? Ms. Lobabo does an excellent job and I really want to commend her. The county used to do code generation at the Buena Vista landfill with methane when I moved here in the 1980s. It stopped and then I understood that it had begun again. So why is it not happening if it isn't happening? I would like to see a biodiesel recycling plant from the plastics. I know there's a group that does that with ocean plastics that I've retrieved and I'd like to see that. I would like dumpsters but at some of these places where dumping is a problem. So let's give them a place to put it. And I know it may and you could make the claim it. It doesn't pay dump fees but it does address the problem. So I think that would help. And I would also like. Thank you, Ms. Steinburner. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Sally Christine Rogers. And my purpose today is to encourage Santa Cruz County to formally endorse the trash talkers initiatives. Trash is a human health issue, psychologically depleting and environmental hazard that adversely affects our agricultural sector, our businesses, washes into our watersheds and ultimately ends up in our national marine sanctuary. Many organizations and governmental entities have been addressing this issue independently. However, they're lacked coordination. Our goal was to get the right people into the room to learn what was already being done to create a strategic plan to come up with solutions, funding, ordinances, accountability, execution and educational outreach. It has been an honor to help coordinate this group, which includes the Santa Cruz County Farm Bureau, Wetlands Watch, California Fish and Wildlife, County Office of Education, Barrow Valley Unified School District, Barrow Valley Chamber, City of Watsonville, Caltrans, CHP, the Santa Cruz County Sheriffs Community Foundation, Santa Cruz County Public Works, the angels there, and this key staff of the offices of assembly member Robert Revis, Senator John Laird and Congressman Panetta. For the past year, we have met on a monthly basis. We've identified hotspots, coordinated cleanups, developed a mission statement, a bilingual logo, a website, and these groups are now working in an engaged, coordinated effort. In just one cleanup, for example, our lead, Ramon Gomez, who works for Mr. Caput. On Hazel Del Red, the trash talker volunteers picked up 4,000 cubic feet of debris, including 40 tires, two refrigerators, a stow of six mattresses, and a sofa. Trash is a massive challenge that affects all of us. However, as trash talkers has effectively shown, when we work together, and not in adversity, we can have a coordinated effort and we can achieve our goal, which is to make Santa Cruz the cleanest county in the state of California. Your support and endorsement is critical to this effort, and I thank you. Thank you, Ms. Rodgers. Anyone else here in chambers? Is there anyone on Zoom? Yes, sure, there are. Mary Lou, your microphone is now available. Thank you. I don't have the numbers. The recycle only takes three out of all of those triangular numbers. They only take three of them, and they do not take any sort of black plastics. So it's limited basically to glass water bottles, metal cans, or whatever type comes in, those numbers, papers and such. So we're very limited in what gets recycled. Everything gets taken over to the San Jose, Clara sorting station, and everything else goes to the dump. If you put in smaller items, it clogs up the system, and then they just throw the whole system out. So I'm hoping that they can come up with something similar to what is in Utah. There was a lady who set up a recycle center there, and they were able to melt it down, and capture the gasoline products and all that stuff for you. So I would appreciate the consideration looking into that type of system for here. Much appreciation. Thank you. Thank you, Mary Lou. Pauline, user wide, your microphone is now available. Marilyn, Garrett, constantly all of this pollution isn't it? I remember bumper sticker pollution is somebody's profit. And also corporations privatize the profit and they socialize the cost. So here we are in the county dealing with all the costs of this toxic waste that corporations are putting out. Why don't we stop the production of the pollution in the first place? We cannot keep running around trying to do the impossible. And your discussion of microplastics just now is indicative of that. They're everywhere. And I'm looking right now at Zero Waste News, the county put out in the summer 2019 with a picture of people looking like they're in hazmat suits with hard haves, masks, trying to recycle is a horrible picture. And there's a quote in here. We really need to stop this where it starts. Here's a quote from your publication. In the June 2019 Santa Cruz Sentinel article, levels of plastic pollution in Monterey Bay rival those in great Pacific garbage patch. Unquote. Rob Juris explains the plastic pollution is made up of tiny bits of debris floating from near the surface to thousands of feet underwater. Ocean animals are consuming these particles. And it goes on. We're in big trouble. Thank you, Ms. Garrett. Tara, your microphone is now available. Yes, thank you very much. I really appreciate the report from Director Machado and the person for the county that filled us in with all that information. What I am asking is I am very diligent about using my small green waste thing for compost. And I find that many of my neighbors are not as informed about what they can put in the green bin and how to put it in the green bin and the blue bin. And I don't know everything. And I appreciate that you mentioned today again about plastics being clean and dry. I kill people that. I do it. But many people don't understand the importance of that. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. And education about how to do it is ought to be part of this program. Thank you. Thank you, Tara. How many more speakers do we have on Zoom? That's it. Okay, great. Well, we do have 10 o'clock schedule item that we're a little bit late for. So I know there's just a few more questions from Supervisor Coonerty on this item. But I'm going to request that we just hold off, put a pause. I think we've reached, we put off our 10 o'clock item long enough. So I want to take a pause on item seven here and we'll come back to it after the ceremony in a minute. And we'll proceed with item 10, which is a proclamation to consider authorizing the issuance of a proclamation honoring assembly member Mark Stone on his retirement to be signed by all members of the board as outlined in the memorandum of Chair Koenig. We'll begin with any comments from board members. Mr. Chair. Supervisor McPherson. Thank you. A lot is can be said and will be said. And I know there's many members of the public don't want to say this to, to, for the outstanding public service that my predecessor, predecessor of Fifth District Supervisor Mark Stone has, what he has done for this community throughout the years. And I'm just sorry, sorry to see him go or leave, not go, but leave his office. But that's his decision. And if there comes a time for everything, he's, the interesting thing about assembly member Stone is that his focus has been so widespread, but he even started when he was a Scott's Valley school board member. Of course, when he got to the assembly, the Fifth District Board of Supervisors, he was always concentrating in particular on environmental issues and childcare issues. He really wanted to make a better opportunity for our children and many, many ways. And then as chair of the judiciary committee, which is a really highly regarded committee in the, in the assembly, he oversaw that very, very well for years. I can go on and on for a long time, but I know there's a lot of people that want to speak about the accomplishments and the appreciation for the public service of assembly member Stone. And I really appreciate you're handing me an easy task. I don't know if you knew the CZU fires were coming or COVID or whatever, but thank you very much. We're getting through it. But while he was here, he did a phenomenal job in Santa Cruz County. And he has done the same in the state of California distinguished assembly members. So I want to thank him for his service very much. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Yes. Supervisor Caput. You bet. Give credit or credit is due. I want to thank you for your cooperation and support for the Pajaro River Project, which is very important to South County. Without that state money, we wouldn't be able to be going forward. And that's going to be flood protection for 100 years. So if you're around 100 years from now, you'll see how valuable your work was. And then Watsonville Hospital is open and staying open. And if we lost that asset to South County, we'd be in big trouble. So that was state money that came through with your support and others. And I remember when I first was getting on the board about 11 years ago, there was this project to buy a rail and trail corridor. And you and I believe John Leopold went up to Sacramento. And when you came back, there was some state money and there was some other money in order to purchase it. So for the past 11 years, we've been going back and forth with rail and trail, but now it's going forward. And so there was a lot of vision in that. I jumped on board, but it was you and others that had the vision at the time. So thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. Supervisor Friend. Thank you, Mr. Chair and Assemblymember Stone. I would like to compliment you on the way that you have led and comported yourself as an elected official. I think that you are the rare elected official that truly still believes in policy over politics and outcomes over optics. I think a lot of people work pretty hard on the self of grandizement and you've never joined that world. You've just been interested in ensuring that the best things happen for Santa Cruz County and across the state. In fact, on the foster care work, for example, you've created some statewide changes. There'll be youth that will have significantly better outcomes throughout their life as a result of the work that you diligently authored. Just on a personal note, your authenticity, your availability, your transparency, you always made yourself available to myself and my staff. And speaking of staff, you always hired remarkably talented staff. I mean, it says a lot about you for not just the tenure that they stuck with you, but the quality that you had and the fact that some of the staff that have moved on have gone on to two exceptionally important things. And I think that says a lot about who you are also as a manager and leader. But I don't think it can be overstated enough how much you respect the county and the county process coming from the county. I mean, I think that you, some of your success at the state has just been the fact that you came from a county government structure. You understood the needs of counties and what our relationship with the state is. When I first got on the board, you emphasized to me the importance of developing relationships with county staff, having respectful relationships with county staff. I mean, you just a class act, and you have a large public sector set of results behind you that the world doesn't know because you've never been somebody that needs to beat your chests and let them know that you did it. And I think that that's what's so admirable about you, is that you just care about these outcomes. And I admire the work that you've done. I admire you as a person. And to Supervisor McPherson's point, while I'm sad to see you go as a state legislator, I mean, I'm just really impressed with the body of work that you've been able to do both at the county and state level. And so I just want to know that this community is better off as a result of it. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Supervisor Friend. Yeah, thank you. Well, everything's been said, but not everyone said it. So I will jump in here and thank Assembly Member Stone for his service to our community and to the state as a whole. As was mentioned, he focused on populations that really didn't have a voice in the political process, whether it's foster kids or environment or just early early childhood or the workings of our judicial system. And by focusing on those systems, you've made real tangible improvements that will not, that we not just see now, but we'll see for generations to come. I appreciate your staff, especially Marie McCarty, who's been always willing to engage and reach out and do constituent work. And I appreciate your approach to, to government as a whole where it's been about, it's been about policy and it's been about principle. And we've been lucky to have you. I know we have a very capable, likely replacement coming in, who will bring a lot of energy and engagement to the role. But I want to thank you for your time and effort and service and hope this gives you more time for long swims or whatever new challenges that come up for you. Thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. Assembly Member Stone, I just wanted to thank you for being a steadfast champion of the environment. And my colleagues have listed many of your accomplishments over your tenure. And I want to remind you that even, even things that maybe don't feel like an accomplishment are in fact successes. And your repeated introduction of a cigarette butt ban in the state assembly, I know it didn't pass, but it was the right thing to do. Someone who has picked up hundreds and if not thousands of butts off our beaches, and I'm sure you have to, it's just, it's so important. And it's inspiring to have someone in the state assembly who will consistently stand up for what's right and stand up for the environment. And you've inspired me and I'm sure another generation of leaders. So thank you. And I'll put it for public comment. Anyone that wishes to say something about our assembly member please approach the podium. Well, I was hoping most of what I had to say would have been said by now and it has. So I just like to talk about a very small micro chapter of one thing Mark did for our little neighborhood in Live Oak and I'd like to just read it. So I touch on all the points. One thing I'd like to talk about in our neighborhood in Live Oak is in 2009, we created a small little working group of residents to help the county adopt what was called a vacation rental ordinance. After countless county hearings, the county approved the ordinance in 2010. The next step was the California COSA commission. The opponents of the vacation rental ordinance were well funded and were able to hire influential lobbyists. Our little neighborhood group was really outmatched but we went to the hearing in Marin County before the COSA commission, not knowing what was going to happen. A little bit of drama in our hearts were beating. Some of you may recall that Mark and none of you have mentioned it was also a member of the California COSA commission during his time here on the board of supervisors. We were hopeful of his support but what happened at the hearing was beyond our expectations. As Mark does and all of you have mentioned he listened to every point of view during the hearing. Our little neighborhood group was lambasted by speaker after speaker. One even sang the God bless America and pointed to us. Anyhow, we sat through all of this. We had no clue what was going to happen. Then the hearing closed and I'll always remember this. Within a few seconds, Mark leaned forward in his chair, made the motion for the COSA commission to approve the county's vacation rental ordinance. Within seconds, another member of the commission seconded the motion and it passed unanimously. After a two-year process and somewhat of an ordeal, it was over in a flash. Our little neighborhood group sat there stunned. We felt like cheering but we simply walked out quietly. Mark has made a difference in so many lives in Santa Cruz County in California. All I can say is thank you for your public service. Thank you. Good morning. I'm happy to be here. I'm a member of the City Council and many things have been said about Assemblymember Stone and he's done tremendous things as you know. And as a Scotts Valley City Council member, I'm particularly indebted to Mark for literally saving Scotts Valley Public Services in 2019. The city was facing financial difficulties and the governor had just vetoed a bill that would have allowed our voters to use the bill by using our sales tax. So Mark creatively using out-of-the-box ideas authored and carried through and supported a bill that allowed that provided some more flexibility, appeased the legislature and the governor and that bill passed and became law as a result we were able to put our tax measure before the voters. I'm very grateful for that. My favorite Mark celebratory story has to do with when I saw him in the recent Pride Parade in Santa Cruz where he was he was our grand marshal sitting in a convertible sports car wearing a robe and a crown and it was just fabulous. I got a kick out of that thing to be doing. Thank you Assemblymember Stone for your leadership and for your protection of our vulnerable residents our environment and our city services enjoy your next chapter whatever that may be. Thank you Councilmember Dulles. Good morning board my name is Dominic Durs I'm here on behalf of Assemblymember Robert Revis in his office. We just come to share our warm regards from the Assemblymember from Robert for all that Assemblymember Stone has been able to do during his tenure and certainly the support that Robert has felt coming from Assemblymember Stone during this time in the legislature I know he speaks often of his first year in office when he was trying to move a bill forward on farm worker housing the discussions and the support he received from Assemblymember Stone met so much in moving that bill forward but I also want to say as far as staff we look at what Assemblymember Stone did in his legislation this year we talk about a staff unionization bill people recognize that all of us who do the work daily it was Assemblymember Stone who has been pushing for things like that not just the environment not just for those most vulnerable like our foster youth but we talk about IDs for undocumented residents so they don't feel left out when they're going to apply for services submitting applications it's things like a farm worker a unionizing bill that you literally saw people march 300 miles to help get passed the legislation that Assemblymember Stone has pushed forward is nothing short of phenomenal and I know as somebody who works here in our region his staff has been equally amazing from Maureen McCarty, Andrew Everly Alec Madness, Erica Parker all of our staff have truly appreciated the team he's been able to put together because when we came in working for Assemblymember Rivas they were the ones we had to often turn to how do we do this and they did it in the same manner that Assemblymember Stone did with dignity, with intelligence and with true thought for their community so thank you Thank you Mr. Derser Good morning my name is John Laird and I think that the first person that came to me and said you should run for the Senate was Mark Stone so I have been teasing him mercilessly about the fact that I worked hard to do it and then he bails because that was one of the joys about the last two years is working with him and it's been almost 20 years ago Jeff Almquist who was a county supervisor Gray Davis was recalled and the next morning the next morning he pointed supervisor Almquist to the bench and creates a vacancy in the Board of Supervisors and a very key vacancy given the balance at the time so I called the governor's office and they said oh you know we don't think we're going to be here long enough to fill the vacancy and I was apoplectic over a series of phone calls basically you created this mess you will fix this mess and then they called me by the end of the week and said we should take a while and we should have time to do it and then I thought me in my big mouth I've been doing this and I never had a candidate and there were three outstanding people that put themselves forward but if you talk to Mark he's one of those rare people in politics that every time you talk to him he goes up in your estimation sometimes the first time you meet people is the high point and not with Mark he really has done that and one of the interesting things is people in Sacramento will know we're from the same area and they'll say tell me something I don't know about Mark and I'll say he swam the English Channel and they will genuinely be surprised but actually attribute it to him and I'll have great glee at the end of that story and saying I've been an elected official over 40 years in Santa Cruz County to photograph in the Sentinel and the Speedo which happened to Mark after that and I think and it has come up in these comments the thing we all know him and love him and see what he does for Santa Cruz County but it's somebody that saw him up close in Sacramento foster kids he chaired the environmental caucus and people went to him on key bills and when I had a tough bill in the assembly I genuinely went to Mark last year we made a historic change in pain and suffering benefits after 60 years and Mark was chair of the Judiciary Committee he guided it out of committee that bill ended up making it off the assembly floor with him presenting it and the governor signing it and it was a historic change losing their right of action because of COVID and people waiting them out gained that right back and it's something that Mark just putting his nose to the grindstone made happen and I can't tell you the number of times in this year since Mark made his announcement that people have said to me in Sacramento what are we going to do without him on and fill in the blank whether it's coastal issues and his coastal commission experience whether it's health and human services and his former chairmanship and everything he did or whether it's on judiciary and basic civil rights and judicial processes and so it has just been an amazing career and I think we are very lucky to have had him as our assembly member he is supporting somebody that if he gets there we'll have big shoes to fill and have a real bar to cross over I think he's supporting her and she's really capable of it but he will just truly be missed Thank you Senator Laird My name is Gail Pellerin and I have had the pleasure of living in all the districts that Mark Stone has represented from the school district to the 5th district supervisors to now the assembly district and it has been an honor and a pleasure working with him over these years he is definitely a man of integrity he is a legend the work he's done in judiciary and foster kids and the environment is exemplary and I've had the pleasure of getting to know a lot of his colleagues in Sacramento and they all say amazing things about Mark Stone and I see Wank that he is someone that you can count on he's a man of his word he's got great integrity certainly just such a pleasure and getting to know him through the eyes of other people who worked with him and he's just incredible he's been an incredible leader for our community and whoever fills those big shoes that he is leaving behind I hope you will answer their call whenever they call for advice so thank you all very much thank you Ms. Pellerin good morning board members Fernando Gerardo chief of probation I just want to say a few words and appreciation of assembly member Stone he's had a significant impact on our juvenile justice system I know very well and on behalf of California's youth and families adults and my department in the field of probation I want to thank him for sponsoring so many bills that have transformed how we work he did much better outcomes for those we serve he's clearly listened to the youth and families, advocates, communities probation chiefs the entire state to make these improvements to how he works so the landscape of our justice system has forever changed I want to share a message from Karen Pank who is the executive director of our association chief probation officers of California and this is what she said CPOP has worked closely with assembly member Mark Stone over the years and has partnered on many important issues including continuum of care reform the transitional age youth pilot program juvenile restoration of competency issues and a pilot program for children's crisis continuum services CPOP recognized assembly member Stone for his legislative leadership on these issues as a legislator of the year in 2018, thank you thank you chief Charaldo good morning I'm Nancy Macy I live in Boulder Creek very extreme pleasure of introducing Mark a lot of times because he has faithfully returned to the San Lorenzo Valley to speak at the environmental town hall which is an which is an annual project of the Valley women's club it was on zoom the last time and Mark has come and faithfully given a report on what's happening at the state level and how it impacts us us meaning in the San Lorenzo Valley but obviously Santa Cruz County and so on and everyone who came and it was usually a Saturday afternoon a sunny Saturday afternoon and there were usually 150 people there and that's a big turnout for our little valley especially on a Saturday afternoon so we were always very honored for him to be there and he always I didn't know that's how it worked in Sacramento he would give insights into how it worked it was very helpful he also came when the AmeriCorps kids I call them kids they were young people from across the United States came as a part of a program to do restoration work in the San Lorenzo Valley and he came and they had never been honored quite in the same way because he gave them recognition from the state of California a beautiful acknowledgement of what they had done for our community and it was like wow this is really cool I've been to the state of California it's really fancy it's got the logo and everything on it so that was really special but the thing that strikes me as you make an introduction for someone is you have to do a little research to find out what they've been doing and every single year it was like oh my god he's done so much and the thing that people have learned in working with Mark is he has empathy and he has a creative mind that comes up with solutions as you mentioned Chair Koenig the cigarette butts who knew that you could even come up with the idea of banning cigarette butts number one and number two what a huge solution it would be to a horrific problem if we didn't even have to pick them all up so that's the type of thing and also the creative work that he did for the queer youth I wanted to mention that one too thank you very much good morning my name is Dana McCray and Jason Heath will never admit this but county councils don't always welcome attorneys joining the board of supervisors it can be a difficult relationship but Mark's first day in office he came to introduce himself to me and said I can't wait to be a client so excited to be on the other side of the table and we'll just see about that but he was true to his word as he always is and he was such a gentleman which isn't to say he disagreed with everything that the office did but if he knew that we were working on something difficult that he had expertise in he would send an article or say have you thought about this and frankly he just made us better lawyers just in his quiet honorable way but as many people have said here I think Mark's legacy is what he's done for young people from his early days in office on a school board to his work on child welfare system improvement planning here at the county and then obviously with the foster care reform that he did the only mistake I ever made with Mark was telling him I would say yes to anything he ever asked me to do and that's how I ended up peddling with him from San Francisco to Los Angeles on the aid cycle and I guess I should thank him for that but the jury's still out thank you so much thank you Ms. McCrae my name is Stuart Rosenstein and I've been lucky enough to work on LGBTQIA issues helping queer and trans youth for many many years I have many stories to share and it's very humbling hearing about all the other work that he has done but specifically to help gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgender and an allied youth in Santa Cruz County he's done many things and he's been so humble throughout the whole experience we had a horrific situation happening in his district some years ago and to calm the flames he wrote beautiful op-ed articles in the Sentinel that helped diffuse the situation and he's just very humble when you thank him he just wants to help people one of my favorite stories of Mark is we have an annual queer youth leadership awards and we happen to have had it at Scotts Valley High School one year and he was in the back where I always stay in the back and Mark Stone looked at me and was hearing all the LGBT youth giving their speeches and Mark said we need to get these kids connected to political issues I want to sponsor a table to get them to one of the largest political LGBT dinners in San Jose and get them at a young age to be inspired to do more and those kids now are in their 20s and 30s and doing great work and they often will tell me they will forget the name of the event but they'll say oh that dinner was amazing I didn't know the LGBT people were respected in that way and Mark has just been so humble whenever I bring him to the table take a picture it's just the kids have so much joy what really inspires though is the parents and grandparents when they hear that Mark is so supportive it's just love and they get emotional when they thank me to thank Mark I want to give a shout out to Mark's team Mark's team is equally passionate to him and during the pandemic when I would call Maureen or Tish or anyone in his office you could hear the emotion on the phone they cared about each person and they were working so hard to help people I'm very honored to be part of the people thank you Mark Stone, thank you thank you Mr. Rosenstein my name is Les Gardner and I wanted to the last gentleman I wanted to add something to that when Mark was first appointed to the board he had to run for office right away and nobody knew him there was five people in the race two were city council members that were much more well known and it was a very tough race and early on I told Mark we've got to get at least 41% in Scotts Valley and the last gentleman was talking about an incident there there had been a lot of bullying in the schools there this is 20 years ago and it was much more conservative city at that time they wanted to bring some speakers in to address that from the gay community and the school board had asked Mark to weigh in on it now he didn't have to he was on the board of supervisors it was a school board and a city issue and him and I talked about this and I said you don't have to do that and it's going to be very controversial and it's going to cost you Mark said I don't care he hadn't been in that job 30 days but he said I don't care he said it's the right thing to do and he did and we certainly won that race but for us that were working on the campaign it showed what the make of that man was and for 20 years I've been close to Mark for 20 years it's always been that way it has always been the issue what's the right thing to do not what is the political right thing to do but what's the right thing to do for my constituents and what's the right thing to do and what's my moral compass and he's never varied on that he's never even abstained from a vote he might be the only guy but he always votes one other thing I just wanted to address one thing that John said about the English Channel John and I went to Monterey to meet with Speaker Bass at the time to talk to her about appointing Mark Stone to the Coastal Commission and when we got in front of her there was a lot of people in the room that were actually in favor of another candidate that was on the Coastal Commission at that time but the first thing out of John's mouth is you know he swam the Coastal Commission he swam the English Channel and not the environment or anything else but he swam the English Channel and I swear she was taken back and we spent about five minutes talking about his swimming in the English Channel and I swear that that must have been one of the things that pushed him over on this Thank you Mr. Gardner Alright, seeing no one else here in chambers is there anyone on Zoom? Yes, we have one speaker All in User 1 your microphone is available Buddy, I would like to see you in person like I used to but I feel pretty ill with all the wireless microwave radiation there something Mark accomplished along with Ellen Peary when they were on the board has not been mentioned yet The county and this took five years of effort to get it stopped and they had to spray for weeds they said all the roads in the county with roundups and you see the swath of death along the roads San Rental Valley Women's Club was one of the groups that called for a halt of this Kevin Collins I remember Central Water District members of the community signed petition and finally Ellen Peary and Mark Stone adopted a policy that aimed for I think it was zero pesticides but they stopped the spraying of the carcinogenic roundup and that is one thing I think is very important and commendable when Mark was on the Coastal Commission however he led the move to put Verizon 4G antennas on the coast and this is very detrimental to nature and everybody microwave radiation so with some policies they're commendable other ones are harmful to the environment like this I do want to give high praise to Maureen McCarty she's been most helpful over the years and without staff we know the elected officials would be unable to accomplish hardly anything so thanks to Maureen thank you Ms. Karen we have one more speaker Tara your microphone is now available thank you Chairman and Board of Supervisors I just want to say you've all said everything that I would agree with about Mark the fact that he's real he accepted my friend request when I see him in the world he acknowledges me I've lived in Santa Cruz County for 22 years I've lived in Pleasure Point for 20 of those years and what I've done but Mark is the one that has been out there and I just say thank you for all your service I'm excited that you're going to be able to continue to swim and possibly swim across the bay to Monterey thank you thank you Tara we have no more speakers well this time I'd like to invite Assemblymember Stone to say a few words Chair and members and I think I'd like to take this opportunity really to say thank you to you and to everyone who's been a part of my career it's been almost 25 years between school board, Board of Supervisors Coastal Commission and now the legislature I just can't say how much I appreciate the voters' willingness to keep sending me back to Sacramento or into these roles and the patients that they have had the confidence that the voters have had in me Scotts Valley, Santa Cruz County especially the 5th District and the 29th Assembly District it's been an honor absolutely to serve but I also want to thank mostly the staff who I've been able to interact with and whether it's staff at the school district staff in the county and every supervisor sort of show up from time to time and county staff just has to keep soldiering on with whomever shows up and whatever issues we happen to bring but in this county specifically being able to meet with staff and get to know the departments and how things function and what the history is was really remarkable and every staff member here was so willing to sit down and explain and talk through and be patient sometimes with the initiatives that we ultimately bring forward we're not always I say this of myself the best and the brightest, we're the ones who get elected and because of that we have to rely on staff and this county is absolutely remarkable in what gets done, I think my colleagues in the state probably get very frustrated with me talking about as they talk about what can and can't get done throughout the state and I think I can be really irritating when I say well yes, but in Santa Cruz County because we can do we have done and we will continue to do that's the way that Santa Cruz County can work and it should, it's a small enough county it should really be able to work that well so I appreciate it all the different levels the staff who I've been able to work with and on my personal staff and with this I'm going to include my committee staff in the legislature but the staff that I've had here and especially all my chiefs of staff almost 20 years worth whether it's Susan or Maureen Rebecca, Craig, Aaron who have put together really a functioning team and the way that we've been able to work and work effectively by having the right people in the right places Allison and Maisha Maisha was chief consultant for Human Services for two years with me and Allison has been eight years, judiciary chief counsel and it's been absolutely remarkable working with folks who have helped guided and provide pathways and understanding to what we need to be working on and Maureen's been mentioned here Maureen's been with me since I was on the board here and now with my district director and so for all of those folks the mistakes that I should have made could have made, would have made but didn't make because of them I probably couldn't even begin to list at this point I think the smartest thing any of us can do when we get in an elected position is to put good people in place, listen to them let them do their jobs and make sure that they are empowered to do the best work that they possibly can it's one of the reasons we focus on constituent services here because we have a very active constituency I think my district office here when I'm in the legislature gets more calls in a day than most of my colleagues get in a week sometimes a month because this is a very engaged constituency and we are all blessed whether you know it or not, elected officials we are blessed to have a constituency that empowered, that engaged that active in what we are doing, they hold us accountable they make sure we are doing what we are supposed to be doing so I can't thank my staff in all its components my staff for working with me for teaching me, for allowing me to do the work that we've been able to accomplish I just want to do a shout out to Les Gardner as well who's been a mentor and a friend and a confidant to me for years and bless I know I've pissed you off a few times but I hope I've made you proud I don't think I've ever embarrassed you at least I hope not through all of these years to my family my kids Melissa and Byron who your families those of you in these positions know give up a lot when we take these roles because we're not there all the time we're not always able to be there as much as we try for them every single time but my kids appreciated what I've done and they have supported me and then finally my wife Kathy and that's an applause line anyone in public service you have to give up somewhere and having a spouse a partner at home to pick up the slack to do the things that you're not able to do we could not do these roles without that kind of support and help at home so Kathy I want to say thank you whatever accolades people want to lay on me is really to my staff is really to my family for letting me be a part of this and it's been a remarkable 25 years all together five years in Scotts Valley on the school board nine years here at this dais and ten years in the legislature now which believe me is plenty I look forward to Gail I'm very excited to be supporting the next person to take my role and I have every confidence that it will be Gail and that'll allow all of you to sort of let me fade into the background and be forgotten because of the work that she will be doing that I have every confidence of thank you I appreciate your acknowledgement I appreciate the acknowledgement of the work that's been done the staff that I've been able to put together and work with over the years and just being able to work in this environment is really truly an honor thank you thank you so much Assemblymember Stone and now I have very nice proclamation for you here I could just get a vote by the board to officially issue this proclamation or a motion second motion by Supervisor McPherson and a second by Supervisor Caput any further discussion seeing none clerk roll call vote please Supervisor Friend Coonerty Caput McPherson and Koenig item passes unanimously thank you minutes and then we'll return to item 7 thank you considering a report on recycling and solid waste long-term planning progress first clerk we please call the roll Supervisor Friend Coonerty Caput McPherson and Koenig alright thank you and please make a note when Supervisor Caput rejoins us Supervisor Coonerty I think you had some questions you wanted to ask thank you Mr. Chair my question was it mentioned in the staff report that staff would initiate a renegotiation of small hauler contracts and only issue temporary permits or rights to engage in that activity I know we expanded pickups with the green waste contract but do you have any idea how many people were talking about that still use these small hauler contracts and has the outreach been done just all the questions around that issue I know it's been I know it's been an issue in other districts recently and I want to make sure we're not stepping into a new controversy here so recently one of our smaller haulers that had been grandfathered in just to operate in the San Lorenzo Valley Summit area to specifically serve residents that were on private roads long private roads off the main county maintained roads that franchise E was failing to abide by the agreement and not making reports and payments to the county so we unfortunately had to terminate them a lot of those customers were able to go to green waste because green waste was able to get a smaller truck that could serve them some of those customers went to our other small hauler franchise summit trash or summit waste and recycling services this is kind of an issue we're reaching out to those affected the former Coons customers assuring them that they need to get garbage service per our universal service ordinance and that green waste recovery is the primary hauler they're the exclusive franchise and green waste has assured us that they can with the smaller truck access all those private roads so I know there's more outreach and education and communication needed but we are working on that so do we know how many potential affected customers we're talking about here there were 300 300 to 350 affected customers and to my knowledge most of them have either gone with green waste recovery some have gone with the other small hauler and some have opted to do the self hauler option become a registered self hauler where they haul their garbage and recyclables to the county disposal sites themselves and this is I know that's around this one issue but but it mentions in the report that that we're sort of going to be taking that renegotiating all the contracts is it just 350 county wide that we're talking about or is there a potential for more impacts down the road the approximately 350 were just in the summit area the San Lorenzo Valley area so so I mean if so we move towards I guess we move towards limiting these haulers, small haulers to just temporary do we know how many people are affected will be affected if I could chime in on this one as well so I think Supervisor Coonerty is referencing the Nero haulers which are commercial suppliers so Casey maybe you could share if you know how many people use the Nero haulers and what those anticipated changes are coming forward potentially correct so we have non-exclusive roll off franchises those are for containers that are greater than 10 cubic yards or 10 cubic yards and greater there is 7 authorized approved Nero haulers that have franchise agreements we've been those have been renewed we need to renew them again they expire at the end of this calendar year and we are going to include provisions we've always had requirements for them to recycle both mixed recycles and organics we are going to be working with them and outing them and their customers to make sure they are compliant with that not all of them can provide smaller sized recyclable service for organics and mixed recyclables but our exclusive franchise with green waste recovery can supply those smaller bins that may be needed at many of the commercial generators to make sure they have adequate recycling service Supervisor Coonerty if I may add on to that I think we understand your concern and we have a similar concern at having lived through the Coons transition and so we will strive to gather more details more information do more outreach before there are any proposed changes because we understand that if we impact those roll-off customers it will impact our constituents as well and so we hear you and I think we are hearing you correctly that we would like to gather up the numbers on the users of those roll-off bins those are the larger bins it's a similar situation with trying to get those roll-off bin small haulers compliant with 1383 and other requirements that we have to meet so we will do outreach and data gathering and make sure that the impacted areas are knowledgeable before any changes occur okay and thank you it would be helpful to know you know to try to know exactly how big an impact this is and then also by SuperZorial District we all understand which community specifically might be impacted so we can have a sense of who we need to be in conversation with and check in with before any changes are made yes thank you thank you Supervisor Coonerty so we have heard from the public on this at this time emotion would be appropriate I'm sorry I hadn't quite actually fully addressed the questions we got cut off last time I mean I appreciate the expediency of it but just getting back to the issue that I want to make sure that Supervisor McPherson's issue is addressed that's important to me also want to recognize what the item actually is which is functionally just a progress report and so I feel like there's as opposed to not accepting the progress report there's a way to accept the progress report but provide additional direction that addresses I feel like this is from a procedural standpoint there's no reason today to not accept the recommended actions and so I would be comfortable I want to make sure Supervisor McPherson agrees with this or is comfortable with this that the additional direction would be that they would come back with the CEQA documents and alternatives and bring them forward as part of the next steps for project development and I say that because those need to be brought back when the projects are considered so we can specify that we want that to come back as part of the project development I just don't see why we wouldn't accept the other elements of the zero waste report or the standard progress report that they also could be using as part of their justification for funding solicitations at this time and sort of punted into some unclear time into the first quarter when the clear thing that I think Supervisor McPherson's asking for is ensuring that he has a full analysis on what the alternatives would be should these projects come forward that's just something we can add an additional direction but Supervisor McPherson what do you think of that well I think that would be acceptable I mean if it's clear and I think it can be made clear again not from the County Council that this would be acceptable so I would I would go along with that to accept the recommended actions the three of the recommended actions with the stipulation that we come back in the near future early next year to report further information on the sequel alternatives I'll second all right we have a motion by Supervisor McPherson a second by Supervisor Friend if we can make a comment Supervisor Cabot I want to thank you and your staff for the help in the past two years with cleanup of trash and homeless encampments that we've had in South County that would be Murphy Crossing area Highway 152 in Hula Hand Hazeldale Road cleanup and also Airport Boulevard near Green Valley area and then so I want to thank you and public works we do have one scheduled I guess for Paulson Road and the staging area will be the property where we have a lease with a option to buy a South County park and which is on Whiting Road so anyway I want to thank you and your staff and the last thing I want to say I love the name of the initiative Trash Talkers so thank you thank you Supervisor Caput any further discussion alright then we have the motion to adopt the recommended actions with additional direction to return in the early part of next year with a review of the CEQA alternatives very good yeah we'll call it please Supervisor Friend Coonerty Caput McPherson recommended thank you thank you to our entire staff on that last item we'll now proceed with item 8 which is to consider a presentation on the 6th cycle housing element update program and direct staff to return on or before January 31st 2023 for an additional study session is outlined in the memorandum of the Deputy CAO Director of Community Development and Infrastructure and for a report on this item we have our Assistant Director of Planning Stephanie Hansen good morning I think it's still morning good morning Chair Koenig members of the Board Supervisors we're going to discuss today our upcoming 6th cycle housing element update the housing element is one of 7 elements in the general plan actually there's 8 of the new sustainability update work we'll combine 2 of them and one of 7 mandated elements and it is on an 8 year update cycle the previous housing element the 5th cycle was adopted and certified by the California Department of Community Development or HCD in 2016 several of the elements in this slide will be updated however in the sustainability update which we'll start to review at your next meeting and then the last 2 elements the public safety and noise elements were recently updated as part of our safety element update this slide shows goals associated with the update we included a 6th goal here because there's new requirements associated with the 6th cycle that are of paramount importance these goals include providing a range of housing choices, removing barriers to providing housing, preserving housing stock and providing opportunities for special needs and supportive housing goal number 2 is specific to assisting in the development of adequate housing to meet the needs of extremely low low and moderate income households a new goal for the 6th cycle is to focus on future housing in areas with high resources these include areas that have good access to transit schools jobs parks and other services sites that do not require environmental mitigation and where the presence of streamlining for permitting is available here are some of the required actions associated with the update first the county will start by reviewing our 5th cycle housing inventory this will require that we do a thorough analysis of the existing 1,000 plus or so properties that were in the last inventory in the 5th cycle housing element and those properties that remain vacant can be included in our next one the 6th cycle inventory during the 5th cycle will have to be reevaluated to see if there is additional capacity for inclusion in the next cycle staff will identify those properties that were overlooked or subdivided and may provide additional housing sites HCD requires that only sites with realistic demonstrated potential for development during the planning period can be included in the housing inventory must identify utility infrastructure and other services and specify the number of units and the level of income that the units can accommodate on the property county staff will review density of projects on similarly zone sites for affordability levels as part of this project with some exceptions vacant sites that were included in our last 2 housing cycles will not be able to be included in the 6th cycle housing so that may put some constraints on how much we can use our existing inventory and may you know encourage or force the county into engaging in rezoning of specific sites to accommodate higher densities after the housing element is adopted the association of Monterey Bay Area has just approved the arena plan for our region stands for regional housing needs allocation our county was assigned arena of 4,634 units to be accommodated in the 8 year planning period the slide shows a comparison between the 5th cycle arena and the new 6th cycle arena arena has increased over three and a half years from the last cycle so it's quite a huge jump for us as of 2021 744 units have been permitted under the current arena which represents about 56% of the required units this year will be a decent year for us in terms of residential building permits and so this percentage will be improved by the end of the cycle need to go back okay actively furthering fair housing is a new 6 cycle requirement we call it AFFH because it's a mouthful it means taking meaningful actions in addition to combating discrimination that overcome patterns of segregation and fosters inclusive communities free from barriers that restrict access to opportunity we do this in part by forming an assessment of fair housing which requires an analysis of the relationship between available sites in our high resource areas and creating policies and programs to address this as well as rezoning of sites the purpose of the assessment is to replace segregated living patterns with integrated and balanced living patterns to transform racially and ethnically concentrated areas of poverty into areas of opportunity the assessment of fair housing will include a summary of housing issues in the jurisdiction and an assessment of the jurisdiction's fair housing enforcement and outreach capacity and an analysis of summary of fair housing issues used to using available state and local federal resources the analysis will include a variety of factors such as trends and patterns in our county and in comparison to the broader region and specifically will be addressing integration and segregation racially or ethnically concentrated areas of poverty disparities and access to opportunity including for persons with disabilities and disproportionate housing needs which may include things like overpayment overcrowding, housing conditions and the like as noted public involvement has to be robust in this program and will begin to occur early in the process staff is putting together lists of potential stakeholders who may have an interest in the development of housing in the county including non-profit housing developers, local developers, realtors, funders farm labor organizations community based organizations others in dressing homelessness or houselessness and interested county departments staff will be using similar outreach methods developed for the sustainability update including an interactive website public comment portal outreach via social media and public sized community meetings it's important to note that a lot of the work that we're doing this year provides a good foundation for the housing element update both the sustainability update and the climate action and adaptation plan contain policies and strategies that support infill housing and housing options in the context of a changing environment policy and code changes in the sustainability update which will be particularly useful include accommodating infill development along our transportation corridors and in urban areas with services broadening the range of densities allowed in our current zone districts facilitating new standards for smaller lots raising the percentage of residential development that can be used on mixed use sites allowing slightly taller buildings and adjustments to floor area ratios that recognize the need for more housing and better utilization of sites bright sizing parking requirements and requiring transportation demand management strategies to encourage reduction in vehicle travel providing easy to follow county design guidelines to address neighborhood transitions and goals for vibrant communities and finally adopting a new higher density zoning district residential flex which will allow 45 units to the acre which will accommodate smaller housing units for single students workers retirees and others rezoning properties along our transportation corridors including the rail corridor will likely be a next step to improve our housing inventory and accommodate arena so here's the schedule we have for the proposed update we'll begin with assessing the housing inventory and doing the AFFH analyses as noted in staff report staff also intends to return to the board again in January with an update to engage our new supervisors environmental review is required and will be anticipated to be completed by the by June of next year stakeholder input will start soon beginning this year and will continue along with community meetings along the way will present a draft of the element to the planning commission housing advisory commission and board of supervisors next summer and then submit our draft to HCD after that will return for adoption by the end of the year the board also directed staff to apply for pro housing designation offered by HCD which improves our counties and housing developers chances of receiving funds from state resources after the housing element is adopted the county would work to achieve the status and has three years to reason properties needed to improve the inventory and accommodate the arena so long as we can. So that concludes today's presentation we're happy to receive any input the supervisors may have to help guide and inform the program. Thank you. Thank you miss Hansen are there questions or comments from members of the board. Mr. Chair supervisor McPherson there have been challenges of our housing element here and there's never bigger than we are facing this proposal and it's no fault of the planning department for sure. I want to thank the planning department and our community development infrastructure for its work on and there are other commissions too on their input in this housing element that they've made to date. We all know it's going to be a huge challenge bigger than ever to meet the new arena numbers for our county even more so than in years past I mean you look at the arena segment and this one goes through 2020 excuse me excuse me 31 2023 to 31 the last one was 1300 units and we just got over half of those built and now they've more than tripled with our limitations in infrastructure water sewage transportation and power and this is going to be interested to see how we can meet this challenge it's overwhelming and again this is no putting blame on the planning or public works or any other department but I guess my comment is let's get real but with our topography what we have and some of the challenges that we have while we're working on these modifications and other tools we're going to hopefully lead to more units we know we have a housing crisis here and as we do throughout the state and many many other places as well we know they're the barriers that I've just mentioned but not to mention before the market conditions neighborhood compatibility traffic and also of course is a concern of the lack of resources from the state to meet the numbers I'm going to be attending the conference in a couple weeks where housing is going to be a huge topic down there I can guarantee you that each of the 58 counties in this state are really concerned about this demand that the state is putting on counties can I ask you do you know that you anticipate more state funding sources and or state enforcement on meeting these rena numbers what's your general thought of how much are they going to put the hammer on this there's a bit of a hammer associated with having our housing element updated in time you can the state can come down on you if you don't they can impose fines I think for those who are egregious they even have other actions that they could take such as ruling your whole general plan to be out of compliance and taking over permitting so there's threats out there I think the biggest threat that I can see is that having a compliant housing element is often tied to state funding and grants both for housing projects and transportation so it's very important that we try to stay on schedule I have not heard of actually the state can come down on you for not implementing what's in the housing element but I think there has to be an understanding at the state level that we are not housing developers per se certainly there's other issues in that drive the market such as interest rates for one thing construction costs etc yeah well there's it's going to be interesting to hear as we go along and I just there's some ideas that I have I want to hear what other board members have to say but this is certainly the biggest challenge we can have related to our housing infrastructure in Santa Cruz County for sure thank you Supervisor McPherson thank you Supervisor Caput okay give everybody else a chance if you want to jump in before me go ahead Supervisor Caput okay thanks anyway yeah I we definitely need very low and low income housing and I just want to say in the past we've been spreading it out and I want to see it I would like to see it continue to be spread out throughout District 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 not concentrated only in South County the other is when we have a new development coming in can we require permeable asphalt and cement especially for the parking areas sidewalks because that way the water will run back into the ground rather than running off and going into the ocean eventually I guess I'm not prepared to answer that question they would have to meet the standards that are in place but we certainly can communicate that comment to our development review and our public works folks yeah can we make it a requirement that I know in the mental health facility that went in and Watsonville that's all permeable parking and also sidewalks so I don't know we would address that in the housing element update which is all about encouraging housing not putting additional requirements in but there's certainly some overlap in doing it in a in a fashion that meets our environmental goals as well yeah and this would be related to requiring more trees to be planted for shade especially in parking areas and anyway shade is a big deal along with water runoff hi you supervisor just a little comment on your question there with regard to design criteria for stormwater we offer a lot of different options but we do defer to the developer or the builder to choose the best option that fits their site every site is a little bit different we do see a lot of previous materials being used because it works well and it's cost effective but there's certainly other options so we wouldn't want to require just one option for everybody we do want to offer different solutions for different conditions but I will tell you that most people most developments are using all these different creative ideas whether it's pervious surfaces or underground storage or other ways to percolate the water into the ground and that's clearly the direction everybody's going including the state and our own projects and so you will see more of the pervious materials but we're hesitant to make it a hard and fast requirement because we know that every site has some different needs and different solutions so hopefully that answers your question yeah do we know the difference between traditional cement and asphalt versus permeable asphalt and cement well sure I mean there are there are a lot of differences I'm not exactly clear on which differences you're interested in but when you have a pervious surface it's just letting the water through structurally it's still a sound product it still carries the load of whether it's a parking lot or a road but the key is underneath that pervious surface having capacity to hold the storm water to hold the design storm event and so the surfaces are they're all good because they just let water pass through while still providing a structural element to hold the vehicles and different loads right and then as far as trees planting trees open space green areas yeah I'd like to see more of that I mean nobody wants to live in a cement area they want if you look at the richer areas of Santa Cruz County they all have trees in shape yeah absolutely thank you thank you Supervisor Caput there are no other comments or Supervisor Coonerty sure just very briefly this is the beginning of the beginning I appreciate the plan for outreach I do though the rena numbers are daunting and the lack of state support to actually meet those goals is very real I do want to say some of the pieces that you're talking about I think are exciting because they make our community more vibrant and livable I think some of the transformations of land use as our economy shifts and as housing types change will be welcome and that will actually lead to a much better and brighter community so I want to appreciate the staff for their outreach and I look forward to hearing more about what we can do after we get community input thank you Supervisor Coonerty some comments and questions here first I just want to underline on the barriers and constraints part of the housing element analysis I think it is really important that we talk to the private sector to home builders who are building the majority of these units and understand where they're getting caught up in our process and of course our entire county has made great efforts to begin to streamline the process you know we at our last meeting put out the position description for unified permit center manager great staff also in terms of unifying the public works and planning departments and I think we need to continue that effort in terms of streamlining the process by talking to people actually building the homes and understanding where they're getting caught up some questions the first is if we increase density or add units to the zoning map now for example will those count towards the future rena numbers yes they would count toward the future because they're not included in our inventory our fifth cycle inventory so for instance a large property that might have we might have attributed a capacity of 30 units whatever new zoning would the number of units that would be allowed under new zoning would then included in the sixth cycle got it so anything that's been added since the fifth cycle was submitted will be will count in the sixth cycle that's great you know you talked about the sustainability update and how I mean really that was step one of this two-step larger process to add housing capacity to our community and I know the planning department did a phenomenal amount of public outreach as part of the sustainability update just wondering how you thought that went as far as the people that actually engaged with the process you know whether it's just raw numbers or you know quality of response collect some numbers but I'll speak to the quality a little bit we really in the sustainability update will review this next time of course but we really tried to provide a variety of ways in which people could could participate so we did a number of community meetings in the evenings and we did study discussions that all of all of the commissions that would be four of the commissions we went out to the RTC we really tried to provide a large opportunity we had a survey we received a lot of comments via that we did email blasts we did social media blasts we worked with Jason Hoppin on press releases and getting advertisements out and Facebook and other areas and so we really wanted to try to build on that again the traditional advertisements and newspapers aren't as effective anymore and I think when you see how much people are relying uh-oh of course good a little on social applications like next door you really want to try to make sure that you're accommodating all those various options but um-yeah okay thanks and uh-how much I mean I think the report mentioned that we do have some money budgeted for public outreach I think we also we got a regional early action planning grant or REAP grant from AMBAG about how much money is budgeted for public outreach for the housing element we still have a little bit of flexibility on that the um REAP chair we may have a disruption to the internet as a result of the earthquake um okay is everything all right when you take a short break that's for 10 minutes all right we'll take a 10 minute break and return at 11 50 okay well now any of the board of supervisors presentation you're noticeable you're really shaking things up Stephanie all right so I was asking about our public outreach plan and about how big the budget is for that you said it's we're still um so the grant was for $500,000 um the guidelines were very flexible with that grant and so we didn't really have to put our budget together line by line we did use 100,000 of that in permit streamlining and we so we've approximately 400 left and we'll use a chunk of that maybe hopefully under 100 for the CEQA and public outreach consultant that we're going to bring on board to help us with those elements and then a lot of it will go to staff time so there will be we do have room to still refine a real budget and figure out how we want to spend it on those types of elements great um you know I guess what I'm getting at here is I'm certain that this is going to ultimately be a difficult and controversial topic in the community um you know we have certainly watched the city try and fail multiple times with the corridors plan which uh has a lot of similarities to the task that we have at hand here um I know I've heard quite a bit especially in recent weeks about some elements of the sustainability update and I mean fundamentally what we're asked to be uh being asked to do here by the state to put more low and very low income housing in well-resourced communities I mean that's uh it's going to be controversial and um I think we have an opportunity to try to improve the way that we do public outreach on this topic uh you know we had the report earlier today about a Santa Cruz like me which specifically said that um in our traditional processes we don't see uh ample representation from people from South County from Latinos from renters critically um and from youth and you know those are all groups which have an important stake in the housing conversation and so given that we actually have some resources to do robust public outreach I think that we have an opportunity here to try something like a citizen assembly which is both representative and deliberative and so the representative part is that people would be invited from throughout the community I mean similar to selecting a jury with a random selection of citizens and um then that group would be it could be winnowed down to something that looks like what our actual population is in terms of renters, homeowners, youth uh and different ethnicities um and then deliberative to the extent that that group would be able to meet multiple times actually get to understand some of the issues and talk to one another about these issues because I'm certain that when we get to the end of this there's going to be a lot of people that say hey I never heard about it one way or another no matter you know how diligent we are to be able to reach but at least if we were able to say well we had someone that you know looks like you involved in this process and this is some of the conclusions they came to I think that's going to really add legitimacy and trust in the whole process um so and I think ultimately as we you know roll out the housing element and some of the rezoning involved with that will continue to help us all be on the same page as the community so um and we have to hear from the public and and all that but that's just some of the thoughts on my mind today it seems like it's um a good confluence of of things here that bring us to this any other comments or questions from board members before I open it to the public well I have one more comment and uh when we're building low income and very low income housing uh do we get uh do you get pushback uh I know when we did in South County I call it the Minto project uh it had another name something Knowles yeah I can't yeah Eric Shapiro Shapiro Knowles uh and I believe it was about 80 units and uh there are people in the neighborhood who were saying we don't want low income housing coming in here I will say that that was probably about 10 years ago and uh the neighborhood is very happy with uh Shapiro Knowles uh Minto area now everything kind of worked out the traffic the people are good so what I'm getting at is uh if can we put a low income very low income in a more affluent area of the county and uh with that uh with that fit so we don't have poor living in one area rich living in another and I'll give you one little comment my wife and I were we went to Carmel a couple years ago and uh you know shopping looking around whatever uh prices are very high and I was talking to one guy there that lives in Carmel and I said how do you if you buy a house here how do you even afford all of the uh property tax the cost of living out here now I'm quoting him not me he said the higher it is the cost the better it is we like it because it keeps the uh he used a word like trash out of our area and that's a sad comment and so are we able to somehow uh integrate the very low income with the more affluent areas uh so the uh requirements I was discussing about affirmatively furthering fair housing um is going to really make jurisdictions look at where we're putting our housing our higher density housing which by its nature should be more affordable if it's not outright uh affordable by by deed um and and we really will have to look at our higher resource areas where there is good schools and and services are available and we need to look at our historic pattern that has to segregation it's not only this community of course it's all communities it goes back back back way back to the 20s in all kinds of of uh laws and regulations that permeated uh uh zoning so um we really are going to be looking at that much more closely in this round and the areas that we do rezone are going to have to meet some of those high resource areas yeah and I think the more offloaded areas would uh um uh they would see how low income and very low income actually does fit in very well as time goes by so thank you Supervisor Caput Mr. Chair Supervisor Friend yeah I appreciate Supervisor Caput's comments um Supervisor Caput has always been steadfast and making that case I think it is important um that the county actually point out that that's exactly what we've done in the last if you look at the last I just didn't want it to go unsaid because if you look at the last number of affordable very low income moderating well moderate income and below but even extremely low income those projects have occurred exactly in the census tracts that you're speaking of for example the Aptos Blue project uh extremely low income the sea ridge project uh low income the project uh the partnership with Dientes is actually not in a low income census track in my colleague's district and he's been supportive of so I just want to point out that what the county has built uh very low income projects in the unincorporated area in the last since you've been on the board have actually been in the exact exact census tracts that you're advocating for right now now moving forward uh with this work that we're doing with the housing element by the way in the sustainable uh plan which will be a pretty extensive discussion but it'll be even broader discussions about how to expand it beyond where it currently is but it's it's worth knowing that that the county's done exactly is what you're saying um uh and putting those those recent projects in those areas thank you Supervisor Friend all right if there are no other comments or questions from board members are there anyone in the public that wishes to comment on this item saying no one here in chambers is there anyone on zoom yes there is Tara your microphone is now available thank you so much this has been really uh a valuable opportunity for me to learn what's going on I have some knowledge of how the the housing element fits into the whole process and what I want to ask is excuse me when we do the community meetings can we also offer an explanation how the basic element is a foundation and then the planning policies building codes and zoning comes out of that I think that's where my neighbors in pleasure point get confused and so if if we could offer that because people are not only I'm not only concerned about density I'm concerned about how are we going to handle the water that I'm sorry that the sewer issues that we have in this neighborhood how are we going to water handle transportation since the bus system does not serve well so thank you so much those are all questions that I hope come up in the community meeting process thank you Tara Rafa your microphone is now available yes good afternoon I apologize if this was already addressed during the staff presentation I was late to this meeting so only got to catch the last few minutes but one thing that I'm concerned for Santa Cruz County with moving forward with adopting a compliant housing element by the statutory deadline is our need to complete the rezoning and the need to do that within the requirements of the law my understanding is that we'll have to probably have to complete an EIR for the housing element itself and we should start planning those environmental documents as soon as possible so that they can be ready to go by the time that we are ready to adopt something by the end of next year I realize it's sort of a chicken and egg problem where we don't necessarily know exactly how many housing units or the density or whatever that we have to be planning for and we haven't even begun to look at sites for our site inventory but these are really parallel tracks that we'll need to be working on so that we do have all of the environmental work sort of happening in parallel as we're working through the community engagement process on identifying sites and moving forward with the programs and policies I helped the City of Santa Cruz move forward with some recommendations that they're looking at as part of their housing element policies and I encourage the county to look at some of the ideas that the City of Santa Cruz has already committed to investigating as part of their update process thank you very much thank you Rafa we have no more speakers then I'll return it to the Board for action Mr. Chair I just one comment and then I'd like to make a motion I think the county has 600 parcels I from A to Z I guess in size do we have any idea of how much how many of these are potentially buildable or is it going to be in this process I'm sure we're going to do that somehow but is that going to be part of an I really do appreciate it I think the public should know and following up and supervisor friends comments that we're we're moving in this direction the best way we can I think and I applaud the planning department and public works and everybody else for getting this to a good place as good as can be and it's going to be a bigger challenge now but do we, is there any way to identify where those parcels that the county owns and I think it's hundreds of them might be buildable maybe that'll be come up or could come up in a discussion with this well the motion that I would like to make that I just move the recommended actions with additional direction as was mentioned by Chair Koenig that the staff release an RFP request for proposal for a public engagement process is both representative and as mentioned by chair Koenig that's I think it's spelled out as you said I think there's a hundred thousand dollars for that kind of a purpose and I think it's absolutely essential that we get a broad spread of the community represented in coming to some requests or some proposals from that so I'd like to make that motion that we do we do release an RFP for public engagement process that is both representative and deliberative I think is the best way to put it. All second. Any further discussion? I mean and I'll just verify both there are I'm aware a number of consultants out there that can help at this point with this type of a public engagement process so for example I know Eugene Orgen created a citizen review panel on housing and recently 2020-2021 the city of Petaluma recently had a 36 person citizen advisory panel on the future of its fairgrounds so some of the organizations the organization that worked with them on that was Healthy Democracy there's also the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford which has done this on the scale and even the country and then the Sortition Foundation so I do think that if we put out this type of RFP there's enough of an ecosystem out there that we would get a robust response. Any further discussion? Seeing none. Clerk roll call vote please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Koenig. Aye. Item passes as amended. Thank you. All right. Thank you again. Assistant Director Hansen. We'll now proceed with item nine to consider first quarter report for fiscal year 2022-23 on cannabis licensing office operations and direct staff to return on or before January 31st 2023 with the second quarter report for fiscal year 22-23 as outlined in the memorandum of the County Administrative Officer and for a report on this item we have our cannabis licensing office manager, Sam Laforte and Deputy CAO, Melody Serino. Go ahead. Good afternoon Board. Thank you. One more. In the first quarter we've continued to see some contraction in our local market and additional 11 cannabis businesses closed bringing the total from last year to 31. This quarter we have not received any pre-applications. On the compliance front we continue to find minor paperwork issues associated with site diagram changes primarily which contributed to the three corrective actions you see in the report. No compliance issues resulted in citations or violations for our licensed operators. On the enforcement front in the previous report staff identified a thriving illicit market as part of the problem with the statewide market and while this remains true our local illicit market has decreased significantly. We believe this decrease in the illicit market is largely due to our CCU teams proactive enforcement work and the economics of the illicit industry have changed. Essentially prices have decreased so much that profit margins are shrinking. The directives of the Board and the funding for the CLO and CCU teams have continually shown progress in decreasing human health and safety environmental degradation as well as fire risks related to the illicit market. On the fiscal front we are 25% through the year we've received 15% of our budgeted revenues and spent 14% of our budgeted revenues which has resulted in a net general fund cost to the county of $78,500 to date. With regard to taxes we have received 16.6% total budgeted cannabis business taxes for the year which is approximately 324,000 below projections for the first quarter. Retail CBT is down approximately a third and non-retail CBT is down approximately 83% from the same time last year. With regard to the previous board motion revenue enhancement options staff have included five options which were included in the October 19th 2021 board letter for your discussion today. These considerations were developed in response to the previous board direction to present options to help support the local cannabis industry and help increase the tax base. Market volatility has resulted in significant decreases in the wholesale cost of goods since these options were developed and staff does have some concerns that this volatility may not produce some of the desired revenue results. Some options may result in decreased short-term revenues and may lead to increased neighborhood concerns while others may result in small revenue increases and impact other economic sectors principally tourism. If the board does wish to pursue any of these options particularly the retail related options staff would suggest that we seek community input via a series of meetings in each supervisory district before the end of the calendar year and present the recommendations based on those results in January. Staff is available to answer any questions you may have on the quarterly report and the options to support the legal industry at this time. Thank you, Mr. Laforte. Are there comments or questions from board members? Yes, Mr. Sheriff, I may begin. Please. Thank you, Mr. Laforte. It is clear that we are dealing with a pretty volatile market. I agree with the general staff recommendation which is the staff recommendations are just in essence maintained status quo. To me it is clear that the market is shaping up and in particular on the cultivation side I don't think that it is at its current scale anyway that it is going to continue to be a viable element of the industry locally. We have seen as you know the reporting you have reported on a decrease in the number of people seeking licenses, a decrease in the number of people trying to convert agricultural parcels into cannabis. But as a result of that we have high land costs, high labor costs and an over saturated local market. I just don't think that it is really in the county's best interest to be doing anything to artificially prop up the industry especially in this changing landscape right now. As the point that you had noted the greatest conflict points in this board recently dealt with this on an appeal component deals with neighbors and cultivation sites with the decrease in cannabis business tax associated with in particular on the cultivation side and some of the other non-retail operations it seems that it would be in our best interest to not make any regulatory or tax related changes or for that matter to even do this the community based outreach that you're speaking of because I just don't think that it makes sense for us to do that. We don't do this for any other industry by the way I mean we've got a lot of regulated industries within our world we have special tax industries including say like transit occupancy tax when things start to go out of business or challenges occur we don't talk about an entire re-regulatory landscape in order to address issues for them so I don't understand why the board would even consider doing anything to improve the regulatory landscape or tax related structure on this. The last point that I think is important to note because I know that we have one relatively new board member since the time that this board explored the tax cycle on this we had a pretty extensive study that was presented to the board HDL I can't remember exactly the name of the consultants that had provided it those numbers never panned out for the county I mean it's clear to me that any sort of changes in taxes or regulation won't ever make those numbers pan out those estimates at the time had said that we would get somewhere between three and twenty times the tax revenue that the county has actually received and as a result of it it just strikes me that the industry is shaking out in a way that retail will probably continue to be successful within Santa Cruz County but cultivation and some of the other non-retail elements will not and I think that our structure shouldn't be how do we chase it by changing regulations and taxes in order to prop up elements that just aren't going to be successful in our area because of external market forces and things that are inherent to Santa Cruz County like land costs and labor costs that mean that it won't really work out anyway I appreciate the report I supported the additional direction that came from the chair at the time just because I know that it was an issue of interest to him but I'm not supportive of doing anything different than we're currently doing especially at this kind of I'm just supportive of the staff recommendation right now which is an accepted file and moving forward as is but thank you for the report thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts Mr. Chair Thank you Supervisor Friend I'm just seeing another member of the board who wishes to speak on this I mean I'll just you know say a couple things which is you know first I think that you know Santa Cruz like it or not Cannabis is a part of the Santa Cruz brand and you know I think that we'll see that as part of the continued retail sales one way or another but I think that there is still an opportunity both for manufacturers distributors and cultivators in our community and you know during this period of fluctuation you know rather than necessarily to see it as you know propping up a dying industry I think it's how do we stabilize stabilize the industry and also provide an opportunity to improve things going forward I mean I see even with the proposal number 3 to increase canopy limits in specific areas I mean we as Supervisor Friend said we know that the biggest point of conflict here is between cultivators and residents and so in designing a policy there where we allowed consolidation of growing operations it seems to me that that would actually decrease conflicts and especially if we made that based on you know basically a good record by those cultivators of not having issues of conflict with the surrounding area that that could be a win-win you know furthermore use of established greenhouses on CA parcels I mean I've seen firsthand how many in our agricultural industry who have these greenhouses a lot of them left over and cut flower business have seen cannabis as a way to both maintain existing operations including a variety of different farm products whether it's cut flowers and diversifying with cannabis with another crop as well as to get more revenue to reinvest in those businesses and fixing up those facilities furthermore maintaining cannabis within a greenhouse is really the most controlled possible area you can imagine because there are is the opportunity just to scrub out or control light and pretty much contain the entire operation within a single building so I think that ultimately those both those policies can be win-win and actually reduce the overall impact on the community and suggestions four and five allowing retail consumption sort of onsite or farm tours I mean for that pretty much gets at the heart of the biggest two industries in our county which are both tourism and agriculture within the sustainability update that's coming forward I mean there's a number of policies that aim to basically build on the agro tourism industry within our community I think that makes sense it is a potential growth opportunity and it's a potential growth opportunity for the cannabis industry as well so I think that there's some good ideas here I look forward to hearing what my colleagues and the public have to say as well but ultimately I think that some of these proposals are an opportunity for win-win solutions Mr. Chair I think you raise an interesting point so I just want to flesh it out a little bit on a policy debate side here I mean at the end of the day there's an over cultivation I mean the market is collapsing in part because there's an oversaturation of the actual product the need right so the idea of expanding cultivation size it'd be like saying people are buying less cars so we should have 10 car dealerships consolidated into one massive car dealership because that's going to somehow improve the industry it doesn't improve anything it just means living next to that massive car dealerships going to particularly suck for whatever residents are there there's an oversupply right now right I don't think that we need to create regulations that make it easier to consolidate or make more cultivation if there's too much stock people are getting out of the cultivation business altogether I mean the other elements anyway the other elements are separate on the non on the retail side but I just think that it's just such a hypervolatile industry and I feel like that what we're doing is chasing regulations to continue to I mean it's starting to flesh out I mean that the strengths are within the resident with or within the retail side the strengths may be although I think we're going to have a policy about this in November about elements the retail like delivery and that kind of stuff but it may not be in our county in particular with that with the underlying labor and land costs for example in the cultivation or even manufacturing or distributing elements of it and therefore maybe those aren't elements that our county actually props up I mean that's that's how it is I mean there's there's there are things that are more expensive for us to do than there are in Mendocino or the Central Valley and everybody has competitive advantages and so I don't see us changing a regulatory framework in order to do it so I think that the underlying economics of it are such that the things that you're talking about actually don't help I mean they actually would create additional issues and we're seeing that play out in how the taxes are playing out right now if I may respond to it I mean number one concern I've heard from cultivators is that right now they're trying to manage operations across many small sites which adds cost and time and you know also means that ten neighborhoods are affected instead of one and so you know I think that there's as I said an opportunity for a win-win year in that less overall neighborhoods could be affected and the individual cultivators could see their costs of doing business go down we've already consolidated these into very specific I mean for example the greenhouse component that you have is already an element of our code I mean no new existing structures for example within the coastal zone the purpose of that was to use underutilized greenhouses specifically called out that we had underused or nonused this is before you got on the board but greenhouses for that exact purpose so I don't I don't know that there's really any modifications that need to be made there but when you look at the sales numbers of the retail side when you look at how much is clearly being grown locally and therefore we've had local growers acknowledge it's almost 90% that they're exporting out I just don't know that doing these consolidations are really going to be beneficial I mean I legitimately don't so I mean to me also since we don't know it's like one of the things I've learned in dealing with this issue for the last 10 years is that when we continually deregulate in order to chase an emerging trend it's very hard to re-regulate if we find a problem and we've found problems with issues and so to me we just need to stop where we have what we have figure out how the industry shakes out and its strengths and weaknesses locally and then if there's actually things that need to be done to improve where there's actual things that we need to improve then we would do it but I think that what we did is we let a genie out of a bottle pretty early on by being the first county in the state to create a regulatory framework on cultivation by the way there was a green rush unquestionably into our area since that time we've been trying to figure out the best ways to deal with it I mean do we put it in CA where do we we get out of the hills I mean we're dealing with this conflict in the San Lorenzo Valley in this item right now so having changing the regulatory framework now and chasing another episodic component I think is just bad public policy and that's why and from the case of history since I've been through this so many times I think that that's why I'm advocating for just maintaining as is and you know that I'm not in I'm in a rare agreement with the the cannabis licensing office with some of their policy suggestions I mean I'm in agreement with the recommendation that right now is probably not going to pan out of exactly what you're seeking for so just to maintain the status quo all right thank you any other supervisor wish to add comments or questions yes comment or supervisor cabinet sure yes we're not deciding on any options right now right is that correct there were five options have been presented the board could choose to advance any of them or not anyway this will have a big impact some of the changes on South County I think we're okay where we are right now personally and if this is going to be to look at this real close if we put it off till January the third I wouldn't even have to worry about it let somebody else handle it okay so I don't know yeah thank you supervisor cabinet supervisor Kennedy sure thank you chair and thank you to the CLA office for your report I think it's just helpful to understand what's going on in the ever-changing industry my basic ideas a couple fold one is I think it's not a bad idea to always iterate and look at adjustments to policies I also think it's recognizing that the work this board did got us into a place with a stable cultivation and licensing structure that it was not a given and we still see other counties struggling to this day trying to figure out how to approach this issue and so a lot of good work was done to get us this point and then adjustments can be made to supervisor cap its point I think we're going to have two new board members and those two new people running right now have very different approaches to cannabis and licensing and so I think it's appropriate to wait and let those new folks engage and reset policy and so I think that this will be a discussion along with housing and many other issues that this board will have in the next year or two thank you supervisor Kennedy I I've seen three things that have been very good coming out of when we first started going down the cultivation and the sales of marijuana cannabis and that is cutting down on the illicit cultivation and we've cleaned up some of our environment in the county which is a good thing and I'm for the medicinal use of cannabis so those are three positives but there are negative parts that I don't want to get into right now all right thank you supervisor cap it no other comments I agree with the comments have been made I just would move the recommended actions I'll come back to you excuse me okay I'm just getting in a hurry Mr. Laforti did you want to respond to any comments made okay then I'll open to public comment now hi my name is Aziz I'm an owner and manager at DNA Organics we are in Watsonville we have five farms which is partially because of this canopy cap kind of deal that we've experienced we don't restrict raspberries we don't restrict anything else we are an agricultural crop and as the industry evolves around us and around this county it will continue to become that and the reason which we are having trouble competing would say Santa Barbara or Lake County is because of over regulation it's not that we're pulling it's not that we're pulling regulations back that are necessary respectfully Zach friend I don't think you recognize what's happening in the overarching industry a lot of businesses have gone out of business across the state we're facing clearance sales this is just part of a new industry it's a struggling industry it's helping a child this industry is a child and if you stifle it you are going to stifle its development and it will never evolve to what it could be and I think it's very important that we recognize that for example in your district we paid out $1.2 million in payroll this year an additional $1.1 million in seasonal payroll mostly focused going to district 2 and 4 residents so these are things that are under threat and we need to protect them so rather than continue to stifle the industry please listen to Mr. Laforte and take into consideration what he's talking about because it's very important to a lot of people here thank you thank you Aziz hi Pamela I've had the pleasure of working on this issue for a long time now first off thank you for not giving up on this completely I think all of the recommendations are really needed and some of them are actually exciting and what we would need to have the sort of industry that we all talked about together for years and years and years I think that the second part of the just the report says what we've been saying for years is that this system we built as much as it was built on good intentions and different people's political perspectives and trying to take a count of all of those it created dysfunction that only the largest most unlucky entities were able to slither through and we have excluded the mass parts of this county who were legal participants in the medical cannabis era from ever participating in this new experiment we've also spent millions and millions of dollars often unnecessarily ruining people's lives with enforcement and keeping on the same problems associated with prohibition even the racial discrepancies of how our post-medical legalization has been the enforcement's been applied when we were having this discussion in 2016 now numbers have came out in 2020 that you're five times more likely as a black person to get caught in this like this enforcement paradigm that we've set up and we didn't leave room for the core of what we were talking about here which is keep it small, keep it local, the equity the compassion, the legacy all of that and just to answer I don't want to spend too much time on Zach Fred's perspective because he doesn't vote for any policy involving cannabis but like we have been propping you up with the child's fund and all that and like we've been paying taxes and like just get the boot off the neck for a little while so thank you thank you Mr. Malo good afternoon I'm Rob Morgan I'm one of the licensees in the county as well we have three different parcels in your district Mr. Caput part of that also as Aziz mentioned is because of the canopy limits per parcel based on the parcel size we've been a compliant operator we've never had any issues in the county increasing the canopy limits is something that our business needs to continue to thrive I think it's a more nuanced issue than what Mr. Friend said as far as the reason the cannabis industry is where it's at you can't have just successful retail without successful cultivation there will be no retail without cultivation I'm in support of the increased canopy limits within the CA zone also the increase of the retail within those zones at those license parcels I think it's something that our industry needs and you know the retail in Santa Cruz County is also pretty small in comparison to other counties so yeah I want to thank Sam too for all the work that he's done with his staff and hopefully when we have the new board members we can push this further along as we have thanks thank you Mr. Morgan is anyone else in chambers is there anyone on zoom here is caller ending in 777 your microphone is now available hi my name is Greg Fernandez I'm a licensee here we have 648,000 square feet of green house that is approved for cultivation I'm calling in to in support of all of the recommendations that Mr. Laforty's office has proffered here today and I just want to not try to pick a fight or anything but supervisor friend just does not know what he's talking about I just got a push back on virtually everything that he said our land costs are very expensive up here but us operators that are already here those are sunk that it's done we do need other methods of income and profit basically and the retail onsite retail definitely would help us along those lines our labor costs are pretty much consistent throughout the state so it's not really you know our farm labor is just not that much more here than it is pretty much in any other part of the state with the exception of maybe Lake County or you know but you know we're we're stuck in this situation really because of the price of this commodity it has just come down and it's the lowest it's ever been ever and there's a lot more there's a speaker that used the word the term nuance there is a lot to this and it's definitely not anything that could be tackled in a meeting let alone a two minute period here so I don't believe that any of these actions would be propping up our industry as you said and another caller said we're here we're paying taxes we're paying payroll we paid millions of dollars in payroll this year and we're very excited about the future and we also have to remember somebody did say that hey we're the first municipality to legalize medical use of cannabis layback in this Darren your microphone is now available hey everybody it's Darren's story sorry I couldn't make it in today I agree with Greg and everybody else we're not looking at oversupply Zach what we're looking at is a bad policy that's actually stimulated the black market if you look at California all the studies are shown the California black market is between two and three times larger than it was prior to prop 64 so anything that allows us to become more efficient allows us to compete with the black market so really what you're going to do is you're not getting rid of cannabis operators you're going to push them into the illicit market so we're not looking to prop up we're looking to stimulate legal operators that are doing it right one of the reasons Santa Cruz County has seen a reduction in illicit operators is because Sam's done a lot of work to help us become more efficient and help us compete and we can put them out of business you're not going to put them out of business with enforcement you can't tax them into oblivion because they're not paying taxes so you really have to help us out and that's that's really you know anything that can help us become more efficient we don't need to become bigger no one's looking to add canopy they're just looking to consolidate it so they're not running around all over the county putting emissions into the air workers are on the road unnecessary traffic etc so whatever you guys can do to help us become more efficient that's greatly appreciated Zach if you ever really have questions about how we're operating and how things are becoming more efficient you know you can reach out to us I don't think the industry is dying I think it's becoming more mature and we're able to deliver it to the consumer for a lower price so it is going to grow you just have to help us compete against the black market which is growing faster than us thank you thank you mr. story chair we have no more speakers all right then I'll turn it to the board for deliberation and action I'll second we have a motion by supervisor McPherson a second by supervisor friend as exactly what exactly are we voting on you recommended actions today are simply to accept and file the fiscal year 2022 2023 first quarter report on cannabis licensing office operations and to to direct staff to return on before January 31st 2023 with the second quarter report for fiscal year 2223 okay so the option we're not voting on the option no we're not the motion is not include any of the options not on but is that correct just a few recommendations that's what I'm looking at here you know I'll just add you know I'm sympathetic to the fact Greg that you said we're supervisor cap it that you know by January of this coming year during the report you'll no longer be sitting here you won't have to deal with this issue and I mean I think rightfully so given that cannabis does impact the fourth district significantly it makes sense that if we were to consider any changes for the industry that it would be done by your successor in the fourth district yeah Mr. Jeff I just may ask the question when we first started on the cannabis licensing office reports because we were we had like a high level of insecurity and instability within the industry and you actually use the word Mr. Laforte is stable in your report we were getting quarterly reports and I'm just not sure if that if we need to continue to do that I mean do you do you feel that quarterly reports are still needed or should we move this because it feels like we have these reports we have these discussions they may not need to happen every couple months should we go into a twice a year situation I mean we don't have quarterly reports on and so I'm just asking now that the industry stabilizing whether it makes sense as part of this recommended action to actually direct you to not have quarterly reports but have them like bi-yearly or something that effect Melody Serino deputy CAO we would certainly welcome only coming to the board twice a year instead of four times a year the data is not changing a lot quarterly to quarterly quarter to quarter and really all that you're seeing is you know kind of the incremental notices of violations that may get filed on the enforcement side I think really that it's the fiscal piece that you're always more interested in in terms of what's happening with the CBT with the cannabis business licensing tax but I think coming twice a year is probably sufficient at this point okay well Supervisor McPherson if you'd be open to an amendment to that motion I mean we currently have them coming back in January for the second quarterly report but just change it to a twice a yearly report starting at the date well I don't know Miss Serino what date would you like to start that process would you want to start it in January and at that point just then move to a twice a year what would be easiest for you I think that would make sense because then then we could stay on track with being present before budgeting so that you would have some information around budget you want to have a report in January is that right and then in June yeah so it would just be a modification of the second direction to just come back and then to change it to a twice yearly as opposed to quarterly report if you're comfortable with that Supervisor McPherson yeah that'd be fine okay alright so the revised motion is to adopt the recommended actions and then after the January 31st 23 report to change to a twice a year report alright any further discussion seeing none roll call though please Supervisor Friend Aye Coonerty Aye Caput No McPherson Aye and Koenig Aye The item passes as amended Thank you I have to walk right 4 to 1 4 to 1 excuse me 4 to 1 alright thank you that brings us to the end of our regular agenda meeting of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors will be November 15th 2022 still 22 yeah we'll now move into closed session are there any reportable actions No alright thank you