 Good morning. Welcome to the February 26, 2019 Board of Supervisors meeting. I'm gonna call the meeting to order and ask the clerk to call the roll Good morning. Supervisor Leopold here friend here cap it First in here and chair Coonetry. Hi here Now I'm gonna Ask we're gonna engage in a moment of silence and a pledge allegiance and I'm asked supervisor friend to offer some Brief remarks. Thank you Just for a moment of silence if we could keep in mind today's actually the six-year anniversary of the loss of two of the Santa Cruz police Officers that were killed in line of duty Sergeant Butch Baker and Detective Elizabeth Butler if we could keep their families and their memories or thoughts today, that'd be great Thank you Thank you Thank you as the CAO if there's any late additions or deletions to the agenda Yes, we have two revisions on the regular agenda item 9 There's additional materials. There's a revised memo packet page 40 and then on the consent agenda on item 19 There's additional additional materials revised memo packet page 223 Thank you Now is an opportunity for members of the board to pull any items from the consent agenda and put them on the regular agenda Supervisor Caput. Do you have any items? Great Okay, any do you have any items to pull from the consent agenda? If not, all right supervisor impression Oh They uphold John. Well, they're item number 41 I'd like to just post phone to our next meeting. There were a bunch of questions I had about it if this is the appropriate time I'd like to pull that from the agenda. Why don't we add that as additional direction during the consent agenda? Okay? Okay, now is an opportunity for members of the public to speak on During public comment. This is just for so everyone knows This is an opportunity for you to speak about items that are not on today's agenda But are within the purview of the board of supervisors It's also an opportunity for you to speak about items that are on the consent agenda or if you cannot attend And stay for the regular agenda items. This is also your opportunity or also the closed session agenda Can I see? Looks like we had a line going how many people are there any other people in the audience who would like to speak today? So I'm gonna ask that we go two minutes per person and thank everybody for for coming out today That's exactly what you did at the city council reducing the public's input bite one-third permanently At the last meeting I was able to shake hands with the Panetta's early campaign manager Don Lane and asked if he had any Reservations about giving the key of the city to Lennon Peace Prize winner Angela Davis She was accused of supplying guns that blew the brains out of a judge and police. So let's think about those police This is a judge that had his brains blown out Don Lane gave the key of the city of which our present chairman Is our our board member now? This is a report from the northern California district of the Communist Party the structure leadership and Objectives the people involved in that this was written by FBI informant Called Carl Prussian Carl Prussian wrote a book called that dynasty of communism in which he included Alan Cranston Kamala Harris by the way is an intern of Trilateralist Alan Cranston. Here's a picture of myself and Alan Cranston. We had talked years ago I was posing his advocacy of a new world order and a good world government Here's a picture of trilateralist in Leon Panetta who runs some political machine throughout the three counties here You have awards the political machine has awarded Hugh DeLacy a communist spy for both Soviet Union and and the Red Chinese we have trilateralist Diane Feinstein here with a so-called driver Who she only knew for 20 years? She knew him for 40 years and he was on the on the her list to receive Department of Defense information this place is tied together Billing the Soviet called Ambag of which Bruce McPherson has been a major key supporter of he's on Person that gave him tens of thousands of dollars is on the front page of US News and World Report Triple Chinese Communist spy and cutting off Everybody the three minutes is outrageous Mr. Coonerty and the adoption of the Rosenberg laws which strikes democracy at the heart. Thank you X X speaker Good morning. My name is Stacy Kyle and I'm a proud resident of live oak in district one The county and supervisor Leopold has been a good friend to live oak over the years You've supported the building of the Boys and Girls Club Created the cradle to career initiative and helped bring Leo's Haven to fruition There's much good happening in live oak and I'm here to provide some details about a project You may have heard about recently that will benefit not just live oak, but Santa Cruz in general The live oak school district is building an all-weather soccer field at shoreline middle school It will have a running path, which it does not have right now a score bar a scoreboard and lights It will be available for public rental during the week after shoreline sports programming has ended as well as weekends Except for Sunday afternoons when it will be held open for families for free to gather play soccer have picnics And just enjoy time together We know that there is a shortage of soccer fields for practices and games especially in the fall and especially when the time changes Once the rain start most fields including the schools and the counties close the county park strategic plan itself notes a desire from Soquel and live oak residents in particular for all weather sports facilities It is our hope that this might be another project. We can partner with the county on to bring to fruition Bill Simpkins behind me is the champion for this project and we'll be speaking next about the expected project budget and our fundraising successes to date But before I pass the mic I want to acknowledge that we had asked parents From mid-county soccer to attend today's meeting to demonstrate support for the field beyond live oak We'd asked people to email their supervisor if they were not able to attend but still wanted to show their support I had thought those emails would be sent after today's presentation not before you heard about the field and that was a Communication on my part. This is a great project that will benefit kids and families from across Santa Cruz I hope you can see that and then we can proceed with the open mind and open hearts. Thank you for your time Thank you. Thank you for coming Hi there, my name is Bill Simpkins I'm a live oak resident and I'm sort of the numbers guy for this soccer field to give you a quick update The soccer fields out to bid the bid closing is on March 12th Shovel in the ground May 20th, and we're going to be completed some plight time in November so We're on right on track right now where we stand as far as fundraising. We have raised 2.45 million dollars so far. I see another hundred coming in and Right now. Oh out of that 2.45 my wife and I are donating a million dollars to this project The cost of it we're looking at around three million dollars, but we're gonna know a little bit better here coming up On March 12th, so one thing I want to add to about it You know, I really want you guys to be a partner in this project, but one of the things I'm pleased about is that the Live oak school district has agreed and what we're doing is we're taking the funds They're gonna come from the use fees and we're not gonna have it go to the school district They're going to the community foundation and that money then will then be in there at 4% interest So come 10 12 years from now. We're gonna have money to replace that field So if you were a partner with us on this, you'll never see us again because it'll be completely self-funded. So Not numbers wise, but I want to tell you about I really have a dream for this these this live oak group here and one of mine is is it we as Stacey mentioned on Sundays The park itself is going to be opened up to the public and we're gonna have five picnic tables there with covers over them And it's gonna be opened on Sundays And my dream is to drive by there in a Sunday and seeing a bunch of families and children out there kicking the ball around Birthday balloons and and having a wonderful time and that's and again. I need your help you guys Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Simkins. That's a great dream. Good morning. My name is Tom Brie I'm a county resident for almost 20 years and a county soccer coach volunteer cost soccer coach Just con here to talk about the importance of this field and the opportunity it has for the kids that we have out playing mid-county has over 500 families 800 players and then in addition to that there's over 300 adult league players that are out there looking for fields When the rains come in the winter months from basically October till April We don't have daylight and so this field solves all of those things Providing light in the evening so we can extend play for kids and adults to have more field time And the artificial turf will allow us to play during the winter during the rains Whereas right now like a day today The fields would be closed and no one would be able to play So this is a big opportunity for us to get sort of on par with our other communities around the Bay Area Thank you. Thank you. Hi, my name is Anna Leiby I am a lifelong resident of Santa Cruz County from Boulder Creek and then down to Watsonville Living in Santa Cruz also and my kids go our participants in Mid-County soccer and I am currently the vice president of the Mid-County board, which is a All-volunteer board and what I wanted to talk to you guys about was how this soccer field Goes right hand-in-hand with the Santa Cruz County Parks strategic plan The strategic plan for the county park is to create a resource On how the county can serve the community and provide guidance for partnering and collaboration And that's exactly what we're asking for the board of supervisors to do with this field The vision is a healthy and vibrant county where everyone is able to be active explore learn play and connect With a mission to provide safe well-designed and maintained parks and a wide variety of recreational and cultural opportunities for a diverse community One of the key findings of this Strategic report was that community needs more programs for youth, especially in underrepresented communities Live Oak is one of those communities and that is why we're asking for your support and a collaboration on this project Thank you very much for your time. Thank you Good morning. My name is Melissa Weiss. I'm a community member. I've lived here 16 years I bought my children here today because they need to see how this works These children grow up to be adults and I know I play soccer as a community member I have since I was their age and field space in this community is really tight It's to the point where it's getting squeezed out where I'm not gonna have a place to play and as they get older that's only gonna get larger of an issue and Bill has really had a vision here of that space. We are the red-headed stepchild of the county I have to pay At Capitola and I have to pay at Santa Cruz City and I live in live oak And I have nowhere to play in my own town So this is a great opportunity for as Bill said to be Part of the process we've had so many community members come together to show you that this is important to us and you being Where you're at and where you sit you're representing us So I'd really love to see you make those choices to help support that. Thank you. Thank you Thanks for bringing your kids out today. It's good. It's good to have you here Just real quick before I pivoted to my public comment because we've been the time has been curtailed So I just want to remind members of the public what it is to be a good fly away being Americans because we are good people I truly believe that you guys are good people I want to be able to share in my latest book that I'm reading The retreat of the state right has a plethora of wonderful information. I'm very illuminating I encourage members of public to go ahead and read that I want to be able to share members of the public that I was able to attend The Watsonville City Council meeting and they have stipulated language in their in their in their agenda a Lot of members of the public to weigh in on the Consent Agenda I also attended the Capitola and That's in your district chairman friend I would ask that you take restorative action and restore the Consent Agenda allowing members to weigh in on the political issue We shouldn't have to gravel. It's imperative our democracy is at stake You know you want to go around on YouTube and make these videos about saving democracy. Why don't you save it on the local level? by The six six months in review before it comes up. Let's let's sit down and let's let's try to make this work Because people should be able to weigh in all the institutions are to be tested by the degree to which they guarantee liberty Tyranny itself is a process of exclusion carried to its logical extremes The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors are engaging in the zombie politics Right the Board of Supervisors created an environment that misinforms the public minimizes community input and discourage Citizen involvement. We're talking people from the threat from down below They're not binding to the scam Right So we need to come out of right now I would ask that you you take you have the moral courage to fix that because I shouldn't have to go to Capitola San Bernito County Board of Supervisors just to be able to show the establishment here that hey They're violating the Brown Act and it's very disrespectful You know members should be able to weigh in. Thank you. Good morning to all of you. I'm here today I'm Jan. I'm from Second Harvest Food Bank, and I'm here to thank US leaders. I'm here to thank the leaders within the Santa Cruz County employees I Here to thank everybody within their departments that are leaders because of that leadership Donations were made for burritos for hot dogs for polka dots socks for Tommy Bahama fat tire bikes For succulents that were planted inside of pumpkins, and I'm here to tell you this is not corporate money This is individual money. This is individual money by people that live in our community because they know their neighbors are hungry and Because their neighbors are hungry, they're willing to donate money Second Harvest Food Bank can provide four meals for one dollar and the county leadership Sent that message out loud and clear, and I thank you. I'd also like to introduce Araceli Saldagano Good morning As part of the holiday food drive executive team we cannot be more proud We really want to thank The main coordinators Mirna Guerrero, Benito Mendoza, Amy Miyakusu, Jillian Ritter, and Adam Spickler So thank you so much for raising almost 300,000 meals that we'll go back into Santa Cruz County We couldn't be more proud I do have a challenge Hopefully the mic's not turned off. You will notice it was rather difficult to write 299,000 and it's just $124.25 away from 300,000 so if all of you have a pen We could fix this before March 6th, which is the awards dinner So if you decide to take out your pen today, it's a total of $122.25 You could take it to Jillian. Thank you Just Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, and I just want to say on behalf of the board Thank you to all the county employees who both worked and organized and put together a really fun and Community building events and raised this money the county the county family really stepped up and were proud to be part of the family morning Tony Crane representing Neighborhood in Aptos regarding the second story program which continues to operate Against what at least one of you has said should not be I Received a letter from Mimi Hall the director of health the health services agency With her final answer regarding what you're going to do about it And what she's done is said they are relinquishing the power of Her department and the Board of Supervisors They're not going to do anything about it and they're leaving it up to the contractor encompass community services to make a decision Encompass has been dishonest with the neighbors as has People from the community from the county There are people in this room right now Who lied to our community? We have internal emails proving it so and those have been presented to you And so I don't you know, I don't know where to go from here It's hard to stand here and and you guys listen to me come here every so often And I get the blank stare but nothing's being done and so We're being forced to move forward and this is a Terrible thing that that a community who has been lied to and has provided Irrefutable proof of that about a program that has questionable effectiveness Continues to operate and we're going to be forced to use our funds our personal funds to protect ourselves and to protect our neighborhood and It makes no sense So I just you know official record you guys have now stated that you're not going to do anything And that you and basically you're saying you don't have the power to do it and that's not true It's absolutely not true. You have the power to do something about it. You're choosing not to Good morning, I'm Teresa Tomei with the Small Business Development Center at Cabrillo College I'm here to thank the board for your support of my program over the years I'll be retiring in two weeks So I wanted to come and give a special thanks to the county of staff whom I've worked with starting from Carlos many many years ago To Barbara Mason and Andy Constable Peter and also the workforce development board staff Andy Stone You and the workforce development board provide very necessary funds to my program that match my federal dollars Which are only a hundred and forty thousand dollars a year are based funding with that with your Contributions with the city of Santa Cruz and others last year. We served over 350 small businesses in the county We are the only county in California that has an SBDC for a single county Most SBDCs serve many counties because of your support I've been able to really concentrate services and we provided we help those clients get over 15 million dollars in Equity and loans. I just want that to hang there for a minute with your investment of lessons $50,000 for both my programs We have provided over 15 million in loans that have stayed in this area that have created jobs We helped create excuse me 11 million. We helped increase our sales of our clients We track it very carefully by 15 million. That's a lot of sales tax revenue So I'm very proud to stand before you and say thank you because your investment is really working to help our small Businesses stay here and grow and create jobs and pay sales tax that we need so thank you for that The Small Business Development Center will continue to serve the county. We've been here to help people apply for disaster loans We've helped a Rancho del Mar clients move and keep their businesses in the county We will be here on an as needed basis as things come up in addition to providing services So thank you to the staff. Thanks to you and it's been really fun. Thanks. Thank you And congratulations. You're well deserved Chair let me just say that I've had the pleasure of working with Ms. Tomay in my eight years as a Cabrillo College trustee Before I became a supervisor. She is a tireless advocate For small business in Santa Cruz which make up the super majority of all business in Santa Cruz her efforts to connect local business with local experts that and the results that you just recited are clear example of the Work that you have done. Thank you for all all the all of your contribution to the Santa Cruz economy And I wish you great happiness in your retirement. Thank you Hello, my name is Brooke Newman. I'm the project manager for the downtown streets team We're the volunteer work experience program for men and women experiencing homelessness in our community I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank the board for supporting our model and our efforts It's been a pleasure to work with the county staff in the administrative office human services department and public works We've enjoyed building collaborative partnerships with county staff from the analysts in each department to the benefits Representatives doing boots on the ground work with our team members. We are really excited for our North County team To start removing debris and perform peer-to-peer outreach to those experiencing homelessness up and Felton very soon We attended a community community meeting held last week by Supervisor McPherson and Felton and found ourselves greeted by a crowd of community members who are solution oriented and Excited to see our team hit the ground and just to give you an idea of our North County team's impact thus far Since July of 2018 We've had five team members dedicated to removing debris from the north coast beaches of Davenport Landing Bonnie Dune Panther and Scots Creek and in total the team has removed eight point three tons of debris From these beaches that would have otherwise ended up in our bay I'll keep it brief, but for those of you who haven't had an opportunity I invite you to join us at our weekly success meeting at the 4a team project that we hold every Thursday at 12 30 p.m This meeting is the heartbeat of our team in which we celebrate our successes share resources and welcome new folks to our Team who are seeking to make change in their lives in our community and in people's Perception surrounding homelessness if you have any questions feel free to reach out to me I'll leave my cards with someone so you can contact me. Thank you. Thank you, Mr.. Chair I would just want to say it was a very successful meeting attended by I think about 80 people up in Felton And it gives those who are homeless an opportunity to participate and improve the community gives them a sense of Worth so to speak and I'm really pleased with the way that meeting went and I'm really anxious to see it start Up in Felton in the Santa Rosa Valley. Thank you very much I'm Sheila Delaney. I'm here speaking as the president of the Valley Women's Club We operate the redemption recycling centers in the Santa Rosa Valley I Know that there was supposed to be an agenda item today with the request for proposal for the recycling Contracts which I'd like to thank Supervisor McPherson for requesting to have that removed from the agenda this time to give us an opportunity to Figure out whether we could continue recycling in the Valley So we're a bit schizophrenic at this moment because we have to consider How to meet the scope of work that the public works has presented to us and at the same time if we cannot How to close down recycling and CRV operations in the San Lorenzo Valley? I have a couple of letters here that because we only have a couple of minutes. I would like to hand to you But the concern Is that the homeless people that you were just talking about? Many of them make their food money or their transportation money by recycling cans and bottles They will not be able to do that any longer I'd also like to give you just our tonnage report in one year we brought in and disposed of through selling and recycling 680,960 pounds of CRV materials and five million containers Diverted during a year. It's kind of an impressive amount So I look forward to seeing you when this item for the RFP comes up on the agenda Maybe we can bid on it. Maybe we can't but I hope that your commitment stated to the environment will hold Thank you. Thank you Good morning. I'm Nancy Macy and I'm here also from the Valley Women's Club I was the director of the recycling centers for over 25 years and Honored and pleased to say thank you to the county for the extraordinary support that you've given to Recycling in the San Lorenzo Valley I want to point out though that the Valley Women's Club started recycling in the San Lorenzo Valley in 1970 out without county help just like Gray Bears did in Chanticleer without county help. So keep that in mind as you're as you're looking at the history But the big point I want to make is that We totally support universal curbside We totally support streamlining things the county is Spending too much money in a lot of areas and I know how hard you've been working on and in your planning To cut costs, but let me point out that the county has supported CRV in the Valley From its inception there When we opened the CRV center in Felton It was county public works that supported the process of getting the permit That was that what that had happened much faster than it might have otherwise And they also said would you mind taking more than just the CRV if people want to bring by their glasses their glass bottles and Their tin cans or their cardboard would you mind taking that since you're already taking it? We did so it was at the behest of the county that the CRV center also became a drop-off center I'd like to point out that when recycling was Going being moved into the bin loman transfer station And we were very excited about that because it was going to be a huge drop-off center and people could bring their recyclables It was county public works that came to the Valley Women's Club and said would you mind moving your CRV To the bin loman transfer station We did so at the behest of the county So I could give you more history, but we're there because we wanted to do what the county wanted. Thank you Morning supervisors. It's a pleasure to be here with you this morning. I'd like to respectfully ask and may I have Four minutes to for myself and to for it to read it letter from a colleague from Oceania Miss a day. Thank you. We can't we can't extend it if you want to have someone else read the letter in the audience We can have that but we can't we can't give extra. Okay. I'll get someone else to read it I'm going to be very brief. I want to just say Bravo on consent agenda number 23 As you know, we have petitioned the board of supervisors for a comprehensive Set of agenda items related to plastic pollution mitigation We were excited when one of our recommendations were taken for taken up in November And we got a ban on plastic toiletry bottles across the hospitality industry So again Bravo on that, but we are really really excited to see a directive that is asking for a comprehensive Recommendation from the Department of Public Works to deal with a host potentially a host of plastic pollution issues in the community So I just want to say that We are in full support. We applaud the action We look forward to seeing what will come from the Department of Public Works And we thank you for listening to this community and our desire to have clean shores and a healthy ocean. Thank you Thank you. Thank you for your advocacy Good morning, honorable council members. My name is Rachel Kippin I'm the co-chair of the Santa Cruz County Tobacco Education Coalition Which works to educate our community on the effects of cigarette butt waste and I'm the assistant executive director of O'Neill See Odyssey which works to provide youth with an understanding of threats to our ocean including plastic pollution I also wanted to thank you for your leadership with agenda item 23 related to plastic pollution and Encourage you to move that forward. What's particularly exciting about this agenda item to me is again that comprehensive plan and Focusing on the multiple effects that plastic has on our community to me. It reminds me of a climate action plan Additionally, as you know working to educate our youth can sometimes feel overwhelming and depressing in Relationship to the environment and your leadership on issues like this is the type of things that we're able to share with the people that we educate And the examples of hope so thank you so much for that special. Thanks. Of course the supervisor Leopold County staff Tim Gontraff and of course save our shores. Thank you so much. Thank you and Congratulations on your new job Good morning supervisors, my name is Tara Leonard and I'm a health educator with the Santa Cruz County Tobacco Education and Prevention Program. I also want to thank you this morning for item number 23 about plastic mitigation And I want to specifically thank you for including tobacco waste in that proposal A lot of people don't even understand that tobacco filters or butts are actually made of cellulose acetate Which is a form of non biodegradable plastic, but these items are not just plastic. They're actually toxic litter They contain chemicals that they leach into the environment such as lead nicotine arsenic the same chemicals found in secondhand smoke And yet they're under our feet every single day where they provide a poisoning threat to children pets and wildlife They're blown into our storm drains and eventually they make their way to our oceans where they are toxic to aquatic organisms Chances are you are fully aware of those issues But are you aware that the latest data is now showing that cigarette filters actually provide no health benefit to smokers I'm holding in my hand a 2017 research report from the Journal of the National Cancer Institute That concludes that cigarette filters actually cause an increase in lung adenone carcinoma the most common form of lung cancer So thank you for including cigarette waste in this proposal And I'd like to make sure that you're aware that my staff is available as a source of information and resources as you move forward Thank you very much. Thank you Good morning supervisors. I'm Thomas wielden. I'm representing myself You deal with quality of life. That's what it's all about quality of life The Santa Cruz Harbor I think provides quality of life for thousands and thousands of people in this community Besides all the other people who come to the harbor from outside the community It's interesting because the lady who just spoke was on the paper and that has to do with the harbor And the excellent program that she runs the second page of your Budget you you talk about How Santa Cruz is the gateway to minor a bay which means if you're going to go out to minor a bay You have to use the harbor you also talk about sailing surfing fishing diving kayaking and viewing marine ammo Viewing marine animals out of those six things You need the harbor to taken and take and have those six things happen I would very very much like to encourage you to support the Santa Cruz Harbor in any way possible. You could thank you Thank you Good morning Becky Steinbruner resident of rural Aptos I first want to protest that already with the change in public process input our time as the public has been reduced by One-third and now you're reducing it further and I want to protest that I don't think it's in the best interest of public Transparency or input and participation? I want to bring to your attention that today the Santa Cruz City Council will be considering a B411 presented by Assemblyman stone that will bring a possible five million dollars. Maybe more to the Santa Cruz City area from redevelopment moneys for homelessness and sheltering of them so I encourage you to Participate in that in any way that you are able to and encourage to provide a stone to bring the county some money, too I also want to bring to your attention I am Continuing my legal action in pro per against so Cal Creek water district the county is a real party in interest because you were named as One of those on the notice of determination So I do have a scheduled preliminary injunction hearing and want to let you know that that is Against many alleged Citing many alleged violations in environmental law I want to let you know that tomorrow the planning Commission will hear of an appeal of a new cell facility in Soquel village that central fire district is opposing this chief hall has opposed a publicly with written comment And I encourage you to support the denial of these new cell towers in Send in Soquel village. I also want to register comment on item number 39. I'm happy that the Soquel Parkway is going to be continued landscape architect locally not somebody out of town I really appreciate that item number 41. I am anxious to hear what comes of that supervisor Leopold I also have concern and item 43 regarding tree trimming and brush removal along the roadways I want to know why public works is not doing that and why we're putting it out to contract with community tree service. Thank you Hello, I'm Shea Halavity, and I'm the communications coordinator at save our shores I'm the annoying person taking pictures in the corner But I'm also here to read the letter of support for agenda item number 23 from Oceana Dear chair friend and supervisors Thank you for your continued leadership across the Monterey Bay region and the state to safeguard coastal resources Including your leadership on combating plastic pollution Including single-use plastic bags plastic straws and most recently plastic shampoo and conditioner bottles in the hospitality industry Today's agent action agenda item number 23 provides another opportunity to solve a critical part of the puzzle to address the single-use plastics crisis on behalf of our members Oceana agrees that county funds should not be used to purchase single-use plastic water bottles for county facilities Meetings and events. We also support your Recommended action to direct the Department of Public Works to research the additional indicated items Related relating to plastic pollution in the county and to present relevant proposed ordinances at the May board meeting As you are keenly aware plastic pollution has grown into a major global crisis for the oceans and it threatens not only our ocean and environmental Health but public health Plastics never go away and said they break down into smaller and smaller pieces Which are choking hazards for wildlife and act as magnets for harmful pollutants that make their way into the food chain While recycling is important and should be promoted. It alone is not enough to solve the plastics crisis We must reduce the amount of single-use plastic at the source before it gets to consumers There is a role for everyone to play and harnessing the plastics problem companies consumers and local governments alike We look forward to the recommendations from the Department of Public Works in May through your thoughtful leadership We hope to see future ordinances to tackle additional ubiquitous single-use plastics in the very near future We also hope and encourage other counties to follow your lead. Sincerely Ashley blackout Drager. Thank you. Thank you So they are final speaker Marilyn Garrett part of wireless radiation alert network and emf aware Santa Cruz Where you can see on the website the 5g? Microwave radiation on a slot and what it means for us It was a very educational event held November 30th at the Santa Cruz lab oak range As I'm listening to the speakers here, and I very much appreciate people who come on behalf of the community and Take their time to do that. I keep thinking of all this pollution and the fact that corporations What is it? They they profit and we the public pay for it in all the cleanup I also think how the wireless microwave radiation Is Sometimes referred to the cell phones as big tobacco to it's very Contaminating their second-hand radiation like second-hand smoke and I do appreciate that you last meeting supported and issues Resolution 530 to kind of put a halt on the working its way through committees on the 5g, but we need to stop the whole 4g and All the wireless facilities that are proliferating the reason the firefighters got exemptions To have these on their firehouses is because they were made ill Functional impairment coordination off tremors like me In a brain fog if it's doing that to the firemen, you know, it's dangerous for all of us We need to stop wireless microwave proliferation. Thank you Thank you that concludes public comment We're now going to move on to access action on the consent agenda, which is our items 14 through 46 And I'll start with supervisor friend. Do you have anything to add? Thank you I have something just briefed out obviously I'm supportive of 23 I appreciate the work of you and supervisor Leopold expanding upon what we've already done here in the county and mr. Gontroff's work on item 24. I'm supportive of the broadening definition I would like to encourage my two colleagues to serve on that the transit district to also include language that would Encourage geographic diversity of these members one of the things that we don't require either the bylaws of the metro or here At the board of supervisors On our public appointments is some sort of geographic diversity when in the entire system obviously is geographically diverse But yet our public members that we appoint we have no direction that actually requires it So I would like to encourage when it the bylaws specifically at the At the at the metro when you're considering appointments to other bodies that are representative that there be geographic diversity trip I'm supportive of this Surveyor Leopold good morning chair Just have a couple of items to comment on First of all, I'd like to thank you for your leadership on item number 23 I'm glad to work with you on this the issue of plastics in our oceans is a very serious one This begins to take some steps. There are more that we need to do and we are working with Our community partners and our jurisdictional partners to look to tackle things like microfiber pollution, which will Which we're trying to come up with some solutions on but the evidence is clear about the impacts of Plastics in our oceans and this is a the another step for the county to take on on item number 38 I want to express my appreciation to the community for their outstanding efforts on raising over two million dollars for Shanna Clear Park and Leo's Haven and For their broad support of measure G This awarding of the contract to start the construction on phase one of Shanna Clear Park is is a great step And we're all waiting very anxiously to to run across the fields play on the all-inclusive playground equipment and just enjoy each other's company in this great park and I see Mariah Roberts here who's a Main instigator of the Leo's Haven's effort and I want to thank you Both for that work and your ongoing work with the parks mission and for the parks department for their Unflagging support of this of this project Also, I'm very excited to see on item number 39 more use of measure G funds To start on phase two and three of the design work For the heart of Soquel Parkway project. This is a project that will connect Soquel together With a walking path by the river connecting the schools the businesses and the community together. It's very exciting It's only been 25 years that the community has identified this But it's been our current parks leadership who's worked to make it happen and I appreciate that ongoing support Lastly on item number 41, I would ask that we just table this to our next meeting There this is a I'm very excited to see that we're finally going to be going out and hiring the consultant to do the EIR For the standable Santa Cruz there was a lot in the RFP There weren't questions I could all get answered beforehand Then I'm hoping we can do that at by our next meeting I'm confident we can great Thank you I too want to thank supervisors Coonerty and Leopold for item number 23 on the plastic pollution and dressing that issue It's another step that we are taking as a county to enhance environmental protection throughout Santa Cruz County and and beyond as a matter of fact I That's I'm concerned about the workload with the public works. I don't know in terms of time I I want to do this But I just want to get a sense of time and to find out if there are any other cities considering such such actions that We might be this is a heavy lift and I don't know if they might be able if you contacted any cities or I know It's a we're doing it as a county, but are the cities? Interested in this as well to maybe alleviate some of the workload on our public work staff Good morning Tim Gontroff public works We have been in contact with our colleagues at the cities at the staff level and also with some of the elected officials They're following this closely, and I think we will see similar action from them one of the directives on this item is to consult with our partners at the cities through the advisory groups the Integrated waste local task force on which their representatives from each of the cities as well as the commission on the environment So we'll be speaking with them directly as well as through those groups And I think you can count on their partnerships in terms of the workload. It is ambitious but we have come to expect no less and We will provide what you asked for on the schedule specified Very good. Okay Just want to okay. Thank you for that effort and thank you save our shores I know that you could add some you will you will be adding some input to this as well It's a tremendous endeavor, and I think that if we can do it together with our cities They'd be another step forward and some of the cooperative efforts in this regard I will abstain from item number 226 and want to comment on the permanent number item number 40 permanent room housing as was mentioned We had a town hall meeting Felton recently Last week, and it was very well attended and there were some people who are very interested in this concept Many of the sites that are being mentioned in this the zoning are in my district 5 this is one way that Really a smart way the Santa Rosa Valley could participate and add some additional housing without taxing our Sceptic systems, which is a real continuous problem up in the Santa Rosa Valley So I do I'm looking forward to this and I appreciate the input that has gone into it to this point Thank you. Supervisor Caput. Thank you item 42 It's good to see that we have nine hundred forty one thousand dollars coming in for guardrail and Striping installation projects countywide That's especially going to be important because of washed out roads and especially out with some of the country roads Where it really is very dangerous for cars and bicycle bicyclists so I'm looking forward to Getting that money. It's Unanticipated funds that are coming to the county and It's going to be a benefit Especially to people that are already facing washed out roads that Need to be repaired. Thank you Thank you, and I just have a couple comments to make so one is item number 19 is bringing in Consulting group to look at our systems to provide that provide services to homeless people experiencing homelessness I want to appreciate the CAO staff for bringing this forward They've worked in a number of different jurisdictions around the country and so can bring an outside perspective to our system And when we're dealing with so much need and so few resources We have to make sure that the systems are providing the best possible services for the best outcome for both the Individuals and the community and so I'm grateful for that on items 23 and 26 and 23 is the plastic item Thank you to save our shores and the community for continually pushing us to do more and better And then our item 26 which is brought was brought to me by the community to support public banking efforts It's a critical opportunity and they're there in the crowd today and it's a critical opportunity to control our financial desk destiny and Provide more resources and I want to thank the community for again taking leadership and pushing That effort forward and hopefully the state Provides us with a mechanism through which we can can provide those opportunities I want to register a no vote on item number 32. It's a grant application. I appreciate I met with I Health services staff. I they're trying to do a lot with a little And and as always they're they're thoughtful about both the clients of the community I just think that even with these additional resources, it will be an additional strain on our community That's not right at this time And item number 35, which is the streets team. I want to thank Ellen Timberlake and HSD And Brooke and the whole two streets team for their incredible work to expand this effort which is both Getting trash off our beaches and off our highways and off and out of our neighborhoods and parks as well as providing work experience and the dignity of Contributing and work to to people in need in our community. So it's an amazing program So with that, I'll look for a motion. I would move the amended agenda. Okay, so we got a motion by Leopold Second actually point of order. You've had discussion that says consent calendar. There should not be discussion You had it on the floor Mr. Arnold Mr. Arnold, Mr. Arnold, do you had your time? Thank you very much Mr. Arnold, I'm gonna have to order you Thank you, please sit down. No, mr. Victoria's no No, no, no the committee members of the public don't bring up points of order This is in total applies by our please sit down and stop disrupting the meeting Thank you And so we had a motion by Leopold and a second by McPherson All those in support of the consent agenda as amended, please say aye. Aye Opposed that passes unanimously So now we're going moving on to item number seven which is a presentation of current pavement conditions in county roadways as outlined by the deputy CAO and the director of public works Thank you everyone who came out today feel free to stick around if you want a pavement update update, but This is Excited as exciting as we possibly can here. Thank you Good morning chair board members members of the public my name is Steve Wiesner assistant director of Public Works in charge of the transportation division with me today is Casey Carlson Who's our senior civil engineer in charge of our road operations section in public works and in the audience? We have Matt Machado our director as well Today we have a brief pavement management update presentation Which is based on the results of our latest pavement conditions survey that was recently completed We do this about once every five years for your board So just for a little bit of context Our county maintained road network is about 600 miles long and that'd be kind of like having a road from Watsonville All the way up to Vancouver, Canada, so it's it's quite a long road To maintain but we're pretty committed to doing it and our road system It's made up of you know large roads that carry a lot of our traffic. These are arterials major collectors and And then of course our local roads. These are our neighborhood roads and split about 50-50 and Today's current asset value Is is just nearly a billion dollars. It's quite an investment that we have in our road system This is based on current prices today as if we were to go replace all of the pavement and our entire 600 mile network And a lot of the major drainage structures as well Okay, so just a little bit of a reminder refresher to you and members of the public How do we how do we measure the condition of our pavement? We've got this technical term pavement condition index PCI. I'm sure you've all heard us refer to this often And it's pretty simple 100 is a brand-new road built to current modern-day standards Zero is a completely failed road So, how do we do this once every five years we go out and we resurvey the condition of the entire network We do that on the ground with consultants We take all the data and it's basically housed and compiled in a software package called Street Saver So this this computer software package has been developed over about the last three decades It's widely used by hundreds of cities and counties throughout throughout California and actually wider and What what the software package does for us? It's a database holds all of our data we feed in modern-day pricing and It'll give us information not only what the condition is what we can expect the condition to be Given certain funding scenarios. We can feed in also Given certain funding scenarios What would be the rest best roads to actually go after considering the limited funding that we have for our for our road system? Okay, just very very briefly just some examples of what different roads with different PCIs look like So this would be like a fully reconstructed new road, which is a hundred. This was actually Granite Creek Road We did this last summer and then as the pavement ages We start to see distress and we start to see fractures and stress cracks and so forth But you know even in the 70s, you know your road system is still in pretty good shape But as you get on down into the 50s, you're gonna start to see more stress More fractures more cracks You'll start to see some differential settlement some rutting these types of things and then if we can't hit it then It starts to rapidly deteriorate we get into the teens and you'll start to see this type of allergety cracking and Some other types of distress as well, and then of course, you know right before failure This is about what a road looks like right before it fails Okay, so with that I'm gonna let turn it over to Casey and have him talk a little bit about pavement management theory and Where we are with our existing system. Thank you Steve So what you can see here on this graph is the degradation of PCI over time As you you start in the good range and as you go forward in time without treatment The PCI continues to degrade and at one point you just kind of start going over a cliff and it degrades much faster What you would like to do is try to treat it when it's still in the relatively good stage with a green or blue treatment there You want to try to avoid getting it into the yellow or the red because it just gets cost prohibitive to try to do work when you're getting down into that range it's kind of like Painting the siding on your house if you can keep painting the siding on your house the siding underneath is protected And if you let the paint to grade it it starts to wear away and and the structure of the siding starts to suffer So after the results of our survey where are we at today? Survey says that our average PCI for entire network is a 48 now That's not where we'd like to be but the good news is That over the last ten years or so we've been focusing most of the money We've been able to receive into our arterial and collectors Those are the major streets that take the most of our traffic most of the buses trucks and just serve the most users So those are the roads you want to try to keep the best We've done a relatively good job of maintaining those streets now We know that the local neighborhood streets have not received as much attention and those do need work Another way to look at it is The arterial and collector streets represent about half of our network by composition So what we're saying is we're doing okay on half of our network The local neighborhood streets as we said we know we need more work And Here's how you can see kind of how we compare statewide average is a PCI of 65 and you can kind of see how we compare to other neighboring agencies Now to talk about funding I'm going to turn it back over to Steve Thanks, Casey. Okay for just a little bit of historical context We do do this update to your board once every five years five years ago 2013 our pavement condition average countywide was at a 53 At that time we knew if we had no money to invest into our pavement surface You know five years later we'd be at about a 42 or a 40 Well, that didn't happen We had a little bit of money and we were able to invest a little bit and attenuate the decline a little bit hence We're at a 48 today At that time what the science was telling us was we needed about 14 million dollars a year to maintain the road system The way it was And so we all know that that we didn't have that at that time Actually, what we did have was we had just a little bit north of two million dollars a year for the last five years in a row And it's something you know, and it really does help But it wasn't enough and so we did see a decline However, there's good news and the good news is is that we've had a couple new funding sources come on board some very critical funding sources and measure D1 And also SB 1 which was passed at the state level and so that's actually going to help us with our Forecasting for what we think we'll be able to have for our pavement management program moving forward So the table you have before you is a ten-year snapshot of what we think we're going to be able to do moving forward and invest into our Pavement and we think we'll be able to invest about eight million dollars a year So really that's four times as much as we've had in the previous years and You can see it's comprised of a number of number of funding sources a measure D and SB 1 being the lion's share of those two And so, you know what that means for our system Okay, so you know this is where the news is a little bit tough here But the science does the talking for us and the current pricing for pavement projects So at eight million dollars per year we can still expect to see actually decline in our overall network PCI And this is what the software is telling us. This is what the science tells us We're gonna see our backlog grow You know, even though we did get this these two great funding sources, which we're very grateful for and we will all benefit from We're still gonna see a decline in our overall PCI Really what we need to maintain our system the way it is around is around 24 million dollars a year That's based on current costs for pavement projects today So even with all that we are gonna see this decline So just in summary, you know, it's our road system is you know a considerable investment for us It's nearly a billion dollars And and our overall network is about a 48 right now, you know, however the good news is that we've we're gonna see You know probably roughly average of around eight million dollars a year for the next ten years invested into our pavement system and However, unfortunately our PCI will probably still decline now. There's reasons for this and and just What we see moving forward when SB 1 got passed at the state level, we knew it wasn't going to be enough We had been speaking with the state legislature for years That the shortfall on an annual basis for sitting in counties was about five and a half billion dollars a year What SB 1 actually generates for cities and counties statewide is about is it about about a billion and a half? And and we all know in our industry that this is really sort of an intern measure to get us to the next Revenue source or model that will be more sustainable for road maintenance and And the efforts already happening at the state level. They've done pilot projects and so forth Right now with the gas tax model is as you pay a certain amount of pennies per gallon at the pump And and we know with increased efficiency of electric vehicles coming on board and hybrid vehicles We're purchasing less gas and this is great for the environment, but it's not a good model to to fund our road maintenance and so Probably what we're going to see other states are studying this well as well is more of a VMT based Road user tax where it's really just based on the amount of miles that your car, you know puts on the roads per year And that way electric vehicles will be paying the same amount as gasoline vehicles and so forth So moving forward what we're going to do is we'll continue to advocate for that new that new model for a road user tax But we'll we'll use the funding that we have available to us as as efficiently as possible We'll work with your board on its priorities We're going to continue to seek as many grant opportunities as we can For our payment management program We're going to continue to advocate for our fair share of the existing sources that are out there such as federal RSTP Fundings and some of the stip fundings that comes to our region Okay, so, you know, that's that's our brief presentation I would like to just thank you for your board support. Your board has been unanimously very supportive of our road system I know you know how important it is We know how important it is we hear it every day from from our community for our neighbors You know, this is how we get tuned from work. This is how we take our kids tuned from their schools, right? This is how services get delivered especially emergency services, right, especially to the far-reaching areas of our county So it's very important. It's important to us We're going to continue to try and do everything we can to maintain our system as best as we can and with that We're happy to take any questions that you may have Questions Supervisor Caput Yeah, thank you for your report and When it comes to the funding that we're we have and go and we are going to have Can you I understand it, but can you explain to the public and maybe some other people that might not know How it's allocated countywide it's by miles, right? Sure, that's right what we do with the pavement management program is every opportunity that we have available is a We look at the road miles per geographic region for the county-maintained road system and we basically a portion our funding out By by road miles. So, you know an example would be in the southern part of the county Actually, just specifically in your district Supervisor Caput Your your district has really only seven point seven percent of the entire road system Down in the unincorporated area of the county and most of that southern county is Watsonville the city right so We would apportion out that percentage towards the roads down in your district Okay, and then when it comes to how much and what in each district is going to be fixed how do we How do we come to what the priorities are is that going to be because you can't your staff can't be driving around the whole County and Marking down. Well, this one looks bad that one looks worse or whatever So that's going to come from what public input from each district And trying to identify the cost and how much how many miles? Yeah, that's a great question We try to be as very scientific as we can about it and we let street saver our software Give us indications as where the money could be most efficiently used, right? But also we're taking into consideration the amount of service requests that we've gotten for particular roadways We've we're taking into consideration Working with your individual offices on and on your priorities and your needs Specifically as well And then from experience of our road crews that are out there on the roads that they really know where the spots are Sure and each district we're talking about unincorporated area roads, right? Correct. And so Most of a lot of district 4 is the city of Watsonville. That's right. They're they're gonna have to deal with that and They're getting funding it from their different sources. That's right. They have their own sources. Yes Anyway, I have a list to give you after we're happy to work with you and all of you on this, okay Surprises are McPherson. Thank you for that report. It's as depressing as it is in some respects But first of all, I want to thank the Public Works Department For the job that has been doing it's been doing especially in the last couple storm years that we've had in 17 And 18 with what you have it's phenomenal how much you've been able to get done We had very little up until the past since you've measured E and then Senate bill one which With with stood a challenge at the ballot box last November as well But for what you've had it it really is remarkable what you've been able to do and I think you're you're correct in Going to the major arterials and collectors. That's where the most traffic travels We have to do that. We here continue to hear a lot from our locals Call some people in Lompico or wherever and you'll hear it from them But and they they sort of understand that because of some of those conditions We can get some federal support for that. So it takes we're waiting to get that support. So I you might in some of those circumstances I don't know how many of those we have in the county But like the creek or the river coming down Lompico, it's it's it's hard to wait But it's worth the price to wait in general. Is that correct? I mean We get 75% federal help some of those. Yeah, we wouldn't be able to build these We wouldn't be able to build these projects without support from the state and federal governments Okay, well, you know, it's encouraging and I again want to thank the voters of Santa Cruz County for passing measure D and November of 16 But I think we're paying the price for the lack of resources we've had I wish we would have had measure D the last ten years But when you say you're only able to spend two million dollars per year for the last five years And now we're it looks like with a combination of measure Measure D and sp1 we're going to be close to four million or or so at least per year Is that right? Well around eight million is what we're eight million with measure D Is I mean as the years go on with that measure D and that's an average over the next ten years, okay? How long does it generally take on page 24 you have the single-layer surf seal And this is where if we would have had the funds to do this at the right time It would have been a lot less costly. It's cost per mile of a hundred and forty thousand dollars But when you get into reconstruct, it's over a million How long does it take to get from there from one to the other? I guess it could change but I mean when you see it you're going and you need a single-layer surface and the normal rainy season at all To take three years five years to go down the tank like yeah, so that's a really good question And then so it's an exponential curve right it drops off rapidly if you don't catch it in time before You know you really want to catch these roads when they're at about a 50 psi If it goes below 50 you start getting into the 40s and 30s it drops off rapidly It just takes a few more years to get down to the teens That's been kind of primarily the issue we've had over about the last decade is that Because we haven't invested the money. We're seeing a larger portion of our system now down into the you know into the poor range So yeah drops off very rapidly and really the idea of that slide that you're looking at is you really want to take care of Your roads when you're in that upper area of the curve so much more cost effective And when you said when the need was 14 million per year to maintain when Uh At what point and now it's 24 million that we know that was just five years ago And you know the reason primarily the reason for that is our construction costs have gone up material costs have gone up Um, and then in addition All of these roads that haven't gotten attention over the last five years Have been in that critical category where they've kind of dropped off And so you're going to see not only a drop in in your pc i which we saw a drop of five overall Um, but you're also going to see You know a majority amount of the network needs a lot more work. Hence why 24 million at this point. Yeah, that's And that's the science talk and that's basically modern day prices and pavement management theory talking right there Yeah, and you want to have a pc i at least 50 or up into the 60s to be In good shape or relatively good shape. Yep, and I it just it's um It's depressing to see that even with the added funding we're going to have and and it's not a to put this blame on public Works, but our pc i is going to go from 48 in 10 years to 33 and um, that's that's just that the the increasing costs and the um The allocation of funding on the decision tree so to speak that it's just going to get worse And a lot of roads before we can address them to that reconstruct That's true. Um, it's you know, but don't let that news dismay you It's really the good news is that we're going to be able to maintain a lot more of a portion of our network with the added funding So, you know, we're going to be able to keep that stuff. That's in really decent shape right now still in pretty good shape It's the stuff that's dropped off the curve That's going to be very difficult for us to go for reconstruction efforts unless we get some kind of One-time grant funding or if there's an infusion of funds in some other way The road user tax could be a really really good way and I think we're going to see a lot more energy Now that sp1's kind of passed and we've saved it through prop six and all that kind of stuff I think over the next couple years You're going to hear a lot more chatter at the both the state and the federal level about a new model for how we fund our road maintenance Again, I want to thank public works for doing As good a job as it's been able to do with the money the funding it has and I think you're going to address the Problems to the best of your abilities. No question about it and again to thank the people of Santa Cruz county who approved measure d because without that We literally would be dropping off a cliff Yeah Very briefly. I mean, uh, so Given the cost of delayed maintenance Does it make sense and then low interest rates in our the county's good bond rating? Does it make sense To bond and spend more money up front as a way to reduce some of these long-term costs That could make sense I would need like I need to look into the details of bonding against a sp1 and excise tax So I don't know if that's actually even possible But it does make sense just in theory to try and do it now instead of later because it's a lot more cost-effective to do it Now waiting is expensive and interesting theoretically that makes a lot of sense. Okay. And the second question is does your model Include the effects of climate change where we're seeing larger and more powerful storms that are causing more damage To our roads. Is this is uh, is this in a stable climate or is this in a Increasingly intense climate. That's a really good question. Our model does not take into account annual rainfall and and we We in santa cruz county think that that should be actually one of the critical factors and how we receive Funding through the state now just to remind everybody how we receive funding through the gas tax Is primarily based on the number of registered vehicles that you have in the county and the amount of road miles that you maintain We have a low number of registered vehicles over the hill. They have probably have like three million registered vehicles We have like in the 240 range 240,000 so That kind of works us against us, right? But yet we have 50 to 60 inches of rain up in the mountainous regions of of our county and Water and and basically, you know the volume of traffic and the loading of traffic is what hammers roads So I would love to see rainfall be a factor in there, but it isn't currently. Okay. Thank you. Supervisor Leopold Thank you chair It's hard to figure out what the emotion is. I feel when I look at this report because It's it's very disturbing About our efforts to be able to fund road maintenance Have we changed? consultants on Who prepares this report? We have not we're still using nickels consulting Um, they're kind of the premier pavement management consulting firm in california Most of the other counties and cities use them Same consultant who did the local streets and roads report for years and years and years for advocacy at the state level So no, we're using the same same consultant. We're consistent Well, the the reason I ask that is, you know, one of the seems like one of the drivers for us be Unable to meet the basic needs of our local road system is that we see a 42 increase in the cost of annual maintenance From the from the last time we got a report here, you know when we went out to the public in 2016 about measure d We said that we needed about 12 million dollars a year and then after that we said we needed 14 million dollars a year And now we're saying we need 24 million dollars a year It's it really feels like the goalposts keep on moving further away rather than closing the gap as we increase funding four fold And you know the plan that you lay out here is the exact same plan that we've had for the 10 years that I've been up here Which is we're going to get the arterials and collectors and the folks on rural roads are going to suffer once again Of not being able to get their roads met We went out to the public and said that if we pass something like measure d We're going to get to some of those roads that we that we didn't get to before Um, and it's incredibly frustrating to to see after the advocacy on the part of Residents here the board the department To get additional resources to to keep on falling behind It's it's tough to go out and make that claim to people that things are going to get better if they don't ever Um turn around so I'm I'm dissatisfied with this report And uh, I would like more information about why we've gone from 12 14 to 24 million dollars An annual maintenance cost it there is not enough explanation here to feel like that 40 increase more than 40 increase Um is something we either didn't know about or has radically changed in just a few years um, it's uh Uh, I we all answer questions every day from constituents asking us to fix the road um, and uh To my rural residents. I said we've got a plan. We're gonna get local resources We're gonna get state resources and to have that done and and tell them well We're not going to get to your road now. Anyway, is uh, is unacceptable To me. Well, I just as a response that we're equally as frustrated Um, you know, of course, we would like to do everything we can for the road system And what you're seeing here doesn't have to do with anybody's opinion. This is the science talking. This is Pavement management theory. This is the software that we use. It's widely used. It's widely accepted Given current prices and one thing I will note though is while we did get measured D past Only 30 is going towards local roads. So you've got 70 going towards a lot of other things in there Okay, that's a and then b SB1 very similar story with SB1. We passed SB1 But only 40 percent of all of SB1's take is going towards local streets and roads for cities and counties So I think those factors should be considered in there with that your frustration. Of course, we can We we can see that um that Both those measures might have put more money into local roads But it doesn't hide the fact that it's a four-fold increase for the money of the department the department has Right, that's true. Uh, I'm sure most departments would be happy to have a four-fold increase Um, uh, we're letting the science do the talking here. This is science There isn't the the jumping from 14 to 24 million Um seems to be a major driver here And uh, I think we and the public deserve more information about why we have that jump and What's really going on? Was it accurate? Last time we talked about it and is it accurate now? Because uh, it's it's the reason we're not we we're running to fall behind um I think we have to work harder to to take care of the folks who have waited Years decades for for someone to work on their roads um, and You know measure d gives us a little bit of money and you know I've tried to focus it on on those folks who haven't gotten the money in the past, but But we owe it to them they pay their taxes too And it just seems incredibly dispiriting to have rallied people So much and then tell them we're not going to get there So I would like if you provided us with a greater information about that jump that 42 jump in uh, in annual maintenance cost Because that's the only thing I can figure as to why this picture is so bad We'd be happy to do that Supervisor friend. Thank you chair and and I do appreciate the work of public works as an underfunded and overworked Uh department and I think we should also sort of broaden this understanding first We have a disproportionately Disproportionate number of people that live in the unincorporated area Where the county provides a front line of services? It's great to compare us to Santa Clara county, but two percent of their population lives in the unincorporated area One of the reasons why uh comparisons for Santa Cruz county are unique and more difficult And when you put in cities, they have a totally different funding structure They they don't have the same topography. They have a compact road mile component Um, I'm sure you would love to have an entire public works department as the city of Santa Cruz does for 12 square miles Okay, these are fundamentally different drivers. I appreciate the comparisons, but they're not they're not comparisons, right? But they also set up an expectation for the community thinking that Um, there's a better way to do it over. I hear this all the time. Why are the roads so nice in Santa Clara? I'll give you an idea Or as our auditor turn controller would tell you tax collector about 15 other titles You know, they get 56 cents or whatever it is on the dollar through the prop 13 formulation We get 13 cents. You just simply allow us to keep some of the money that our taxpayers already pay locally I'm sure that you would appreciate one two three additional cents on the property tax dollar See what it is public works could do when you see what a quarter cent and half cent sales tax produces Imagine what we could do if we could just keep the money locally We have a fundamentally different system here You have roads that were built as logging roads that are now residential roads with no drainage, right? And there's an expectation of maintenance in these areas that serve five to 50 people on roads that were never Really designed to actually sustain any kind of measured residential component As you as evidenced by the one photo you had for my district, which was a failed I wasn't sure if that was my street my home street or uricka canyon But it turns out it was a different street in my district, but I think that there is A reality that we have to face in the unincorporated area of santa cruz county Which is that people spend a lot of money in taxes have an expectation of services Totally reasonable that would be on par with cities and we have a fundamentally different structure on how we provide them You will never be able to provide people with the level of services that they desire for the money They pay under the current construct under prop 13 and a couple other things that happen in this state period Secondly just the design of these roads historically is such that Unless we're advocate, I mean we can pave the rural roads all we want if we're not doing anything on the drainage side You're talking about climate change. I mean, this is the only need climate change to see that these roads have been failing for 50 years And a lot of them are still just tar on dirt. I mean, they're not even They're not even designed roads with any kind of anything So in order to totally reconstruct the structure and to actually provide it would take An infusion a lot more than 8 million a year We have over 200 million of current deferred maintenance right now that escalates up to 300 million I mean anybody that has a 200 million in debt can tell you that there's a lot that would That would go on to having to just get back to zero nonetheless actually making improvements within the system Is true that we made a commitment to the voters to deal with the local roads on measure d and that's actually what we've been doing The reason that arterials and collectors are better because that's what our tip and s tip funding has been going to for the last That's what the federal government the state government want. They don't actually allow you to use it On local roads under some of the stipulations. That's why soquel freedom That's why those roads have actually gotten improvements within my district. That's why their pc i is higher And it's proof that when you have money the road condition actually improves However disproportionately in the unincorporated area, we have residential roads many more lane miles than residential roads So it doesn't take a math major to know that that's going to bring down your pc i when their conditions Significantly lower The question though with that is since that's the construct and that construct isn't going to fundamentally change Absent like some massive change on property and etc to supervisor coonerty's point If you have a deterioration of roads where as noted by the engineering staff Exponentially gets where you reach a tipping point where it's almost impossible to come back to you have Costs of construction escalating not just the cost of maintenance associated with something that has a 15 pc i versus a 50 But the cost of construction we've seen in some cases almost 30 percent year over year increases over the last couple years And you have lower bond ratings. I would actually think that part of the direction today. I know this is mainly an acceptance file I think we should look at directing public work staff to come back With what it would take to front load some of this measure d money My concern is we adopted a five-year plan here My concern is is that on year six when we come back to some of these residential roads The road that we first surveyed that was 48 is now 28 And that 900 000 is no for my district isn't 1.7 million because it's not like we see taxes going up In fact, we actually see sales taxes as flat potentially even going down courtesy the internet commerce and other components So that road's now exponential exponentially more expensive to maintain or redo So I don't know what the where the other side of the chess board of this really actually is on on stage two Meaning that when we come back to some of these neighborhoods that we've done and when you did the work in La Selva beach I mean everybody loves it except for the people didn't get their work done and now they want to know why Their road right which I understand But it has made a significant difference on the areas that have been done Miller cut off as gorgeous when I was up there relatively recently So I know the work is is good But I don't know that we're gonna I think that we're doing great work now I think five years from now that money really isn't going to do that much in the residential areas unless we front load Some of it because of the condition deterioration and that's going to be an even more difficult conversation I think for us to have So when it comes time for motion after we open it up, I would like to encourage that to come back There has been pretty significant discussions about whether you can bond I believe it was made clear through measure d that we actually could I'm not speaking specifically to sp1 Speaking of sp1 We're one of the counties that has to use that money to actually Dig our way out of a major hole from the storms a couple years ago Other counties are actually able to invest that in roads that didn't fall apart So we have an essence of five-year delay on that where we would have been able to invest that in road condition as well So we're in a disproportionately difficult situation and that's structurally and otherwise That the only way I think we get out of again is a prop 13 reform But the one thing we can do with the local level I think is front load these investments Which would mean that we'd be having an honest conversation with the voters that seven to 10 years from now You may not see that much road work is associated with measure d because we elected to do it But I think if we don't do it, we're not going to end up making those investments Really do any kind of influential degree at all because the cost Okay, we'll now open it up for public comment This is an opportunity to remember to the public to speak to us about this agenda item Thank you. Becky Steinbrunner a rural resident of aptos and a member of County service area 33 We pay to maintain our own two mile stretch of road. So I know how hard and expensive it is and thank you for the information I want to thank you supervisor leopold for being a voice of the rural residents What's not being discussed here is if you let those rural roads go to the point that they are unsafe For emergency response during fire evacuation during fire response How do you figure the cost of delays of responding engines to fight a fire and The result of that. So I think we have to look very carefully at protecting And preserving the rural areas of our county for a lot of reasons I see freedom boulevard. I see so cal drive between Rio del Mar and freedom boulevard. I see poulsen road And I really wonder where where's the money going And I have to wonder when I have sat in RTC meetings and heard the county say that the number one priority project for STIP grant funding Is aptos village Project area traffic improvement. This is not about me not liking the development. So please don't say that and don't think that It's my sincere Concerned that the county could judge Traffic improvements Intersection improvements moving a bus stop for millions of dollars As the number one priority project for the county Three times running and getting the highest dollar grant amounts for that project when there are Roads like poulsen and so cal drive between rio del mar And and freedom boulevard and freedom boulevard itself. They get very little I used to work a lot with susanne rogberg in department of public work. She was great As was john pressley and is matt machado The county had a program where they used slurry and chip seal On a lot of these roads just to keep them from deteriorating to a point of no return As you say, I would really like to see that reinstated I also wonder in your graph there why there are zero dollars coming from sb1 in 2019 2020 and 2021 I really need an explanation of that And I also want to point out that public works hires a lot of expensive consultants Recently your board approved a $600,000 contract with two consultants for traffic analysis That's one cost saving we could have right there so I Would also like to encourage that As our storm projects get done that we Co-operate with any other projects in the area for efficient setup and mobilization. Thank you The answer to your question is why there's no money from sp1 and 2 is because it's the match for the 140 million million dollars in storm damage That we need to provide fema to get To get the those roads repaired from last year's storms Oh, okay. Thank you. That would be a helpful note on that Because it's not clear to the public why it's a zero. Thank you. Thank you next speaker Thank you. It's good to have a question responded to thank you I agree with what becky steinbrunner just stated. I write I live in aptos 37 year resident of aptos off of freedom boulevard There's semi rural area and The fact that the priority goes to for the roads that she just explained to the aptos village Project, I think is a misdirection to put a kindly of Priorities and also The fact that the public is underwriting And paying in large part for this development I think is quite quite improper In terms of the overall budget I keep thinking of this I should bring this pie That shows where the money is going in this country. It's like half of it Approximately to the military and wars of us empire And then you get down to the little slivers of county government schools parks, etc I remember hearing a program on share of the wealth campaign. It was called back then and I know you are part of organizations of Counties and elected officials. I think there needs to be a lot of advocacy of keeping those funds in local government because it's just being siphoned out into Programs that do not benefit the public So I think we need that advocacy and I've cited this before that great bumper sticker It'll be a great day when the schools have all the money they need And the air force has to have a big sale to buy a bomber What we could do with that money for schools and parks and counties and Recreation, etc. It's just mind boggling So that priority whatever you can do to advocate for a I mean I like to turn the pie upside down give the military a little sliver of all our tax money And reverse it. Thank you Thank you. I'm boyana morgan faller. I live off of summit on spanish ranch road And I want to really thank you for the presentation on the road conditions We are one of those roads that is reaching a point of Being too dangerous for even a water tender to be able to drive on it This is becoming not just inconvenient or bumpy to drive on This is becoming a safety matter in an area that is also very prone to fires Um, I really appreciate any work that can be done In the front loading of the investment so that some of these things can be Taking care of I think our road spanish ranch as we've been in touch with the public works department We have on our own done so much work for years Trying to really help but I feel like we have undermined our own case That we have delayed and delayed to the point where now it's beyond our capacity to do anymore and we just want to Really plead with you to address these rural roads We do pay our taxes We have done a great deal out of our own pocket and our sweat to maintain things to the extent we can And we really need the county to step up and take care of this for the safety of your residents In these rural areas. Thank you Thank you. That concludes public comment. I'll bring it back to the board Professor friend So the item is a presentation So I'll move to just accept and file the presentation with digital direction that Public works come back and I'll seek guidance On what would be a reasonable amount of time from mr. Plosios on just determining this before I make a date Do you know how long it would take to just come back with a Whether or not it would be reasonable to do some sort of bonding or loan associated with measure d on the local roads I think within 30 days we could come back and at least with some more information about the options available to the board Okay, so the direction then will be to come back by the end of march to the board It can be a consent item just with information about how the process would work Second motion by friend Second by leopold all those in favor. Please say aye. Aye Opposed that passes unanimously Um We have a 10 30 scheduled item, uh, and I'm afraid I have to apologize to mr. Clifford who's been patiently waiting That we will now so now consider Alternatives evaluated by the santa Cruz coastal reuse plan the davin board cement plant Selected preferred alternative and direct staff to seek funding to complete the required environmental review of the local coastal program amendments to implement the selected preferred alternative as outlined in the memorandum of the cao and while our presenters Make their way forward. Let me just briefly They're coming forward. Let me briefly make a couple comments that I think may be helpful So one is this site is one of the Uh, most important reuse opportunities In this county both because of its size and scope, but also because It is a at a key juncture in many other projects that are Occurring on the north coast whether it's the same opening of san viscente redwoods The coast dairies project the fact that uh, davin port has now been discovered and uh, is feeling the impacts of uh, of nine million tourists who live within a hour drive And so there's an important opportunity for this site to To not only put to reuse to create jobs and opportunity But also to reduce some of the burdens that the community is currently facing We've gone through a number of we got this grant with the idea that we had to Evaluate some alternatives Those alternatives needed to basically Identify the public benefits the environmental benefits that the community needed to see They needed to be economically feasible and they needed to pass the muster of uh, the regulatory bodies which uh, in this case most importantly include the coastal commission who has the final say Over over what happens at the site We've gone through an extensive process Um, but this the one of two things to focus on one is this is the beginning of the beginning Uh, we do not have a project. We do not have a developer. We do not have any any meaning uh, any changes so this idea the idea of this, uh, project was to identify A preliminary options that would then go through environmental review Uh, the environmental review would analyze traffic and water and impacts The board would then select the alternative based on the environmental review, which would include analyzing Doing nothing and some other alternatives Uh, and then it would anyone who wanted to do something would then have to Develop their project take that to the community outline their project Do an environmental review of that apply to lafko and do an environmental review of the water and the sewer Uh and get lafko approvals then it would go to the planning commission Then it would go to the board of supervisors. Then it would go to the coastal commission. So, uh, we are Many many years away if ever from having a project on this site And so we need to be cognizant that this the opportunity was to sort of frame What kind of changes could be made to the local coastal program to fit those goals? Let me just say I met with members the davenport north coast association yesterday They requested more time to review The this proposal and give comments I agreed with their request and so while we will have a hearing today and hear the presentation I'm going to ask my fellow board members to defer a decision until the april 16th meeting To give the community more time to to to look at what what the options are and to give feedback So, uh, thank you for your patience in that long Explanation, but uh, we have andy constable from the economic development department to introduce this item Thank you, uh, chair community and supervisors Uh, good morning. I'm gonna ask lisa and debbie. I don't have a remote control and I don't have a screen so When I just flag you thanks Um, my name is Andy constable. I'm the economic development manager for the county With me today is lisa plowman and debbie rudd from rrm design group, which is our consultant for this effort The topic of our presentation today is the davenport cement plant coastal reuse plan As you're aware the closure of the cmex cement plant represented a significant impact for both the county and the community of davenport The county lost one of its largest taxpayers and was faced with the need to oversee a hazardous waste cleanup on the site While the community was impacted by a loss of jobs coupled with a dramatic increase in both sewer and water fees With that in mind the purpose of the plan was to develop a vision for the future reuse of the site and to identify various financially feasible land use alternatives They're designed to stimulate the redevelopment of the property while providing coastal Priority uses and other beneficial uses for the community The team that contributed to the creation of the plan was county staff the economic development and planning department rrm design group and their various subcontractors The local coastal commission staff The davenport community and the grant funders In regards to the grant funders the idea of preparing the reuse plan For the site came from the sempervirens fund They believed like we do that the public should have a voice in the future use of this important site And that the public amenities like trails public parking restrooms drinking fountains And a visitor center should be included in whichever development Option is selected by the county The sempervirens fund found the funding to prepare the plan Develop the first scope of work and ask the county to lead the planning process, which we agreed to That was about three years ago But before I get into the details of the plan I'd like to recognize and thank the sempervirens fund and their funders The state coastal conservancy the resources legacy fund And the gordon and betty moor foundation With their generous contributions and the county had the opportunity to better understand this site and plan for its future use So today we'll be presenting the draft coastal reuse plan We'll be reviewing the various land use alternatives that are part of that plan And of course we'll make the recommendation of alternative five as the preferred alternative And lastly we'd like to ask the board to direct staff to seek the funding to complete the required Environmental review of the proposed local coastal program amendments in order to implement the selected preferred alternative And with that framework, I'd like to turn it over to r.m Good morning members of the board As andy said i'm lisa plowman with rm design group. I'm a principal there and this is debbie red Also a principal with the firm and we've been the team working on this project for the last two years I wanted to have a slide that highlights the project site I think most people know that the project site is north or In or inland of the one But some people may not realize that the site also encompasses land that is seward of the one Which includes some active agriculture and some other areas and land that actually extends down In front of the community of Davenport As andy mentioned there is a collaboration as we developed this plan and the concept was that We would try and identify that sweet spot for a Program that would be supported by the community would be considered to be economically viable And would have the support of the county and the coastal commission because all of those elements are important For success on the site The goals of the plan included providing some community amenities and benefits to the Davenport area Connecting to the national monument. There's about 14 000 acres of publicly held land Or held by non-profits surrounding this area. And so there's a tremendous Opportunity to connect to that land with trails Identify future uses that could be supported by all the stakeholders again Identifying something that was economically viable that would attract reinvestment in the site Do environmental review complete environmental review on the plan that would help further Attract developers to the site to reinvest in it because it could conduct some of the initial environmental analysis for a project preserve active agricultural resources Look at preserving some of the historic buildings. They're associated with the site that's Been around for you know since 1903. I believe and then Looking at cleanup of the site because we know that there are Toxics on the on the site that would need to be cleaned before there was future development So as part of the process I just Staff laid this out nicely in the staff report But wanted to cover for the public what the steps in the process have been We've been working on the plan for just a little over two years almost two and a half years at this point We started with stakeholder meetings, which included members of the community from Davenport and other representatives from state parks and the federal government And we held a couple public workshops early on in the process We produced a technical background report that analyzed the different constraints and the opportunities on the site We've been meeting consistently with the coastal commission staff to keep them in the loop and getting feedback from them as we move along and Staff actually added a third public workshop to the scope In order to ensure that the public had an opportunity to have a view of the plan before we came back to the board So the plan basically includes and I know you all have a copy of it Seven chapters and a set of appendices and essentially it talks a little bit about the Concept behind the development of the plan lays out the site opportunities constraints the goals Our public outreach process and the feedback that we received during this time frame The alternative land use options and design guidelines That the board will be selecting from the economic feasibility analysis that was prepared by economic planning systems And the required local coastal program amendments that would be needed to implement One of these alternatives With that i'm going to have debbie red present the land use alternatives But before I hand it over to her I want to explain a little bit There might be some confusion about the number of alternatives that we've analyzed In the first draft of the plan we had three alternatives that had been developed that we Distributed it out to the public for their review and that included one that was eco lodging and visitor serving alternative two was a more recreation oriented and visitor Serving use with a conference center and alternative three was age restricted housing with visitor serving and through the process We got feedback from a local company joby aviation that they had an interest in the site And so before we went to the second public workshop We worked with joby aviation to develop a fourth alternative that would have accommodated Their headquarters and manufacturing on this site Since that time joby aviation has opted to move their manufacturing facilities to another community And ultimately that alternative was eliminated But during the process there were a number of comments and alternatives one two and three And including the support that had been voiced for joby aviation's alternative so The staff and rm worked together to develop a fifth alternative that would seek to respond to the many Comments that we heard from the community the sort of combined alternative one And provided some space for maybe a headquarters for a company like joby aviation Um Just to start out we wanted to let you know that there are a set of land uses in each alternative So every alternative will have a visitor center and a museum that will sort of honor what's been on the site The different projects that that cement plant contributed to whether it's uh pearl harbor or the golden gate bridge or whatnot um, we provide restrooms and parking to alleviate some of the Pressure that's been put on the Davenport community for the visitors that coming to the area We would have public trail heads For each opportunity for each alternative camping and our cabins emergency service storage active agriculture and open space So with that i'm now i'm going to hand it over to debbie red So i'm going to walk you through each one of the alternatives quickly Alternative one is the eco lodging alternative. So we have a 100 rooms in the lodge And then we have a mix of other kind of lodging units like small cabins that could be nestled into the trees tent cabins 100 camping spots And then some spa health and wellness yurts and other Lodge amenities we have 15 000 acre or square feet of event a retreat space that would go along with that lodge and a restaurant some family employee housing of 30 units all along with the The uses at least someone over that's that are in every space like the visitor center This is a land use map that kind of shows how those are organized We have the majority of the uses central in the site and you can see Seaward of highway one Due to public input saying they would like to minimize development Seaward of highway one. We just have the existing ag some existing housing that is there today and a small amount of camping And then reusing the historic crocker hospital as a restaurant This is still alternative one you can see on either side of alternative one We've buffered both newtown and davamport with some trees and open space So the development is more centrally located Alternative two is the recreation oriented land use the a little larger lodging facilities with 200 rooms 75 cabins 25 tent cabins and Only 75 camp spots It has a little larger conference center And alternative when we had workshop number one The community came to us saying if we are going to do lodging We'd like it to be kind of like a a celomar style lodging that you see in Pacific grove So this was modeled more like a a celomar style But we reduced the conference center in half. I think from a celomars conference center We included the recreation activities And restaurant and then up the housing unit with more with a larger lodging We included 50 units for employee housing and the concept there Was if we're going to provide these new jobs for this lodge that we need to provide some more affordable housing For them on the site as well. So they're not commuting and adding to traffic Alternative two the purple represents that recreational component. The red is the lodging And you can see it again. It's more centrally located on the site You can see the this is again alternative two And it shows what we're showing here is how how much Square footage that would look like on the site with the buildings Alternative three was the age restricted housing alternative So we're adding 300 units of age age restrictive housing This because of this age restrictive housing is the most economically viable alternative The lodging is a little smaller And we did include a little over 200,000 square feet of flex light industrial space on this on this alternative You can see on this graphic the yellow is the age restricted housing It takes up a majority of the developables part of the site And the red is the lodging It shows that this has a lot more development than the other alternatives and on Workshop number two. This was the least supported alternative Though it's the most economically viable the amount of development and the number of people on the site was not supported by the community alternative four is the joby aviation alternative and it included the clean industrial or clean technology light industrial And this is the it did include a little bit of lodging the cabins a little bit of Artist studios restaurant But it was primarily looking at this clean technology And this is the alternative that has been eliminated So alternative five what we've done with alternative five is what we heard at workshop number three the community At the second workshop the community liked the joby aviation alternative the most alternative four when joby aviation decided to relocate their Manufacturing to a different community. They still said that they'd be interested in having some What of a presence there in davamport and the community seemed Supported above that So what we did was take the best of alternative four And their second alternative their second most favorite alternative was alternative one, which was Probably because it was the smallest alternative and take Merge that with alternative one Then we listened to the community and reduced the size of the Resort as much as possible and worked with the economists to test this alternative So we continued to test this alternative to come up with Reducing it as much as much as we can but still make it economically viable So we reduced the number of rooms and the resort amenities We reduced the number of meeting space But we added 20 market rate units. That's what created the balance of reducing the Lodging we added these 20 market rate units. We still have the affordable units And we still have and then we added a neighborhood market Which is also something that came out of our last community workshop wanting to have something for the community So alternative five has 75 rooms 55 cabins And then 39 campsites And what we did is on the campsites worked with the coast commission They have a minimum requirement that they would like to see for affordable Visitor serving use so that's our campsites Those are in there not because the community wanted them but for the coastal commission We also included the affordable market rate affordable and market rate units on this one Event meeting space and the a little bit over 200,000 square feet of flexible space So this is the light the light industrial clean industry It would accommodate the joe b aviation headquarters if they chose to pursue that But I also could accommodate some kind of educational component working with universities artist studios live work uses That could be a little bit more flexible And we added the neighborhood market This shows again how it's organized almost in every alternative we've located the visitor serving close to the entrance This was Another response not only to the funders, but to the community. They don't want the their community to be the The gateway to the national monument They want to the community the visitors to come to a different location park and a different location use restrooms at this Location so this is the visitor serving use the visitor center that would accommodate these visitors to the national monument This shows you the in the light blue at the bottom is the Clean industrial and then the resort we've separated that and the resort is kind of more at the top of the site in the red The guidelines the document does outline some guidelines and Standards to guide the future development wanting it not to be one large Um resort style building, but smaller buildings smaller tent cabins smaller cabins Yurts have been included in a number of the alternatives something that will blend more with the natural environment Housing that would also accommodate these affordable Units and then adaptive reuse was something the community also strongly supportive There are some existing buildings out on the site that could be reused including the silos that are out on the site This is an example in barcelona spain where they they reuse some existing silos and turn them into residential and office space Here's some silos turned into recreation climbing gym or apartments So there's there are some opportunities. It's not required in the plan, but it is outlined as encouraged Excuse me. I also wanted to mention that each of those alternatives will provide Um improved pedestrian access between new town and Davenport That was something that the community requested and then also addressing the safe crossing of highway one So each of our alternatives Talks about coordinating with caltrans to provide it Whether it's going to be at grade or a pedestrian big bridge at this point We don't know but we realize that that's a really critical element to redevelopment of this site So um, as I mentioned eps did the economic analysis of all of the alternatives They based their analysis on information that was drawn from market data And interviews with different developers around the state of california Um, they used planning level building construction costs from a well-respected Organization it's called rs means. Um, it's used typically and locate Identifies location adjusted costs for various building types rm provided the horizontal costs for construction and preparation of the site And then we worked with county staff to identify what the planning and permitting fees would be And each alternative includes a contingency for cost and identifies the critical element of investor Returns so roi and what they found was that all four of these alternatives one two and five Were economically viable some more than others That we never did an analysis of alternative four because it was a single user private investment and We determined that jobia aviation would have to determine whether or not it was economically viable for them But alternative ones has a viability score of 0.7. So that is the lowest viability Alternative two has a viability score of 1.4 alternative three Is the most viable with a score of seven and then alternative five Just a little bit less than alternative two at a viability score of 1.2 So each of these alternatives provides a return on investment Which we identify as residual land value That could be Attract developers obviously the higher the return the more interest you'll have but each one is considered viable So I just want to briefly cover the lcp amendments that are going to be required to implement the plan We have developed in the plan if you've had an opportunity to look through it The land uses guidance for the land uses that are going to be in each alternative Which we talked about which is the visitor center museum trails restrooms parking And then we have standards for visual resources biological resources cultural resources And sort of green building and sustainability And they are standards to help guide future development. For example with visual resources. It talks about how you're to break up the buildings How you're to screen potential buildings on the site biological resources set the Setbacks from different types of resources And cultural resources talks about avoidance And then we've developed criteria planning criteria for each of the alternatives that are going to be considered by the board today We did have to make some amendments to the current local coastal program And we would be deleting a policy that addresses the phasing out of industrial uses on the north coast because that was specifically Looking at the c max plant. And so once we changed the zoning on it, you will no longer need that policy We amended a few policies to clarify The types of uses that would be permitted on the site We added a policy specifically for the cement plant and then we are going to be amending some of the general plan land use designations and the zoning on the site to accommodate the plan Just quickly I want to give you an idea of some of the comments that we received. I'm not going to go through every one of them But debbie explained where the support Was for each of the alternatives and workshop too But some of the things that we heard from the community that we've tried to accommodate in alternative five Was preventing new development on the ocean side of highway one Adding a market for the community allowing an industrial use for joby aviation There was also a comment like if joby aviation wasn't going to be The clean tech that maybe there would be alternative clean tech that could come to the site They wanted to Minimize the camping and visitor serving There were concerns about age restricted housing on the site and lack of services Um There was interest in housing for the community members Which is why we looked at increasing the housing in alternative five They wanted us to address highway safety and site access And then Also make sure that we address over time the projections in traffic and water use and any potential impacts And all of those items will be addressed in the environmental impact report So some of the anticipated benefits of the reuse would include Removing the existing facilities that are on on the site Um and cleaning it up it would Reduce the water and wastewater rates for the community of Davenport who have had to bear the cost for all of those And also would have another user that could bear costs of infrastructure improvements if they were needed over time It provides new affordable housing Safe access across highway one It provides the public parking and the restrooms Um away from the community of Davenport to relieve the stress that's been put on that community It gives a visitor center and a place for the launching in the national monument For people to access those areas provides the trails as I mentioned Provides that improved access for the community of new town to Davenport Creates jobs in the community and generates revenue for the county So just in terms of next steps. I wanted to Supervisor Coonerty did a great job of laying out what the next steps are and where we are in the process And as he mentioned, we are at the beginning of the beginning. We have a draft plan, which is a programmatic document It's not the project But it sets out Local coastal program amendments that would allow a future use that is different than mountain residential So what would happen now is the board would select this preferred alternative Environmental review would be done on this programmatic document. So it's programmatic environmental review And then the county would conduct review of the plan and the eir It would go to the ag advisory committee the historic resources commission the planning commission finally to the board and then on to the coastal commission but after that That sets the stage for Developers to come in and express interest in the site. It basically Makes it a more attractive development option And at that point if a developer purchases the site from cmex They will have the land use designations in place that would be needed to redevelop the site But they would have to develop a project Submitted to the county it would go through standard discretionary review There would be another environmental document prepared for that project And then that project would get county review and coastal commission review again So there's a whole another layer of review that's going to happen after this plan gets adopted And that essentially concludes our presentation We have a slide up that for the public to show how they can stay involved in the process and stay current on Where things are happening and and what's going to happen with the environmental review in the future And we're happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Are there any questions? Seeing none, uh, we're going to open up the public hearing. Let me just Make this statement, which is the community representatives asked yesterday for Seven more weeks to have more discussions in the community If you plan if you plan on being here on april 16th after this community discussion And can wait to save your comments that till then it would be appreciated If you're not gonna if you can't be here or you want to make your comments today, please do so But the idea the community request was that we would have more time to discuss Discuss it within the community So is there anyone who would like to speak today? Please line up if you would if you don't mind Thanks, uh, Supervisor Coonerty. My name is mark lipson. I'm a resident of Davenport since 1983 And I'm a partner in molino creek farm and I am a board member of the Davenport north coast association I just wanted to express our appreciation This uh, supervisor Coonerty and his staff for their solicitousness to the north coast community throughout this process and, uh We did make very extensive comments on the draft report And so we're appreciate the a few weeks to be able to analyze the final report and look at, you know, all the Changes that resulted and look more closely at alternative five. So with that, thanks very much. Thank you Good morning. I'm rachel spencer I live in Davenport and I'm here to ask you to support the request for seven week delay on the Reviewing this there is one erroneous thing on the slides and that is The community did not have time to have input on alternative one two and three The meeting that that was supposed to happen at was completely taken over with joe ben We fell in love with him immediately. We all put all of our attention there. We never discussed alternative one two and three And like a lover spurned here. We are so we need some time to review this. Thank you Hi, my name is heather mcdougal. Um, I moved here when I was three in 1967. I live on swanton Now um, and uh, but I went to the Davenport school and I worked at the Davenport school for 13 years until last year I feel like we're never going to get a perfect plan um, but I think it's really important that you guys have been listening to us and um, uh, I just want to make sure that um, when you That that it sounds like you're already doing this, but I just want to make sure that the that the Project integrates with the community well and isn't so fancy that the community can't participate in it um, I didn't like uh, I think it was option one that had the Larger development for tourism. Um, for that reason, I feel that this is a fairly balanced plan in terms of um, having housing having a market having uh, a somewhat diminished tourist presence, um And um, I may not be able to be here on april 15th, so I or 18th So I just wanted to say that um, I appreciate that you guys have been taking into account the fact that this is an unusual community that is very independent minded And they don't We don't um want to have some big giant thing in the middle of the community that takes over and doesn't Involve us. So thank you for for listening Thank you Thank you. Becky steinbrunner. I'm a resident of rural aptos, but I have actually been to some of these Meetings because there is an odd connection To the community of davenport right now with the aptos village project And um, I want to just speak to that that the public utilities commission approval of a new crossing For the aptos village project connecting it to soquel drive is contingent upon closing to Private at-grade railroad crossings one of them is in davenport oddly enough It was selected by county public works. The second is in front of the baby hotel in aptos So that's the reason that I have been watching this project And I am aware that the residents of newtown in davenport are very much against closing this crossing Because it is the safest is the microphone working. There's a change. All right. Thank you It is Becky this that that crossing is not part of this reuse plan So you need to speak to the item that's before all right, but I'm just saying that That crossing needs to stay open because part of your It it leads to cement plant road And If if that's closed cement plant road would be the only way in and that is the access that you're talking about here So it does apply and I want to make sure that the residents know that it is still on public works radar to close that And I think that needs to be taken off For the safety of newtown and for the safety of these people that you're considering bringing in and it talks directly to The issue of public safety entering and exiting highway one. So it is germane I also want to make sure that the plans accommodate the newly constructed county emergency communication tower that was just put up there and And in closing I hope that the historic measure will also Give a nod to the Davenport cement plant helping build the Panama canal where they actually called Bags of cement a bag of Davenport. Thank you Always learned so much from Becky Steinbrunner and her research and her astute comments I was up at the Davenport school Some years ago when Aaron Brockovich Came and spoke to the community about the chromium 6 contamination. And if I heard correctly, this is A toxic waste site and of course you're talking about cleaning it up I I often think I don't think things can be cleaned up They move the poison somewhere else and it begs the question. Why Is is such contamination allowed all the time? It's our capitalist system as I see it profit over everything It seems to me as I'm listening to this. It's like the the what does it say the cart before the horse? You're speaking of Potential uses Of this area But it's so toxic Doesn't that have to be taken care of first before you can proceed ahead? That's that's one of the comments there and also I am dismayed that this cell tower emitting microwave radiation has been put in more more toxicity all the time so Um What's what's being done on the cleanup? How how can you clean that up? Um, anyway, those are my comments. Very disturbing. Thanks. Hi. I'm dada calza. I'm not a Davenport resident But um, I do handle listings there from time to time and so I've had had some time to See the town and just speaking as a longtime local Realtor have a few thoughts to Just suggest on ways that the community could integrate better with the improvement there Provided that the environmental cleanup could be done in a way that's safe for kids Um, you've got the Davenport school right in the middle of town And if you look at the parcel Great out there are 11 apns that formerly existed there. It seems to me that integration with the community Is key to whatever plan gets done there And if you could have 11 of the new homes be within the community as opposed to an us and them And then have a new school site on the Davenport cement facility that could also be used as You know on weekends, you know Real playing fields, you know giving Davenport a good school. They have 108 Households I believe in Davenport right now. So a lot of the development there seems to be If I play amateur civic planner If you more than double the size of the community with say senior housing, which I think was a horrible idea just because access to hospitals and such It seems like the number of new homes intuitively shouldn't be more than the number of existing for it not to outweigh it And then having visitors serving There's visitors serving and there's visitors serving You got motel six and then you've got somewhere like Ventana or in it post ranch and we certainly have the financial Sphere of influence within 50 mile radius to power a $1,500 a night Accommodation or even a $2,500 a night accommodation While it's a little bit of a stratification In order to make that viable you would only be you would need I think Ventana has 65 rooms total So I think it could be economically viable with a smaller number of rooms being built if the focus was on something Very much ecotourism minded But at a at a higher financial level they wouldn't require so many Intruders if you will and if it's really nice and more self-contained there'll be that much less People interloping into the community while they get their zen, you know, their zen yoga, whatever Thing done on on site. So those are just some thoughts, but I think the integration of the school Building a new school because if you look there, it's you know, it's a wonderful school. The principal is awesome I've met him. They have the whole organic the fifth graders and sixth graders cook for the rest of the school, which is I think a dream I think a new school facility off on the on the cement plant that could also be used for Park and community center repurpose because it already de facto is the community center for meetings and sessions. That's my that's my input Anyway, thank you. Thank you Hello, my name is bill henry. I'm a resident of Davenport. I live there with our my wife who's a teacher and our two young daughters And we moved there because it was a small town and kind of away from the hustle and bustle of of the west side of Santa Cruz and I think that the introduction of a Fifth alternative that more than doubles the size of the town that we live in and increases the Temporary population to over to around 400 people per night Is a tough thing to throw in within five days of approving of approval potential approval of the preferred alternative So I would recommend that that you guys defer until seven weeks from now. I also wanted to add I'm an ecologist with the background in toxicology and that the environmental contamination was mentioned several times in stakeholder meetings during the During the process of formulating the plan and if I look in the plan the words dust particulate and Air quality are not mentioned once except for a comment and historically those were important things that were affecting the town from From this land. So I'd like to see I know this stuff comes out through the environmental review proper process But historically there have been activities on the site such as removal of the ball mill That did result in negative impacts to the air quality of the town And I've been in touch with the Monterey Bay air pollution control district regarding this issue and received little if no action or feedback And so I would like to see that incorporated more into the initial planning process rather at an EIR stage Thank you very much Good morning. My name is John Barnes. I'm a member a board member of the Davenport north coast association I've been so for the last 25 years and I just want to Underline what we've said earlier in that thank Supervisor Coonerty for delaying the consideration of this matter for another month or so I think it'll give the community a much better chance to have a look at the plan and and provide meaningful input And I also want to thank very much the supervisors office and staff for the not just the public meetings but uh Many other opportunities in many ways for us to Interact with your office on this issue and and all the issues that confront the north coast. Thank you. Thank you does that Sir Hi, my name is Steve Schieffer. I'm a retired plumber pipe that are out of local 62 in castelville Our jurisdiction covers Monterey and Santa Cruz counties Uh, first of all, I want to say thanks to all the residents of Davenport for being here. It's a lot of good issues being brought up I'm going to give it a little bit of a different slant Of what is important to me on this issue um Santa Cruz years ago along with fordord the fordord reuse authority adopted prevailing wage Um verbiage for any construction that was done on the job which allowed, um Middle-class workers like myself to actually have a chance to go to work there Uh construction workers by the very nature of their job Is the first day they go to work. They're working themselves out of a job So my issue is um Maybe we should try to make this all of the work that's going to happen up there if in fact it does happen Uh prevailing wage Or maybe even a local higher ordinance like the city of Santa Cruz adopted years ago Also for adopted years ago in the city of Salinas um Also if there's going to be mitigation involved uh and tearing down the plant I've lived here long enough to remember the city of Davenport being gray Everything was gray um I think using the rails To uh get rid of construction debris is a really good idea And also would be good for tourism um So that's kind of just My little take on the whole deal So Thanks a lot. Thank you, sir Is there anyone else like to speak to us? This would be our final speaker My name is Alex Sandoval I'm a labor and wage compliance officer and I'm a bit of a investigator if you will I'm paid for My wages are paid for by a trust fund the building trades construction trades Unions pay my salary and I'm seeing a Disturbing trend of out-of-town contractors come in and this is a beautiful project. It's going to benefit Santa Cruz the city of Davenport I'd like it. I'd like to see it benefit the local Youth that we are training. We have apprentices We have journeymen that live in the area that spend their money here that buy houses here and What's going on? I'm seeing this trend of Out-of-town contractors making money bringing their employees Taking it to Out of our area. We're not seeing any benefit and um The project labor agreement would be awesome Considerations to the local hire Spirit if you will The city of Salinas has it as my compadre stated. There's several cities that have it written into their contractual Verbage and I would like to see it applied here and have it benefit our citizens and our Youth which we are training Thank you That concludes public comment and I'll bring it back to the board I would move the the recommended action of post boning acceptance of this report until Seven weeks. I think yeah the april 16th meeting april 16th meeting great So get a motion by leopold the second by friend All those in favor, please say aye I Oppose that passes unanimously and thank you rm and the staff for your work on this That brings us uh to our final item of this morning Which is a presentation of the state of the santa cruz metropolitan transit district as outlined uh in my memo Mr. Clifford, thank you for for your patience. Oh, thank you. I'm learning so much about santa cruz county this morning May need some bus service up there too Mr. Chair supervisors, thank you for the opportunity to present you The annual state of metro and I'll try to move this along. I know it's nearing the lunch hour Just always like to provide some quick stats on metro. We have about a 50 million dollar budget this year We employ 319 people We own 98 fixed route and commuter buses that run on 26 routes and we have 41 paratransit vehicles Our service area is the entire county about 264 000 We provide 5 million fixed route and commuter trips per year and about 72 000 paratransit trips under our Paracruz service per year always an interesting note A little over 50 of our ridership our ucse students and faculty and cabrillo college students So how do we fund all of that? Well, we fund it through a variety of sources passenger fairs That is a combination of what's paid at the fair box and other Revenues that come to us to offset fairs through the partnership We have with amtrak kaltrans vta on the highway 17 service cover about 20 percent of the overall cost of operating the business a little over 46 percent Of our of our revenues come from the 1978 half-cent sales tax Which is dedicated to metro and the additional Revenues we received from measure d as you may be aware. We receive about 16 percent of the total revenues for metro operations About a little over 13 percent is state operating funding sources including the new sp1 funding a little over 8 percent is federal operating And about 11 percent is what we call capital eligible state and federal funds State transportation assistance and a federal program called the small transit intensive cities And then the remainder just under 2 percent is revenues we we receive from Leases that we have and advertising on our vehicles So all of that allows our board to now For the second year in a row program Three million dollars annually towards the capital fund for the purchases of new buses and i'll talk about that in a brief second But what i really like celebrating is certainly in contrast to the last time i was here a couple of years ago We now have a good stable foundation. We have a five-year projection for a balanced budget We haven't been there in a long time and it's really a good place to be and i want to thank the good work of our board To the members that are here and and mr. Friend was here during part of this on our board too A lot of good work was done to get us to a stable place and i want to thank you for that As you talked about earlier and some of your presentations about local streets and roads and the condition of those roads and the The the need for money to continue to to go after those Much-needed repairs. We were all happy to see prop 6 fail This past november that that would have been devastating to us at metro Everything i just said about a great foundation and and Five-year balanced budget would have been out of balance and i know that prop 6 failing and SB 1 surviving is equally if not more important to you at the county I spoke about buses earlier About 50 of our bus fleet is is aged beyond its useful life We have great mechanics. They do a wonderful job But you can only keep an old vehicle on the road so long And it's just time to replace it and we have about 50 of our vehicles that are at that place Now if we want to take care of that problem, that's a 38 to 50 million dollar problem So if money just fell out of the sky today and we could go replace 50 of our fleet That's what we would need now y 38 to 50 million Well if we replace those vehicles with compressed natural gas, which are the clean fuel vehicles we've been using since about 2002 that's about a 38 million dollar proposition If we replace them with zero emission electric buses, it's a 50 plus million dollar proposition And as you may or may not be aware The california air resources board late last year adopted a regulation That will mandate that we be a hundred percent electric in all transit properties across the state of california by 2040 What that means to us at our particular agency is in 2026 Mandatorily, we must begin buying 25 percent of whatever we buy in the way of buses as zero emission Buses and starting in 2029 and thereafter every bus we procure must be zero emission buses Also helping us with our our backlog of equipment that we need to replace Santa Clara VTA our partners on highway 17 sold us 10 diesel electric hybrids For a 24 tings for a dollar apiece. So that was pretty exciting to get those for a dollar apiece And we're going to be running those on that partnership run on highway 17 They also sold us four articulated buses that we will use for ucsc service Also for a dollar apiece. So pretty good deal. We couldn't pass that up didn't have to finance it In in in electric buses and and santa cruz metro putting our toe in the water We've cobbled together a number of grants that will now fund for pro terra hundred percent zero emission buses We're just within days of Placing that order. We're just wrapping up the final specifications on that And those buses should be here sometime early next year So that'll be a real celebration for us here in santa cruz county To have those electric buses arrive and and we'll make sure that we uh We put on a big event when they do get here because they will be the start of our journey towards 100 santa electric Now one maybe two of those buses will run in watsonville on a circulator that we designed We have the first year of that paid for through some air quality funds. I think it's 27 66 dollars So that will be a new circulator for watsonville And then also exciting for us this year. We've talked about Automated vehicle location for a long time Well, we again because of sp1 the stip was well funded. We got some stip money from the state And that paid along with some local match for us to put avl on all of our buses What that means is that our customers will now have a smartphone application when they can look and see when their bus is coming And they can time their arrival at their bus stop rather than getting to that stop and finding out Um when the bus arrives late that the bus was running late now They'll be able to see it on the phone for us at a staff level We're excited about just pipelines of data that will flow to us that will help us run the system better So it's a really cool thing And then and then later this year we're going to we're going to the board authorized a pilot project on our highway 17 commuter service In which they will be the customers there will be Piloting a smartphone fare payment application. So that's going to be exciting for us on highway 17 And i'll be anxious to report on that to you next year Ridership is doing well. It's uh, well, well, okay well compared to the nation The nationwide trend is two percent down We're we're kind of flat here in santa cruz county in part because our ucsc Ridership has been very good as the college grows. So too does that ridership We've lost a little bit of ridership in the student population because for some reason they're using uber and lyft Here and there and that's caused us some losses Cabrillo college has steadily increased five percent and highway 17 is down just a little bit We have some work to do there once we get our new marketing person on board You've probably read about the eco pass. We're working with the city on that. It's it's a city sponsored program under their Transportation management program. They hope to give 4 000 free passes through that program to downtown employees And we're working with the city to launch that hopefully in the next few months We're just working through all the details. That's also a pilot program But we do have to work through a number of details And then at our last board meeting supervisor leopold Asked us to contact the county and look at whether we can explore a similar type of concept here with the county employees I've already directed my staff to follow through on that. So we will we will take a look at that in the air of disruption and alternative service models metros investigating Pilot projects that we might bring to the board sometime this year that could involve uber lyft taxi some combination of that But the the real thing there to keep in mind is it's an on-demand type of concept So in areas where we can't justify a fixed route or we've pulled back our service Low density areas Time of day issues like late night early morning We might be able to do some on-demand service And actually cover those those much needed trips those unmet needs unified quarter as you know We're participating with the rtc on that you've been very involved in that We will be heavily involved in the alternatives analysis that looks at the rail corridor Looks at whether bus rapid transit train or some other concept might be viable in that corridor And in a course the impact the potential impact of whatever is done to metro funding And then we're also working with the rtc on bus on shoulder We hope to have that Type of proposal for you that kind of integrates bus on shoulder concept into the auxiliary lanes Helping us move through that gridlock. I'm sure if we have a bus moving through that gridlock in the peak hours We'll attract new riders and then finally in the in the unified corridor. We're seeking operational improvements along the so-called freedom corridor Metro is also working on its very first 10-year strategic business plan We're focusing in seven key areas Safety first culture financial stability stewardship and accountability Service quality and delivery internal and external technology employee engagement state of good repair and strategic alliances are the seven key areas That our board is focusing on and then finally metro is conducting later this year a long overdue Onboard customer survey that'll give us good data on our riders who they are where their unmet needs are And we'll also try to do some investigation of non riders to find out why they're not writing the system Mr. Chair supervisors that concludes my presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have Thank you. Are there any questions? Yeah, I just want to thank you for that There's a lot said there the metro and I've been a member of the board there. There's been a lot of changes and We As said everyone else in the recessionary period really took a hit. I think over six years or five years that we lost A projected 24 million dollars. And so we had to make some adjustments to our service. We have come back from that I'm really I think that we have a stable operation now as was stated I want to thank mr. Clifford for his leadership and getting us there Since he's been here. He he saw the picture that was pretty bleak when he came in And now we're I think we're on good stead and I I can't say enough about the vta And how we appreciate their cooperation and so on as those buses for one dollar each and We were headed in the right direction literally because with the electric buses and how we can Really make that a bigger part of our system And I think it's also interesting to know that our ridership I think it's usually estimated that about 75 percent don't have their own Um method of transportation individual transportation So the service that we provide is is critical to Thousands of residents of santa cruz county and I think we're we're on the right track and we've made a lot of improvements Environmentally sound and I think transportation wise very very vigilant and I thank you for your service and for your report And for waiting. Thank you Thank you Uh, thank you chair, uh, I appreciate this update to the board of supervisors. Uh, the supervisor McPherson and I Uh, sit on the metro transit board and uh, uh Spend a lot of time thinking about the future of the transit operations here in santa cruz county Really appreciated the leadership that you have shown Since coming to the metro to not only lead us out of a financial crisis But to really start rebuilding metro so we can adapt for the future and adding technology like the avl Trying to think differently about how we use our services on the highway 17 Thinking creatively about how we provide services here in santa cruz county Is critical for us to ensure that we have good transit service throughout the county I I think we it's going to be it's we get that what we do is ever-evolving Because the the transportation habits of people here in santa cruz as well throughout the rest of the country are Consistently involving But I think that we have the right team in place to be able to meet those challenges And I appreciate the work that you do and the leadership that you've shown At the transit district appreciate that and and right back at you We have a great board and it's really wonderful to work with a board that has a vision That and we're just in sync. I like that Thank you. Now it's an opportunity for members of the public to speak to us about this item Thank you. Becky Steinbruner Thank you for that good report Very well delivered and very easy to understand. So thank you so much I was very excited too when I heard on the radio that metro got The buses 10 buses for a dollar each. I did not realize you also got four articulated buses for a dollar each And that's an amazing deal. So thank you for that information I do have questions About the student fairs. I'm happy that the students are using it. I know that it is a part of their tuition fees Being a parent of a cabrio student and she does use her her pass But i'm wondering what percent of the the metro budget comes from those Fees that are required all students at ucsc and cabrio college pay students adults and Younger people as well and what percent of those people who pay for that service use it How is this working out economically? To support metro and also help these students out with transportation I also would like some information about the reestablishment of some of the route cuts that happened during the recession And to speak specifically to one area in live oak is the The area where there is a planned kaiser medical facility and a 700 car parking garage There is no bus service along so kill avenue frontage road. I know this and so What is being done to evaluate first of all re-establishing some of the routes that were cut and second of all to expand routes to accommodate and encourage ridership from areas where there is changing land use I am very interested in watching the bus on shoulder Progress along with the unified corridor study I would also like to ask what is being done in terms of studying the need for additional stops I have met with various metro people and county department public works About adding a stop at aptos creek road and so cal drive to accommodate the Events that happen at aptos village park But also as the aptos village project comes online and that area becomes more congested than it already is Having a second bus stop at the aptos creek road so cal drive intersection I think would really ease that congestion and and Serve the public well and in closing supervisor leopold I would like to thank you for pursuing the idea of Bus passes for county employees following the footsteps of the city. I think it's a great move forward And I really want to thank you for pursuing that. Thank you Marilyn Garrett regular bus rider. I took the bus here today I want to compliment the bus drivers who are Amazingly helpful and skillful And I heard you say safety first You know getting exposed To microwaves from all this wireless technology Is not safe In fact International scientists. Here's just one small quote Um They have shown that uh publications have shown that electromagnetic field affects Living organisms at levels well below international and national guidelines Effects include increased cancer risk Cellular stress increase in harmful free radicals genetic damage Structure and functional changes of the reproductive system learning and memory deficits in Neurological diseases and negative impacts in general well-being in humans Damage goes well beyond the human race as there's growing evidence of harmful Effects to both plants and animals. This is an excerpt from this international appeal To stop 5g This is uh distressing to me to say safety first And you're promoting this is my bus schedule Looking at things on your smartphone doing this with this. You're promoting A toxic technology This is not a good use of funds at all The other thing as a regular bus driver in the last I'd say about a year Each bus now has surveillance cameras. I think about eight on each bus And I talked to someone in it and I think it was three quarters a million dollars might have been grants I I would refer someone was telling me about a book surveillance capitalism Everywhere we go. We're being tracked. We're being filmed Um, and I think it does not go with democracy and another thought I had Since there's a large Spanish-speaking population in Watsonville And there are a lot of round-ups of people who Made you know from Mexican heritage I was just wondering if it's very chilling or some people don't want to ride the bus Because they're being spied upon and removed. I don't know I find it inappropriate in a waste of money Thank you. Thank you. That concludes public comment Would the board will now recess until noon where we're where we will reconvene for a closed session Will there be any reportable action? Yes All right, thank you and uh Then we'll then we'll be back the County council to report out of closed session Thank you. So this is the report from executive session today's february 26th 2019 and the board unanimously voted to allow county council to initiate litigation Once that litigation is on file. I would be happy to answer any questions about it. Thank you We'll now move on to item number 10, which is to consider the General fund mid-year budget report with updated estimates for the fiscal year 18 19 preliminary requests for 2019 through 2021 and an updated five-year forecast as outlined in the memorandum of the ceo and uh, miss plasios Or sorry, mr. School There was determination that we're going to switch those two items. Okay, so my item will come next. Okay Uh, so um, so we're starting with 11. Okay We will first consider the major financial update for fiscal year 18 and 19 as outlined in the memorandum Of the auditor controller treasurer and task collector. It's just cool Good afternoon chair Coonerty and members of the board The county budgeting principles outline that the county should regularly monitor budget conformity The report on your agenda today and this presentation provides information on the status of the budget at the mid-year point of the fiscal year Combined with the next report by the ceo our two presentations provide a comprehensive mid-year fiscal updates On my agenda today are four areas. I will discuss general fund revenues general fund expenditures Fund balance reserve and offering uh insight to where you can locate our financial reports All right, this mid-year report focuses on the status of the general fund However, the complete 2018 19 county expenditure budget is provided here In addition to the general fund the county budget includes several other funds To re familiarize yourself with the various elements of the entire county budget. I'm highlighting them here for you First we have special revenue funds. Those are made primarily of housing park dedication funds fishing games And the road fund. We will not be discussing those funds in the rest of this report Next we have what's called less than county wide funds. Those include library and county fire expenditures We also designate board govern special districts and other agencies Funds included here include flood control mosquito abatement and the park csa 11 Oops Internal service funds internal service funds include fleet services centers information services department duplicating risk and the entire public works department We also designate separately enterprise funds which includes csa 7 Wayne avista post closure expenses as well as those with the davenport and freedom sanitation Switching focus to the county's general fund revenues I want to call your attention to the makeup of the general fund revenue sources As you can see in this pie chart the county's largest general fund revenue is intergovernmental aid This makes up 48 of the revenue followed by 25 percent of other revenue was made up by taxes Intergovernmental aid is funds received from federal and state agencies I will highlight many of these areas in my next few slides The county has received 39 percent of its budgeted revenue to date as you can see shared on this slide Although this may sound low seven months into the year We are ahead of where we were this time last year when we had received 36 percent of the budgeted revenue One reason for this seemingly low receipt level is that only 37 percent of intergovernmental aid has been received These revenues traditionally are received later in the fiscal year as they primarily are paid on a reimbursement basis from the federal and state government We need to spend the funds before we can be reimbursed However, as this is the largest revenue source for the general fund This is an area that we monitor closely both on the auto controller's office and in the cio's office Next on to general fund taxes Tax revenue is the second largest revenue source for the county's general fund This chart reflects that the county has seen an increase in each of the tax categories compared to this time last year Since taxes are a significant revenue source A review of the property tax delinquency rate is necessary Property taxes are classified as delinquent if they are not paid within one year Currently the county's tax delinquency rate is 2.1 percent. This is the lowest that it has been in the past 21 years This chart covers the past 12 years and highlights the spike the county saw in delinquencies during the 2008 recession Compared to where we are today Such a low rate of delinquencies reflects that the vast majority of county property owners Are able to pay their property taxes within the year that they are due This is very beneficial for the county's cash flow needs During years when delinquencies are higher the county did eventually receive the back taxes As well as collecting penalties and interest that was deposited into the general fund Santa Cruz county is on the teeter plan for apportioning property taxes This allows special districts and cities to receive their full apportionment Even if there are some delinquencies Giving them a steady cash flow in exchange the county absorbs the cash flow shortages But also retains the penalties and interest accrued One indicator of our local tourism economy is the county's treasury occupancy tax collections For this seven month reporting period the county's tot collections are significantly ahead of last year We have exceeded the prior year's collection to date by 654 thousand dollars Recently the odder controller's office has added additional resources to identify and collect tot taxes from short-term rentals The county entered into a contract with a website research vendor to identify unregistered short-term rental properties The vendor has been very effective and we are expanding their scope of work in the next year We also continue to maintain a contract with air b&b Air b&b collects and remits taxes on behalf of their host to the county monthly On to cannabis business tax Cannabis business tax activity for the last three and a half years is reflected here in this slide The revenues reflect the cbt program your board approved and has periodically modified The county dispensaries pay seven percent gross receipts tax on their dispensary sales The revenue from this activity has increased slowly each year A few delivery services also pay cbt and are recorded in the same category Cultivators and manufacturers also pay a gross receipts tax Originally collected at the seven percent rate your board reduced the rate to five percent beginning january 1 2018 The revenue stated here includes a hundred and two thousand dollars from recent audit findings Interest and penalties an additional 42,000 was recently billed to a dispensary Related to an audit which we anticipate to be paid this fiscal year General fund revenues county interest rate the county's interest rate has continued to increase over the last year Last month we apportioned 2.145 interest earnings to both the county and the other pool participants In december the county's investment pool was made up of 39 county funds And the balance belonged to schools and special districts who are mandated by state code to keep their funds in the county's investment pool I'm pleased to be able to report on these increased earnings However to remind you my fiduciary responsibility as the county treasurer when investing pool funds is to look first at safety of the investment Then at liquidity of the investment and then third the yield on the investment Monitoring budget conformity at the mid-year point includes not only examining revenues, but also expenditures A high-level overview of the expenditures is provided here This time last year the county had expended 51.9 of its expenditure budget So at a high level we are at the same place we were last year Because of controls that are in place in the county's financial system Departments are not able to expend beyond their expenditure budgets without board approval The exception for that is salaries fund balance reserve Your board adopted a fund balance reserve policy of 10 percent to be reached by 2021 The 10% goal was achieved early and is budgeted to be maintained at the 10% level in the fiscal year 2018 19 Now for a discussion on the county's bond rating The county has received strong credit ratings from both moody's and standard imports Shown here is the statement moody's provided when it assigned a rating for the recent tran At that time moody's also reaffirmed the county's long-term rating of a a3 As you read this article moody stated the county's ratings are highlighted by the county's solid sized and growing economy Consistent financial operations Albeit with lower than typical cash and reserve balances And low total lease and retirement costs The county continues to focus on transparency and making financial information and reports available online More than 10 years worth of county annual financial reports and county budget documents are available on the county's main website to the public Specifically on the auditor controllers website We have a data tool to access current financial information And specifically we provide cannabis and transient occupancy tax queries that we update monthly in summary General fund revenues are at 39.33 of budget Which is slightly more than this time last year with 36 percent received General fund expenditures are at 51.45 of budget, which is similar to this time last year at 51.9 percent Property tax delinquencies are at the lowest in recent history Interest rate earnings are increasing Please accept and file this report. Thank you, and i'm available for any questions Or some years we hold our questions and combine them together after the ceo's report Why don't we do that? And i now have the ceo Do his report on the mid-year budget report Chair cunard and members of the board carlos palacios county administrative officer, and i'm here with christina maury The county's budget manager Today we are going to be giving our mid-year budget report. We started last december with the preliminary budget estimates and now we have more data and so we'll be even Able to provide you with more information as we go into the development of the 1920 and 2021 two-year budget Overall, I would say that the county is doing well As the auditor controller treasure tax collector just pointed out But we continue to have tight budgets. I will say What you will see in today's report is that in terms of this fiscal year We are a little bit challenged to meet the savings. We were anticipating earlier We were anticipating 3.6 million dollars of carryover fund balance Right now as you look at the results. We're a little short of that, but we will I'm confident that we will be able to achieve that by year end I'm we are working very hard with departments To make sure that All expenditures are reviewed Especially with regard to the Positions being filled And so there's I'm highly confident that we will make the 3.6 million dollars or more Budget carryover at the end of this fiscal year as you look into next fiscal year You'll see that there's a potential deficit if we were to fund all of the requests from departments So it's important in our report to note that this is not a status quo deficit In other words, if we were just to hold the county Operations in a status quo fashion not and add any new positions to what we have already Committed to in our budget and committed to in measure g We would have a balanced budget right now But I am reporting to you that as we have received departmental requests We are potentially could have a deficit if you if we tried to fill them all And that's due to a few reasons One is that our revenues are some of our revenues are slightly down as our budget manager will point out Some of our costs are slightly up And so it presents Somewhat challenging to add new programs or or positions so With that introduction, I wanted to tell you that we will deliver you a balanced budget. That's my job Is to present a balanced budget to you in may And so I am working with departments to make sure that we Are able jointly to present the board with a balanced budget It's these are tough decisions The the requests that departments have made to me are not superfluous. They are real needs in the community And they're also grants that are expiring for example Overtime costs that are being incurred due to workers comp and other issues So that's not that the needs are not real or or that they are superfluous They are they are real needs. The county is still Building back its general fund after the great recession We still have less than the number of positions that we had at the time of the great recession even though we've added a number of new positions in Especially in health services agency due to the affordable care act So you and you recently heard for example general services Employees talking to the board about the need for maintenance workers And we are way below the number of maintenance workers for example That we had before the great recession So we are trying to restore some of those positions in this next year's budget But it is tight and the reason is tight is Primarily due to some of our revenues being a little bit low But also doing our costs that we're trying to absorb Especially our retirement costs our retirement costs For the next five year will be five years will be increasing by double digits double digits increasing And so that's very significant And that's something that all public agencies who contract with purrs the public employees retirement system Are having to reckon with and so Anyway, it's a challenging environment as it always is Meeting department requests and their needs but I Will deliver a balanced budget come may even though I wanted to make sure you understand that the requests the departments are making Are very real and very important requests and we are taking them very seriously and working with departments closely One thing I will say is that the county works very well together Every one of our elected officials and our departments feels part of the team I don't feel like anybody is not cooperating or not helping They actually work very very well together and I really do appreciate all of the department heads Both elected and non-elected Because they really do work very closely with us and our staff In helping to deliver a balanced budget with that i'll pass it over to Ms. Mallory to give the mid-year budget update Thank you, carlos. Um, good afternoon chair coonerty and members of the board Um, so i'm gonna give you a brief overview Is that on on looks like it's on it's on okay Thank you There it goes, okay So, um, first we're going to take a quick look at the state budget A little bit about the economy. Uh, we'll focus in on the general fund budget As the auditor has also done Because that's where your board has the most discretion And then we'll look ahead and then we'll talk about how we can prepare for the future So the, um state budget Has a healthy surplus of 21 and a 0.5 billion dollars governor new simon Proposed budget includes considerable investments of one-time resources and recognition of the near historic economic expansion plan The plan is to reduce liabilities and payoff debts and invest funds for emergency preparedness fund social services programs And homeless services Among his proposals is to revise the in-home support of services or ihss maintenance of effort moe requirements to provide fiscal reliefs for counties And his proposal to spend an additional 600 million on homeless services Primarily to fund homeless navigation centers throughout california Though it was not yet known how these additional funds for homelessness will be apportioned If the state budget is approved santa cruz county will save approximately 1 million dollars in ihss costs in fiscal year 1920 So we're really pleased with the proposal and we'll save an additional half a million Based on what we originally projected for 2021 The potential for continued growth is narrowing for both the nation and california With both experiencing full employment and historic low unemployment rates By july 2019 the current economic expansion will be the longest in modern history The u.s. Employment rate dipped to 3.7 percent in november of 2018 the lowest since 1969 And inflation is rising santa cruz county's unemployment rate was 4.1 percent In november of 2018 still above the state and national average Total employment is expected to increase 1.1 percent in 2018 with an average growth rate of 0.6 percent through 2023 Average salaries are expected to rise by 1.9 percent The largest employment gains are expected in education health care leisure services government and professional services And the population is expected to rise by a half a percent per year After a strong 2018 fueled by federal tax cuts and increased federal spending The real gross domestic product is projected at 2.7 percent in 2019 Gradually slowing to one and a half percent by 2022 So we'll focus in a little bit on the general fund As uh, mr. Palacios mentioned Things aren't looking as good as we originally forecasted in december Our general revenues are down by about approximately 1.5 million dollars Primarily from reduced cannabis business tax from cultivators and manufacturers And reduced penalties on delinquencies as the auditor mentioned earlier People are paying their taxes, but we're also as a result of that. We're receiving less in interest in penalties Departments have updated their estimates for the current year and costs as mentioned are higher And revenues are lower than anticipated resulting in about a three million dollar impact To the general fund This results in a potential four and a half million dollar impact to the general fund compared to the 3.6 million dollar in savings Estimated leaving almost a million dollar shortfall which puts our contribution to reserves and jeopardy So here you can see a chart summarizing the general fund total financing available offset by the financing uses estimated The majority of the department increases in the current year are from reduced revenues From recording Permit and cannabis licensing fees in addition to increased overtime for public safety CO staff are working with departments to reduce costs and increase revenues wherever possible To increase the financing to carry forward to 2019-20 as planned Additional savings have already been identified in fiscal year 18 19 From remaining unused contingencies Increased general purpose revenues Primarily from the increased interest earnings you heard about earlier And some unanticipated department revenues In addition the general fund contribution for capital improvements could also be reduced by a million five By redirecting savings on completed certs funded projects from 2014 and 2015 bond proceeds To other capital improvements currently in process It is anticipated that enough financing will be available to carry forward to fiscal year 1920 To help fund the status quo increases identified in december On a positive note, we have major g Which is included in our 2018-19 estimates Funding began for those initiatives in january and it's utilizing the first quarter of major g funding set to begin april first These initiatives include Approximately 1.6 million dollars in the current year park capital improvements of about a million dollars Mid-year funding for three park staff And mid-year funding for the focused intervention team staff which includes positions for the sheriff and health services These programs are also included in the 2019-21 Budget with the addition of the augmentation of funding of almost 600 thousand dollars for county homeless navigation center So here you can see the preliminary forecast for 1920 anticipated increases Of financing of 13.7 million to offset the status quo increases. That's what we reported in december Um however at this time based on the estimates um that we're currently receiving The general purpose revenue growth and savings is less than anticipated by about a little over a half a million dollars And department requests are more than status quo at a net cost increase of 26.6 million or 13.7 million higher than anticipated If we reduce the increase to reserves to a minimum Saving almost 300 000 it leaves us a 14 million dollar budget shortfall to reconcile between now and may Let's take a closer look at our revenue growth Here you can see a breakdown of the primary revenue growth from taxes which represent about 90 percent of the county's general purpose revenues Revenue growth estimated for 1920 of 9.2 million Primarily from the recently passed major g transaction tax and increased property taxes of three percent Which includes also um an increasing transient occupancy tax of eight percent Which projects growth of about five percent over the current year And this is all offset by the reduced cannabis business tax of almost 900 000 Total tax revenues are projected to grow over budget by approximately seven percent Based on the current year growth economic indicators and a full year of major g transaction tax Overall revenue growth is still average even though estimates have decreased by about a million dollars from the preliminary forecast Provided in december due to the reduced penalties on delinquencies and the reduced cannabis business tax from cultivators and manufacturers It is anticipated that growth and interest earnings will help offset some of these reductions Here's a summary of the mid-year estimates which show total financing available of 161.2 million and requested financing uses of 175.2 million Which results in net costs higher than financing by approximately 14 million We just want to reassure you the county administrative office is working with departments to modify the requests in order to present a balanced budget to the board in may We're working with departments on targets We're hoping to have a good draft plan within the next few weeks and then we'll look forward to presenting that to you Staff anticipate that additional financing will be available from prior year department budget savings And increased general purpose revenues leaving the remaining reductions needed from the department requests Until the budget is balanced the co has implemented a budget hiring review with departments That have not achieved an acceptable status quo budget given our financial constraints Here's the chart showing the initial projection for fiscal year 2021 Comparing the preliminary estimates provided in december compared to the estimates received from the department's initial requests Net costs are primarily increasing by 6.4 million based on department initial projections Which are impacted as mentioned earlier by reduced revenues from grants Recording and permit fees and other increased costs and new requests Leaving a potential budget shortfall of 7.9 million rather than the million we projected These initial requests are under review and it is anticipated that the budget shortfall will be less than 7.9 million When it is presented to your board in may However, due to the declining revenues in some departments It is possible that the shortfall might may not be as manageable as originally thought with increased revenue options So looking ahead the general fund is expected to meet its obligations for fiscal year 1920 through serious belt tightening and further reductions to the department requests However, due to some declining revenues in the current year and continuing through 2122 the general fund is unlikely to meet its obligations without new or increased general purpose revenues And or cost reductions that could potentially impact programs and services Based on initial projections the annual budget shortfall is increased from 1 to 3 million to 8 to 10 million But it could be as high as 13 to 15 million If prior your savings are not achieved or general revenues are stagnant or declined further Since the retirement rates may level out to a more modest average increase of 3 percent by fiscal year 2324 revenue growth could potentially cover the expenditure growth based on current operations The five-year forecast will be updated once we have finalized the proposed budget 19 2019 to 2021 So the primary cost driver as mentioned earlier in the next five years is the increased cost of retirement Due to the rising rates, which is faced Facing all agencies invested in CalPERS Retirement rates are anticipated to nearly double by 24 25 since 17 18 Rates have primarily been impacted by the loss of investment earnings during the great recession Decreases and projected future investment earnings from 7.75 percent to 7 percent and changing demographics The county's retirement cost is estimated to grow from 49 million in 17 18 to 86 million in 24 25 The general fund cost shown here is expected to grow from 42 million to 74 million Which is a cost increase of 32 million? Assuming that approximately 40 of this cost increase is recovered through intergovernmental revenues and fees The cumulative unbudgeted ongoing net cost increase over the next six years is approximately 19 million Which represents about 50 of the total salary and benefit increases anticipated Costs are expected to level out by 23 24 to be more modest and manageable So preparing for the future We do have an approved strategic plan And we'll have an operational plan that will help guide priorities We have our continuous process improvement that's going to help us create efficiencies Performance measures will help assess effectiveness And reserves will provide support during a recession Revenue options will help preserve core programs and services So one of the primary revenue options that we've discussed before is to increase the transient occupancy tax or the hotel tax The county currently charges an 11 percent transient occupancy tax Rate which is similar to the nearby cities except recently capitol and watsonville are now charging 12 percent Other jurisdictions charge up to 14 percent such as the county marine city of marina and city of los altos To t increases usually generate wild wide public support In the recent election san carlos and daily city both increased their to t from 10 percent to 12 percent Followed by an annual increase of a half a percent until reaching a cap of 14 percent It is likely a to t increase could be very successful in santa cruz and provide additional funding Each 1 percent increase in the rate generates about a million dollars So in summary Even though a recession is not yet upon us the county is beginning to see some revenues decline Limiting the overall financing available for the general fund supported programs and services Requests are currently higher than anticipated and will be reduced to status quo operations in order to balance the budget and live within our financial constraints General fund reserves will be available as needed in order to provide a softer landing during the next recession In order to preserve essential services Due to the board's careful planning for the future The county is better poised to weather the next recession with the reserve fund at nearly 10 percent Or 52.5 million at the end of 18 19 And i'm happy to answer any questions Sorry about that one of the areas where it looks like our revenues are down as in the cannabis business tax As far as i understand we haven't given out any licenses for cultivation yet Do you have any report that you could give to us about What might be the expectation there because that seems to have A direct effect on on revenue? Yes, it's been Challenging Going through the licensing process due to land use regulations some of them having to do with fire agencies That's one big issue that we've had Um others have been just due to the difficult nature of planning in uh outdoor grows in a Complex environment like sangra cruise county Uh, I will say that there's a couple of uh sites Where we are getting close to being able to issue licenses and each of them have multiple license holders As many as 20 for example to one site so we think that um When we're they those sites are through the the land use process that they will actually issue Quite a it'll go from zero to 20 overnight and then from 20 to 40 and so we are Cognizant of the fact that that is an issue That's important both to the industry And us of terms of getting these licenses processed I'm working closely with cannabis staff and planning staff To make sure that we're doing everything we can to expedite the process Yeah, I mean I can't tell whether that site with 20 People on it is going to bring in new tax revenue, whether those people are currently paying CBT Or not, uh, it just seems to me that uh, we approved regulations in may of last year And here it is almost march And uh, we need to be doing a better job if we're counting that on it's one of the legs of our Of our stool for revenue You know, I think I think that that's a why that would be a wise chance and we should look at our Regulations to see whether we haven't just created too many hurdles And either make the the assessment where we're going to get less taxes And we're going to tax somebody else or we can make it Work with the people here who are interested in paying the taxes I guess the other question I have is You've been clear to point out that the requests That we've received would yield a $14 million deficit, but you do not intend to bring us a budget that would have a $14 million deficit But uh, there there is concern about the structural deficit And I couldn't tell from the the slides whether Is that are you assuming that that it's going to go back up to eight million dollars is a structural problem Or is it going to be less than that? Well, what um, we have talked about the structural deficit being what we also consider our fund balance carryover Because that is typically in the budget world considered one-time revenues that you shouldn't count on as being ongoing revenues so It is three point six million dollars this year it would go up higher next year Um, but I don't um, I think the way to look at it Is not as a Is a structural deficit in the sense of some counties are actually spending more than they take in Uh in terms of ongoing revenues ongoing expenditures. I think our fund balance has been fairly consistent over the last decade We've typically brought forward Um in the five million are under range And so I think there's a good argument you could make that that's actually an ongoing You know, uh, it can be expected a revenue source And so I think it's something we need to be careful of And we but I I wouldn't say it's an on I wouldn't define it as a structural deficit in the typical sense The other thing is that uh, the reason people are worried about using, uh, fund balance as part of your budget solutions is because during a recession Those, uh, fund balances tend to dry up So for example, the fund balance carryover is typically made up of two things one is salary savings And two is revenues, uh exceeding our projections In a recession, um, salary savings disappear because people stop leaving because there's jobs that aren't available in other places So suddenly your salary savings go down and then revenues typically underperform rather than overperform in a recession So that's why you want to carry uh, keep that fund balance carryover your reliance on that number to a Very conservative amount and I think we've done that I think in a budget our size to have a five million dollar carryover that we're relying is very conservative Um, this is a question from is driscoll on the question of uh, toot receipts Do you have a sense of how much of that comes from vacation rentals? A Significant portion comes from vacation rentals. I mean would you be willing to to guesstimate a percentage? I mean, what's our total toot? Our total toot year to date is five million four almost five million five right now all of our Tivity in our audit division right now is being focused on short term rentals We still certainly pay attention to all the rentals in the unincorporated area, but it is where most of our activity comes I honestly would need to get back to you. I I could provide with additional information But I I couldn't even off top my head begin to tell you anymore. Yeah, well, I I appreciate the information you could Tell me offline, but I think it would also I appreciate that we provided staffing to look at the auditing of of these hundreds of vacation rentals that we have In Santa Cruz and I appreciate the work that's being done to try to find those people who are trying to operate Outside the system. We recently were contacted by a new Interface which is camp sites sort of like air bnb, but camp sites and Constituents of mine from the happy valley told me about it. I went online and there are a number of them here in Santa Cruz That I I think we should probably I don't think would qualify as vacation rentals because I I don't think they qualify as structures Um, but they're operating. It depends. I'm aware that even within the air bnb universe. There have been some situations where people are renting State park sites that are highly desirable and then turning around and re-renting them through air bnb Not necessarily in our neighborhood, but I certainly have read about those situations The vendor that we work with goes out and looks at any rental listings Initially our first contract with the vendor was just focused on our limited zones that we have in Santa Cruz county And then I wanted to make sure that we could get enough activity out of this vendor before we then made it countywide And we certainly received a lot of uh bank for our buck. And so we are now expanding it to the entire county If there are any rentals being posted And they are platform tent sites they potentially could count. I don't know Okay, I mean, I don't think our regulations cover uh, uh tent cabins. We do have tree houses and boats. So You never know I'll leave it to the lawyers to decide whether that qualifies But I'm glad to hear that we're using our auditing power to make sure that everybody it's a level playing field for everybody in that industry I just had a couple quick questions. The first was um, the purse costs, which are Significant, but we've also we implemented Uh reforms here at the local level and there are state ride reforms. So what do those costs do after 2024? um Are we sort of getting through the worst part? Uh, and then Uh, does it stabilize? What's what's the the long-term trip window all those? Uh reforms sort of kick in So we're in we're in the hardest part with this next budget year The next three years will be the hardest steepest part of the curve And so that's why it's going to be such it's going to be a challenging time to add new services After seven years, so five more years by the year 24 fiscal year 24 It actually levels out and you have modest increases of two to three percent per year And it'll stay like that for a number The recent projections I've seen it'll stay stable for five to ten years and then actually after That period which would be 15 years from now. There's actually steep declines Projected and whoever's on the board and in this chair will have big budget surpluses in theory Because all of the reforms will have taken place by then Sometimes look we'll take credit for them They'll get to enjoy it The second question was so we implemented a two-year budget with the idea of providing An opportunity for people to think more long-term and And strategically about their budgets based on what we saw in other counties How is this How is this working so far these early stages as you're having these conversations? Not just about this fiscal year, but but two years down the road I think it's helpful. I I know for the departments. It's a bit more work Because they've got to look out But I think it's helpful to manage the general fund and the budget as a whole because we can see what's coming And we're having those conversations earlier with the departments about You know what they're planning to do and so I think in that case, it's helpful It's also when you're in limited financial constraints. It's helpful to see what those increases are What's coming so you can make better decisions today Okay, great Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess the best thing you can say about this. It isn't as bad as the road budget We've got just this morning, but I I really think it is good that we are able to review this at this time and I I'm glad to see that we're really sensitive to the reserves. I think it's Literally paid dividends or it's helped us at this point and it will in the future if we hold on to that 10% To the best possible way we can um the The retirement costs have been just explained And I think everybody throughout the state had projections of higher revenue from the cannabis industry and I Was just asked as a a member of the california state association of counties or CSAC uh, we had some high interest or Um percentages that we we put on our tax rates And I'm trying to find from them or maybe you could we'll help them out They're they're going to hear from us if those who had lower rates actually got Uh more revenue or the projected revenue that they thought they were going to get It's all it was uh made very difficult because the state took 15 percent right off the top And so that really hurt our ability to work that game But in essence uh is a higher tax rate is that Is it um, I said bring in less revenue because people are just saying I'm not going to do it and I'll get caught If that's the way it goes but try and The personnel from CSAC did say this is going to be a difficult thing to try to judge or or get a Figure on but I'm trying to see if there is anything like that with the state I in statewide also the in-home support services Thank heavens the governor put that in because I know that was a big hit Another thing that CSAC and the counties throughout the state of california were Very very much concerned about uh, this means a lot of money to this this county And just I know that there's really a concern about The number of new employees that could be added, but I know that you're aware of it. You mentioned it, but We don't want to let our our capital facilities Uh go to the way of our roads so to speak and I don't mean to go back there again, but We We don't want to pay more A lot more later if we don't take care of it now and that's one area where I think we we Legitimately need some more people to help us out and maintaining our physical plant That's just my personal view of it at this point, but uh, I appreciate that you're there the message We we have time to uh to correct this as you had stated and I appreciate your presentation Who has your cabinet? Yeah, thanks. Thank you very much With the pension obligations I you see different projections even though we're We're a little bit better off than we were it shows that what it will actually go up about 40 percent Uh over the next 20 years Is that assuming we're doing the same today as we're doing a year from now five years from now 10 years from now The pension rates that we we've talked about They are increasing significantly over a seven-year period We're in we've already passed two of those years and we're going to have five more years of increase During that time the rates will have doubled in effect Which are significant and that's due to a number of different factors demographics as we mentioned Earnings in the stock market that's purses is making and some of the benefit formulas that have changed over time But we have made reforms and that's important to note that there's been significant reforms both made by this board At the local level and by the state And those reforms will pay off because after we get through this difficult period over the next five years Costs will level out and then they will eventually start decreasing over time So we just have you know, we have some stormy weather ahead of us and we're prepared and we're doing actually I think we're doing very well if you think of it Despite the fact that we're weathering the very difficult financial time in terms of Increasing costs. We're still adding services. We've added, uh, you know new park New libraries We're doing more with roads The governor's actually been very generous To local government. This is probably the most generous budget From a governor that we've ever seen in my career And so there's lots of good news Actually, even though I know it's a bit of a Sober memo we sent you there's as you will see as we get into the budget There's actually lots of good news as well in terms of services to the public Okay, and then uh, when when we're putting money aside for pension Obligations retirement costs projected in the future The money it's coming from different sources Out of the general fund And then who are we actually paying it to work? We're putting it into CalPERS Yes, we we pay a fee to CalPERS. They invest those those funds Um, and then they pay out the retirement costs So we actually turn over the money to PERS and they invest it and that's part of the problem has been that their Investment earnings have decreased from 7.75 percent to 7 percent Which is a significant number that in effect we're having to make up for Right and then but we're kind of when we put it into CalPERS. We're putting it all in there That is correct. Okay, and but we're tied in with You know, thank you for giving me a financial class here, but What if Los Angeles Hypothetically went belly up or something that would affect the whole CalPERS, right? I mean we're we're a part of it But we can do our share, but if everybody else doesn't do their share We're in trouble I guess it would depend on how big the agency were if it was if it was a big Agency like county of los angeles that that would be definitely affect the system But if it's one of the smaller agencies, it wouldn't be have to be as significant If it's a smaller agency, it wouldn't be as significant So it depends on the size of the agency if they were to have trouble and and actually there's There actually are no agencies right now that I know of in the state that are Having that kind of trouble people are struggling, but there's no one that I've heard of is Even right now thinking of bankruptcy or anything like that Right like like Stockton is doing better now than it was Well, yeah Stockton Vallejo Vallejo was you know the first city to declare bankruptcy number years ago Stockton Riverside there was about three will bell that was for different reasons though But yeah those there's no one like that and they're actually doing Doing much better all of those jurisdictions Okay, thank you Okay Thank you very much now it's an opportunity for the members of the public to comment on these items Thank you. Thank you for those reports It's kind of shocking as a member of the public to hear And and please clarify did I hear that there's a four possible 14 million dollar shortfall? Did I hear that right? Okay, I'm just I'm still kind of reeling from hearing that because I remembered this conversation Last year and it seemed like it was going to be a lot better condition. So Um, I I would like some clarification. I think I heard that Anticipated growth will help augment Income so does that mean that? The county's land use policy will be seen as a way to Get us out of this deficit That has me a bit concerned and Regarding the cow purse I understood that At one point the ratio of retired Government worker to actively working Government worker will be In the near future one to one If if I could have some clarification on that and what that ratio is now I would appreciate that And finally in in just thinking about the redevelopment agency funds and that's Assemblyman stone is working to get some of that money back to the city of Santa Cruz Is there any chance that some of Similar money could come For a capital improvement projects for the county Thank you very much Thank you That concludes public comment. I think the short answer to your question Supervisor leopold question Brought this up a moment ago, which was no, there's not a 14 million dollar deficit That that was the If all the asks were Filled But as carlos palacios made clear We will have a balanced budget Coming into this year He was informing us that there are many more asked and then we have money, but he is not going to let us Bring a deficit in fact are we will probably have about five million dollars worth of carryover in this year's budget, so we're it's Uh He's just pointing out that we have a lot of need out there. Well, we can't we can't meet at all Yeah, maybe a better way to word it is a department request succeed Available resources by 14 million dollars, but obviously are under Our fiduciary responsibility We must produce a balanced budget and we will and we actually are going to be able to do it while adding services Which is a great thing for the community and So even though it's it is a difficult time. We're actually doing very well I would also add that There the county of santa cruz made a decision during the closure of redevelopment to place all of our Resources under third-party contracts. That's what built the center for public safety the boys and girls club parks The east cliff parkway a whole bunch of other things and all of our housing resources Were either put into project like st. Stephen's or The chapiro knolls project Or with the housing authority so we don't have any money in a bank account for Assemblymember stone to to help us use in some other ways the other jurisdictions Kept money in a bank account with the assumption that they'd be able to use it But so far they've been paying their bonds Without being able to use it Thank you back So that concludes items 10 and 11 We'll now move on to item number 12, which is to consider and Consider an update and study session on the calisanne cruz county operational planning initiative And direct the ceo office to return in may 2019 with a proposed operational plan for fiscal year 2019 through 2021 as outlined in the memorandum by the ceo Only have miss coburn here to present Good afternoon chair coonerty and members of the board. I'm gonna wait just a moment As i'm joined by a few others So i'm nicole coburn assistant county administrative officer And i'm here to present on our operational plan and provide an update to you So this is our agenda for this session I'm joined at the tables by three members of our operational plan steering committee I have me me hall to the left director of health services Matt machado deputy ceo and director of public works and one hill doggo our agricultural commissioner And they're going to be helping me with presenting on our strategy development and just a little bit But before we get there, I'd like to start and just provide a brief overview of our strategic plan And then I will go into our operational plan both the process and the elements that we're developing This is the first time we've presented on our countywide strategies and we'll be discussing Some of what went into drafting those draft statements And then at the end I would like to cover some of our next steps So as you know in this past june the board approved a six-year strategic plan The plan was the result of a year-long effort during which we engaged with thousands of county residents and staff To develop the vision mission and values shown here as well as six focus areas and related goals These are the six focus areas. They each have four goals for a total of 24 These focus areas and the goals will also be shown within the operational plan document and they will With those we're going to be adding Strategies department objectives and key steps. All of the elements from our strategic plan are also online at www.sccvision.us Our operational planning Structure is overseen by the county administrative office The operational plan steering committee which includes representatives from around the county government And then six subcommittees which are tied to the six focus areas The subcommittees um contain over 60 subject matter experts Representing every county government department So just to remind you um, this slide shows our plan hierarchy At the top we have our strategic plan and it really provides our north star For what we're trying to achieve as a county What we're working on right now is to develop an operational plan and to eventually Fully integrate it with our two-year budget So the operational plan will contain countywide strategies which represent our approach And as well as department objectives and key steps I want to note that this is the first of three operational plans in the current strategic plan cycle So and it's an important step in changing county culture and collaborating with departments throughout the county to achieve the vision Over time the operational plan will fully integrate with other initiatives including continuous process improvement Performance measurement and the new to your budget But this is really the first step and it's a start in doing that In december we were here providing an update and we showed this timeline At that time we had just completed a training with departments on objectives and key steps And we had just begun the process of starting to think about our countywide strategies and draft those At the steering committee and subcommittee levels Today we're here to provide an update on the operational planning process and primarily strategy development We provided a handout which includes all of the 54 strategies that have been drafted and and as well as a sample of some of our major projects and initiatives This spring, um, we plan to conduct some additional engagement with the community as well And we'll talk about that a little bit later And then in may we want to bring to the board the proposed operational plan and then the final plan in june for adoption So our operational plan elements as I mentioned, um, we'll be adding three elements to tie to the strategic plan One is our countywide strategies, which are the approaches as I mentioned The second are our department objectives, which are smart actions that are working towards our strategic plan goals in countywide strategies And i'll note that objectives may appear under multiple strategies often times they can tie into different ones And then the key steps, which are the critical activities or steps taken to achieve achieve those objectives These inputs, um, have been taken into consideration as we draft the countywide strategies They include the community voices from the strategic planning process last year existing department and partner goals county staff input from the strategic planning process and the department objectives of which we currently have 180 in some sort of draft format Uh, the point is to really take these into consideration and not develop the operational plan in the vacuum, but to to use existing work and keep that in mind This graphic shows how, um, departments are collaborating and for us collaboration is a priority Um, this this we took the draft objectives and tried to tie together How departments which ones relate to which departments so this graphically shows the connections between the departments And we expect to deepen this collaboration as we proceed through the planning effort We are also working on embedding our county values in our strategies As we develop the operational plan the guiding principle of the steering committee Has been to take into consideration the principle of equity And we are working on linking our strategies to the county values as well as reflecting this guiding principle So just to briefly go over our strategy framework We wanted to come up with a consistent way of representing our strategies So we are using a statement that starts with we will and incorporates our actions and our impacts So here you will see an example We will advance prevention and intervention services that promote community wellness These are all of these strategies that you see on the handout That was included with the board item and passed out today Follow this same this same format and we hope it will help with comprehension So with that I would like to turn it over to Mimi hall director of health services who's going to Review the first area our first focus area of comprehensive health and safety and the strategy development there Thank you, Nicole. I'm pleased to be here today chair Coonerty and honorable board of supervisors And I'm also pleased to Say that I'm a member of the subcommittee over comprehensive health and safety This subcommittee is composed of representatives from the health services agency Human services the sheriff Probation and the district attorney and it's chaired by our probation chief Fernando Gerardo The strategy we're highlighting today within this goal area of health equity is within that goal area of health equity Just as reminder for members of the public The definition of health equity Is that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be healthier This requires removing obstacles to health such as poverty Discrimination and their consequences Including powerlessness and a lack of access to good jobs quality education and housing safe environments and health care The themes that emerged in our discussions about health equity were access to care creating safe communities and prevention and intervention The strategy highlighted today here speaks to prevention and intervention Which we know can help us achieve better individual and community outcomes as well as reduce the need for greater and more expensive interventions down the road Some of the projects and initiatives that have been identified already to support this strategy are reducing clinic wait times Bolstering our thrive by three services and core's development of a library of evidence-based practices Next I wanted to review the focus area of attainable housing The attainable housing subcommittee is composed of representatives from the assessor recorder's office the planning department CAO's office human services health services Economic development and homeless services coordination And this subcommittee is chaired by our planning director Kathy Malloy So the strategy that we're highlighting today is within the goal area of local inventory Which includes increasing and diversifying our housing options Some of the themes that emerged in our discussions of local inventory were access to housing Having a variety of housing by different income levels and then also focusing on urban centers This strategy here speaks to access and variety of housing Of which single family residential alone cannot hope to address And we know that this strategy will also require a lot of creativity community and innovation to address Some of the projects that emerged And identified a need to support this strategy are completing development permits for projects such as 17th and Capitola Using our county owned property for its greatest community benefit And also updating the housing element of the general plan as required by state law And with that i'm going to turn it over to matt machado who is going to talk about strategy development around reliable transportation Thank you. Mimi. Good afternoon chairman supervisors Under reliable transportation our subcommittee was composed of representatives from public works planning economic development human services health services in the CAO office The strategy we are highlighting today is within the goal of local roads Additionally other goals were covered. They included regional mobility community mobility and public transit Themes that emerged in our discussions of local roads were safety and improved maintenance The strategy here focuses maintenance prioritization based upon usage and safety Some of the projects Or initiatives identified to support this strategy are being developed by public works In partnership with other county departments As well as regional and local governments As chair of this subcommittee, I will be presenting reliable transportation to the rtc on march 7th And to the mtc on march 22nd Next i'd like to introduce uh, Juan Hidalgo to discuss sustainable environment Thank you matt. Good afternoon chair members of the board I have the honor to serve as the chair of the sustainable environments of committee The subcommittee is composed of representatives from the agricultural commissioner agricultural extension general services planning parks public works and cannabis licensing The strategy we are highlighting today is within the goal of outdoor experience Themes that emerge in our discussion of outdoor experience were access to parks diverse recreation needs connection with our natural environment and facility facility improvements The strategy here speaks to access and facility improvements by making sure That we're considering location ability Along with myriad other factors when making capital improvements Some of the projects or initiatives identified to support this strategy are completing the first phase of lios haven A new preteen teen recreation camp And renovation of the simkins swimming pool The dynamic economy subcommittee is chaired by andy constable economic development manager The subcommittee is composed of representatives from economic development Human services ceo's office sheriff child protective services Planning agricultural commissioner and parks The strategy we are highlighting today is within the goal of community vitality Themes that emerge in our discussion of community vitality were unbalanced geographic distribution of economic resources In the correlated high cost of housing The strategy here speaks to identifying policy and investments The county can make to support individual individuals creating inclusive communities and economies Some of the projects or initiatives identified to support this strategy are economic developments downtown revitalization projects And the collaboration among planning public works and environmental health to create a one-stop shop for development services Now I will turn it over to matt so he can tell us about operational excellence Thank you on Under operational excellence our subcommittee was composed of representatives from personnel information services public works human services The ceo office county clerk and elections county council auditor and general services The strategy we are highlighting today is within the goal of county infrastructure Other goals that we developed include customer experience county workforce and continuous improvement Themes that emerged in our discussion of county infrastructure were equitable access safe facilities And using our resources to effectively address urgent community needs The strategy here speaks to all of these themes Especially putting county owned land to work towards achieving the goals Mission and vision for the county adopted By the board and the strategic plan Some of the projects or initiatives identified to support this strategy Our development of the county's long-range facilities plan And the current construction of six library projects funded by measure s Next up. Nicole will cover next steps Thank you matt So I will briefly go over our next steps in the operational planning process Currently departments are in the process of resubmitting their smart objectives and key steps And once reviewed each smart objective will be aligned with one or more of the county's strategies and goals We also have plans to proceed with some additional engagement with three key audiences this spring The first is key informants and we plan to hold Some focus groups one in each of the focus areas These sessions will be facilitated by angela and tenori who continues to support plan development We also plan to present this presentation to a number of county commissions as matt mentioned the rtc being one of them Um, we will be agendizing these presentations for meetings in march and april And then lastly we plan to conduct three open houses one in north mid and south county To provide a forum for for the public to come and learn more about the strategies And speak with some of our subject matter experts within the subcommittees Lastly in may we will be bringing to the board the proposed operational plan And then based on your feedback and any additional input we receive we would come return in june with the final plan So in summary, um our county strategic plan includes our vision mission and values It contains six focus areas and 24 goals And our county operational plan may include up to 54 strategies which are approaches to achieve our goals And 180 objectives from departments, which are the smart actions for achieving those goals The emphasis in the operational plan will be on department collaboration and achieving our county values So with that we're happy to answer any questions that you have Sure So are there any questions I can I just am really pleased to see this moving along. Um, it's very encouraging. I mean it really gives us A target and I'm glad that we brought this CAO said let's get this together and and work it together and it was Evident by there's some comments that were made by some departments already that there's a really a sense of cooperative effort Throughout the county that I don't think we've witnessed certainly in my six years as a county supervisor So I'm encouraged by this because I think it really gives us a focus and shows us where we want to go And I'm glad to have to see that we're going to Have these three open houses in the north middle and south part of the counties I really encourage the public to attend those And I just have one suggestion On that collaboration chart. I think that you should enter that in a modern art contest. It's a winner Thank you for that suggestion So uh, so thank you and I'll just jump in here, which is um And I echo all the comments and I it's great to see different department heads up here All working collaboratively across their different areas because that's that's fundamentally what this is about In terms of the the strategies in front of us I think the overall they're really good and they're very clear that the only couple areas I would add is On the climate change we talk about resiliency, but we also need to be reducing our carbon footprints or to help Not make the problem worse or to do our part There's not there's not a mention of arts or culture in this And I think we should we play a role In that in part probably in our economic vitality part piece And then um, finally on the both the health and the safety piece There's excellent language about providing services, but it's also it's not only about providing better services But it's also about reducing community impacts. So there's there's two elements to those goals for those programs and then Finally, I just say The objectives are where the rubberers really going to meet the road And making sure that those are clear and for the average they'll be meaningful to the average citizen Who who may not be? You know reporting back to the state or federal government about different grant money and or whatever but wants You know better services or quality of life in their communities and making sure that those objectives reflect Their customer driven essentially And also the other pieces They should be ambitious and encourage risk I I would be disappointed if during budget time we've met all of our objectives and we've checked every box That probably means we didn't set our objectives high enough. So we should we should be we should be pushing and understanding That that we aren't expecting everyone to be perfect and to fill all those every objective perfectly but but uh, so where it works We and we want you to try risk take risks some of which may not work out but that's um, but it's our job to encourage that and Um, and then it's also hopefully from the line level staff all the way through department heads In eagerness to try different things that that hopefully will work But some may not and um, that should be encouraged in the objectives All right now's the time for members of the public to come Speak Thank you for the report becky steinbrunner resident of rural aptos um As a member of the public I find myself wondering what is this really going to mean Like he said where the rubber meets the road boots on the ground projects What if when you have these community meetings, how will you take it to? um A way of interpreting it so that people understand how house is going to change will this change anything That we as public members see In operation in our county um, I didn't I didn't hear anything about fire safety and partnering with California department of fire protection. They're updating their vegetation treatment plan Things like that. I mean those are real concerns that many rural residents have And and it isn't confined fire safety is not confined to the rural areas anymore We've seen the fires blow into the the the wildland urban interfaces, so Santa Cruz city could be affected too live oak could be affected too So I guess I want to thank you for this good presentation and I too. I'm really happy to see departments talking That's a great improvement and and really good to see but in public meetings Um, I would hope that it's it's this good work Collaborative work is put forth in a way that is meaningful And real and tangible to the public so we understand the results of your good work here um And I would also like to see some energy put toward historic preservation efforts in the county That's a big piece of our History that will need to be preserved going forward with an emphasis on infill and density. Thank you Thank you. It'll be a Quick one, uh, the south county satellite office, uh, study What would that uh I Where would that be and It was in the report That's an example of one of the asking you then Yeah, that's an example of one of the potential sample projects that would become an objective and be tied to The strategy within the area of operational excellence So there's an idea to study whether it would be feasible to have a satellite office in south county For certain general government functions Right, which would be fine and uh, and then uh, I guess quick, uh I don't know any update on the Behavioral health mental health office and Watsonville opening up That would be you right Oh, yeah, there you are I'm sorry. I keep looking at the wrong. Yeah, the holdup has been An issue with pj and he actually cooperating with us to do what they need to do And so we've been in touch with their government relations Person and we've been making progress So we're we're moving forward That's good. I'm sorry to put you on the spot right here, but Thank you All right I'll just I'll just say I appreciate the work putting into this, you know, obviously we're Everybody gets to watch as this gets built and so we have this foundation of some basic values and Key strategies and now we have to build the rest of the infrastructure with all the objectives So it is hard when you're when you're just Driving by this This process to sort of see what it's going to look like You have to believe that that we're going to have objectives that that we can be measured by that we will That will set what we want to do I believe we'll have that and I think we're this is the right foundation to build for this So I appreciate that work Great Do we need to accept the report or Is the chair community we actually a technicality if we could vote on the last three presentations So you can do it in one vote that would be I would I would move to accept All the last three I'll second. All right. We got a motion by leopold and a second by cap it All those in favor, please say aye. Aye All those opposed those pass unanimously. Thank you very much That now concludes our meeting today. We'll adjourn until our march 12th Regularly scheduled meeting at 9 a.m Thank you