 Good morning. Welcome to the August 24th, 2021 meeting, regular meeting of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. I'd like to call this meeting to order. First of all, we'd like to have a moment of silence and then the Pledge of Allegiance. And I would like to just say, let's all have our thoughts and prayers with those especially who are caught in a very, very difficult situation in Afghanistan. We just hope for their safety and God bless them. And we just hope that they return as quickly as possible. Chair, if we could have a roll call first. Excuse me, that's on my mind, I guess, right now. So please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Here. Friend. Here. Community. Here. Capit. Good. McPherson. Here. Thank you, Chair. You have a quorum. Thank you again. I got ahead of myself, moment of silence and Pledge of Allegiance. You've heard my concerns. Anybody, any other Supervisor want to speak on anything? Okay. We have Supervisor Koenig and myself and the board chamber. The three other members are going to be joining the meeting by remote. So we'll have a moment of silence and then the Pledge of Allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America, through the Republic of Pakistan as one nation, for God, indivisible, the Redeemer and Justice for all. Do you have consideration of late additions to the agenda and additions and deletions to the consent and regular agendas, Mr. Palacios? Yes, we do have a few items on the regular agenda. Item number seven, there's additional materials. The presentation on the pension obligation bond issuance. And there's also a public comment received on August 24th. On item 12, there's additional materials. There's a public comment received on August 23rd. On item 13, there's additional materials. Public comment received on August 24th. And then on the consent agenda, there's additional materials. Public comment received on August 24th. And that concludes the revisions to the agenda, Chair. Thank you. Any announcement by more members of items removed from the consent to the regular agenda? Yes, Mr. Chair, I'd like to pull item 26 and just make it right after item eight, which is out of our other cannabis items since there's some related actions to it. Maybe we can make it 8.1 if that's possible, ma'am. Yep. Okay. I'll make comment on the consent and agenda number 24 and also on 26th, okay. Okay, do you want to make a? Oh, wait, okay. Go ahead. No, that's all right. Well, we'll wait for that. We're not looking to pull the item. We just want to make comments. Yeah, right, yeah. Which we'll do after we accept public comment on these items. Correct. I might pull it for the part of number 24, D, E, and F. You want to pull item 24? Yeah, go ahead. See, we'll make that item. Okay, we'll make that, I guess we should, try to get that in the morning session. So I think I'll try to make that item 12.1. Number 24 will be 12.1. Okay. Any other comments? Announcements by board members. Items removed to the consent to the regular agenda. You've heard that. Ms. Cabrera, do you want to announce our procedure? Just for clarification, item 26 is moving to 8.1 and item 24 is moving to 12.1. Right. And now for public comment. Now is the time for public comment. If you wish to comment and are joining us through the Zoom link, please find the hand icon at the bottom of your screen and click on the icon to raise your hand. If you're calling in from a phone, please dial star nine now. This will raise your hand and place you in the queue to speak. If you're here in chambers, please line up at the podium. Now is the time for the board members and supervisors to receive comments from the public. If you wish to comment in Spanish, we have a tractor available to assist. If you wish to comment and are joining us through the Zoom, please find the hand icon at the bottom of the screen and click on the icon to raise your hand. If you're calling in from a phone, please dial star nine. If you're here in the room, please line up at the front. Thank you. And I'll just add, any person may address the board once during the public comment, not exceeding two minutes. Comments must be directed to items on today's consent and closed session agendas yet to be heard items if you can't be here later on the regular agenda or on a topic not on today's agenda, but under the jurisdiction of the board of supervisors. We'll take public comments now for 30 minutes. And if necessary, additional time for public comments will continue after our regular agenda, which is going to be going into the afternoon today. Yes, sir. You're the first. Hello, good morning. My name is James Ewing Whitman. I guess my comment kind of addresses the truth as a perspective and that is within the scope of everyone listening to this and everyone behind me and on this other side of this maritime courtroom. The subject of Afghanistan is I find really fascinating and why there's a sensationalness of what's going on in Afghanistan. And there are some real tragedies going on, the tragedies in Afghanistan are nothing new. To the extent of the 1,575 pages that I didn't spend an incredible amount of time looking into but I did find several of interest and I'm glad that I was able to download that and I took a picture of that large volume. I may show up here and talk tomorrow because there's another public meeting and Thursday. But once again, what is in control of this board? You guys have a lot of We-Way and it's really up to how you guys wanna present to the public now and in the future. The Taliban was an organization created in the 80s by the USCIA and that's, al-Qaeda is really not that much different. So the Taliban decided to reduce the opium production in Afghanistan by 97% and soon after 9-11, the US invaded Afghanistan. And within a year, thanks to the US military, opium production was more than it was ever before. So to jump to what happened a couple of weeks ago and apparently billions of dollars of armaments have been just released, that makes whoever recaptures those armaments one of the most powerful armies in the world. But I'd like to focus on what's going on in the United States, thank you. My name's Serge Cagno, I'm the Mental Health Advisory Board and Executive Director of Recovery Café Santa Cruz. Glad everybody's healthy today and here. There's a written correspondence letter J which you helped write and I appreciate that. Suicide Prevention and Recovery Month, the proclamation. I am not representing the whole Mental Health Advisory Board just to be clear, just myself. Very supportive and compassionate proclamation. I just wanted to ask, there's a phrase substance abuse used twice in there and I was just gonna ask if we could use the phrase substance use disorder since we're talking about awareness for people and trying to de-stigmatize that thing. But otherwise, absolutely beautiful proclamation and I thank you for writing it. Number seven, you guys are gonna talk about vaccinations for county staff and I also appreciate you guys sometimes going against some of the public opinion that happens these days and actually keeping people safe and trying to do what you have to do. Thank you. Thank you for your service too, much appreciated. Gary Richard Arnold, Chairman, Board of Supervisors. This is one report from the University of Sydney, a infectious disease professor says, as soon as a mask becomes saturated with moisture, your breath stops doing their job and past droplets, a process that takes only 15 minutes. Last year, the supply of N95 surgical masks were used and he says that they were totally worthless. We've got the CDC's National Institute of Occupational Safety. It says that they warn that even surgical masks do not provide the wearer with reliable level of protection and the hailing smaller airborne particles and does not consider respiratory protection. JAMA reports that German schools that they tested, the environmental office noted that the children's ailments were related to elevated carbon dioxide and hail and their findings suggest that children should not be forced to wear their mask because they have six times the amount of carbon dioxide that is permissible in a room. I'm also very concerned about the very fact that this is a organized program. The county was warned over a decade ago about the vaccines that were coming. The COVID plan of Rockefeller called Lockstep 2010 is available. Our community foundation, which has a huge Lacey social justice fund, man responsible for the death of tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Chinese. Anyway, Carlos Palacios was on the board of directors when they allowed a lady by the name of Margaret Lopez to decide which businesses stay open and which don't. Those businesses that were shut down should look into a RICO organization. The person that funded that lady should be public and anybody that's keeping that quiet should be under the jurisdiction of the DA for malfeasance. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody here, anybody else in the room that would like to address us, anybody virtually? There are eight speakers, nine speakers on Zoom. Okay. Carol, your microphone is available. Good morning, this is Carol Bjorn and I wanna echo what Gary just said. We need to have mass choice for the kids in our schools. I would invite everyone to come to the Pajaro Valley unified school district board meeting tomorrow evening at 7 p.m. in Watsonville to speak on this item. In addition to that, discrimination is alive today in the schools of Santa Cruz County. Please call Ferris Aba and the County Office of Education trustees today and ask them to remove all policies that discriminate against the unvax students. Currently, if a student is only exposed to a COVID positive person and that person displays no symptoms, that person must quarantine for 10 days if they are unvaxed. The vaxed do not have to quarantine. Not only is this discrimination, but it's also coercion. In 1975, Amnesty International created a report on torture. In that report, it included Biderman's chart of coercion. The first item on that list is isolation. So you have schools across this county not only discriminating against the unvax students, but also applying coercive techniques to get them to comply. In addition, this policy violates the student's right to medical privacy. By treating the unvaxed differently in this way, everyone will know who is unvaxed. Please call Ferris Aba and all County Office of Education trustees today, ask them to immediately remove these discriminatory and coercive practices. And please make a public statement denouncing these discriminatory and coercive practices. If you all fail to act and if you all fail to do this, then you are saying it's okay to discriminate and you're saying it's okay to use coercive practices. Personally, I think we should all be supporting our students no matter what. And I appreciate the man who spoke about suicide prevention. How do you think these kids are gonna feel when they're being singled out this way? We need to really be respectful of mental health and not discriminate. Good morning. I'm offering comment today on item 26 of the consent agenda, which has now been pulled to the main agenda. This is regarding the county's ongoing cannabis licensing operations. My family's lived, worked and run businesses across Santa Cruz County for almost 40 years. And while I understand the county's economic interests in cannabis industry revenues and the policy decision you've made to support the cannabis businesses, I wanna urge this board to also carefully consider the current negative impacts that commercial cannabis cultivation and manufacturing operations are having and will continue to have on sensitive environments and the families and neighborhoods across your districts. Specifically this morning, I'm asking this board to consider at a future meeting several amendments to the existing Santa Cruz County code dealing with non-retail licensing to include one, a public notice and public hearing process for all future commercial cannabis operations, regardless of the size and location. Two, a robust appeal process for any licensing and or permit decisions related to commercial cannabis. And three, enhanced setback requirements for any commercial operation near established residential homes, parks and facilities serving children. These amendments will one, bring back much needed transparency to this current mostly secret process. Two, improve public trust and confidence in the process. And three, demonstrate that the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors prioritizes protecting our sensitive environments and the quality of life for all County residents as much as generating tax revenue from the cannabis industry. Thank you. One user, one, your microphone is available. Can't hear anything. I heard the last speaker, but after that, I'm not able to hear anything. Can you hear me? Yes. Hello? I cannot hear anything. And I am not sure that you can hear me. I can hear you Becky. That's Ryan Coonerty. Oh, good. Thank you. Thank you for responding. Can the rest of the board hear me too? Start for two minutes. Justine Brenner, this is Zach. I can hear you. I don't know if the board chambers can hear you right now. That's the issue. I'm not hearing the board chambers either. Yeah. Can we resolve that problem before I give my testimony? I can hear you also. Becky, we can hear you in the board chambers. All three of you are participating remotely. Is that correct? Yes. So there seems to be a problem. I would like my testimony heard by all in... Becky, why don't you just hold on and we'll wait until the board comes back. Oh. Becky, this is Ryan. I've been told that the chambers can hear you. So go ahead. Good evening, friends and capists for confirming that you can hear me. And I'm hoping that the rest of the board and any audience members met in the board chamber can as well. My name is Becky Steinbrenner. I live in rural Aptos. I will not be able to stay for today's 1.30 session on the county taking possible action to mandate COVID injection of all county employees. I am not supportive of this at all and hope that your board will not require all county employees to be vaccinated. I want to point out to you that the International Association of Firefighters in their July 30th news release state, we strongly encourage all firefighters and emergency medical personnel to get vaccinated but do not support vaccine mandates. The county should take this as a cue. These are frontline workers and they are not supportive of mandating vaccines. Requiring this and requiring those who for whatever reason choose not to get the injection is discrimination and would violate the American Disabilities Act. I would also like to point out to you that a number of members of the public have received responsive materials from the county of Santa Cruz and also from the California State Health Department saying there is no documentation of the isolation of the SARS-CoV-2 organism in human beings. There is no documentation of that material in isolation. I want to jump back a bit. I find it curious that two items have been pulled from the consent agenda. One has been put for action at 8.1 immediately. The other one was shoved off to later in the day. I request that item number 12 be put as item number 8.2 in all fairness and that is a better procedure to support the public comment for people who are waiting here to be part of that hearing. Thank you, we have reached time. Thank you. In closing, I just want to say there is an item on the consent agenda requesting evaluation of different departments and California County fires has been added to that. I support that. County fire and Cal Fire need to be held accountable. Thank you, Collin, the user 7780. Your microphone is available. Yes, we can hear you. Thank you. This is, and I would like to speak back because I'm not sure where to go. The area between Freedom and Locking Valley Road has had about four power outages in the last month. From July 29th, 10th of August, 14th of August, 20th of August they've lasted about five hours each. As best we can tell from someone talking to a representative from PG&E, they seem to have a sensor issue where a very sensitive sensor is triggering a power outage which then takes them five hours to restore power. PG&E has not acknowledged what this issue is in phone calls and I don't know where to go to try to resolve this and see if we can have them change the equipment or do something else instead of these weekly power outages. So I would like some feedback from the provider friend or someone else. I don't know if this is a, not sure if this is actually a board of supervisors issue or which board would be responsible for going back and talking to PG&E and getting resolution on this. My suggestion is that he writes to supervisor friend who will pass that on to the board of supervisors. We receive several of these types of complaints or concerns. Vicki Wintour, your microphone is available. I wanted to speak on a consent agenda item number 24 which I understand has been pulled and thank you supervisor Caput for doing that. And I just want to advocate that you take the steps that are outlined to make the online notification system for pesticide application that you take leadership on this and follow the recommendations of the grand jury to make that system available to all Santa Cruz County residents. And I know, and I also want to thank you for your leadership on following the science and protecting our school children and county residents from COVID. And I just want you to take that same type of leadership to implement this online notification system for pesticide. Thank you. Vicki Shepard, your microphone is available. Thank you. Vicki Shepard and I live out in the the district that Zach friend overseas. And I'm hoping that regarding item number 26, a cannabis item that as we start to have more in-depth conversations about how this is affecting our neighborhoods, really taking consideration an evaluation of the existing farms that are mostly out in our district. And in our particular neighborhood, we have about 50 homes and it's a bowl, it's sort of a little valley right along the ocean with a lot of wildlife. And there has just been a permit hold for that particular farm, the farm that's in the middle of that bowl. So we literally, most of the properties, many of them look down into that farm. We have, my concern is that there is, has as far as I know, no process where there's an environmental study of what would happen to that area if a cannabis farm was allowed to go there. There are not only 50 homes in that area that most of which look down into that valley or that bowl, we maintain our own roads. There's also a school that's adjacent to that farm. And I'm concerned about the lack of transparency. We just learned about this permit being pulled even though we've been very aware of the possibility of some changes since there's been a lot of activity on the farm, including what appears to be preparing the greenhouses for some modifications and reconstructions. So our concern in the neighborhood is about traffic and our concern is about the lives and the children, the people that are going to be affected. Dalia Eperson, your microphone is available. Hi, thank you. I'm speaking on the mandates, both the vaccination mandates that you're looking at and also the mask mandates of the schools, but the vaccination mandates, forced mandates, first of all, why? I just have to, the question begs because anybody who chooses to get the vaccination is going to be vaccinated, there's no problem. So when you say it's for public safety, it actually doesn't make sense. Those who want to get vaccinated, they'll get vaccinated, they're good to go, no problem. Those who do not want to get vaccinated, hey, they take the risk of being unvaccinated. So what public safety are you referring to and how does that play into public safety? It just doesn't make sense. Also forced mandates, this violates all 10 points of the Nuremberg Code. It violates people's rights to medical privacy and it violates people's rights to choose what medical service is best for their body. Now I have a medical background. I was an LVN, I'm retired now. And if you go to the VAERS website, V-A-E-R-S, it shows the deaths from COVID vaccinations. And we're talking about 12,791 deaths. And please realize the swine flu vaccination or the swine flu shot in 1976, that was halted only after 32 deaths. So again, this whole thing about mandates, unethical, it goes against our rights, we should always have the choice that is the American way. So reconsider and do not force any mandates, especially for something like this, it's already caused over 12,000 deaths. And that is on the VAERS public website. Thank you. Michael, your microphone is available. Good morning, supervisors. I just want to speak this morning, very briefly about an issue that you've heard two previous speakers speak about. And that is with regard to the non-retail commercial cannabis operation that's planned in the middle of the neighborhood in the area just to the south of Aptos. This isn't an agricultural area that's away from neighborhoods that would have no impact on areas. This is, as you've heard, literally in the middle of a neighborhood with the 55 to 60 homes. All the supervisors at this point, your offices or your staff, received letters and calls from our neighbors here with regard to concerns about this operation. So I'm not going to belabor the concerns about it, but in broad strokes, we're talking about noise, we're talking about odor, we're talking about security, we're talking about light pollution. And I think that the current ordinance has to address those issues, begs the questions of why such an operation, we're talking 22 greenhouses here, would be allowed to be licensed in the middle of a residential neighborhood. The environmental impact and the consequences of the current county ordinance that allows an operation like this in the middle of a neighborhood with families and it is especially obvious to those who join that neighborhood or join that operation and will be looking down on it. So like the previous speakers, I just really urge the supervisors to take in consideration and amend the current ordinance to prevent the placement of these kinds of businesses in these kinds of neighborhoods. We have ample more remote locations that these operations can be successfully carried out and meet the objectives of the county. Thank you. Hello, your microphone is available. Thank you. Good morning supervisors. My name is Mark Weller. I live in Santa Cruz and I'm a member of Safe Ag, Safe Schools and my comments regard item 24 D through F on the consent agenda. I'm very concerned that the board may, according to the staff report, ignore the Santa Cruz County civil grand jury's recommendation to initiate a system of county online pesticide notification within six months and to work with other counties to push the state for a comprehensive statewide notification system. We know that three quarters of the more than a million pounds of pesticides applied in Santa Cruz County every year are so dangerous to our health that they are banned in at least six other countries of the world. Many and dozens of countries of the world but we find out three years after the fact when the state finally posts the information. We need to know ahead of time so we can take precautions so we can close our windows so it can keep sensitive people indoors so we can avoid the areas of the applications. We also know that most of these pesticides are applied in South County in Latinx majority areas. This is an example of environmental racism. Stop pesticide secrecy. Are five white guys going to ignore this issue? I trust not. Thank you. Kathleen Conley, your microphone is available. Kathleen Conley. Thank you. I needed to unmute. Good morning, everyone. My name is Kathleen Conley. I'm the emergency preparedness manager for Public Health which is a division of our health service agency. I come to this morning to the meeting to thank the board and support of the National Preparedness Month Proclamation. National Preparedness Month was started a year after the tragic events of September 11th as we're coming up on the 20th year anniversary of that tragic event. It causes us to reflect on our own personal family preparedness and the work that we are doing in our county to build resilience and to ensure that the whole community is ready for any type of emergency disaster of any type of hazard. I would also like to commend my colleagues and peers and all of the people in our community who have worked so hard since the start of this pandemic to save lives. And finally, I would also like to note that Santa Cruz County along with two other counties in the state of California were noted in today's New York Times for our high vaccination rates and the success that we have had which is the whole community effort. So again, thank you for your support for National Preparedness Month and we encourage all of our community members to really think about and to plan your personal and family preparedness as we move forward. Thank you. We have three last callers. That was it. We have three callers left. Oh, three. Call-in user one, your microphone is available. As a reminder to star six to unmute your phone. Hi, this is Marilyn Kiran and I wanna thank the previous speakers, except for the last one. And I have a book in front of me called The Contagion Myth, why viruses, including coronavirus are not the cause of disease. And the book explores theories of how disease actually spreads. And the book has citations of how illness has followed 5G installation in all the major cities in America with some 5,000 towns and cities now covered. And the symptoms of radiation poisoning from 5G are the same as the symptoms listed for COVID-19. In Europe, illness is also highly correlated with 5G rollout. And a study of a Spanish epidemiologist has charted the rollout of 5G in many, many countries and states that demonstrates a clear and close relationship between the rate of coronavirus infections and 5G antenna locations. The inside cover of the book are there really such things as viruses or are electrosmog toxic living conditions and 5G actually to blame for COVID-19. And I would like the board to stop any 5G installations. And I would like to know where Kathleen and Woody, your microphone isn't available. Am I unmuted now? This is Kathleen Kilpatrick. I'm a resident of Watsonville, a retired school nurse and trained as a nurse practitioner in occupational environmental health. And I live in the senior neighborhood close to the fields. And I wanna thank Supervisor Caput for pulling that rubber stamp of the agricultural commissioners response to the grandeur report from the agenda. I believe we all in our group that have worked on these issues believe this requires a lot more examination and further discussion. And we really urge the other supervisors to meet with us, not dissenting their staff but themselves so that we can clarify some of the misperceptions both in the grand jury report and in Juan Nidalgo's response. And I was really concerned that everything in the supervisors report that was presented to them to approve was pretty much a rubber stamp of what our egg commissioners put in his report. And then when you get to the end not even being willing to take on an advocacy role for this issue at the state level which other elected officials have done are Watsonville city council and school board and other city councils. And there's no harm in saying we're gonna put our power behind reinforcing the right to know of our citizens so that they can reduce exposure to the most toxic pesticides that are being applied in large quantities in our county and all over our state and our country. So let's keep talking about this. We have more work to do and we do have friends who can help. Milt Buck Collective, your microphone is available. Please state your name at the beginning of your comment. Yeah, good morning, chair or the supervisor, my name is Bernie Gomez, Milpa. And I'm, you know, I wanna say thank you to Mr. Kaput. Hope I said pronounced your last name correct. But for moving the item 24 onto the agenda this is another, you know, conversation that needs to not just be had but there's need to be direct action taken upon, right? The truth is that our families, you know, our elderly are used, our students, you know, they deserve to be protected, say, you know, from these harmful pesticides, you know, some might, you know, the ad commissioner, he really uses the whole, you know, like my hands are tied, I have my hands tied, I can't do anything, right? But the truth is, you know, the sense of advocacy that he can really push for, right? It's not there. So we need someone that's actually, you know, willing to take initiative and realize that these are really harmful, these are harmful factors that are affecting our communities, our families, right? So I just asked the board too to understand that, yes, Watsonville, you know, it's 84% brown, a lot of that population works in the fields. We do have, you know, elderly residents, you know, residency right next to some of the fields, right? McKenzie Park area, Bridget Street area, we have the Lakeview school right next to some fields, right? There's, you know, fields all around. So I just urged this board too, you know, to also adhere to and support the city council of Watsonville and the PBUC board, just like the previous speaker said, you know, they actually recognize that this is something that needs to happen and they've supported previous community engagements, right? And they've been able to, they were willing to sit down with the community and speak on this, but understanding that that's not their jurisdiction. So that's why I'm here and urging the board to make this happen, you know, it's low cost. It's, you know, and even if it wasn't, you know, this is the safety and security, right? Of people's health, you know, and that should be the first and foremost on top of your agenda to securities, you know, my family that they work in the fields, you know? So with that being said, thank you for the time. And I hope everything goes well at that further meeting. Thank you. Chair, there are no other speakers and there are no speakers in the ATRAM. Okay. We'll return it to the board for comments on the consent agenda, recognizing that item 26 has been moved to 8.1, that's the cannabis quarterly report and item 24 has been moved to 12.1. That's the grand jury report discussion. I'll start with the first supervisor, supervisor number one, any comments on the consent agenda of this supervisor Koenig? Yes, thank you, Chair. On item 24, the release of the broadband RFP, I just want to say I'm very excited to see this moving forward. Since taking office, I've heard from a lot of Santa Cruz mountain residents who feel isolated, disconnected, and generally frustrated by their inability to have access to fast internet service over the last year and a half. And I hope that this half a million dollars that the board has allocated for broadband will connect more people going forward. And then we can also take advantage of more federal and state funds coming available for this purpose. On item 45, I just want to congratulate the Health Services Agency on receiving this $4 million grant for children's and students' mental health services. It's going to make a huge difference and also address some of the needs we've seen, again, coming out of the pandemic for more mental health services for students. On item 47, the submission of the local area management plan. I just thank you to the Environmental Health Department for all the work they've put into this and the extensive public comment, reviewed and integrated. It's good that there is finally a time in the near future when our county will again be able to permit and review advanced treatment systems. Can I hit that? I do anticipate a longer discussion about this when we consider the ordinance updates themselves, those that are outside of the state requirements, including evaluation at the time of property transfer. And I also think that when you do, as a board, work on affordable alternatives like composting toilets, because ultimately increased requirements for advanced septic systems without affordable alternatives will simply lead to increased non-compliance. And finally on item 57, for the accepting bid results for the Live Oak Branch Library Project, the bid came in a little bit more than expected, but I'm still excited to see this project moving forward. It's within our budget from Measure S. And again, a big thank you to voters for approving Measure S. This will ultimately construct new electrical lighting, carpet and updates to the children's area at the Live Oak Branch Library that I will be much appreciated. That's all my comments. Thank you. Thank you. Second district supervisor, friend. Thank you, Mr. Chair. A few items I'd like to comment on. First item 22, I just wanted to compliment staff. There's a wide variety of items here that we're applying for this consideration with CSAC or creative items as well as it just shows the general leadership within the county. I hope that some of these are selected. We definitely deserve statewide recognition for the hard work for our county staff and we've received a lot of it in the past. I appreciate the occupation and consideration. On item 23, the redistricting item, again, a great appreciation to not just the committee that was created, but Ms. Benson and others in the CAO's office have been working to make this happen on a very condensed timeline. I would just like to encourage some of the outreach to expand a little bit beyond what was proposed to some of the secondary local papers, like say, for example, the Scots Valley Times or the Aptos Times, for example, and some of the neighborhood associations just to make sure that that outreach can happen. Since there aren't outreach events per se or committee hearings in every district, I think it would be important that we also reach some of those neighborhood-based organizations in a different way to let them know they can participate virtually in some of these meetings. On item 29, a great appreciation to our CAO and county staff in general on the remote work policy. It's very forward thinking. There aren't very many public agencies that are taking this much of a leadership role on this. It really does work on equity, the environment and the economy as far as it'll really bring services or help allow people to work remotely, but also anybody that's been sitting on Highway 1 in the last couple of months knows that any time that we can take some of those cars off is the second largest employer in the county that'll make a big difference. And there's a pure economic effect on people not having to do the commute as well on childcare, health, et cetera. So I think it really is a very forward thinking policy. And I'm glad to see that we're moving even more forward on item 34. I definitely appreciate Supervisor Coonerty and myself that brought forward this item and I appreciate the board's support of it and also the work of Mr. Bowling and others in ISD to continue this process. I see this as a model that we can use should there be additional state or federal funding coming through an infrastructure packages. There was a pretty significant $6 billion package in the state that hopefully this money or excuse me, this process could also be used to help create that process. I mean, there's a lot of communities not just in the first district, but as well in the second and fourth and well, I'd say the fifth and actually third while we're at it that it's one of these real areas that are really touched by lack of broadband access. It was really obvious during the pandemic but also even recently as people still continue to use telemedicine just having access as a real fundamental infrastructure issue and this is a good first step toward it. On the last two items on item 50, just appreciation for IHSS. I mean, anybody, we really should take more time to really appreciate those that work and in-home support of services. And I'm really glad to see that we're finally able to help with the pay situation. A lot of appreciation both to our human services team but as well as Ms. Patel and the personnel department to really make sure that this happened. But at the end of the day, those workers are doing work that many people aren't willing to do and it really makes differences in people's lives. It's really unmatched and a great appreciation to those workers that do that. And the last but not least on item 54, Hidden Beach. This is very exciting to see additional funds coming in this way and to have that groundbreaking coming up soon and to honor Jett Ramsey for this park and to see so many members of the community help fund this. I mean, the county did our job of both, Mr. Plosius was supportive of the board's interest in funding this as was Mr. Gaffney but to have this much community support shows that we can really reach out to the community to help fund these things. It's the largest investment in that playground in that park in a generation. I'm looking forward to seeing it come to reality. I thank you, Mr. Chair. I apologize my comments for a little bit long but I appreciate the opportunity. Third district supervisor, Ryan Coonerty. Sure, I'll be brief. There's just two items. Supervisor Friend just mentioned both of them. Item number 29, which is our remote work policy I think is a fantastic approach and I'm very supportive of it. And for all the reasons that Supervisor Friend mentioned and frankly, there's a way to recruit talent to the county that maybe we otherwise couldn't compete for. And so the only thing I'd like to add is I'd like to get additional direction to come back at budget time and hear how that policy is working in practice and how it's going in terms of those economic indicators in terms of keeping people off the roads and keeping people retained or attracted to work in Santa Cruz County. And then on item number 50, as Supervisor Friend says, these in-home supportive healthcare workers are doing really incredible work that's not only benefits their clients but also benefits society as a whole, keeping people out of skilled nursing facilities and other costly alternatives, keeping people in their homes, leading quality, improved quality of life. And I'm very happy and appreciate the personnel and HSD's work to reach a contract and to get more money into the pockets of these people doing this really incredible work for their clients and for our community. Fourth District Supervisor Greg Capich. Thank you, Chairman. I'll make my comments on the two items that were pulled and I agree with the... When we pull, discuss those items, don't, that'd be the proper time. I don't know if there's anything else on the consent agenda. No, everything else has been mentioned. Item 50, I wanna thank in-home health services also. Thank you. I have a couple that I would like to mention. Item number 22, the CSAC Challenge Award nominations. I wanna congratulate the county staff who worked from projects that have been nominated for Challenge Award with the California State Association of Counties. Thank the staff for all the work that has done for these projects. We have received statewide awards and recognition before. I surely do hope and expect we will do the same this time. On item 23 that's been mentioned, I wanna ensure the public knows about the redistricting process. It only happens once a decade, but this year will be happening very quickly because of the delayed census that took place. And so I wanna thank the members of the redistricting commission and the staff who are working under that timeline to bring back the plan to the board for approval in December. And that means that those sessions will probably be starting in the early part of September. We needed to get it back to the board by mid-December for final action. This is the redistricting process that really draws our county supervisor lines. So people should be aware that that is going to be a quick but upcoming process. And we are going to have meetings throughout the county for people to comment on those. Also, I wanna mention on item number 24, the broadband. As was mentioned by Supervisor Koenig, this is very critical for us. If we have been working to expand in this county and the state has, and I think as I as a member of CSAC or they have been pushing for this as has Supervisor Friend on the National Association of Counties, NACO, to expand this, it would have helped us immensely in this very recent fire crisis that we had. But we're really excited about the prospect of having more people have more communications in those types of crises. The on the item number 39, the River State Fraud Program under the District Attorney. I wanna thank District Attorney Jeff Rosell and his staff for the real estate fraud program. Very much a concern. It's very been very successful. I'm especially concerned about fraud, especially towards senior citizens who are among the most vulnerable in these trying times. And on item 47 that has been mentioned, the local area management plan or LAMP, the recently retired John Ricker would like to love to see that this is finally getting underway. I'm glad we're on track to get this report approved. It's been a long time in the making and it will be a good to have local management again on this issue to reduce the time it takes for approval. And I wanna thank the environmental health team for their efforts on putting this plan together and implementing it into the future so we can have a very more environmentally sensitive county throughout Santa Cruz. With that, I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as with the two directions to delay item 26 to 8.1 and item 24 to 12.1. I'll move the consent agenda with the additional direction. Second by Coonerty. Please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Supervisor Caput. Who's there? Supervisor McPherson. Aye. Thank you, Mr. Passes of the Tendents. Supervisor Caput, did you hear that? Did you get his vote? Sure he voted yes, but... He's not responding, so four to one. Okay. Yes, thank you. Okay, very good. Very good, thank you. We will move to item number seven on the regular agenda. Excuse me, to consider the adoption of a resolution confirming the issuance of one or more series of pension obligation bonds to refinance the outstanding obligations of the county to the California Public Employees Retirement System with respect to the county's safety plan and safety sheriff plan approving and directing related matters as outlined in the memorandum of the county administrative officer. We have a resolution authorizing the issuance of the POBs, indenture of trust, chart one of safety plans, chart two safety plans, table three estimated POB savings, preliminary official statement, bond purchase agreement and pension liability, management possibility, and Marcus Pimentel, our finance manager will be presenting this. Turn that on and pull it, no corsetry. That little button on. Thank you, my apologies. Good morning, Chairman McPherson and our board supervisors. I am, as you announced, I am your county budget manager and I'm presenting today's item on our concluding actions to issue our pension obligation bonds. In this hybrid presentation, we have two of our team members here virtually with us, Suzanne Herald of Herald and Associates. She's been our county's longtime municipal advisor and our bond counsel, Juan Galvan from Jones Hall. They're here in this space. So if we have questions and we need their support, they'll be here and available. As you recall, a primary objective of this project has been to stabilize our future payments and cash flows. In addition, we wanted to reduce our risks as well as increase the funded level of our pension plans, especially our own safety plans. We expect to recycle some of these pension obligation bond savings to reduce future pension obligation costs. So it's an important part of our future solutions to bridge our gaps. Today's actions, as you already outlined, will direct staff to finalize the pension obligation bond issuance process that was approved on May 11th, authorized on May 11th, 2021. And we want to provide an update on the changes since May 11th. Some of those we'll be talking about here in a few seconds. And finally, we wanted to conclude with what we told you we'd come back with some best practices policy on managing and developing plans to reduce future pension liabilities. In this board agenda item, we've linked this to our May 11th report since that report contained a lot of detailed substantial information and attachments that help talk about pension obligation bonds, their opportunities, their risks, and the thinking that went behind today's actions. The process, as you've been familiar with, we begin informally in April 15th, we presented this to the County's Dead Advisor Committee. They unanimously approved the moving forward with issuance of pension obligation bonds. On May 11th, this board authorized us to continue actions, including a validation action towards issuance of pension obligation bonds for our safety plans. We concluded that validation action in July. On August 16th, we had a very successful rating review by standards and porers. And today we are concluding actions and we expect to close these bonds by September 21st and likely earlier than that. Now just recapping some of the highlights that have changed since May, I am happy to report that we are still projecting well north of $60 million of savings over the life of these bonds, $61.3 million. And happy bird report that our bond interest rate is reduced from a projected 3% down to 2.4%. That is largely due to the confidence and trust the market and our rating agencies have in this board is actions, the County leadership and the prior conservative and very prudent fiscal management of the County. We do expect that the total issuance will be reduced to 124 million from 140 million that has large, that reduction is largely attributed to the reduction in interest rate and CalPERS. CalPERS, as you know, the stock market in March of 2020 collapsed mightily after the pandemic. CalPERS investments lost substantially in the end of that year. They've recovered a lot of that market and one of the opportunities that came out of that is they increased the funding level of our plans which reduced our liability. So the reduced interest rate plus some of the CalPERS earnings that reduced our liability allowed us to target a lower funding level of our debt. With that 21.3% investment rate returned by CalPERS it triggered a reduction in their discount rate. Their discount rate is what they project for future investments, but it's also the rate they charge us on their debt issuance, on their debt service costs. So that reduced from 7% to 6.8%. As you might recall, we modeled scenarios that were what would happen if CalPERS reduced the rate all the way down to 6%. And in those models, we were still achieving savings of $40 million. So we anticipated a reduction in the rate. This doesn't surprise us. And there could still be some more future modest rate reductions. And overall our savings is still projected at 61.3 million dollars over the life of the bonds. We both jumped ed. This is just a recap, a brief recap of a proposed financing structure. Most of the bonds will go towards increasing our fund level or our safety plans from 67% to 90%. There is a portion of the bond proceeds because we wanted to avoid double payments. We will have new debt service that starts this year and we would be playing our existing debt service to CalPERS. We're using some of the debt proceeds to pay CalPERS in advance. So we're not double paying on our debt. Otherwise just recapping that we, with this action we'll be increasing our investment, our fund level of plans up to 90%. We're very happy to do that. Included with today's actions that we discussed in May was the inclusion of a debt management policy that really is about when we come back to the board with future plans. And one of those by way of examples, what would happen if our 90% funded level of our safety plans dropped in the future down to below 85% that would trigger us from coming back to the board with a plan to return that to 85% or higher. In addition, we want to come back to the board later this fiscal year with a funding target for our other pension obligation liabilities and a plan towards how we reduce our miscellaneous plan that you might recall is a big portion of our liabilities but there's still some issues that we are resolving with the spirit courts and some other issues before we come back to that. But we want to come back to the board with how we reduce those liabilities and increase our savings in the future. So this is, we're really happy to bring this forward. It's a best industry practice and it was supported by S&P. With that, we get to our concluding actions or we should also pause for a second. And we always forget to thank ourselves. And I want to thank this board and our CAO, Carl Squasius. We've had an outstanding team put this together. They've been working on this for quite a long time, including Christina Mowry, our current county budget manager, Eda Jerisco, our elected county auditor, controller, treasurer, tax collector. They've been very instrumental in this, as has Jason Heath in returning hundreds of pages of review in an amazing time. So he's been phenomenal. We've had a very thoughtful, candid, dead advisory committee who looked at this very closely. And we've been supported by a lot of extremely important that subject matter experts, including Suzanne Harold and Jones Hall, Wong Galvin, who are here with us today, but also Govan Best. We've worked with CalPERS. They've been very generous with their time. And our new underwriter, Steve Nicholas, in Bank of America Securities, they've been very helpful with validating some of our projections. So we've had a very strong team, and I'm proud of this team, and I'm proud of the work that we've accomplished. So with that, we get to the concluding actions and ending this portion of the presentation to confirm the issuance of one or more of the series of our pension obligation ponds towards the goal of refunding, refinancing these outstanding obligations and approving the pension management policy that's outlined here on the slide for you. With that, that concludes my presentation. I and I know Suzanne and Wong are available for any questions you might have. Thank you. Thank you. And again, welcome Marcus Pimentel as our finance manager for the county. Very well done. Overall, this is going to save us $2 million. And I think it all also signifies, as you stated earlier on in your statements, the value we have in the county to have an adequate reserve that's recognized by the financial markets. And we're going to get back there. It's been a rough go as we know for one reason or another COVID fires, whatever the case, but the value of having an adequate reserve is really, really important. And this shows the success of that. I'm going to go to comments from the board. Start with supervisor friend, district two. Any comments? I think Mr. Chair, I don't have any specific comments other than appreciation on this. This is something we had a very extensive discussion about some months back. And as you noted, it does save a significant amount of money. I mean, there are some idiosyncrasies with the CalPERS process and the way that they calculate returns and such. But with that said, this is a very responsible thing to do moving forward and also puts future boards in a much better situation from a financial standpoint than the situation that we had inherited previously. So I think that this is a very responsible action for future boards as well. Thank you. Supervisor Coonerty. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to take a moment to thank staff, recognize previous County leadership who built a solid financial reserve that allows us to take advantage of these record low interest rates to lock them in for the foreseeable future and reduce our liabilities. I think this is a smart move and I want to thank everyone who's been involved in the effort. Thank you. Supervisor Caput. Yeah, thank you. I just wanted to make a quick comment that yeah, we did it in parrot the huge pension problems that we have today. That all started, a lot of it started in the 1990s and we're having to deal with it. So hopefully when we're done, the ones that replace us in the future will not have to not have this bigger problem is we're having right now. Thank you. And Mark, how are you doing, by the way? He's doing fine. Good. Supervisor Coonerty. Thank you, Chair Yes. I just also want to express my thanks to budget manager Pimentel and all the staff who have worked on this. You know, the County's actually a little bit ahead of the games and some of the other agencies out there. I know there is going to be competition when issuing these bonds. And so the quick work is allowing us to take advantage of the opportunity and also the sound fiscal management. Getting us to this point is allowing us to get to this fantastic interest rate. So just my deep thanks and appreciation. Are there any comments from the public? There's none here. Any virtual or? One speaker online, color 2915. Your microphone is available. This is Becky Steinberger. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. I am also glad to see that this lower interest rate money is being secured by the County. But I question why there is no additional payment being made to pay down this debt when the County has the money. This is a tactic that the Aftas the Sub of Fire District has been doing for the last, oh, I'll say three or four years. They're making double payments. And that is a wide use of money. So when the County has the extra funding, such as now, I mean, there was a budget surplus recorded, I believe, due to all of the federal funding. Why don't we use some of that to pay down the debt so that it is less of a burden? That makes financial sense. And what most of us try to do to pay our mortgage is, thank you very much. There are no other speakers and there are no speakers in the atrium. Okay, we'll return it to the board. I don't know if you had any further comments, Mr. Pimentel. Entertain a motion by the board. I'll move the recommended actions. I'll second, Supervisor Caput. Okay. Please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend? Aye. Community? Aye. Caput? See. McPherson? Aye. Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. Okay. We will go to item number eight. This is to consider an ordinance amending Chapter 7.130 of the Santa Cruz County Code relating to cannabis dispensary siting criteria, setback waivers and schedule the ordinance for a second reading and a final adoption on September 14th, 2021. As outlined in the memorandum of the County Administrative Officer, we have the 7.130.110E code amendment and the Santa Cruz County Code 7.130 red line. We also, we will take up this item as number eight and as was requested by Supervisor Friend, we will discuss a number 26 separately, but we'll go with this report first. Good morning, everyone. At the October 6th Board of Supervisors meeting, staff presented a summary of the cannabis licensing officials authority and options for including the public in decision making. The board made a motion that the cannabis licensing office officials decisions related to cannabis retailers seeking a setback waiver, include a public notice and appeal procedure. We're here today to review the proposed amendments to the ordinance. We're struggling here, the wheel's not working. We should be on public. I think right here, public. Next slide. Thank you. The public notice discussed with the board included notification to the public within 600 feet of a parcel while attempting to fulfill the board's motion. Staff has proposed we notify all owners within 600 feet and all lawful tenants within 100 feet. This was not identified in the board motion, but follows the current planning department policies for public notification associated with development permits. In addition to this notification to the lawful tenants within 100 feet, staff has also included posting a notification on the property which aligns with current planning department policies. With regard to appeal procedures, the procedures proposed include allowing appeals by any person. Any appeal would result in a stay in the issuance of a cannabis business license and upon receipt of an appeal or appeals, the matter will be heard de novo by an administrative hearing officer. The administrative hearing officer would be required to render a decision within 30 days. That would be final as specified by the board in their motion. Questions with regard to these changes? Okay. Well, thanks again to the cannabis licensing office for bringing this to the board and as well as the past modifications to our ordinances to improve the processes. I just wanted to question how many potential licensees would this apply to now if approved? And what level of compassionate care would future applicants need to demonstrate in order to be eligible? As it currently stands based on our review, only two of our current retailers meet the criteria for being approved for their compassionate care component of their business. Okay. Okay. I would go to the board. I'll open it up with Supervisor Coonerty. Any questions on item number eight? Not at this time. Thank you. Okay. Supervisor Caput, this is on item number eight, not item 26. So any questions on item number eight? Thank you Supervisor Caput. You are muted. I'll wait for item 26. Supervisor Koenig. No questions. Thank you. Questions? Any questions from the public here? Downstairs or on the? There are no speakers for Zoom or in the HM. Okay. We will return it to the board for action. Mr. Chair, this is a Supervisor Friend for a very brief comment of appreciation, Mr. Laforti, this was my requested additional direction, I appreciated the board's approval of this. I think this is a very reasonable approach and I also appreciate County Council's quick work on this. I will move the recommended actions. Friend? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. Caput? Aye. McPherson? Aye. Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. Okay. Now we will go to item number 20 or 8.1, which was item 26 on the consent agenda. And this is to accept and file a fourth quarter and annual report for fiscal year 2020-21 on cannabis licensing office operations, direct staff to return on or before October 19th, 2021, with the first quarter report for fiscal year 2021-22 and schedule a public hearing on November 9th, 2021 to address ordinance changes as recommended by the County Administrative Officer. Would you be presenting this again? Yes, I will. Okay, go ahead, please. For our last fiscal year, our retail system remained stable, specifically in the fourth quarter, we still have 12 retailers. Two retailers received conditional licenses in the third quarter to allow time to coordinate license modifications with the state. That has been completed and both now have annual licenses. With regard to taxes, we received over $3.1 million in retail CBT, which is a 16.8% increase over last fiscal year. On the non-retail front, I'll be presenting updates on key areas of interest previously identified by the board. With regard to licensing, 66 licenses have been issued as of the end of the fiscal year. Six licenses were in review. Of the 66 current licenses, 30 are a direct result of code modifications. 38 use permit applications have been submitted. Several of those submittals were delayed due to COVID related closure of public counters. But as of the end of the fiscal year, 26 use permits have been approved and seven are no longer being pursued. Compliance activities for the fourth quarter in the year, compliance inspections have remained steady with approximately 60 sites being inspected last quarter, not including our follow-up inspections. We have seen an uptick in non-compliant activity with our operators, mainly focused on our new operators. This has led to the issuance of five notices of violation last quarter, which resulted in two operations being closed, one licensee and one operator with a local letter of, or a Lola. For annual compliance activities, as part of the year-end summary, I wanted to highlight how the CLO code compliance efforts complement the sheriff's office enforcement efforts. The sheriff's served 96 search warrants last year and code compliance staff issued 59 notices of violation associated with those search warrants. In this work, code compliance staff evaluate unpermitted and substandard work as part of issuing the NOVs. 19 sites were deemed an immediate public safety hazard and power was disconnected to some for all the properties to mitigate hazards identified by code compliance staff. Activities within the C&M zones is limited to a total of 100,000 square feet. There are currently eight properties pursuing cannabis activities within these districts. There is currently one property within the C&M zones still building out to meet their use permit conditions of approval, and a second, which is applying for building permits to meet their licensing requirements. Of the remaining six properties, five have licenses and the sixth is pending. The total potential canopy within these buildings could be approximately 12,000 square feet. Of note, only three of the eight sites within these zones plan on cultivation. So with regard to non-retail taxes, we received nearly $3.1 million in non-retail CBT. This was 1.4 million over budget and represented a 95.8% increase from last fiscal year. The main driver of the increased non-retail CBT revenues for last fiscal year was primarily a increase in licensed operators. Enforcement activities remain steady overall for the year, even though the sheriff's team were reassigned during the CZU Lightning Complex fire last year. Enforcement activities have identified more indoor cannabis cultivation activity associated with power theft than in previous years. This year's activity included the seizure of 59 firearms, which was an increase of 32 firearms versus the previous year. Now the amount of processed cannabis seeds decreased substantially by over 7,000 pounds, but the amount of cannabis extract increased by over 700 pounds this year. The labs identified by the sheriff's office, the sheer amount of them has remained steady, but the size and scope of lab operations this year was greater than in years past. There have been numerous changes at the state level this year that I wanted to highlight to the board and those changes include an Appalachian's program. So cannabis cultivators can identify where their cannabis is grown in an organic equivalence program. The most substantial changes that have occurred at the state level are focused on the consolidation of the state agencies. There were three licensing agencies that have consolidated into the Department of Cannabis Control. The Department of Cannabis Control has completed a superficial revision of state regulations to reflect this consolidation effort, but this year we do expect significant revisions to reflect the streamlining efforts that the DCC is currently making. All right, I'm stuck, Stephanie. Thank you. So just a brief summary. 30 licenses have been issued based on the new regulations. 66 licenses total as of the end of the fiscal year. Enforcement activities have remained steady and staff is seeking to make additional non-substantive code modifications to clean up some issues with regard to technical issues in the code. And I'd like to open up to questions from the board. All right, thank you very much. I think we've opened this up with Supervisor Friend who requested this to be pulled from the consent agenda. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. I thank you for the board for indulging this being pulled in also for Mr. Bill 40 for his work over the last year. Since part of the reason why I was interested in pulling the item is because they're gonna be coming back in November with some code modifications and I thought that it made sense to propose additional ones based on information that we've received over the last year. As you know, all these ordinances are meant to be iterative. We take sort of a yearly look at them or even a quarterly look at them to see whether they need to be modified and we've made innumerable modifications to them over the course of time. And I think that one of the things that needs to be modified is in regards to the non-retail ordinances. As you know, the board also had always focused on ensuring that all this activity not be in residentially zoned districts, unfortunately, at least on the non-retail side, what we're finding is that a lot of this cultivation of manufacturing is actually occurring immediately adjacent to a residential parcel, which was I think outside of what the board's intent always was and is having neighborhood-based impacts. Now disproportionately, to be fair, this is occurring in my district with a little less so happening in Supervisor Koenig's district, but all the same, these impacts are very real and I think was outside of what the board's original intent was. Over the last year, I've had meetings with the Farm Bureau, I've had meetings with neighborhood associations, with community groups, even met extensive conversations with our great GIS team to look at maps to ensure that we weren't, that what we were considering proposing today for the board's consideration for a future comeback ordinance revision was really just to honor the board's intent and not to just simply remove the possibility of cultivation or manufacturing or any other non-retail activity. And I think that we've met a decent balance. I also like to acknowledge that Mr. Laforte has volunteered a lot of his time to attend these community meetings virtually with us to answer a lot of questions from concerned community members, as well as the Farm Bureau and he's an outstanding resource for the county and I've appreciated his time on that. In particular though, I think that what we need to do is have staff come back at that November date with some specific modifications to the ordinance. And some of these, by the way, mirror what we just adopted on the retail side. So such as a noticing community and put an appealability factor, that language just adopted on the dispensing side, on the retail side. And I think we should also have that on the non-retail side. And I think that we need to prohibit on the non-retail side cultivation on CA property that's adjacent to residentially zoned districts plus a setback of 500 feet. So a valid question would be, well, how much does this impact? Well, it still maintains over 800 parcels for cultivation in the CA zones, but it eliminates these conflict points that occur actually specifically in the first, third and second districts where there are residentially zoned districts immediately adjacent to commercial agricultural cultivation. And that is what has been leading to most of these complaints. As Mr. Laforte said, there's been a number of compliance issues over the last year. Well, if you look at the stats that are basically all within the second district and almost all of them are conflict points between residentially zoned areas and commercial agriculture. So to move forward on that, I'm prepared after public comment to make a specific motion, but I'll daylight the additional issues that I have. I think that we should have a moratorium come back to the board on approval of any permits, just like we did on the vacation rental side that would meet this criteria until the board can actually adopt an ordinance associated with this. I'd be asking that we have a moratorium come back on these conflict point locations, maybe September 14th that the board can enact in advance of the November action where the board can consider these changes. And lastly, I just would ask Mr. Laforte and County Council to come back with information on current permit holders that might be in conflict with the zoning and setback concerns. I recognize that they have a permit. I don't know what the solution is on that, but just to kind of provide an understanding to the board of how many there are and ways that maybe we can mitigate or address those issues because that's where a number of those complaints are coming. I'll put that into a specific motion when it comes back or I'd be happy to answer any of my colleagues' questions or I'd be very welcome to hearing anybody from the community. There are a few members did speak during public comment, as you know, I've received sort of an innumerable number of letters in advance of that. The board received a number of them as well. So there is a lot of community interest in support of these actions. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Sure. So first, I think I wanna start broadly by appreciating Mr. Laforte and this report. It's incredibly clear, outcome-driven and by and large, really good news. We moved from a place where we were getting very few permits approved to where we now have an operating system. I appreciate both the increase in business and tax revenue, but then also the increased enforcement to ensure that the rules are being followed. I thought it was a very good report and reflective of the very good work that the cannabis licensing officer has been engaged in and sort of a model for other priorities for the County of how we can track and see improvement and make changes as necessary. As Supervisor Friend mentioned, we've gotten a lot of letters and just had some comment this morning. And I'd like to ask Mr. Laforte to respond to some of the comments that were made this morning and how we try to balance, you know, competing uses or needs in this area. The public associated with the Crest Drive area, I believe that's what all the speakers were discussing. I think it actually exemplifies how the code works because those members of the public have been concerned. They've reached out to the office, they've reached out to Supervisor Friend's office, but that site in question actually would not qualify for a cannabis business license without going through the conditional use permit process due to its location to sensitive receptors, the school that was mentioned, there's also a state park in the area. So that would not be able to be licensed directly by the office. It would go through the same development process as any other commercial use in the County. So I think it actually, the people's concerns make sense and they're very clear, they've articulated them super well, but the code actually captures it quite well by deferring any action to a conditional use permit, including a zoning administrator public hearing and public notification. So I believe there was a second question in their Supervisor Coonerty about... No, no, I wanna appreciate your work and I appreciate the clarity around what that particular parcel and the process that the public process that will be implemented in that area. I haven't heard Supervisor Friend's additional directions yet so I'll wait and can respond to those. But overall, I just wanna thank you for the report and the work on both the permit processing side to create jobs and tax revenue, but then also on the enforcement side to protect our environment and our neighborhoods. Thank you. I've been getting phone calls also and a couple of letters and I could see that the same problem we're having in just Supervisor Friend's area and others could be coming to the Watsonville area. I just wanted to say from what I'm looking at on number 26, it does allow for the review process. It does have, it states public input and it also has the appeal part of it. So the whole thing comes down to, we wanna protect residential ag areas and CA and residential a lot of times come right next to each other. So it's a protection of neighborhoods and also the word compassion, compassionate cannabis growers and things like that. We need to show compassion to residential areas that and residential neighborhoods and they don't want a lot of changes. They've been there for many years and they have a great concern about how cannabis right next to their neighborhood might change the whole atmosphere of their neighborhood. So anyway, I agree with, we need to look at this more and I'll support any motion. To do that. Supervisor Brown, you were gonna make the motion. Okay, we'll wait after we hear public comment and return to the board. I'm gonna make a couple of comments too. I'm impressed. Thank you, Mr. Fort for everything that you have done to get us to this point. We've seen an increase in revenue and law enforcement activity as, and I'm very concerned about making sure that the compassionate care portion of this is remains and I think it will with any motion. We worked a long time on this over two years and we got to where we are today. And I think we have benefited from those discussions. There's probably, there's going to be more, it appears. And so I do appreciate a new look at this under the circumstances. And just want to say thank you for your office and what you've accomplished. It's a, you don't have a very big office at all. And for the law enforcement activity too that has taken place. Supervisor Coney. Yes, thank you, chair. And thank you also to Mr. Laforti for the great report and all your work to improve the licensing operations in the county. It certainly shows in terms of some of the revenues we've started to see, I mean, nearly $6 million to the positive $3 million from the retail space and another $3 million from non-retail. And I think our county certainly sorely needs that money in these trying financial times. You know, I'll just echo what Supervisor Friend has said. I mean, certainly I've heard concerns from residents within my own district, also having grown up on Browns Valley Road, which is the site of, one of the sites of concern I've heard a lot from former friends or current friends and former neighbors there. So I recognize the need to balance the interests of industry and residents. I guess, you know, I'm, later on in our agenda day on item 10 we're considering the comprehensive economic development strategy and it does talk about ag tech innovation. And I think, you know, we have to include cannabis as a crop in terms of ag tech innovation and potential for our community. So, you know, I'm really interested as we move forward in understanding some of the impacts that Supervisor Friend's proposals will have on the industry, as well as any ideas from the Cannabis Licensing Office on how we can continue to support the industry in a responsible way. Thank you. Will we go to the public? Are there any comments from the public? See. Good morning, my name is James. I'm kind of reminded of a landlord that kind of put me in my place when I was renting from her in 2007. And she's like, you know, stoners come up with the best ideas in the world. They're just too stoned to do anything about them. And I will think that, you know, the last time that cannabis came up when I actually was able to attend a city of Santa Cruz meeting, they went on for over two and a half hours. You know, during this process, when everything got shut down, the liquor stores didn't get shut down and the cannabis dispensaries didn't get shut down and neither did any of the big corporations. So it's great that we're talking about cannabis, but if there were three things that could actually heal the world, it would be hemp and cannabis is part of hemp. During the Civil War, it was required that every farmer grow hemp, which is an unheated, activated cannabis. So that's enough. I mean, I'm sitting here because I want to comment on, I believe what is going to be 8.2, but I figured I'd put in my 10 cents. No, it's going to be 12.1, but go ahead. 12.1? Number 26 is, what was it? Number 24 is going to be 12.1. Any other comments from the public? Yes, sir. Hi, I'm Christopher Daley and I've been a 47 year resident of Santa Cruz County and I've been cultivating cannabis since I was 15 years old. And when the sixth plant limit was passed, I believe it was April 14th, 2020, the word didn't get out to people. People in my neighborhood were growing 24 plants and didn't know that it was down to six. And the sheriff's department came in and would take everything. And that, you know, they could have left six plants. I believe the way it is with law enforcement, it creates a dichotomy. It makes growers and law enforcement creates hostilities between the two. And it needs to be communicated, you know, or the laws when they get passed advertised so people know what's going on, you know, because waiters now, when they fly over, you know, they could letter the people and say, hey, you have too many plants, you got to cut it down, you know, limited to what it's supposed to be instead of coming in and taking everything like that. You know, it needs to be a rapport between the cultivators and the constables. Because the currency, I've seen some of the sheriff's department, some of the things that they've done to people like drain their water tanks and, you know, this is like the sheriff of Nottingham, you know, we're going back in time. It's like going back to the camp years that was a failed policy then and it's a failed policy now, history repeats itself and we're smart enough to not go back in time. Yeah, thanks for listening to me. Thank you, thank you for your comments. Anyone else would like to address us here, chamber? We have anybody online? There's no one in the HM, just for the record, the HM has been closed. Okay. There's caller 2915, your microphone is available. How many callers do we have? We have three callers. Three, okay. Thank you. Hello, this is Becky Stegner. Can you hear me? Thank you. First of all, thank you to provides a friend for pulling this from the consent agenda. It really does merit discussion like what we're having now. And I know in table one that district three has zero licenses. And I think that's a big disproportionate difference between say district two that has 28 licenses, district one that has 26 licenses. So I'm curious why district three, supervisor Coonerty's district has no licenses. And yet there is definitely corrective activity enforcement activity going on there even with the CCU fires happening. As is shown in table five, notice the violations by supervisor district there were a total of five violations in district three. I am very curious and quite concerned by the information in table four, the cannabis enforcement activity, especially the number of firearm fees, 40 alone in the third quarter. By the notice of violations in the district, table five, that looks like it could be mostly from the supervisor Connick's area where there were five actions, one action taken in the third quarter in district three and one action taken in district four. So I am curious about this level of weaponry that's coming into the cannabis areas. I'm grateful that the law enforcement is finding it and seizing it. I've had a very large operation in conjunction with the BHO lab in my community. And people had no idea it was- Chris Codpia, your microphone is available. Hello, this is Chris Codega, can you hear me? Okay, my family owns the property at 224 Browns Valley in Coralitas. We've been working with this issue since 2019. And I would like to thank a supervisor friend for being so receptive to our neighbors in Coralitas. We have over a hundred people who are involved in our group called the Coralitas Coalition for Balanced Land Use. I appreciate with his recommendations, a 500 setback, a foot setback is good. The peels process, we appreciate that. Greenhouses, we feel should be required if you're gonna do it to limit the odor. The odor is terrible down there in our area. We're also very supportive of a moratorium as of now on the licenses that are adjacent to the residential zone type RRA and R. And also I'd like to raise the issue of enforcement. Right next to us at 196 Browns Valley, there were people who had felonies that were able to get licenses. We don't know how this happened. We're worried about firearms. Also, the cannabis is not subject to the ag water runoff rules, which our little pinnaker organic apple orchard is. We're having major rodent problems because most of the land on cannabis grows is fallow. So we've had terrible gophers and now squirrels. And also I'd just like to say that, revenue is not the most important thing. And we just, I don't think you make enough money off having grows in small rural neighborhood. So thank you very much. Vicki Shepard, your microphone is unmuted. Thank you for taking my call. Can you hear me? Can hear you. Thank you. I just want to thank Supervisor Friend and Capit for addressing this issue, the cannabis issue again. And for the work that Sam is doing to really look at the community that I live in off of Crest and CV Terrace. But also I want to say I had a long conversation with a long time well-known farmer in the rural area of Watsonville that is I believe the district that Capit oversees. And I know that he has told me that there's three farms within his region and some of them, you know, they glow in the night and we're talking about environmental concerns. And I don't know that we've really addressed the lighting that happens from the greenhouses that really ruins the night sky. And I would love for this to be, you know, really looked at environmentally. And I know I'm not as articulate as some but I just want to appreciate that you're taking time to look at this and take moratorium on these issues. Yeah. And different models that we've explored. So I'm just gonna thank you again for stopping and taking a look at this and thanks for your time. John, Pazini, your microphone is available. Thank you. I also want to support the board's review of the cannabis cultivation regulations and support and appreciate the attention that both the cannabis licensing officer and the supervisors have provided for the community in Coralitos. It's time to understand the impact that some of these cultivation grows have on residential communities and to review a better way to find a more balanced way to continue to support the cannabis industry within Santa Cruz County but also support the residents of Santa Cruz County and make sure that we can provide the resonance with the ability to continue with our way of life and the reason why we all love living in Santa Cruz County. Thank you. Kathleen and Woody, your microphone is available. I did not really intend to speak on this topic. It just happened to come across my, yeah, I just wanted to speak up for Watsonville and downtown Watsonville. We have a lot of warehouses, some of which are empty. We have farm workers who are changing occupations because if they work in the cannabis industry, the pay is better, the working conditions are better and they're not exposed to pesticides. I guess those are positive things but meanwhile our warehouses that could be converted to vibrant organic products being produced or being used to produce marijuana. And I don't really feel like marijuana is always the best use of our agricultural resources. I think there are environmental concerns. I think there are cultural concerns. I know a lot of pot farmers. I was married to a pot farmer at one time. I just don't think that this is the best use of our agricultural capacity for this area and for the benefit of our community. And I think that the amount of revenue that was gained from that, that was shockingly low between the value of the marijuana industry. So just remember Watsonville, remember the nature of our agricultural history when you're protecting those more affluent suburban neighborhoods. Thank you. There are another speakers chair. Okay. There's one more check if there's anybody from the public who has not spoken, wants to speak on this. We'll return it to the board. I'll direct action comments from a supervisor friend who brought this. Yeah, thank you again, Mr. Chair. And I just wanna address a couple of the questions other my colleagues, including yourself have sort of raised. I mean, ultimately the modifications that I'm proposing maintain the existing framework that we spent a couple of years on. I mean, candidly at the end of the day, overwhelmingly this activity is still gonna occur within the second district. I mean, the first district has the manufacturing side but we're really, my district has the cultivation side and what's being proposed is not gonna subsequently shift this to any other location. It's just gonna eliminate those conflict points between the residentially zoned areas, or lead us in particular, which is where this has been disproportionately difficult. And then some areas in the greater La Selva area but that's really what this is looking at. And I tried very hard actually in my work with both the neighborhoods, with the Farm Bureau, with the cannabis licensing officer to try and come up with something that honored what both supervisor Coonerty and supervisor Koenig were noting, which is that this is realistically an industry that's gonna be in existence here. And this is not an attempt in any way, shape or form to undo any of the work that the board had previously done. It's just that we look at ordinances over time and this is such an evolving space, even more so than any other land use decision that we've made over the last decade or so that I think it's reasonable to make these modifications. The debate about whether or not the Pajaro Valley should have switched from apples to lettuce and then lettuce to berries and maybe berries to cannabis is one that's a valid larger question and the board has had those discussions, I mean, sort of alluding to what the last caller was saying, but ultimately what I think that we've been consistent on even though we've had some really robust debates and as you know, I've been on a losing side of some of those discussions is that we never intended it to occur in residential zone areas ever. I mean, be it dispensing, manufacturing or cultivation and yet what we didn't address was when these are immediately adjacent to it has the same de facto issue of existing in a residential zone area. So what my proposal is is to move the recommended actions on this item but to provide additional direction where the staff is to return in November which is already within the recommended actions but specifically with updates on the non-retail ordinance that include a prohibition of cultivation on CA zone parcels that are adjacent to residentially zone parcels plus a setback of 500 feet. And as I noted that maintains still over 800 parcels that are open to still do this cultivation. Create a noticing community input and appeal ability process that we can simply just mirror after what we just adopted for the retail side. To come back with information on current permit holders that might be in conflict with these new zoning and setback concerns, how many there are and just provide information on whether there are ways that could mitigate or address that issue. And lastly to create a moratorium on approval of any new permits or any permits that would come in conflict with this CA property adjacent to residentially zone plus 500 feet while this ordinance is being considered. So that would come back on September 14th, the proposal for the moratorium. The actual ordinance revisions would come back in November. And as a reminder, it still has to go through quite a large public process. It has to come to us, it has to go to the Postal Commission, et cetera. So it's gonna be a long time until these changes are actually put into place which is why I think that there should be a moratorium that the board should consider in September in advance of that long process. So that's my motion. All second. Okay. And so that's to come back September 14th in relation to the moratorium and a revision to discuss the ordinance revisions in November. Is that clear? Please call the roll or do you, excuse me. Do you want any comments? I'm sorry. Sure. Thank you, Chair. Yeah, I'd just like to appreciate the motion and move an amendment that on November nights, staff include an evaluation of the potential impacts of the changes proposed by Supervisor Friend. And additionally, the staff return with options that would potentially support the cannabis industry or increase tax revenue. I mean, that's a reasonable amendment because generally speaking, when this stuff comes back, they provide the context as to what the impacts of the ordinance would be. So I see that as a friendly amendment have no issue with and I would hope that Mr. Laforte would always come back with what this would do or not do in regards to what our proposed interests are. Still, with that said, I think that, so I will accept that as a friendly amendment. I do believe though that ultimately, I can't support something that continues to allow this cultivation against residentially zoned districts. I hope that the board would agree with that when it comes back in November. Chair. Yes. On November 9th, are we, is staff supposed to return with code modifications or just a report on the potential code modifications and the effects of them per Supervisor Friend motion, Supervisor Friend's motion and Supervisor Koenig's addition? Is it just, is it both or one? So I'm asking for the code modifications to come back. I figured in the staff report, there would be a consideration based on Supervisor Koenig's comment or amendment that would provide whether or not, what these issues are or aren't in consideration because ultimately that's what's going to inform whether the board's comfortable with making this decision either way. I don't consider them to be two separate analyses that need to happen. Proposals rather than specific code amendments for other ways to support the industry. Yeah, yeah. Okay, we have, please call the roll. Yeah, okay. So this is for item 8.1, Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Feunity. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you, motion passes unanimously. Okay, very good. Thank you. Good discussion. Thank you, Mr. Laforte for all your work on this who really appreciate it. Thank you. We go to, I think we'll go through. I guess we'll go through. I'd like to get right through before we go into a closed session about noontime. Item number nine is to consider and approve in concept and ordinance adding chapter 7.61 to the Santa Cruz County code to establish the Santa Cruz, Monterey, Merced, San Benito, Mariposa, better known as the SCMM-SBM, Managed Medical Care Commission and repealing chapter 7.58 to terminate the Santa Cruz, Monterey, Merced, Managed Medical Care Commission and schedule a second reading of the final adoption of the ordinance on September 14th, 2021 as outlined in the memorandum of the Director of Health Services. We have an ordinance adopting the Santa Cruz County 7.61, Santa Cruz, Monterey, Merced, Santa Cruz, or San Benito, Mariposa, Managed Care, Managed Medical Care Commission. I don't know that we're going to have a presentation on this. Just a point of order, Chair. We do have a scheduled item at 10.45, item 12, excuse me. Thank you. That is very, thank you for bringing up to my attention. Okay, I'm sorry. We're gonna skip to item number 12 as the Board of Directors of the Santa Cruz County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, Zone 6, it's a public hearing to consider formation of the assessment district to fund the maintenance of the Rio Del Mar Flats drainage improvements, close the public hearing and continue the public hearing to September 14th, 2021, to allow for tabulation and certification of the assessment ballot results and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of Zone 6 District Engineer. Yes, sir. Good morning, Chair McPherson and directors. I'm Kent Edler, Assistant Director of Public Works as well as the Assistant District Engineer for Zone 6. This item before you today is regarding the Rio Del Mar Flats Benefit Assessment District, which is being considered for formation in order to fund the operations and maintenance of a pump station and associated drainage facilities, which Zone 6 will be constructing if the formation passes. The Pump Station and Drainage Improvement Project would alleviate the common flooding issues in the Rio Del Mar Flats area, up to the approximate 10-year event. Zone 6 staff was awarded a grant from FEMA for $600,000 for the design of the project, and an additional $4.2 million in grants has been awarded for the construction. Although $4.8 million in grants have been received for the design and construction of the project, there aren't grants available or another identified funding source for the ongoing annual operations and maintenance. So the property owners in the area who have a direct benefit from reduced flooding are being asked to form the assessment district in order to cover the approximately $121,000 in annual operations and maintenance costs. The amount would increase annually by the lesser of 2.5% for the Consumer Price Index. The project to relieve flooding in the Rio Del Mar Flats has been the culmination of many years of study by Zone 6 staff, our engineering consultants, the Coastal Commission, FEMA, as well as state parks. It also was subject to a thorough environmental review process, which included public noticing and a public hearing. Numerous community meetings have also been held in articles in the Aptos Times regarding the project and the proposed assessment have been written by Director Friend as well as myself. The Rio Del Mar Flats area was developed in the 1920s and the drainage system installed at that time was inadequate. Basically, the area is too flat to effectively drain the area into Aptos Creek, so the proposed project would disconnect a portion of the drainage that currently drains to the creek in order to alleviate the flooding. If the assessment district formation does not pass, there would not be enough funds to operate and maintain the pumps and the drainage facilities. Not being able to properly operate and maintain a system like this could create other issues, so the project won't be constructed if the assessment district is not established. Zone 6 staff would also have to decline the $4.2 million in construction grants from FEMA, Cal OES, and the Department of Water Resources. Valets were mailed out to property owners following the June 29th, 2021 board meeting. Property owners have up to the close of the public hearing today to turn in ballots at either the Department of Public Works or outside or in the board chambers here and there's a box right behind me. So the recommended actions are open to public hearing and hear objections, if any, to the proposed Santa Cruz County Flood Control and Water Conservation District Zone 6, Reel Domar Flats, Drainage Improvement Maintenance Assessment District, close the public testimony portion of the public hearing, direct the election department to tabulate the submitted ballots and continue the public hearing to September 14th, 2021, to allow for tabulation and certification of the ballot results. Also wanna point out that a Zoom link has been set up for the public to view the ballot opening or the ballot tabulation by the elections department. The link is located on the Public Works website on the bottom left of the page in a light blue box. Interested parties can click on that link for details on how to join the meeting. The link is also available on the civicmic.com website in the news section. Note that further recommended actions will return on September 14th with certification of the ballot results and I'm available for any questions. Thank you, before we go back to the board, I'd like to open the public hearing to the public. Yes, sir. Hi, my name is Doug Spinelli. I'm a property owner in the flats area. I recently wrote a three page letter and gave a copy to each member of the board and to the director of Public Works. Today I haven't received any reply from anybody. So I came here in person just to express some of the concerns that I have with this project. My first question is, how did the county determine that the existing drainage system is inadequate when based upon my personal surveillance or inspection of these drain basins, about 50% of them are plugged completely. The remaining of the remaining 50%, about 25% are about half plugged and live vegetation is seen growing inside some of these catch basins. I also have observed that there are pigeons nesting in one of the drops or the pipes that conveys the water from the area to the Aftos Creek. So it makes me wonder what Public Works is doing to help relieve this problem. And I kind, I was just up to the Public Works department and I asked about the amount of maintenance. Go ahead. The amount of maintenance that is occurring at the site and I just got some sketchy answers. So I would like to have that information clarified because I don't think they're doing the proper maintenance to make the system work properly. And a second, I had a second point here. Oh, I want to question the assessment district itself, how people are being selected to be, okay. I just want to get some more information so I can see how they're determining who's benefiting from this proposed solution to the problem. And I'd like more information on that. I know from my personal experience, my house over 35 years, my house has had water pond under only three times. And I solved that problem with a $100 submersible pump. So it makes me wonder why we have to spend all this money on these things when maybe a more simple solution is available. Okay, thank you. Oh, you know, I did ask for a written reply and I hope I can get one. I don't know if you want to briefly answer any of those at this point, Mr. Edler? Sure, I can certainly address some of the questions I was taking notes. So how did the first, how did the county determine that the drainage system wasn't adequate? We've had our engineering staff review hydraulic modeling and looking at the system. Basically the drainage system out there is incredibly flat and it drains to Aptos Creek. So what happens is that during heavy rainfall events, I'll just use the layman's terms that there's not enough power in the system to get the water out into the creek. So the water during the rainfall events is basically backed up by the high flows in the creek. So that's the basic reasons why the system is inadequate. So regarding the system being plugged up and so forth now, we have had our maintenance staff out there recently to take a look. Part of the problem is that again, the water levels are really high in the creek right now. So when they go through there and they look, it's full of water because it can't drain out. So they're waiting till in late September, before the rainy season comes, so they can get in there and really inspect the system and get everything cleaned out before the rainy season. And so we go through there and we do that annually and then so how was the assessment district formation, the parcels determined. So we looked at the hydraulic modeling and determined what the flood elevations would be based on how properties would benefit by this project. So it affects properties up to the tenure event. So the assessment district was broken down into several different elevations. So there's properties that are at, who have touched the 14 foot elevation, the 16 foot elevation and the 18 foot elevation. So the lower you are, the more you would flood. So those properties would have a higher assessment. So any property that's getting assessed, with properties that are getting assessed would be touching those 14, 16 and 18 foot elevations. Additionally, properties that are maybe not in the, in the realdom are flat area, but they would have to drive through the flooded areas or the areas that would benefit by this, by this project. So there we looked at those properties as well, cause they would receive a direct benefit by no longer having to drive through flooded areas. And so our modeling and mapping shows, shows the areas of the properties that would receive the direct benefit. Thank you. Is that open for discussion? Well, just one question if you have. Oh, no, okay. For a couple, very briefly. No, no, no, that's okay. I can wait. I questioned some of the things that he said, there are alternate routes to get out of the area. You don't have to drive, for most people, they don't have to drive through the flooded areas. Okay. Thank you, sir, for your interest. Are there any other comments from the public? I have two on Zoom. Two are on Zoom. Three now. Okay. Caller 2915, your microphone is available. Becky, your microphone is available. We'll go down to Tuka G, sorry, she's unmuted. Hello? Hello, we can hear you, Becky. Becky Steinbruner, I didn't hear that you wanted me to speak, is that my time? Yes. Yes. Oh, thank you. This is Becky Steinbruner. I have attended some of the meetings and really have a question as to whether if the current system is not working because of high water levels in Eptoc Creek, will the new system work with the effluent being pumped out to the beach during high tide times? What guarantees us that in sea level rise or high tide storm events that this new system would work? I'm concerned that it will not. And I have seen some of the correspondence on the website by the homeowners in the area where the effluent would be pumped out as to potential damage to their areas that has already been somewhat imperiled by storm events. So I would like to hear from Mr. Edler about that possibility. A 10 year event is really nothing now given climate change and sea level rise and very extreme storm events. I would like to see the effluent pump offsite to perhaps the state park area where there could be ponds, winter ponds or groundwater recharge percolation rather than pumping it onto the beach and possibly having it not work. Now I realized that is an extreme increase in electricity to pump it, but ultimately it could solve the problem with the pipes being flat. The sand that accumulates in the street is going to clog the drains. As the former speaker said, they're already clogged. I understand the new pumping system would have larger pipes, but just because the pipes are larger that does not necessarily guarantee that your microphone is available. As a reminder to star six to unmute your phone call. Tika Ghaffari, second call. I see they've unmuted their microphone. Tika, your microphone is unmuted. I see that you've accepted the unmute. And we want to call Dale Flowers. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, first of all, this political process or the public process that we've been going through has been flawed from the start. What has seemed to happen is you had a solution and then it's been trying to persuade us, the neighbors here to buy into this solution. And there's a lot of questions about it. And so one question I have is just proportional voting. Voting on the assessment district, some people get more than one vote, commercial interests. And I think that needs to be explained clearly. Like somebody down that owns the commercial property down there gets 20 votes and someone else who like self gets one vote. So this proportional voting idea about the assessment district I think is questionable. The idea of the public interest, this is a real Del Mar is a destination point. And it's also a traffic of alternative when highway one is clogged up, all the cars are coming through here. So defining this so narrowly, the public benefit is, I don't think quite fair. What I was looking for originally was, hey, here's all the potential options that we can have and an evaluation of those. So I know during the pandemic it's been hard to have a public meeting, but I think we need that. The getting information about, and frankly just doing what we're doing today has been very difficult. Getting information about what's going on has been impossible. Mostly it's been coming from neighbors finding, well, there's gonna be a meeting and you can give some input. So I guess one last question, did the coastal commission approve this project? That's my comments. It just seems a very frustrating process. I think we should just stop and start all over and educate everybody about it. I think a couple of those questions could be answered briefly. Is it because of Prop 218 and so forth? Yes, that's correct. That's how the assessment voting is. You might just briefly explain that. Yeah, so for Proposition 218, it's a weighted ballot. So people that have a higher assessment, they'd be counted, their votes would count more. So for instance, if somebody has a $300 assessment and somebody else has a $100 assessment, the $300 assessment is gonna count three times as much. So that's for Prop 218. So, you know, and I'm a little puzzled by, the comment about it's been impossible to get information about the project. There was, just went through public hearing, environmental review with public noticing. We've mailed flyers out to every property owner in the area, letting them know about public meetings. We've set up dedicated websites on there. I've done multiple public meetings. There's been articles in the Aptos time. So there's, we've had just a ton of information out there. And I've been available, I've given my email address. So a lot of people have been contacting me with questions about it. Has the Coastal Commission approved the project? This project was not required to have approval by the Coastal Commission. It has a coastal permit that was issued by, that went through the Zoning Administrator. It's outside the Coastal Commission's jurisdiction. However, I want to point out that the Coastal Commission did review the project. And there was extensive back and forth with the Coastal Commission. So they are, they essentially approved what we were proposing and they didn't oppose the project. But the project does have a coastal permit. Thank you for those comments. Gaurav Singh, your microphone is available. Can you hear me? Yes. Thanks for taking my comments. So we are on beach drive and I share some of the concerns that the other neighbors have in terms of the new location for the outfall. So effectively we are dumping thousands of gallons of water into this area, which has existing homes, the beach drive and the sand, right? So there is no way of knowing what will happen to that area when you redirect thousands of gallons of water. Thanks to Kent and his team that did make available some of the engineering reports. So we looked at the engineering reports and there is no way to establish that this would be safe for the homes that already exist there. So I would highly reconsider the location. I think this would actually cause unintended consequences that have, I mean, we have no way of knowing what would happen. It looks like there were alternative proposals there which would reuse the existing drains. And I think that that seems like a simpler solution. It would avoid having to assess the existing homes with this new tax, if you may. So I would highly encourage the board to reconsider the locations. It's a very unnatural way of redirecting thousands of gallons of water to an area that honestly has never seen that level of water. So what it does to that neighborhood, that area is actually very, very concerning. So that's my comment. And I think thanks again for making that engineering report available to us. Like I mentioned, I think there is really no way of knowing what happens to that water, where it goes and what other damage could it cause to that area. Thank you. Hi, I'll try it again. Sorry about that. I've been living there for 14 years in the real Dumber Flats and I've seen the floods happen, come and go. And they're not as frequent as one would think. The pipes were built in the 1920s and I don't think they can handle today's amount of water traffic. So when I talked to one of the engineers in about 2010, he showed me maps that they drain the water from the higher elevated areas into the flats and they were gonna work on a system to get the water out of the flats. This is a problem that was created by the county itself. And the solutions are many in some examples like Rye, New York, where they use barrels and collect the water from the roofs. And if every house had between two to four barrels, that could be about 40,000 gallons of water or more and then let it drain into the soil naturally. And if we do that, we're gonna prevent saltwater intrusion. It's already an issue coming up with saltwater intrusion. If we pump the water out, we're gonna have another environmental issue in the flat area. And also we don't have to use electricity or power for pumping the system, the water out into the ocean. So my vote is no on this and I think the county should look at other solutions other than systems of pumps and electricity. We can use gravity and also drain the water naturally into the ground itself is what we need. Thank you so kind of. Turn this to the board. Supervisor Friend, this is in your district. Did you wanna make a comment? Oh yeah, thank you Mr. Chair and thank you Mr. Edler for the presentation. You know, obviously this is an ongoing issue that predates even the nine years that I've been in office. It was one of the things that was made very clear to me that residents within the Rio de Mar flats wanted addressed and every year that this occurs, usually multiple times a year, we receive a lot of inquiries as to how the system can get fixed. Over the course of that time, I've had a lot of community meetings in Rio de Mar generally in association with the Rio de Mar Improvement Association held at the Rio Sands Hotel they're right in the middle of where this flooding occurs. We've written articles, we've done mailings, we've held virtual town halls in the last year. I mean, there's been a lot of outreach and actually, you know, I think that just given the number of people that have expressed concerns about the issue, it shows the evidence that as to why public works went out and I think actually in some respects pulled America out in order to get this kind of funding for multiple public agencies when they're dealing with resource situations of protected species within the creek, needing, although they didn't need approval, clearly having coastal commission provide input and I was a part of some of those discussions where coastal asked for and supported the perk on the beach having commentary about the groundwater recharge component talking about how this would or would not impact federally protected species within the creek. I mean, this is a very complex project and it's also a project that costs millions of dollars and those millions of dollars have now been obtained through multiple grant processes that took a significant amount of time to get. And so obviously I think that this is a good solution for that area. As Mr. Edler said, I mean, obviously what is good, the one good thing though about Prop 218 is the public gets a decision about whether they support an assessment like this in order to have the solution. A voting against it unfortunately would mean that the money would need to be returned because we couldn't meet the terms of the grant for construction and maintenance. There really isn't a plan B on funding associated with this. So because there really can't be, this was a project that was constructed with the concurrence and support of all these other resource agencies that have a say in how this would actually be done. So I think that I'm hopeful that that will determine that the votes are in support of it so we can start eliminating this historic flooding issue. I mean, these are homes that were constructed on a historic flood plain. So it shouldn't really surprise the community that these areas are gonna flood. This is a solution that helps address some of those natural occurring issues that would occur down there. Whether there was a drainage system or not installed. And this addresses the most common occurrence which is up to a 10 year occurrence situation. But I do wanna reiterate the fact and just for my colleagues, I know that you've heard this from me before but there was a lot of outreach to the community and there continues to be on this. And so, I mean, otherwise I think my wife would wonder what I was doing on all those nights down in Rio de Mar because we've got a lot of community meetings down there just having this one subject that public works has been down there, resource agencies have been down there and we've really tried to provide all the answers that we could as well as discuss what the engineering solution would be associated with that. So I just wanna express appreciation irrespective of which way ultimately the vote goes to Rachel Fatui's work, Ken Edler's work and others that have worked on this for years in order to try and bring a solution to the community that as far as construction costs go didn't cost anything. I mean, over $5 million in grants including environmental review and on and on and on in order to come up with this situation. So I appreciated the comments though from the public hearing today, they're comments that we've heard over the course of this public outreach and we'll see over the course of time what the community down there seeks about the flood protection or not. The comments from the board. Just a brief question. Thank you, Chair. Mr. Edler, what level of sea level will rise would the new proposed infrastructure be able to accommodate? I mean, I understand that a 10 year event but of course I think it was in Tennessee recently that we saw a thousand year event. So could you just help us understand how resilient this infrastructure is gonna be? So the infrastructure where the, I think the majority of the, or some of the comments have been made about the outlet. The outlet is located on the beach. It's above the high tide line but the water would drain down into the soil and be soaked in, basically infiltrate into the soil. I don't have, the project isn't intended to address sea level rising. Is sea level rise, it's intended to address kind of the current flooding situations and the 10 year event it's, we say it's approximate because there's a lot of different factors that can affect how well the system works and what levels it'll address. So I can't really say with specifics how sea level rise would affect it but the project isn't being designed to address sea level rise. Have you considered other solutions that would be more resilient in say a hundred or a thousand year event? Well, there's really not much that other options out there because the whole area is flat. I mean, it's in the area is in a hundred year flood zone. It's in a hundred year wave run up area as well. So this is intended to address the lower level storms at the bigger level storms, the hundred up to a hundred year event, the system isn't gonna, it's not gonna alleviate the flooding in those issues. So that's not really the intention of it. So those huge events, the whole area is just gonna be overwhelmed. Thank you for the clarification. Any other questions from board members? Hearing none, entertain a motion. Mr. Chair, I'll move the recommended actions. Second, moved and seconded. Please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Community. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you, Chair. Motion passes unanimously. Okay, and although I remember 24 is 12.1, we're gonna go back to number nine and go through it. As you know, as me as the Chair, I'd like to just keep on going. Item number nine, I'm not gonna repeat the ordinance in the chapter to establish the Santa Cruz, Monterey, Merced, San Benito, Mariposa Managed Medical Care Commission. And we do have Health Services Director Mimi Hall available where she'll give a short staff report on this item. Virtually. She'll be virtually. Okay, very good. Yes. Good morning. Honorable Board of Supervisors, are you able to hear me? Yes, we hear you. Okay, thank you. And I would just like to note that I'm joined today by Stephanie Sinonshine, Chief Executive Officer of the Central Health California Alliance for Health, who is available to provide additional information. Director Hall, Director Hall, I apologize to interrupt. This is Supervisor Friend. I don't know if your audio is actually plugged in, but we're getting to even a very low volume remotely. So if you would just try it one more time, I'd appreciate it. Thank you. Sure. I apologize. Okay, let's try it again. We can't hear you with that. You're not plugged in. Okay, is this any better? I apologize. Okay, I apologize. I had to reset my settings. And these are the challenges that come with virtual meetings. So I just, good morning, I'm Mimi Hall, Health Services Agency Director for the County of Santa Cruz. And I'd just like to note that I'm joined today by Stephanie Sinonshine, Chief Executive Officer of the Central California Alliance for Health. She's available to answer questions for additional information as needed. As your board is aware, Medi-Cal is California's Medicaid program. And it is the state's health insurance program for over 13 million Californians with low incomes. It covers 40% of all California's children, half of people with disabilities. It also pays for 50% of all births in the state and 58% of all patient days and long-term care facilities. Every Mani-Cal beneficiary in California is covered by, it gets their healthcare through six main models of managed care. And in Santa Cruz County, the Central California Alliance for Health, also known as the Alliance, is a model that is a county-organized health system. This means that it is a single managed care organization that serves one county or a group of geographically contiguous counties. Currently, the Alliance serves beneficiaries in Santa Cruz, Monterey, and Merced counties. And the current Santa Cruz, Monterey, Merced Medical Managed Care Commission serves as the organization's governing board. Over the past year in 2020 and 2021, California Department of Health Care Services provided technical assistance to counties regarding their option to change their Medi-Cal managed care type. And it allowed county-organized health systems, such as the Alliance, to expand to geographically contiguous counties. San Benito County and Mariposa counties had submitted their intent to join the Alliance Managed Care Organization and receive support of the current Santa Cruz, Monterey, Merced Medical Managed Care Commission. So in order to proceed with this model change, counties must submit to the Department of Health Care Services and executed county ordinance to formalize the choice and change the Medi-Cal managed care model by October 1st of 2021. So approval of today's recommended items are a first step in the passage of an ordinance to be heard on September 14th. And should that ordinance pass on September 14th, that will allow for expansion of the Alliance service area. And it will also expand the governing entity, the commission to include San Benito and Mariposa counties. And the voting members of the new commission will expand to include representatives from all five counties of the new managed medical care commission. So with that background, I recommend today that the board consider and approve in concept the attached ordinance, adding chapter 7.61 to the Santa Cruz County Code and eliminating, terminating chapter 7.58. And additionally, I ask that the board take action to schedule a second reading and final adoption of the ordinance on September 4th, 2021. Presentation of this type outside of the Central Coast Community Energy. And it looks like a real good move in that direction. Supervisor Coonerty, you are the appointee from this board for the managed medical care commission. Do you have any initial comments? Yeah, I think just two comments. One is as Director Hall noted, the healthcare landscape is challenging and changing and I think that the Alliance has really stepped up to provide care to our members, half of which are kids. And in this difficult time, it's more important than ever that we have had a safety net. And both the sort of day-to-day quality of care as well as the grants that create a more robust system for our members has been really important. And this expansion has is, and then this expansion will allow us to obviously cover more people and hopefully leverage resources in a way that benefits all of our members across all of our communities. And the second part is this is also, this is fundamentally about governance and I think the Alliance staff and leadership and Stephanie Sondenschein as well as the board has tried to figure out a way to make sure that we incorporate these potentially new counties without sort of diminishing the leadership from existing counties in the system. And I think this is a good balance to preserve a manageable board, but also good representation across these very, very different counties. Thousands more for better medical care in our area. Any other comments from the board before we go to the public? Seeing none, hearing none. Any comments from the public? None here in the chamber, any on the phone? There are no speakers, we assume. Okay, I'll return it to the board for action. Supervisor Coonerty. Move the recommended actions. Second. Second for whoever, please call the roll. That was a motion by Coonerty, second by Koenig. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. McPherson. Aye. Thank you, motion passes unanimously. We will go to item number 10 to consider adopting an ordinance amending Santa Cruz County Code Chapter 1332, 13.32, regarding Mobile Home Park rent adjustment as recommended by the Mobile Home and Manufactured Home Commission and schedule the ordinance for second reading and final adoption is outlined in the memorandum of Supervisor Koenig and Friend. We have recommendations letter, a text of the proposed amendments and ordinance amending sections 1332.070 and 13.32080. Supervisor Koenig, did you wanna open this discussion? Yes, thank you, Chair. This issue was brought to the attention of myself and Supervisor Friend that currently our Mobile Home rent control ordinance does not cover non-sale transfers. And so that's cases like inheritance or foreclosure. So you can imagine how frustrating this could be. There was a story of a young man who inherited a Mobile Home from his mother. Obviously his mother was hoping to provide her son an affordable place to live in our county, one of very few left. And unfortunately upon that transfer because it was not a sale, it was an inheritance, he saw the rent at the park increase substantially. It was no longer an affordable unit. So he could not afford to stay in there. And then also of course, it reduced the value of the property inherited because it would be less valuable to sell to someone else that becomes less desirable without the carryover of those rent control provisions. The other case I mentioned of course is in the case of foreclosures because very few financial institutions are willing to make Mobile Home loans today. Thankfully our local Bay Federal Credit Union does continue to make those loans but because our rent control ordinance does not, Mobile Home rent control ordinance does not cover foreclosures. They basically have very much increased liability in the case that someone is not able to make their payments. And so without this change, they could either, they could very well cease to make these kinds of loans which would of course make Mobile Homes less available option for people needing affordable housing in our community. The primary change to the ordinance is to address that so that the rent control measures are carried over in the case of non-sale transfers like inheritance and foreclosure. It also provides individual unit holders the opportunity to a legal channel to sue in the case that they feel they have had their individual rent unfairly increased. That opportunity does not exist for individual unit holders today. Thank you. I understand there are about 2,000 Mobile Homespaces that fall under this, our regulations would stand to grow with this passes. Supervisor Friend, do you have any other comments? Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Supervisor Koenig for that thorough introduction to the item. As many of you know, the Mobile Homes really are, and Manufactured Homes really are an essential affordable housing element in our county, both predating Supervisor Koenig, but within his district and definitely within my district and shared there with Supervisor Caput, we've seen challenges to our Mobile Home ordinance from park owners that have tried to take away affordable housing options for the community. And our local ordinance has withstood the test of time and it has become a statewide model and it really is an essential ordinance. I reached out to the author of the ordinance regarding these proposed changes and he had said to me that he didn't realize that it was always the intent that these things be included in there and didn't realize that it was being interpreted where they weren't explicitly in it. It's our belief that these are really de minimis but essential changes to this ordinance right here, our Mobile Home Commission thoroughly reviewed this and is completely supportive and also a great appreciation to Henry Cleveland and others on the Mobile Home Commission who have been ensuring that our ordinance gets updated when necessary to provide this essential component. So definitely appreciate the board support on this. I think that it was always the intent of the original ordinance to include this in and now we're just cleaning it up to ensure that it's explicitly stated. Thank you. I'd just like to mention and thank the Mobile and Manufacturing Home Commission. It's one of our, I think 40 commissions and committees that we have in this county. They're very valuable to us and thank you for bringing this to our attention. Any comments from the public here in the chamber? Do you have the comments? There are no speakers on Zoom. And we turn it to the board for action. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. Please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. Caput? Aye. McPherson? Aye. Thank you, motion passes unanimously. Thank you. We will go to item number 11 to conduct a study session on the 2020 Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy or CEDES or SEDS five year plan with the summary of COVID-19 impacts on economic development as outlined in the memorandum by the Director of Human Services. We have the CEDS 2020 study session presentation. I do believe the Andy Stone is going to be correct. Yes, Mr. Stone. Excuse me, the County of Santa Cruz workforce Development Board Director. Thank you. Good morning, Chair McPherson and members of the board, Andy Stone, Workforce Development Board Director. Today I am joined by Josh Williams from BW Research as well as Peter Detliff, who is the business services manager for the Workforce Development Board who is standing by. So Josh Williams is joining us virtually. And so today we're going to talk about the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy which was approved by your board in May of 2020. At that time you requested we come back with a study session to dive a little deeper into the details of the report as well as give an update on some of the economic impacts of COVID. So... Hello, morning, thank you for this opportunity. Yeah, as Andy just said, I'd like to go through the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy that we developed with the Santa Cruz County Workforce Development Board and then some research that we did looking at some of the economic impacts of the pandemic on the county, both from a kind of an economic perspective, but also looking at what it did in terms of the world of work. With that, Andy, can you switch to the next slide? So, yeah, well, you know, here's the cover for the, this is for the SEDS and SEDS is the acronym for Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy. So as I said, we're gonna look at kind of what the SEDS was both in terms of the process to kind of create it and some of the components that came out of that project. Look at some of the key findings from the SEDS and the kind of the follow-up pandemic economic analysis and then really look at kind of the state of the workforce, which is a report that we recently completed to kind of look at where the workforce is and kind of where it's heading as we hope to get out of some of the significant impacts from the pandemic. So those are kind of the items I'd like to discuss this morning. The first slide really just kind of looks at, we looked at the county, most of the data that we were pulling us for the county as a whole, but we did break it up into different areas, both Capitola, the city, Scotts Valley and incorporated area in Watsonville. We also looked at kind of splitting the county in half, kind of looking at the south and the north. So these are some of the different ways we looked at the county's economy and its workforce, both in terms of overall, but also some of these smaller geographic areas within the county. Let's jump to the next slide. So this first group of kind of slides is really taking a look at comprehensive economic development strategy, the key components in the process. Next slide. The SEDS process really started before, kind of well before the pandemic hit and we were kind of planning and talking about it in kind of or started the process in early 2019. And the purpose really of the SEDS is to do a few things. It's really meant for, to provide relevant stakeholders with a deeper understanding of kind of the social and economic trends, factors and metrics within the Santa Cruz County. It also then is supposed to serve as a guide for kind of how do we look at and develop kind of data driven policies and decision making within the outline for economic development. So kind of a strategic planning document. And it's required to be updated every five years to allow the county to qualify for grants and funding from the Economic Development Administration. So it allows the county to get federal funding from the Department of Commerce. So with that, let's jump a little further. For the Santa Cruz County SEDS, we really started with an economic assessment of the current conditions, both for people and the workforce. We looked at it from an industry and kind of an employer perspective. We also looked at some of the things really connected to the place and those are things they're dealing with, with housing and with infrastructure. And then the last one we kind of developed and to be honest, we were talking about resilience before the pandemic yet, but it became really relevant while in the middle of the study, in February and March of 2020, the pandemic became something that was having a significant impact on the economy. It also included a SWAT analysis. What are the strengths and weaknesses and opportunities and threats to Santa Cruz County's economy? Next slide. It also includes a action plan. It provides goals and objectives, goals and objectives at the SEDS and kind of a, here is kind of the structural framework of what an action plan would look like. It doesn't do all the details, but it provides really some strategies and some categories and partners to move forward. And then lastly, it puts together an evaluation framework. What would performance measures look like? How would they be used to assess an implementation of economic development strategies in the county? And how could that kind of impact and drive kind of future strategies as you learned from those initial tactics and strategies for economic development? With that, let's jump into the next slide. From the, we had a good group of stakeholders that were involved in the SEDS community input. This include regional leadership and stakeholders from the different cities. A lot of economic development managers, city managers within the county, but it also include public meetings. And the meetings were largely, this process is happening in April and May. We were able to do one meeting kind of before the pandemic hit and that was in person. These were largely done online and we also provided opportunities for public opinion and feedback again in March and April. So that feedback was all done online and through email and like that. Next slide. Some of the key findings from both the SEDS and a pandemic analysis that we did afterwards. And so this includes both of those. Let's jump to the next slide. Okay. I mean, one of the things that's important for us to know is that one in six Santa Cruz County residents that works leaves the county. Typically, largely they're moving, they're going down the valley to Silicon Valley for higher paying positions. Now, the plurality of those positions are in what we would call innovative and STEM occupations. You can see that that only represents about 42% of those. Another 20% are found in kind of management sales and communication occupations. Other 10 to 12% are found in these other areas, population serving and tourism occupations, production and maintenance occupations and healthcare law, logistical. So one of the key findings here is that overall, 16% of the people that live, and this is a net number too, it's actually probably a higher number because some people actually come in to Santa Cruz County to work, but that's a much smaller portion. 16% of the people that live in Santa Cruz County at work are traveling outside of the county for work, you know, net. Let's go to the next slide. We can look at, and it's important to know the numbers or the data that I'm showing you here is really before through 2019, so it's before the pandemic hit. But you can see over the last five years from 2014 to 2019, the largest growth in terms of jobs were in population serving and tourism positions. That was about 8% and then healthcare and municipal sector. Some of the export-oriented and kind of innovative industries, they grew at this period, but they grew at a slower rate at about three to 4% compared to the 8% growth in employment that we saw from healthcare and the population serving industries. We break that down a little further. Let's jump into the next slides. And you can see these are what those population serving industry clusters look like. You know, it's tourism, it's retail. Building and design actually saw the largest growth and the building design industry was largely driven by, you know, a lot of construction, a lot of the design work particularly. You see that finance insurance in real estate and professional business services grew at about 5%. Retail actually declined in that time. Let's jump to the next slide. We can see that healthcare, municipal industry clusters, these include healthcare, education, knowledge creation, public services, water and energy. The size of the bubble represents the size of total employment. So water and energy are relatively small employers in terms of the number of jobs in the county, whereas healthcare and education represents a larger portion of your total employment in the county. Well, let's jump to the next slide. And then you can see the growth in some of the export-oriented, innovative industry clusters, growth and wages. You can see that defense, aerospace and transportation manufacturing saw considerable growth in that 2014 to 2019 timeframe and brought in a lot of, you know, or I should say the majority of their were higher paying, higher earning jobs, which is good for the county. While, you know, agriculture and food and other manufacturing saw small growth, you actually saw a slight decline in biotechnology and biomedical devices and some of the ICT industries. Now, it's important to recognize these are the industries and not necessarily the type of occupation. So what I mean by that is like information communication technologies could be a software firm, but there could be people that are software designers and we actually have seen those occupations have grown. They've just grown in industries outside of software. And we'll talk about that a little more later as well. Let's go to the next slide. One of the good signs and one of the positive things we saw in looking at kind of job changes between 2014, you know, through 2019 was that the tier one jobs and tier one are kind of your higher paying, higher wage positions that typically require a four year degree or more grew at about 12% over that, you know, and grew more than your tier two and tier three, tier two are kind of your middle skill, middle wage positions. Those typically have an average wage and say at about $50,000 a year. Your tier three are your lower skill, lower wage positions, they have an average wage at about $25,000 to $30,000 a year in Santa Cruz. Tier one positions are about $90,000 to $100,000 a year. So the fastest growing occupations in these classifications were tier one positions. However, it is important to note though, that a majority of Santa Cruz County jobs are still currently tier three. And while the trends are good, you still see that 52% of occupations tend to be classified in tier three. And that's largely because of the large percentage of kind of tourism and agriculture positions that a majority of those are tier three occupations. Next slide. One of the things that we saw as a real challenge from an economic development, but even just from a kind of equity and a quality of life issue was the real difference in terms of internet access at home by income. And you can see that over a third of households with less than $20,000 a year in income do not have access to the internet. And you can see that number, even a household between $20,000 and $75,000 a year over one in six households did not have access to the internet at home. And so that's a challenge, particularly in the pandemic. And you can see those with over $75,000 a year, that number dropped 73%, a very small percentage. And that's a problem for a multitude of reasons, but one, in the pandemic and just in general, the importance of access at home, internet access for not only for finding a job, but for access to education and really even connection to a lot of the services and things like that in the pandemic became particularly important. So we think this is an area where we wanna really look to improve as a potential objective, moving forward from an economic development, but also with benefits that will go beyond economic development for the county. Next slide. One of the areas we spent a lot of time in the SEDS report and even in kind of the COVID state of the workforce, research really looking at economic resilience. And one of the areas that we found that is kind of a really important way of looking at kind of household economic resilience was really looking at debt to income ratio. And one of the challenges that Santa Cruz County does is while it does have a relatively affluent population, about a third of the population is living below what is considered a kind of a living wage. And there is a relatively high debt to income ratio, meaning people, obviously their debt to income is higher than the state average and also higher than the national average as well. And this is a concern as we particularly as we look at kind of economic resilience. Let's jump to the next slide. The SEDS also did a SWAT analysis and for those maybe not affiliated with that acronym, this is identifying the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and really from a perspective of economic development but also in this idea of economic resilience. Some of the strengths included kind of the location and quality of life within Santa Cruz, both the natural beauty and the proximity to Silicon Valley, the culture, the outdoor oriented and kind of modern culture, the strength of the tourism and hospitality industry which brings really money and brings money and revenue into the county from outside the area and also the local education institutions and some of the renowned programs and faculty and an educated workforce. And again, that's not necessary for the entire population but for a majority of the population. Some of the weaknesses are the cost of living and the transportation choke points, the high portion of kind of employment within the county that tends to be lower paying, particularly tourism and agriculture, income inequality and homelessness and really kind of exporting a lot of the high skilled local talent that's commuting outside of the county. Those are some of the weaknesses. Next slide please. Some of the opportunities, how do we capitalize on the outdoor lifestyle and experience when there's already seen some sporting good designs and opportunities to kind of build upon that. There's a small business growth and entrepreneurship and particularly in the current environment where there's a lot of churn and change within businesses, within small businesses, you're also seeing businesses move where they are as more people are working remotely. The county seems a potential hub for kind of agriculture tech and agriculture tech development and combining some of the agriculture businesses within the area, along with some of the talent in technology and information communications. Retaining UC Santa Cruz students in the area and in strengths of engineering, physics, and sciences and developing opportunities for more centralized housing and public transit. Some of the threats to the area include natural disasters and other economic disturbances including drought, wildfire, some of the things that we just talked about earlier in terms of proximity to the ocean and ocean sea level rise. Relatively high exposure to economic damage were both from tourism and changes to household that debt to income ratio and a culture that is historically resistant to kind of growth of businesses within the community. Issues of income inequality, mobility, rising cost of living with stagnant wages and its impact on homelessness. So these are some of the threats. Let's switch to the next slide. I hope I'm not going over time. This is a slide that really looks at one of the important things to understand from the pandemic is it's really uneven impact on household and on businesses, both from a worker perspective, but also from an employer and an industry perspective, COVID-19 had really disparate impacts depending on who you were. As a worker or as a business, you may have seen little to no impacts where you could have seen really kind of massive impacts. And we see that here just by income. And one of the scarier things, one of the more challenging things of the pandemic is if you had a higher income, let's say your average income is over 60,000, you saw really little to no impact on total employment. We've actually updated these numbers since the presentation was originally produced. And that 6% drop for higher income workers is now down to zero to 1%. It's really, there's really no impact. It recovered all those higher wage, higher paying positions. But that lower income, those jobs that are making less than 27,000 a year, in this older slide, it said they had a loss of 34%. And since through June of 2021, it's still at 22%. So almost one in four lower income jobs that was there before the pandemic is not there now. And again, these are the people that are likely to have that higher debt to income ratio and have less economic resilience. And I worry about issues related to homelessness, but just people falling through the cracks because the people that were hit hardest by employment loss tend to be low income workers. Next slide. One of the other interesting things about the pandemic is we see higher unemployment, but you're also seeing a real need employers who are having a really hard time finding workers. How does that work? How do you have high unemployment and a real labor shortage? And a lot of it is because of a skills gap, right? The positions that are needed, we don't have this thing, the workforce that's unemployed doesn't have the skills that are able to really qualify for those positions. And this labor force participation, so the black line shows kind of just the California change in baseline. So labor force participation has impacted the entire state and in fact has impacted the entire country, but the problem has been much more acute within Santa Cruz County. And that labor force participation drop has been even higher. And yet, and what we're seeing as employers in Santa Cruz County are having an even harder time finding workers, particularly in some of the, both higher paying, technically skilled positions, but also even a lot of the population serving industries as well. So it is definitely an interesting kind of conundrum that the county is facing in some ways much more cutely than the state is as a whole. Next slide, please. State of the workforce. So we did also have kind of a follow up of work that came out a few months ago that looked at and asked some like key questions that are coming out of kind of the state of the world work from the pandemic. Let's jump into the next slide. And so I'm trying to summarize a relatively robust report that looked at that, but we identified industries and communities and kind of greater distress. We looked at career pathways and some of the transitionary training and education as well as some of the immediate employment opportunities. So I identify those specific ones and look for and track changes in employment by industry cluster, some of the industry economic stress by business and community and looked at some of the education and training participation. LFPR is kind of labor force participation rates and what that meant. And some of the changes in customer behavior and consumption patterns and really work arrangements and entrepreneurship, all of these things are things that we looked at and we're still looking at because they're still evolving particularly as kind of the pandemic kind of goes up and down and kind of goes through these changes and the impacts it'll have both temporary but also some of the longer term changes we expect in terms of employment and economic behavior. Next slide, please. Okay, so questions. I think I've run out of time but I'm happy to answer any questions about the different reports and the economic development strategies. Thank you very much for that thorough report and very interesting and we're gonna be considering the proposed operational plan for the next two years in the county with the agenda item 14 today. And I'm encouraged that many of the proposed objectives directly address the weaknesses and threats of the SEDS report that's been identified. Number one, the debt to income, if I have a question, Santa Cruz County versus California were way up there. Is that because of the high cost of housing generally? Yeah, I mean, that's at least part of it for sure. You also tend to have a wage deficit or I should say, yeah, you tend to pay lower wages but have a higher cost of living. And that's one of the reasons why people tend to leave the county. And that what I mean when I say lower wages because the larger percentage of employment and things like tourism and agriculture, those tend to have below average earnings, right? And because it may make up a larger percentage of the employment within the county, it definitely makes it more costly to live here. So you have a higher cost of living but a lower kind of overall wage profile. And those add that and definitely housing is a big contributor to that. I was in a public transit here but we don't talk much about these other opportunities listed on, I think it's page 250 of the agenda packet. And you've mentioned or addressed some of what I'm interested to know from staff if there was an organized process underway for us to work with the community partners such as UCSC to, you know, the hub of ag tech in particular I'm thinking of, how we retain more UCSC engineers and scientists. That's gonna be really important, I think, in trying to resolve or improve this outlook that we have in Santa Cruz County. Before we go to the public, any other questions from the board? I'll start with Supervisor Caput. He hasn't. Okay, Supervisor Koenig? Questions? Yes, thank you, Chair. I just noted that we still lag in tier one jobs compared to the state overall. Is there many specific strategies or recommendations for how we can increase tier one jobs in the county? Yeah, no, it's a great question. The report spends time detailing that so I'm just gonna kind of outline that. But yeah, I mean, the key strategies are really three-fold. They're about improving and kind of expanding entrepreneurship in specific sectors. There are, we've seen an increase in different research, information communication technologies. Some of these industry clusters that tend to pay higher wages are an important part, looking to retain and develop. Again, as I was just being told, the talent that is developed in Santa Cruz, the problem is right now people come and get a great degree in engineering and physics or something in material sciences. And then leave, so how do you retain those people? And then also look for opportunities in some of these emerging industries and clusters, as well as some of the potential infrastructure changes, I think increasing bandwidth and things like that could have good support, education, training, but also opportunities for getting individuals, entrepreneurs to be more engaged or potentially more likely to grow within the area. And during the public input and community input, did you hear any continued need for increased office space? I know I'd heard that at one point, but I think that might have been pre-pandemic. Is that still a need within our community? Yeah, I mean, office space is something, I think one of the things that I didn't emphasize enough for my presentation is you wanna spend time understanding the changes that are happening within your community. We're seeing one important point is over the last 18 months, we've seen more change in the labor market and the economy than we did 10 years before that. And those changes are still occurring. And so one of the things we're seeing is we're seeing employers seeing, requiring and asking for different times of office space. And you're seeing more like remote and small satellite offices that are connected to home and allow workers to come in and work at time, but maybe do more remote work, right? And what does that mean in terms of bandwidth requirements? And what does that mean for kind of office and space requirements? All of those things are changing. But yeah, I would expect more satellite offices, more, you know, a rollover or change in the type of office space that was demanded. Answering your question directly, yes, there was a need for more office space kind of before when we started this process, but I'd wanna look at this and re kind of reevaluate those numbers because there's been so much churn and change, you know, over the last six to 12 months in terms of what employers are looking for. Yeah. And then to your point about fostering local entrepreneurship, I couldn't help but notice that outlier and aviation and defense, presumably is that Joby aviation that contributed to that or are there other? So yeah, I mean, the air taxis are definitely part of that and there is more than just Joby's one, but there are others as well, but it's also research and drones and it's a really kind of niche, kind of interesting area that we probably should explore a little bit more, but I will say it's volatile. You know, that's the kind of thing where we, you know, we need to kind of make sure, meaning that data was from 2019. So I'd want to reevaluate where it is and kind of the middle of 2021 and those kind of innovative industries tend to change relatively quickly. So I want to update that and see where it is, but that is definitely an area, those air taxis and some of the research around drones. And even we're seeing some new work in terms of energy and water, you know, an infrastructure that can potentially provide an increase in those tier one jobs as well. Thanks. And then were there any specific strategies for ag tech development? I mean, I know it's certainly on all our minds, especially given the number of local employees that are currently engaged in the agricultural industry. And so obviously anyway, that we can increase ag tech and hopefully increase their pay as well at the same time would be great. So any specific? Yeah, I mean, I think there's kind of two strategies around ag tech. For one, it's really trying to connect the supply chain and really the value, you know, in ag tech is as long as, you know, the more that the local agriculture producers can really go further long and package and develop and really connect to markets, the more they can retain the kind of the revenue that comes in from that. So rather than selling kind of raw commodities, you know, they're selling niche and organized, you know, you know, boxes of or bags of arugula. It's all ready to go, right? And maybe arugula is not the best example of strawberries, whatever. It's really connecting to that supply chain and developing it and then using and developing a lot of the technologies around tracking weather changes and, you know, the more automating and, you know, the connecting to the big data that is improving kind of the efficiency and productivity of agriculture would be valuable. You know, the ag tech is air and air where I really think you almost wanna be regional because this is something where Santa Cruz, Monterey, you know, even San Luis Obispo at some level, they're all working to and looking to connect your supply chain regionally as best you can and connect with the kind of technology innovators that are in this area would be a good thing. One last question, I understand this report was required by the federal government. Can we, does it allow us now to apply for specific grants to fund specific portions of the plan or, you know, how does that process work? Yeah, so what the, I gave you kind of information on kind of due reports. So the first one in the majority of really the presentation was the SEDS, which is the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy. And yes, it's exactly like you said, it's a requirement to be able to apply for USEDA or Economic Development Assistance, you know, Department of Commerce grants. And so it does basically allows you over the next, through 2024 to apply for any grants that are relevant, you know, for your county. And it provides some of the framework for, you know, how you would evaluate potential grants and maybe some of your priorities for that. Okay, thank you. Supervisor Friend. No, thank you, Mr. Chair. Appreciate the presentation. I have no additional questions. Thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. Thank you for the presentation. I guess the data was helpful. What strikes me is how small a county we are and how interconnected we are. And so, you know, a couple of different founders decisions to build or grow their company here has profound impacts on the data that we're seeing. And so I think, you know, overall we're subject to these macro trends that are hard for a county our size to really influence. However, I think working collaboratively across the different jurisdictions and coming up with some micro policies and targets, it shows the impacts it can make, right? And so I wanna, I think going forward, thinking how we work collaboratively across jurisdictions to have a unified approach to economic development will be really essential as many of these firms and workers are moving across lines or the workers who previously are part of the 16% leaving the county maybe staying here. And when they shift most of their week to here, you could see it an economic benefit and a civic benefit and a cultural benefit to having those folks not being cars and environmental benefit. So what strikes me is just the importance of cross jurisdictional collaboration and being aware that, you know, a couple firms decisions can have a pretty big impact on the overall economic picture of our community. Yeah, no, I think that's a great comment. I would also say, I mean, they've done research on this. It's really good. I forget his name, he's a professor out of Cal Berkeley and they've kind of estimated that, you know, things like biotechnology and some of these innovative industries like air taxis for every job you generate in Santa Cruz, there's a five job multiplier, right? And it really has a big impact on increasing those tier one jobs. So yeah, I mean, you can think about every job that you create in an industry like biotechnology or information communication technologies or these drone or these, you know, these higher ag tech, they can generate five additional jobs and of those five jobs, maybe one or two of them are tier three, but the other, you know, three are tier one or tier two, two tier occupations. Keepers, that's okay. Hey, I do appreciate your enthusiasm. It's really great. Any questions from the public? There are no speakers on Zoom. Okay, I think the proper thing would just, to accept the report. Oh, excuse me, go ahead, sir. Well, I figured I'm here, I might as well comment. Hi, my name is James Ewing Whitman. I'm gonna quote two people right now. Figures don't lie, but with statistics and averages, the shallow focused sure can figure. And I'm quoting Catherine Austin Fitz who once ran HUD and Lena Pugh who has made lots of different observations as far as the frequency weapons that are so rampant here. You know, this county's development, talking about available office space and business space. There's available office and business space everywhere. All you gotta do is walk down any street and open your eyes. Businesses have been destroyed due to what's been going on here the past year and a half. As far as innovation and supply chains, you look at what's going on in the United States and what's going on in the world, but to focus on what's going on in the United States, farmers are being paid 130% of their value for their crops to destroy those crops and an additional $600 per acre if they literally cut down their crops with some little mower. So that's my two cents for this. I'm waiting to comment on some other things. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Any comments virtually? There's now one comment. Kathleen and Woody, your microphone is available. I also had not expected to see this presentation and comment on it. It was definitely a very vivid documentation of the gentrification of Santa Cruz County. I think it's useful to bear in mind that if those tier one workers can't afford to live here, they will leave whether there's a job for them or not. Even the middle class cannot afford our teachers and our nurses and a lot of other middle class workers cannot afford to live here neither by buying a house nor by renting a house or an apartment. So the housing is key, but also I'm really intrigued by this interest that you have in ag tech because we believe, especially here from the viewpoint of the Pajaro Valley, that this is a vibrant agricultural community and that our county and our Valley could be a model and a mecca for training in ag tech. Ag tech that would reduce pesticide use, that it would improve working conditions, that would allow us to produce those value added products that come from this valley of branding mechanism and also increase the quality of our tourist options being outdoors in beautiful farms as well as on our beautiful coastline and in our redwoods. So we have a vision for this community that would incorporate a whole lot of economic trends that would value our natural resources, including our soil and also have a positive impact on our climate change that would draw down carbon instead of releasing it. So really look at ag tech and look at our farmers in general and also in the local availability of good food and not having it all be shipped elsewhere. So please consider that vision when you look at this economic picture. We need to grow our own food. There are no other speakers on Zoom. Okay, we're turning to the board. I think I'd like to entertain a motion to accept the report. That'd be, if I don't know if that's necessary. It's really, let's just go ahead. I'll move to approve. I just wanted to say thanks Josh for the report. Thank you. Thank you. You're my supervisor. This is just a study session. Okay. So we really don't have to. There's no vote required. No, we don't have to. Okay. Well, thank you for your presentation. Very much appreciated. A lot of work to do. We have some good opportunities as well. Thank you very much. We're gonna move for the last pre-lunch item, so to speak, 12.1, which was item 24 to approve responses to findings and recommendations of the three 2020-21 Santa Cruz County civil grand jury reports and take related actions that were recommended by the county administrative officer. Supervisor Caput, you pulled this item. Do you like to open the discussion please? You bet. And what I'll do is rather than dwell on each specific item that I'm gonna talk about, I'll just throw it all out there and see what we can do at the end. First, I wanna say Juan Hidalgo has done a wonderful job as the county ag commissioner. All 58 counties in California have to have agriculture commission commissioner. And we're fortunate to have Juan Hidalgo on our side. He not only has that office and a very small staff, but he has also vector control and weights and measures that can be explained later. But that's a big responsibility also. The grand jury, they looked at this and I know with the grand jury reports, they focus on certain areas and look and try to solve problems in a certain area. They're looking at it as one item, each individual on the grand jury might have a specialty. So I give a lot of credit and a lot of weight to the argument of the grand jury. Cause they're able to focus on something that as the board of supervisors, we're hit with maybe a hundred different items and we can sometimes just focus on one item. It comes down to funding. I know with Juan Hidalgo's staff, he has a very small staff. So to ask him to do even more is something that would be very tough. I did see in the item that we could at least lobby the state for funds in order to help every ag commissioner in all 58 counties in California. But we could join together with other counties and lobby the state to have better notification of pesticide use and some funding for the office in order to focus on that. So that's one thing we can do, lobby by letters and support by the board of supervisors. I like to see study sessions and neighborhood meetings to talk about people's concerns in, especially in the Watsonville area. Bronte is in the senior village area and their homes back up on Bronte right on agricultural land. And they brought that to my attention that certain times out of the year, this is in the past. I think we've resolved the problem with that. But they would wake up in the morning and their windows would be open during the night and they would be able to smell some kind of pesticides being used. And they said that they had no idea that pesticides were gonna be applied in that area. So notice is a key thing and it can be done online and also I guess the state also does put out notification but it's not as specific to certain neighborhoods that people wanna know basically in what general area. I know some of the farms out there don't have an address and it's hard to specifically pinpoint exactly where they are going to apply pesticide. But locally we know and the farmers know landmarks or certain areas that we can focus on within a quarter of a mile. I guess a quarter of a mile specific sites are the schools especially. The state at one time was pushing to have that a one mile which would be impossible to do because almost every school is within a mile or two of each other and the notification would be very difficult. But the quarter mile is certainly something I think we can do on our website or on some kind of notification. Protecting the health and the neighborhoods that are the people that we represent is a very big issue and I'd rather see us air on the side of trying to do too much rather than just doing the minimum. So I like us to really get out there and actually look at this. And somehow like I said with landmarks, getting notification out. If need be, if the money is there even sending out some letters in advance. I know with the schools what they've been doing now when they apply pesticide near a school, they try to do it on a Saturday morning very early. And so by Monday, basically the pesticide is not as dangerous I guess for the school kids. And the other problem we have also, we have the drift, the wind and everything that does carry the pesticide scenario. So what I would like to see is that we look at this issue after we have neighborhood meetings and get public input and focus on it a little more. I know we can't alone solve the problem, but we can certainly push to make everything better. So I would like to put it on a future agenda where we have the actually have someone from the grand jury, maybe the person who focused on or the people on the grand jury that focused on the pesticide use have them come and speak to the board and we could get a discussion going. Like I said, on making things better for neighborhoods and for farm workers. So I know the state, over 20 years ago, they put out a ban on methyl bromide and they gave the farms like four to five years in order to come up with an alternative. Well, 20 years went by, they kept extending it and say five more years, five more years that pretty soon it was over 20 when they finally got rid of methyl bromide. So I don't wanna see that happen in our community. District one and district four, my district, we represent more than 75% of all the agriculture in Santa Cruz County in our area. So I guess my motion is to put, to actually put on the agenda where we have the grand jury and we have a discussion on what is the most we can possibly do and how we can lobby the state for funds if we need it and lobby the state to make protective measures for neighborhoods and schools and children, of course, and also neighborhood schools and pretty much, oh, the farm workers, yeah. And then now I open it up if anybody wants to second that, that'd be great. That how we might address that. Mr. Palacios, we could consider that for an agenda item in the future. Yeah, we can certainly discuss how we'd wanna do that in the future and handle it. I know that there's also an opportunity to do some community meetings as in either an addition or to a study session. And so we'll certainly can speak to Supervisor Caput and see how to come back in the future with his request. Thank you. All right, and so we'll come up with a date later. I'm gonna have two new neighborhood meetings in my district, near schools, and we'll have one in Dalgo and his staff and others from the county probably show how we're trying to do the most we can. I know a lot of things, the state is irresponsible for it, but we can certainly lobby, we can certainly push the state to move faster, and we can somehow talk about how to make our notification here in our areas better. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I don't, I had a question for our agricultural commissioner. I don't know if he could approach the stand. It's, you know, this issue, I've heard a little bit about it as well from some constituents. I guess it seems like there's the farming safely near schools pilot project that has been launched in Northern Monterey County. What are the opportunities to simply extend that pilot to include portions of our county or all of our county? You know, have you evaluated that? Do you have any sense of the cost? Good afternoon, Chair, members of the Board, Juan Hidalgo, the cultural commissioner. Thank you, Supervisor, that's a good question. That pilot program in Monterey County was funded by state funds, and that program in particular is to provide notification about use of pesticides, of specific pesticides, what we call California restricted pesticides, which is a small group of pesticides here in California. When those materials were to be applied within a quarter of a mile of certain schools, I think their pilot program includes three schools in the Power Valley Unified School District, and I think they have some other schools in the North Monterey County School District, but that's what that project is about specifically just to members of the public could sign up to receive that information. And again, it's just for use of those materials within a quarter of a mile. One of the things that Santa Cruz County has done for many, many years now, well over two decades, is that we have had a similar notification program with the Power Valley Unified School District. So whenever there's to be a soil fumigation, which is a particular type of hazardous material that our growers use to kill soil pathogens before planting in our county, whenever they're gonna use one of those materials, we send a five-day notification to the school district. So we have had a really good working relationship with the school district to do essentially the same. And the way it works is that we provide that information to the school district, and the district sends the information to the impacted schools, that sends the information to the teachers, the principal, and my understanding is that they post that information so that parents at that school can also receive the same information. And coming back to your question, Supervisor, I have not explored the opportunity for that pilot program with Monterey County. That was a pilot program. My understanding is that the funding from the state did dry up. So I think the county is continuing that program to some extent. However, I think it is the county that's picking up the cost of continuing that program for the community there. Okay, thank you. Yeah, thanks a lot, Juan. I appreciate everything you're doing. And your office also has to investigate if somebody goes to the hospital and complains about feeling ill or whatever. That's a big burden on you also. I don't know, how many do you have on your staff? You have a very small staff. Let's kind of move forward with the direction we might have, but you can say how many you have in your staff, but I think Supervisor Cohen has another question too. How many staff members? Yes, we have a small staff supervisor. We have during the summer months about 30 people. During the winter months about 20 people. And specifically about four of those staff work primarily in the pesticide use enforcement program. Okay, thank you. Supervisor Cohen, you go ahead to the question. Yeah, thank you Chair. No further questions actually, just it seems like that's potential there to potentially build on or expand that pilot program in the future if we can identify appropriate funds. And thank you for your current work with the school district. And maybe our work can also inform and improve the work done in Monterey County so far. Okay, and you might just say, any other questions from board members? Mr. Chair, I have a brief question of Mr. Odalgo. I'm definitely supportive of Supervisor Caput hosting some community meetings down in his district in the South County. I think that a question from Mr. Odalgo is realistically, I mean, most of these are state regulated and most of these are not within the board's review. I say this because I think it's, one of the important things in government is not creating an expectation of what we can or cannot do by hosting something like a study session based on this. I mean, even Supervisor Caput's own point was that this is about advocacy to the state. So can you just explain the regulatory environment that this exists and where the board's authority sort of starts and ends, where your authority starts and ends and how the state regulatory environment is because I'm supportive of community outreach. I'm just more hesitant about having an extensive board discussion over something where I don't have any authority to actually effectuate anything. Friend, there is some limitations between what my office is able to enforce locally. This is the regulation of pesticides. It's at the state level and my job is to enforce pesticide regulations locally. Any changes to state regulations definitely lies with the state. I know that there's just an interest to receive notification from some of our community members who are not the only county where there's communities asking for the same. And I think in that report, I included some brief information that the state is already looking at this issue. There's already a lot of meetings already taking place with some stakeholders and there's gonna be more meetings in the future to get the public information, public comments as to what the community would like to see for a statewide notification program and realistically, I think that's where this issue better lies just to be consistent, just to have equity across the state so that there's no two counties doing and providing information that is not the same that can create some confusion. So the state is already looking at this issue and in fact, they have allocated $10 million fiscal budget to begin to have those community meetings. All right, thank you. Then it sounds like the better place for this to land would be actually for the board requesting that the state hold one of those community meetings via virtual or in-person here within our county as opposed to the board itself hosting a study session directly and that it should be held in the area most impacted which would be really the southern or eastern portion of my district and then the outside area there of Supervisor Caput's district. So I mean, I'm supportive Supervisor Caput of, well, I'm supportive of moving forward with this item actually as it is, but I would say that through additional direction it should be about if the board needs to do an outreach to invite the state to host such an outreach meeting we should or it could be part and parcel with the community meetings you're doing down below or down in the South County below where some of these other issues are happening. And also I think the school district should also be invited as part of this. They've been very receptive in conversations I've had with them on this issue. Any comments for you too? Right, yeah, I agree with you. I understand one, there's only so much we can do. The state actually has regulations and they do the enforcement and things like that. I guess what I'd like to see we focus on this more rather than just giving it a minimum of attention. And then maybe we can get Monterey County and San Benito County to join us in putting some pressure on the state in order to help us get this notification out. We should be able to do that. Notifications are key to the thing. And I think also you understand which pesticides are allowed to be used and which ones aren't and which safety procedures have to be followed. So yeah, I just don't wanna find out later that people in a certain neighborhood or in a certain area are farm workers or people living near a farm. They're ending up in a hospital with some kind of calamity. I don't want us to ignore that. And we see it on television a lot. All of a sudden Roundup is bad for you. Periquad is bad for you. You know, I'd rather were at the forefront, yeah. Mr. Hidalgo in that effort. Any other questions from the board? Coonerty, any other questions? No. Okay. We just would be, we need a motion to accept. You have a comment, Mr. Hidalgo. You'd have to take a public comment now with the reminder that anybody who already spoke on this item in their early public comment that they cannot speak again. Yes, right. But if somebody has not had a chance to speak, there would be a public comment. Anybody would like to address this on this issue who hasn't addressed this before? Hi, my name is James. I don't think I'm gonna repeat anything that I've said before or what I wanna comment on on number 13. I'm very pleased that this is available for public comment and wasn't just one of the rubber stamped consent agenda items. Number 24, approve responses to findings and recommendations for the 2020-2021 Santa Cruz County civil grand jury reports and take related actions as recommended by the county administrative officer. Out of the 17 pages, that was two and a half lines. Number 24 is actually 108 pages. It's from 567 to 675. Some information that I will familiarize myself with later. Nothing about this report had anything to do with and now I need to be careful with my language. What's the definition of allopathic medicine? Treat symptoms and diseases using drugs, radiation and surgery. How is neuropathic medicine different? It uses all those same procedures, but it focuses on what's going in your body and what could be going in your body to affect your overall state of health. Anyway, I wanna be careful with what I wanna say on number 13 and be respectful. But I'm glad that there was so much information that was provided to everybody and I certainly will familiarize myself with that 108 pages of the 1575 pages that are being put forth today. Thank you. Yes, good afternoon board supervisors. My name is Hector Calderon. I live in Santa Cruz County. And the reason that I'm here today is that there was a civil grand jury report that was produced which safe ag safe schools, local coalition wanted to commend the civil grand jury for having chosen the subject matter as one of the investigations looking into the inner workings of the county. One of which looked at the pesticide notifications which our county leaders throughout the county continue working tirelessly to push our County Ag Commissioner Juan Hidalgo's office to simply post the web postings of growers notices of intent to apply restrictive pesticides that would be a simple way to give public information to the general public. And yet I'm here because as a part of safe ag safe schools we have expressed extreme disappointment on how the board of supervisors have responded to the given report around pesticide notifications was to simply pass the onus off of the Ag Commissioner and onto the State Department of Pesticide Regulations which is we know that the grand jury took some time a really long time to really produce that report and while the board has simply just dismissed this matter is even more concerning. We know that community and people pay with their health especially farm worker families and communities of color that live closer to these fields specifically in the South County of San Cruz knowing that Latinx communities are overly affected through environmental racism that exist and thrive in historically marginalized communities and we believe that the public has the right to know about these applications of highly restricted pesticides that the County Ag Commissioner must at the very least be able to post these notices of intent. And it's also just because as a community we have that right to know. So simply, I know that there was a lot of disgust here in terms of what the board, the Ag Commissioner had came to say. Thank you. Thank you. You have the comments from the public. I have one speaker, two speakers on Zoom. Two speakers. Kathleen Kilpatrick, your microphone is available. So I'm not sure if I can speak or not but there is another speaker at this location. Is Woody there also Kathleen? Yes, Woody's here also and will I be able to speak? Let her speak, let her speak. Okay, I just wanna say that there are some issues that were raised by this discussion with the supervisors and Woody's gonna talk about the live example of what's happening in our neighborhood. I do wanna say that we have had pretty good communications with Juan Hidalgo and that our senior neighborhood got a special exemption from the usual lack of information and we are getting informed of some of the pesticides. But just like the school notification program, it's not really set up to give people a timely and appropriate amount of information about what's going on in our neighborhoods and in our schools. And I think that the supervisors really need to hear more about the flaws in that particular system, the school notification, which we believe was built to fail in Monterey County. And then you also need to understand the needs of our senior communities and our other vulnerable populations. So yeah, I think supporting the lobbying is a really great thing to do but we also still feel like a pilot project in this county is doable. It's part of that ag tech development that we were just talking about in the last segment and that we have capable people here who could help our county come up with the models that would inform the state and their work toward making this a universal thing. We already don't have equity or consistency. We have a better ag commissioner than most and this is a worse problem in other counties. Is that it? Vladimir Suman, your microphone is available. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Yes, sorry, my name's Michael Gissair. I had a different accounts name on mine. I represent an organization called Science for the People, a national organization, as well as the local regional organization, Safe Ag, Safe Schools. And the issue is really very simple. The science is clear first. The science tells us that dangerous pesticides are still being used in California and that drift leads those pesticides to people beyond farm workers in the communities that surround the fields. Most recently research out of UCLA has shown clear connections between pesticide drift and childhood cancers from up to eight different pesticides that are used in Santa Cruz County. And so until these pesticides are banned, which hopefully will happen down the line, people need to be informed. This is about the right to know. This simply is the issue of the agricultural commissioner making available the notices of intent that the growers have to submit. It's not a big deal. It's not something expensive and difficult to do. It's about having people know what's being done so they have at least a chance to do something about it. It is also, as Hector Calderon said, a clear case of environmental racism. The people affected by this are people in communities around farms as well as farm workers, children in schools that are near the farms. These children are largely people of color. And so that's what's going on here. The issue is not that complicated. The science is clear. What needs to be done is clear. And we in Safe Ag, Safe Schools don't understand why this is not happening. Thank you. There are no other speakers on Zoom. Okay, I'll return it to the board. Motion to accept the, or to approve item number 12.1. Did you have another comment, Mr. Palacios? No, okay. Entertain a motion to approve item number 24 or now 12.1 to have a motion. Move the recommended action. Okay, okay. Call the roll, please. I'm sorry, the second? I did that. I'm going to vote for it, but I'm going to vote no on part of it. I wrote it down here somewhere. Well, you got it either yes or no. Well, no, but we're going to put it on the agenda in the future to focus on this. Right. That's the recommended action. Supervisor Koenig. No, Mr. Chair, just to clarify, the recommended actions are not to put this on a future agenda. The recommended actions are the actions that are listed within the board item. That is true just to accept the grand jury reports and what was presented to the board. We know that there was, go ahead. Yeah, and then supervisor. Actually, I'd like to put an amendment. We put it off to vote on it when we get more information from the grand jury and neighborhood meetings. So, I mean, I don't consider that a, I mean, I'm not trying to discourage the neighborhood meetings, but I don't consider that a friendly amendment. We're here to consider whether or not we approve our response to your jury, what's been the consideration of your additional information, the CIO had said that he would work with you individually to help set those things up or to potentially come back to the board if that was warranted. But the item before us right now is not specifically to bring something back to the board. And I would be willing to work with you too, just as far as inviting the state goes to try and uphold one of those community meetings with the state that Mr. Adago said that the state has funding for Monterey County, our county and the school district in the neighborhood, neighborhoods down there. But this, but my motion is just for the current recommended actions. Can't Supervisor Caput? It was our, the guy supervisor. No. You don't want to second it. Do I have a, who's the second? I'm not gonna, I'm gonna vote no on the, only because I think in order to vote on it correctly, we need more information. There's a motion by Supervisor Friend, who is there a second? I did not catch the second. Is there a second? All second. Second by Supervisor Koenig, please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig? Aye. Friend? Aye. Community? Aye. Caput? No. McPherson? Aye. Thank you. Motion passes for one. Chair McPherson, we're running a little bit late according to our schedule. I might suggest that we start closed session at one o'clock, and then we start the afternoon session at two o'clock. Okay. If that's acceptable. We will go into closed set. We'll recess to go into closed session at one o'clock. One o'clock. And return for the regular items, number 13 and 14 at two o'clock. All right. Yes, I think that will give us enough time. Very good. Thank you. Thank you. Good. Okay. That one. Oh. Oh no, we have to pause it. Only missing Caput. Okay. I'd like to call the meeting of the August 24th, 2021 afternoon session, 2 p.m. of the County Board, Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors to order. We will open with scheduled item on vaccination requirements for county staff. We did have to delay this until two o'clock because the morning session went a little longer. So we'll open this up at this point. And I think, Mr, I think Carlos Palacios and is Dr. Newell gonna be presented to or will you, Carlos Palacios? Yes, I'll be speaking on this item. And I believe we'll have a Gita Patel available as well for questions as well as, I think Dr. Newell is also gonna be available for questions. So I'm bringing this item to you because there are continuing an ongoing assessment of the business operations of both government and private businesses to ensure the safety and welfare of staff and those we serve. A number of counties, including the state of California recently issued vaccine mandates for their employees. And there have been two general types of mandates. One, including Monterey County and now Santa Clara County, I think San Francisco as well, have a vaccine mandate for all County employees and there's no alternative. Other counties such as San Benito and others in the Bay Area have issued mandates with an option that employees could, if they don't agree to get vaccinated, they could actually agree to get tested once weekly. So based on that, we've done a survey of our employees and found that 85% of our County employees are currently vaccinated. We hope in the next survey that we will be up around 90%. But it appears that there still be approximately 10% of our employees who are still are choosing not to get vaccinated. So I have decided to bring to the board today three options to deal with this issue that other, as I said, other private businesses, the federal government, state government and other County and state city governments are dealing with option one would be to maintain the status quo. That would be to do nothing and just encourage voluntary compliance with vaccination. This is, as I said, we're at 85% now. We hope to get within 90% within the next couple of weeks. A second option would be a mandatory vaccination for all County employees with no alternative. And again, I said there are some businesses that have done this. This applies to some of our health employees right now, given the state order. And so it's certainly an option, especially now that the federal government has completed their certification of the Pfizer vaccine. The third option is to allow, is to require vaccinations for employees, but for those who are refused to get vaccinated to give them the option of a mandatory weekly testing option. And that would be the third option. Staff, including myself and our personnel director recommend option number three at this time. The main issue is how do we keep our employees safe and we believe the testing option does provide, does definitely increase the number, the safe environment of our workforce. And also there are operational and legal issues with requiring a vaccination and without an alternative. Given the laws that our employees are subject to and the due process rights they have, entering into discipline over someone who is not refused to get vaccinated could be a very lengthy and difficult process. And so for that reason, mainly from our point of view, from a operational and legal point of view, we are recommending option number three, where we would have a testing option for county employees with mandatory vaccination policy. However, we will do whatever the board would like to do. I know it's a difficult policy decision and I know different county governments and different businesses have come down on both sides of the issue of whether to require vaccines with or without a testing option. With that, I will end my report and I believe county council's available, the county health officer, Dr. Neal, and I believe Agita Patel is also available as well. There are any questions for staff? Okay, thank you, Mr. Plosios. This is an issue that's certainly not, it's gonna please them all no matter what we choose. And so, but I think a decision does have to be made. I think your recommendation is right on target. It does give some options and it's an encouragement as well as an option. And so I think that's a fair offer, so to speak. Any other, any comments from the board before we go to the public? Supervisor Koenig. Thank you, Chair. I just have some questions. I think this would probably be best directed to the health officer if she's available. But I'd love some clarification of the difference between transmission of the virus between people who are vaccinated and unvaccinated. Is there a significant difference that we're seeing between folks who are unvaccinated versus vaccinated transmitting the virus? There is about a seven-fold increase of infection rates in unvaccinated compared to vaccinated. Once infected, however, vaccinated and unvaccinated transmit the same amount of virus for generally the same period of time. Seven times more likely to be infected if they're unvaccinated. Correct, and they may not even know it, so they may come to work, whether vaccinated or unvaccinated, many infected people are asymptomatic and they may come to work not knowing that they're infectious and then spread the disease to coworkers. Got it, and then given our recent mask mandate indoors, you know, what additional public safety benefits does it provide to have a vaccine mandate like this? You know, aren't we already, you know, pretty effectively preventing spread within the workplace with masks? Masks are just one layer of protection. Vaccine is probably the most important and definitely the most effective layer of protection of our county health workforce, and that goes for not just other employees, but with the public as well. So it's much safer to have more of our workforce vaccinated. With option three providing the testing option, would we provide testing at all of every place of county employment or what testing sites would we offer? We are, we're working on the logistics of that right now. So if the board were to choose option three, what we would do is more than likely we would have a few sites in both North and South County where people would come and get tested once a week and we'd have certain days when employees were required to come to work and get tested first thing. Okay, and then I know that some private employers, I haven't heard of any public, but are requiring testing at the employee's expense. Have we considered that option or are there legal issues with that option? There's our HR director, maybe she can address that. Yeah, happy to address that. So one of the things that we're currently looking at just for convenience on the testing is that we are trying to have a mobile vendor who will actually come to our work sites and so we'll make it convenient so that employees may do that at the job site, which in essence will equate to, they'll be doing it during work time. And there would be no cost, hopefully there'd be no cost to the county or the employee. It would be either build, we hope it would be built to insurance, to health insurance. So I can explain about the vendor that we're looking at working with and this is a vendor that the city of Capitola and Santa Cruz are currently using. The vendor has an ability to bill for insurance, which means that we wouldn't have a cost. We have also asked the question, if for any reason an employee doesn't have insurance, let's say they're not utilizing our county insurance and they don't have any, which I think that's probably not a reality. They also have a way to bill through federal mechanisms so they are letting us know that there wouldn't be a cost. And we have reviewed a preliminary contract agreement, which also indicates no cost to the county. Well, that's incredible. Yes, and that's why we're currently making sure, dotting our eyes and crossing T's to ensure that that is so. Awesome. And then I've heard some concerns about medical privacy. I mean, is there any way that those people who are doing the testing, are they gonna be lining up in front of the building? And so it'll be obvious, who's chosen to vaccinate and who hasn't? So the idea would be that we certainly would have a window of time. So I would like to think that we will not have a big line forming. Our goal would be that not everybody can come at the same time. So we would have a window, right? Like we probably have a morning session and afternoon session. And I think that would help eliminate that line view and it shouldn't be an impact. Okay, thank you. And then my last question, again is for the health officer, which is with the Delta variant, Lambda and any other variants of concern, are we seeing increased infections in children, the folks who cannot willingly be vaccinated? Or I should say, I mean, obviously, I should comp infections that require children to go to the hospital. We haven't seen any of those type of infections here during the Delta search, thank goodness. And we hope that we don't, but we are seeing more cases in children. Perhaps it's because we're identifying more with schools reopening, but we are definitely recording more cases among unvaccinated children. And the more we can get our adults vaccinated or eligible community members, the better for our children as well and for keeping our schools open. So with Monterey County and Santa Clara County not going to a full mandate without the testing option, is the fact that Pfizer is, the Pfizer vaccine is fully approved, make that any more legally viable or are there continued concerns through that route? Well, I think it makes it more legally viable. Generally, we still haven't seen a case yet that discusses public employment and what the due process rights are involving bargaining impacts and things like that with regard to public employment. So there are issues that we have to deal with that there, but it is a legally viable option, which is why it was one of the options that is presented to you. Okay, thank you. That's all my questions. Yeah, the questions from the board. Second, just to supervise your friend. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, I have more some comments than questions. And first let me just say how proud I am of the workforce, the County workforce that we have this level of vaccination already, which is higher than the community at large in most places in the state. And for that matter, most places in the country. So I mean, we should be proud of the fact that the County employees are, we're not just telling the community to get vaccinated. We're also individually doing it and taking a leadership role on that. So I'm proud of that 85 that we've got that kind of number. With that said, I think that with the approval of the Pfizer vaccine with the president's comments yesterday encouraging vaccine mandates, I understand the rationale for number three and I get it. I'm actually inclined to support number two. I think it's cleaner, but I'm willing to go along with number three. If the board reviews it in a much shorter time period than's proposed in the staff report here, or I should say ads or review on one of them says December. I'd like to see something in about 30 days to see whether there has been 30 or 45 days depending upon how long it takes for full implementation to see whether we've seen an uptake, whether there are costs and also it allows us to be more flexible in determining any kind of issues with the variant about whether we need to do that. I just believe that when we have Dr. Newell in the media almost every single day saying vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate, we need to make sure that we are the leaders showing that we can do this too, that there isn't a separate set of standards for us as county leaders going out and saying to do it versus what we're asking the community to do. And so I'm comfortable with number two. As I said, I think it is ultimately gonna be the cleanest way. And I think unfortunately it's gonna be the real way to actually increase uptake. I'm skeptical that number three is gonna really increase the number of county employees that are vaccinated. I think that those who are vaccine hesitant will maybe come along because of the approval of the Pfizer vaccine altogether. And I think those that aren't supportive of vaccines aren't gonna feel motivated because of a testing requirement. I do think the testing requirement may help catch them early cases to keep other employees in the community safe and there's a value to that, which is why I would support it. But if the goal here is for 100% vaccination, I don't think number three realistically gets us there, which is why I'd like to see a review of this policy in about, I'll take the CIO's recommendation on how long it'll take to implement it, but either a month or 45 days and then we can come back and get in December for what the report currently recommends. But that's where I am. And just great, great appreciation for Dr. Newell and her work on all this. I'm supportive also of the mask mandate as she knows, but every time there's a mandate that comes down, this is language that concerns a lot of people. And I think right now in our hyper polarized, polarized political environment, there's people who historically would have been fine with mandates that for whatever reason now are disproportionately not. But I gotta say it's been approved. It's not experimental. And those that are unfortunately going to hospitals are all of a sudden finding religion, trusting doctors, nurses and any kind of experimental medication that'll come their way. So I do think that realistically, we need to just make sure that everybody is vaccinated and if that requires a mandate from our employees to start, then we should consider that. But Mr. Clausius, I guess my one question to you would be would 30 or 45 days be enough for you to come back with an initial analysis of the numbers as well as any costs that have been incurred? Time because the recommendation before you includes a period of 30 days for employees to comply. And the hope would be that with the choice of vaccination or mandatory testing, some employees may go and obtain the vaccine. So I think a realistic picture of coming back to you with some data and numbers to after giving a period of compliance would be November. So define compliance just so I know, is that your first shot? Is that fully vaccinated? Because obviously there's a couple of week period in between the two. How are we defining it? Cause I mean, what you would be stating if I'm understanding this correctly is that somebody on the 29th day may be going to getting their first shot. I think if the goal here is to actually send that we're not intending to have that level of delay. And so either people are gonna do this now or they're realistically not gonna do it. I think that I think that you've got two sets of people you had a hesitant people based on both information or valid concerns in their mind anyway about the safety of the vaccine, which I don't share those concerns on the EUA. But then you've got people that are just simply not gonna get it. And I think that that data should be able to parse out pretty quickly actually of those who are just not willing to do it. So if you could explain those two elements about whether it's full vaccination or single shot and what you're talking about. Being that we were hoping to be able to track both. So in the notices that will go out to employees who are unvaccinated giving them their options, we will see pretty fast what the reactions. We also know there is a requirement under the law to also look at religious accommodations and medical accommodations. So we're thinking the 30 day compliance we were hoping that that would even be for the first shot. And then we can certainly track those who are in the process of getting vaccinated. So we would have data that shows who's in the process perhaps not fully vaccinated. And then also we'd have a sense of those who adamantly say I won't be getting vaccinated I'm going to do the weekly test so then we can look at those numbers. So I am confident that we can certainly come back to you in October with some information. I think we would be able to come back with more thorough information in November because I do think if there are those folks who need the accommodation and qualify for a religious or medical condition that kind of process getting doctor's notes and going through the religious process will take at least two weeks. And I think that if somebody is denied an accommodation then they still have that choice to make whether they could even get that first shot in September. Okay, so what I'm hearing then is that we should know in 30 days since we have a 30 day compliance of whether or not somebody got a first shot got an exemption or is going to be tested which means within 45 days we should have the data. I mean it's still complete. I mean I recognize it's still one shop versus two shop but we know the direction that the employees have chosen to go and we know what costs are being if any are being charged to the county as a result of that. I'll still, I'll move from the 30 to the 45 days whatever that time period is of the meeting, the first meeting in October then that would accommodate that. I appreciate that information, so thank you. I'm sorry to interrupt but I wanna add a clarifying note that if your board is looking at option two or option three right now and if you were to go with option three we wouldn't be looking at religious or medical exemptions because there's a testing option. So nobody, so it's mandatory vaccination or testing and so there wouldn't be a review of accommodations under that option but there would be a review of those accommodations under option two. Okay, I apologize. I think that the board is leaning toward option three just based on some of the comments that were raised earlier by three of the members for including myself. I'm fine with doing number three but I do want the board to be able to review this again in early October to see whether it's actually moved the mark on this as far as how many people are actually getting vaccinated, which is the end goal, I mean really that's the true goal. The goal isn't to get a bunch of people tested. The goal is to actually set the expectation of a community that is as nearly vaccinated as possible both, I mean obviously understanding that there's both aid restrictions and some issues as to why some people can get vaccinated but so I appreciate that clarification from County Council. It doesn't change then. Whatever data you bring back to me in early October should help inform the board's decision of whether we need to move to a mandatory number two in essence or whether we could stay on the track that we're on, that's what I'm looking to come back for. Thank you. Third District Supervisor Coonerty. Yeah, let me just say I'm in general agreement with the direction that Supervisor Friend is outlining which is to start with option three, gather some data then in 45 days, make a determination about whether we need to move to a mandate as the adjacent counties have done. I think we're doing this for a couple of reasons. One, we're trying to keep the county community, the county as an organization healthy and safe. I just had a friend who was vaccinated who had to be readmitted to the hospital with a second case of COVID. And it was, it is a very serious situation and especially for coworkers who have kids or people with underlying health conditions at home, the folks who are choosing not to get vaccinated at this point are putting their coworkers, their friends, their family and the community at risk. And we need to at minimum have testing and ideally have vaccinations happen. And then the second part of it is I think, the other jurisdictions are watching us right now. And when you add up the collective workforce of the county plus the four cities, you're talking probably close to 1,000 people that are potentially would be vaccinated if we move towards that. And 1,000 people in a community our size is a significant number given the spread that Dr. Newell outlined. So I think from an institutional point of view we have a responsibility and then from a community wide community health point of view we have a responsibility. And I'm okay with starting with number three and then seeing where we're at and then looking at whether we need to move to number two. Option two, thank you. Does your supervisor cap it? Any comments? Thanks Bruce. Yeah, let's see, if I have my numbers correct we're talking about maybe 250 out of 2,500 in the county of county workers have not been vaccinated. So we're talking about 250, give or take a few. All right, you bet. And yeah, I like option three because the testing part, although it's not perfect it gives an option. We've all in the last year and a half we've been through difficult situations from all sides and there are some of the 250 that do not want to get vaccinated. I just don't want to get in a situation where basically if we made it mandatory and they refused we'd be firing them, is that correct? And I just don't want to have another fight going on while we're working on everything else in the county. Go ahead. Do you want to just clarify and address the comment that you made supervisor cap it about if somebody is not taking care of either testing or vaccinating you don't want to fire anybody. However, they would the testing part is okay. However, if an employee refuses to do both we would need a mechanism for compliance. And in the staff report we have indicated that if there's a refusal to vaccinate or test it will lead up to termination. And I just want to make that clear. Yeah. Okay, so yeah, with option three we're okay. But I guess when we come back, I don't know it's just a real tough situation for everybody right now. And what percentage of that 250 they're going to be working virtually from their homes possibly? Do we know how many of those would be? Most county employees are working a hybrid schedule the majority we need they're coming in the office part of the week and working virtually part of the week. So that's how most of these employees but some employees because of the nature of the job are required to come in every day. There's a very few employees actually who are working a hundred percent virtually at this point. Right, okay. Would some of them have an option to work virtually until the pandemic blows over? Not for the reason not to avoid getting vaccinated that would not be a valid reason to work virtually or to not test that's not acceptable. So the only reason somebody's working virtually is because it meets the business needs of the county and it is a privilege being given to our employees in general to work hybridly part of the week but it's not based on their desire to not get vaccinated or get tested. And so technically if it became mandatory they would be fired and then they'd have to go on unemployment it's a mess all the way around both. They're not getting the vaccination and they're refusing. That's probable but it doesn't look like that's where we're going to be going. So I get your point but... I know they lose their pension, they lose their, I don't know, one or so, yeah. Okay, well, I just, before I open up the file I just want to thank our county employees. You know, the 85, probably 90% compliance with being vaccinated is phenomenal. As we stated previously, it's probably the best of any other governing agency I know of anyway. And I want to just thank our county employees for stepping up under the circumstances and to really offering new programs like it's just Vax the Valley and my San Lorenzo Valley for offering more opportunities for people to become vaccinated now. So it's as we have in various other areas of the county as well. So I can't say enough about our county employees for the services they're providing and for them being coming vaccinated to really defer the spread of this, especially with the DILT variant. I'm gonna open up. Well, real quick, what about SEIU and youth and reps and stuff like that? So I have notified SEIU who happens to be our largest unit that your board was considering this item. And under state labor laws, we are obligated to notice them after your action and meet and confer over the impacts. So they are expecting me to correspond with them today to let them know what your action is. And I will also be making a offer to all of the bargaining units to meet and confer over the impacts and the impacts that they will want to really dig into and talk about is really what are the ramifications to employees if they do not comply. And we're prepared to have that conversation with them and they had appreciated the heads up that your board was considering this item today and are expecting to hear from me based on your action. Thank you. Okay, we'll open up to the public now. Yes, sir. Good afternoon, my name is James Ewing Whitman. Maybe someone misspoke earlier when they implied that the FDA or FCDC are part of the federal government. They are independent corporations. There is a lot of information around the world that the four types of stings, like only could they be called a vaccine after they changed the law earlier in January 21, both of the DNA and the MNRA changed the individual into a patented individual and the Supreme, excuse me, the Supreme Court in 2013 made a legal distinction and made it unlawful or legal to patent a natural human being or a plant or anything. But if it's been modified, it can be patented. It has no rights. So I kind of have a lot of questions. How could I limit them? Can anyone in this room or anyone on the planet isolate any virus in a duplicatable form? That answer is no. The PCR test was never meant for to replicate situations like this. And depending on how many factors it's repeated, it's ability to become in precise increases. So why is it even being used? The World Health Organization has already admitted fault here so they're gonna stop using it at the end of this year. What's been going on in the past 18 months? Complete coverups and lies. So what else? Uh, you know, it's interesting in this room with everybody, not many people are talking about neuropathic medicine. And, you know, figures don't lie, but liars sure can figure. You know, about the Delta variants, it's in the deltoid muscle. Let's go a little longer. Okay, go ahead. Is there a speaker? Thank you. Go the mic down please, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you. There is no isolation of the genome worldwide, including the California Health Department. We have a letter from them. CV-19 does not exist. Cell cultures of the COVID-19 treated patients were lab tested by Stanford, Cornell, Dr. Robert Young, and they found influenza A and influenza B, that clinically that is flu A and flu B. Dr. Kaufman, Dr. Cowan, the frontline doctors, Dr. Simone Gold, Dr. Robert Young, they've all been asking worldwide for the genome of this isolation. And it is negative. CDC, page 39 on the COVID, does not have an isolation of the genome. So where did the flu go in 2020? It disappeared. If we don't have an isolation, we don't have a real sensible disease. There's no need for masks and vaccines. And vaccines are not, these COVID vaccines are not vaccines. They do not create immunity. They are injections. Thousands have died. It's not seen on television, but if you go to alternative news, we have thousands that have permanent disabilities. They produce spike proteins in the lipid membrane that damages all the cells, especially your blood bearing organs and your brain. The graphene oxide in these injections is extremely toxic and it reacts to the frequencies of the Gs, 4G and 5G. And I just want to say, please do your research from my heart. Do your own research on this. You are asking people to take a very devastating injection that may kill them off within two years or sooner. And these are people that have worked with you and served you. Please, before you do this, do your own research. Thank you. Any other comments from the public here? I just found out about this. So I don't have facts and figures, but I'm afraid too often, I've been in front of this board before in facts and figures didn't make a difference. The law will eventually catch up to this kind of situation. And there will be lawsuits eventually trying to set this right. Look into your heart and do what you know is right. If you take the side of Satan, you still have time to change your mind and join with God and do the right thing and he will forgive you. Anybody else in the chamber that would like to address the board? Do we have anybody? Yes, I have five speakers on Zoom, six. Carol, your microphone is available. Good afternoon. This is Carol Bjorn. I'm here today to urge you to go with option one on this to keep the status quo. And for various reasons, Dr. Fauci, who was on MSNBC last week on Wednesday, August 18th, he said that vaccinated people infected with the Delta variant have the same viral levels as the unvaccinated infected with this variant. This means vaccinated people can easily spread the Delta end quote. So these vaccines do not prevent transmission. Therefore, it doesn't make sense to have any kind of mandate of vaccines. Secondly, this is really a question for Dr. Newell. Why haven't you been promoting early intervention? There are lots of early interventions that are available that are a lot less risky than vaccines and that are much more effective and then people aren't hospitalized at all. And Ryan, I'm really sorry that your friend was hospitalized after they had the vaccination, but there's another concept everyone should probably research. It's called antibody dependent enhancement. And this occurred with the vaccine trials with the first SARS vaccine in 2008. They did it only on animals and all of the animals had antibody dependent enhancement. And that means they were vaccinated, but then when they came in contact with the virus later on, they became even more ill. So that's what you're seeing right now. So if you continue vaccinating people, you're not gonna see less disease. You're not gonna see less of anything. There's been 85% of your county workers that have already decided to vaccinate. That's great. You guys should be done. You don't have any legal authority either to mandate a vaccine for a worker. I think Joanne is right. You're gonna see a lot of lawsuits. And the other thing is you're completely ignoring the risk of vaccination. 11,000 people have died from the COVID-19 vaccine according to the VAERS, which is a government website. So you all really need to think about this and not caller 1192. Your microphone is available. Hello, can you hear me? Hello, can you hear me? Am I on? Thank you. I'd like to address the county employees and county residents about the safety of this so-called vaccine. It's time to thank for yourself and use common sense. When people go to get vaccinated, there's supposed to be a piece of paper in the vaccine box that says what's in the vaccine. It's called a material safety data sheet. It is left intentionally blank. How can you give your informed consent to an experimental vaccine or even an approved medical treatment if you don't even know it's in it? Blind trust is not a virtue. You will only have yourself to blame for the adverse reactions. I'm gonna play out the rest of my time with an audio recording by a Catholic friar, Brother Bugnolo. And if you'll just wait a second, I'm gonna start playing that for you. Thank you. Those making these vaccines know these vaccines will kill you. They know science, they're not stupid. When you spend billions of dollars to build a factory to produce vaccines, you have enough scientists to know that antibody farming will kill you. And we have to face the reality of what's going on, that this is the intention. The intention is to exterminate humanity. Somewhere around the nearly two billion people, I'd hear it say, have been vaccinated. Now, according to Monsignor Ann, anyone who has taken these vaccines, that prime your immune system to react excessively the next time you run into a coronavirus, these all will be dead in two years. In the next two years, we will see two billion people die on earth. If you're in a state like some of my relatives where 85% of the people are vaccinated, everyone on your street will be dead, except you who haven't taken it and the others who haven't taken it. And as an anthropologist, I feel strongly motivated to tell you. Erica, your microphone is available. Can you guys hear me? Yes. Thank you. Well, I just wanna start by sharing a bit of my history. When I was 29, I had a mini-stroke. At that time, I was given flying colors for health by my physicians. They're always as, you know, great, you're doing awesome, you know? And I had a stroke, essentially a mini-stroke. Now, this type of medical intervention has risks and it's not acceptable to assume that people will be fine by taking it. People like me who have some serious health history need to be able to say no. And the offer of just taking tests, well, the thing is, is those tests have ethylene oxide and ethylene oxide is cancerous. So it's to asking people to put themselves at risk for cancer. So that may lead to some issues for you guys later on down the road. One confusion seems to be that these vaccines are now approved. My understanding is it was just an extension of the Emergency Youth Authorization Act. And even your own evidence shows that vaccinated people and unvaccinated people spread COVID and therefore, you know, if it exists, they spread it. And since there's still as much transmission among both groups, there's no real benefit. Thank you. Kanzuiya, your microphone is available. Okay, thank you. Hi, my name is Kenza Tempsamani. I live with my family in Capitola and I vote. Thank you, Manu Koenig. Right now, all over California mandates are being created and enforced, which take away people's right to choose for themselves and their families. COVID injections were first offered as a choice, often with a reward. Then increasingly it has become a situation in which there is no more choice because one will lose one's employment, access to the public domain, or even to family and friends. We were told the COVID injections are highly effective at controlling the spread and decreasing the likelihood of getting COVID. And yet Israel, the country with the highest COVID vaccination rate, 78% for those 12 and older, I refer you to the article in Science Magazine of August 16th called, A Grimm Warning from Israel, Vaccination Blunts But Does Not Defeat Delta. The article states that breakthrough cases are not the rare events the term implies. As of 15th August, 514 Israelis were hospitalized with severe or critical COVID-19, a 31% increase from just four days earlier. Of the 514, 59% were fully vaccinated. Which brings me to my next point, mandates. To force another individual to do something is morally and ethically wrong and usually feels wrong in the conscience of the enforcer. If you're a parent, you know what I'm talking about. In positive discipline, we say good parenting feels right. Even if you, the people in charge, think that vaccination is good for the community, what gives you the right to make a choice over what goes into someone else's body? And for people who do not wish to get the injection, it could actually be harmful regardless of what the ingredients are. Think of the placebo effect in which some people get better when they believe that they are getting medicine. If people believe that the COVID injection is harmful or poisonous to them, then regardless of what its ingredients are, it may cause detriment to their health. Immute. Hi, sorry about that. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, you can. Hi, my name is Kat. I did not repair a speech. I wanted just to touch on a few thoughts as I was listening. Carol said much of what I wished to say. We talk about all of these benefits of these vaccines and how they are the safest way to quote, beat COVID. And that is such a joke when we know that they have not prevented transmission. And all of these mitigation strategies have actually been more harmful to our health than helpful. And I think it's just an abomination to our county and everyone that lives here to have to go through the circus act of putting on face coverings that do not prevent viral transmission that actually inhibit the exchange of gases. I came and spoke about this for schools last year. I just am appalled to see what you're putting our children through with this upcoming year. And now to see that you're going to be pushing these experimental, even though you say it's not experimental, the trials for Pfizer were not set to be complete until 2023. And now they still don't have adequate safety data on the effects on pregnant women and their fetus and their embryos and their fetuses. We do not have adequate data on how this is affecting teenagers. I do know that the rates of myocarditis have gone through the roof. If you go to the government website, VAERS, you can see that there's been 13,000 deaths post COVID vaccinations. Over 54,000 have been hospitalized and over 595,000 have had adverse reactions to these COVID vaccines. So that's really something we should be thinking about. And when I hear you talking about how this is the safest way to beat this virus, I disagree. It's clear that many viable and affordable treatments, we were suppressed. Even bad science was created to make them appear dangerous. These are safe and affordable. Calling user four, your microphone is available. As a reminder, this star six to unmute your call. Am I on? Yes. Okay. This is Marilyn Garrett and I'd like to read a sentence here. In the practice of medicine, sometimes the dogma about a certain subject becomes so rigid that even when the truth is sitting in plain sight, physicians, and I would add others, simply cannot see it. You've been hearing the truth about vaccines problems with all these lockdowns. I'd also like to read from learntherisk.org, a publication called Vaccines for Health or Profits, question mark by Brandy Vaughn, who was a Merck, former Merck pharmaceutical sales executive and founder of learntherisk. Unfortunately, she's not alive. The book opens up medical freedom is a human right. First and foremost, mandatory vaccine laws are a violation of the basic human right to voluntary consent without coercion to any and all medical procedures, tests, experiments, and preventative measures. The Nuremberg Code was established following World War II based on the fact that all medical products have an inherent health risk and serious side effects vaccines included. I do not want to see you kings of the county as I call this all male board. Further inflict harm on the population by mandating. Global? Lara, your microphone has been unmuted. We'll move over to caller 6094. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, now we can. We're back to Lara. OK, great. Yeah, I'm calling because I wanted to make it clear that what you're doing is in violation of the Nuremberg Code, which is international law and the penalty for violating what for doing what you're doing is death. And you will be held accountable at some point, whether on this planet or with God. So you need to you need to do what's right for humanity and take a stand and stop doing what you're doing all for the money. We know what you're doing. That's all I have to say. We'll go to caller 6094. Your microphone is available. It is star six to unmute your phone. Second call for caller 6094. Tara, the caller has access to their microphone, but has not unmuted. Hi, I don't know why it's taking me again, but sure, I'll continue talking. All of this information that's being shared today is not secret. It's on government websites to show how many people have been dying and been injured and the censorship is outrageous. It's just like in Nazi Germany, when Hitler was putting stars on the juice, you're creating a medical apartheid, separating humanity based on their vaccination status. It's coercion and force. It's immoral. This has to stop. You guys are really taking away too far. The propaganda and the mind control and the psychological warfare on the American people is beyond anything I could even imagine, but those of us who are awake are gaining in numbers and gaining in organization and you will be held accountable. That's all I have to say. There are no other speakers for public comment. Okay, I don't think there's any other person in the audience or the chamber that wants to speak. I'll bring it back to the board for consideration for action. Anybody? Mr. Chair, I'll move. I believe the recommended actions for number three. I'll just confirm that if not, I'll just specifically move item number three. Mr. Placios, is the recommended actions number three just confirmed? That is correct. Okay, then I'll move the recommended actions and I'll also add additional direction to have a report back in 45 days with an update on any costs, the additional uptake from the employees of the vaccine numbers, any lessons learned and then to provide the options again of status quo or I guess in this case it'd be status quo or mandatory vaccines at the time just to allow the board a second opportunity to review this in 45 days. Second. Supervisor Coonerty. Okay, yes, Coonerty. Yes. Thank you. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend, I'm sorry, Supervisor Friend. He is mouthing aye, but we can't hear him. Aye, I don't know if it's not working, I'm sorry. Thank you. Coonerty. Aye. Captain. This is option three, right? Correct for option three with additional direction. Aye. Thank you. Supervisor McPherson. Aye. Thank you, motion passes unanimously. Okay, very good. We'll go to item number 14 to consider the proposed Santa Cruz County operational plan for fiscal years 2021, 23, that's two years and direct the county administrative office to return on September 28th, 2021 with the final plan for board approval as outlined in the memorandum of the county administrator of officer. We have a vision Santa Cruz County report, attachment A, operational plan, attachment B, operational plan for sure. Thank you for being here. And Nicole Coburn, I think is going to present. Yes. Good afternoon, Ter McPherson, the members of the board. So I'm Nicole Coburn, Assistant County Administrative Officer. I'm here today with Sven Stafford, Principal Administrative Analyst. And we're going to be presenting on the proposed operational plan for the next two fiscal years, 2021 through 2023. And I, before we begin, I just want to thank all the departments for working with us over the course of the past eight months on their operational plan objectives. They've worked very hard, taken all of the feedback given to them. And I believe we have an excellent plan to present today. So this is our agenda for this afternoon. We're going to briefly touch on our strategic and operational plans and provide a brief overview. We'll then get into our operational plan for the new two-year period, talk about the development process and some of our theme areas as well as give you a brief tour of our objectives online. And then we'll wrap up by discussing our next steps. So just to remind you where we've been, three years ago we were here and the board approved the County's first strategic plan for the six-year period of 2018 through 2024. Following approval of that plan, which included the County's vision, mission and values along with six focus areas and 24 goals, we went about developing our first two-year operational plan. That plan was approved two years ago in 2019 and that contained 55 strategies and 180 objectives for achieving the County's vision, mission and goals. Those objectives were based on a smart framework and just to remind you, a smart framework means that our objectives are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. So that means we're trying to achieve very specific things and we're trying to measure them to see how the County is performing. Our new two-year operational plan for the next two-year period contains 148 new objectives as well as some carryover objectives from the original plan. And we've added a new element to our smart framework and that is the E at the end, which stands for equity and we'll get into that a little bit more in a bit. So in terms of how we developed the plan, this past winter we started in on training for County staff that focused in on measurement and equity to provide them with key concepts and definitions and remind them about our smart framework. We followed that up with this past spring with working with departments on drafting their objectives, providing feedback on those drafts and revising them as we move forward. Then this spring and summer, Sven along with County staff presented to 25 commissions to talk about our operational planning process and to give them an update as to where we're at and they received some feedback from those commissions. And today we're here to present our proposed operational plan and to receive any feedback that the board might have as well as the public. So our new two-year operational plan focuses in on three main focus areas. The first is COVID-19 recovery. I think as we're all acutely aware, the pandemic has changed the nature of our lives and how we work. And we wanna ensure that everyone can adapt and create more resiliency within communities that have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. Another theme area is fire recovery. We are just about one year away from where one year into our CZU fire recovery, as we all know, that fire burned 86,000 acres and destroyed almost 1,500 structures. We're currently watching the state's largest fire and history burn to our north. And here locally, the board established our Office of Response Recovery and Resilience, or OR3 as we like to call it, not only to recover from the fires, but also to ensure a better response to future disasters. OR3 is guiding policies to make our community more resilient in the face of the ever-changing climate. Our third area is equity. Also a year ago in August, the board declared racism a public health crisis. And this past December, the board directed our office to incorporate equity and social justice into our operational plan. Our office is going to be continuing to work with departments as well as external partners, public health, and the circle on anti-racism, economic and social justice to make sure diverse voices continue to be involved in developing county objectives and addressing changes as we move forward. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Sven, who's gonna go a little bit more into depth in our focus areas. All right, thanks, Nicole, and good afternoon, board. In terms of COVID-19 recovery, the 21-23 operational plan builds on the county's save lives Santa Cruz County program to slow the spread, adapt and adjust, vaccinate and treat, and elevate readiness. And all county departments have submitted at least one objective to respond, recover, or become more resilient in the face of the pandemic. Examples of this include working with community partners, especially in South County, to maintain and strengthen the relationships and programs built over the last 18 months. An example from our Housing for Health Division of moving vulnerable households from our quarantine shelters and into appropriate housing from our Public Health Division in terms of maintaining an increasing lab and epidemiological capacity to be able to respond to future public health crises. And then from a variety of departments on investing trust in county staff to maintain remote work schedules, be productive and increase access to services both online and in person. In terms of fire recovery, our community and county response have been immense. Almost all of our debris removal is complete and the Recovery Permit Center is currently achieving seven to 10-day turnarounds for most rebuilding permits. OR3, county fire, planning, public works, and environmental health, along with a variety of other departments have contributed operational plan objectives. And some highlights of those include in planning, taking best practices from the Recovery Permit Center and embedding those benefits for all county residents, improving infrastructure through public works and planning also so that evacuation routes are clear of hazards and information is available and clearly communicated, ensuring our most vulnerable have resources and that we coordinate community ride to access the knowledge and generosity within the county. And then also with OR3 updating our climate action strategy to incorporate new estimates of impact and to provide an environmental justice lens to the impact of climate change. And the final focus area in terms of embedding equity, we've really worked with our departments to improve our smart framework by adding the E and providing training to departments to create more measurable objectives. Within that measurement, disaggregating the data is really required to create objectives that move the needle towards more equitable programs and policies. And county departments have submitted 80 objectives in the plan that work across one lens of equity. And the range includes geography, race, age, ability, income, and gender. And some highlights of this include internal improvements like implicit bias training and health and human services joining the government alliance on race and equity. External objectives include improvements like removing barriers through better language translation services, community engagement and partnership policies and collaborative programming, making sure our youth of color, for example, and our communities have the opportunities they need to achieve their goals. And then also making unprecedented investments in South County, including the new building at 500 Westridge. And so now I'll ask the clerk to share the website screen and we'll take a little tour of the operational plan. Before we start, I would like to thank Tom Melconian and Yan Zhang from ISD who did a lot of the work in getting this website up and running. As you can see here, we have our county vision mission and values and underneath it, the 21-23 operational plan. Here we can simply click on see objectives and it'll take us to our, Stephanie, can I have control? It's actually, it's all right if we go out of full screen. I can see the whole browser. This will be better. Okay, excellent. So here we can cycle through the various goals. Within this we can also cycle through our strategies that are linked to the goals. And at the bottom there's also a space here on the one and two to see the full list of objectives that are related to these. And so if we look at one objective, just to go through one, this is from our probation department that by June 2023, they'll increase the percentage of youth of color on track to graduate to 50%. Below that you can see the key steps related to achieving the objective. And below that there's a plan reference to see where the objective is linked, target information. So you can see the specific target baseline information. So currently 39% of youth of color on track to graduate and then a progress marker. And so all the new objectives have 0% progress and the first update to this plan will be in winter 2022. We'll see progress updates for all 182 objectives. A couple other things just to show a note here. On this page, you can see a link to the archive of the 2019-21 operational plan so people can easily navigate to that. You can also come here and sort the objectives in various categories. So here you can look at it in terms of timeline when objectives are supposed to be completed. You can see objectives by department. You can see them in terms of our different equity lenses. So external communications, community partnerships and county services. And then internal facing objectives like county facilities or internal systems and objectives targeted towards our workplace. In terms of COVID and fire recovery, you can also see objectives sorted by category of response, recovery and resilience. And this stands for fire recovery as well. The three categories of response, recovery and resilience. And so we just encourage people to go on the website and play around one additional thing that I wanted to highlight or bring the board's attention to is the just amount of collaboration that happens on the plan. And so this is a sort of web of how all our work is interdependent. If we look at our COVID-19 related objectives, you can see that health services has the most connections built in. If we look at our fire related objectives, you can see that OR3 has the most connections, which is nice to see that it's a department that's existed for six months but is already building the relationships within the county and as evidenced here in the plan. And then within the equity related objectives, obviously the board named racism a public health crisis. And so it makes sense that health here has the most connections, but we should also be proud that every department submitted at least one objective that attempted to embed equity. And so with that, I'll turn it back to Nicole and ask the clerk to highlight our presentation again. So today we're asking for the board to provide any guidance to our office on the proposed operational plan and then to direct our office to return at the end of September with the final plan for 21, 23, 23, at which time we'll ask for the board to approve the plan. And we're happy to take any questions you might have. Thank you very much. I'd like to make some statements that could have made before you made the presentation that I'd like to congratulate the CEO and his whole staffs and Nicole in particular for developing what I think is a very worthwhile operations plan for the next two years. If the general public wants to know what's on our mind and where we really wanna go, they can refer to this and see this is our standard, this is what we wanna do. And I'm proud to see that the county establish its first strategic plan a few years ago and I'm equally pleased that the resulting operations plan that we have been implementing for the past two years has been a solid success. We've accomplished a lot of those goals. The next two year operations plan really reflects lessons learned. And I think several of the key objectives are worth a special mention that we have accomplished. And I could have mentioned this earlier on as well. The COVID-19 recovery effort will provide community grants, increase our epidemiology, a lab capacity to provide needed testing and tracing and perhaps most importantly, provide rental assistance to those in danger of losing their housing. In terms of objectives relative to fire recovery and resiliency, the county will update our climate action strategy, which we'll look at how we will need to adapt to climate change, especially extreme natural disasters and weather. And one suggestion I think we might make and I'm sorry to make this late, we talk about fire recovery, but I think we need to say fire preparation too because we have to set some objectives of what we wanna do to prevent, hopefully it never realistic fire in the future. So I mean, aside from recovery, which we've done a phenomenal job at, what are we gonna be doing to prepare for the next disaster, a fire disaster, many of which are taking place throughout California. And I'm sorry to bring this up at this point late, but I think that if we added that phrase, it would be very helpful. The county will also aim to reduce the number of fossil fuel vehicles in our fleet as well as implement a permanent remote workforce policy that will greatly reduce the vehicle miles traveled to county offices, hopefully that highway one corridor in particular, the unified permit center between public works and planning to be established next year and will enhance the county's ability to provide more efficient customer services, residents and businesses seeking building permits. And last but not least, I'd like to highlight the objectives of the county as set for itself, embedded inequity considerations within all community services. We will be providing translation for all board meetings, training all county workers on how to recognize their own implicit and conscious bias toward others. And establishing, which has been mentioned, the South County Service Center campus that will be more centrally located for community members to access county service at the Marine Center or 500 Westridge in the South County. But those were some real key and important objectives that are in this new plan and I'm looking forward to supporting it and congratulations to the CEO to bring this to our attention and saying, we need to do this without his and his old offices directive and saying how much we need this. We wouldn't be where we are and we've accomplished a lot and there's a lot more to do but it can't be overstated that we need a plan of attack and this is it and the public can see what we've accomplished and then what our goals are in the near future and for the next four years as well. I don't know if there's any other comments from the board members, Supervisor Koenig. Yes, thank you chair and thank you, Mr. Stafford and Ms. Coburn for the great presentation. The website is incredibly easy to navigate and kind of fun too. So it lays it out very well. I appreciate that presentation. And as the chair pointed out, I would encourage any members of the public to go explore it as well. I also appreciate the emphasis on objectives being smart, specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound. And so really in my review of the objectives just making sure that they are consistent in meeting, meeting the outline of specifically being measurable. And I'm really glad County Fire is included this year. That was definitely, I think we all see the obvious need for that now. And honestly, our citizens deserve accountability from County Fire. And this will be a good way of ensuring that happens. I'll just point out a couple of specific objectives that I see that could use improvement and we'll be sure to follow up with more specific notes as well. But on number 298, fire surveillance, again, fire being an important topic and needing to make sure that these objectives are measurable. Right now it just says that a number of cameras, or sorry, it just, let's find it here. It just says by June 2023, County Fire will expand fire surveillance cameras throughout Santa Cruz County. So to ensure that this is measurable, I'd love to see the objective in terms of, yeah, a number of cameras observing a percentage of the county. So for example, by June 2023, County Fire will have five cameras observing 85% of the county, something to that effect. On objective number 299 for volunteer firefighters, this right now reads that by June 2023, County Fire will increase the number of volunteer firefighters by 5%. That's three volunteer firefighters. We definitely have a crisis in the number of volunteer firefighters today in the county. I had the opportunity to speak with our fire department advisory committee recently who explained some of the challenges that they've been dealing with as far as really maintaining volunteer firefighters once they've been trained. And so we have some fundamental issues we need to address in the way that we recruit and train volunteer firefighters. I think if we do that successfully, we're gonna see an increase of more than 5% or three additional folks. And I think we really need to get at the core of the process and aim our sights a little bit higher. Some more, you know, at least 15%, but there's gonna have to be some substantive changes to if we're really gonna address the shortfall. Moving on, bike lanes number 296. I was just happy to see this included that by June 2024, we'll install 10 miles of Bufferton protective bike lanes on Soquel Drive between La Fonda Avenue and State Park Drive. I think there's probably also some other important connections that we could look at. Number 228, safe routes to school. I noticed that this could be a hard one to measure. I don't think we have the data currently as far as accidents that happen near school specifically. You know, we do from the Office of Traffic Safety a statewide agency have crash ranking data from across the state and specifically for our county. So it might actually be easier to set an objective that is county wide rather than one specifically near schools. It's not to say that safe routes to school are not important, it's an essential part of this. But the objective might be easier to measure and complete using a county wide measure. And just so people understand the importance of this, currently we are actually the third worst in the state for bicycle accidents of any county. That's all my comments and I'll follow up with any more specific recommendations on some of the objectives. But thank you again for your good work and the great searchable database. Thank you. Psychodistory Supervisor Zach Friend. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Supervisor Koenig for your comments. And it is really a remarkable sight to see this come to fruition at this point. I know Supervisor Coonerty shared this story but a few years back before we hired our CAO we had traveled around the state meeting with other counties. Yeah, they did business and saw that one of the gaping holes was the fact that our county didn't have the strategic plan or this type of operational objectives. And to see it all come together here is remarkable. I'll also say that it really is the framework and a very transparent and accountable blueprint for what work the county does. And if people are interested in, if the community is interested in what the county is planning to do, what we currently do, then you can visit an easy to navigate site and you can also reach out to your elected officials to say whether or not you think things should be modified over the course of time. But oftentimes the work that local governments do is behind the scenes and people aren't familiar with how it impacts our day-to-day lives. I think having something like this available for the community to see and also for, I would say for the media to take a deep dive into to help explain to the community the work that's being done is very valuable. So a great deal of appreciation to both Mr. Stafford and Ms. Covren for your work and looking forward to continue setting on this these kinds of measurable goals moving forward. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, so I just want to add my voice to the course appreciation for the easy and transparent accessibility of this. I also appreciate the new emphasis on equity and making sure that it's really built in. Part of this is creating that transparency and awareness for the community about what the county does. And the other thing is to really create a culture that aligns with our values and vision within the county family. And I think we're well on the road to that. I love the connection map that showed how many of these goals and departments are interconnected because for too long, I think we've treated each problem as to be solved within one silo of government not recognizing the interdependency and interconnection with other departments that's needed. I will go back to make one comment which is, and I made this when we were first beginning this process and I think it's important for both the board and the community recognizes this, which is I don't expect all these goals to be met. In fact, I'll be angry or frustrated if they are because it means that we've set the bar too low. And we will also want government to take risks and some of these things, situations will change, we'll come up short or funding will run out. There's a variety of things, but I want each department should be setting one goal that's definitely a stretch or a risk or an experiment or a pilot. And then seeing and then learning and failing fast, right? As they say, in terms of seeing works and iterating or dropping it or changing it. And so I appreciate the effort and I look forward to seeing the next round back in September, the final version back in September. Thank you. I wanna thank the staff for your report and all the hard work you put into this. I appreciate it all. Thank you. Okay. Are there any comments from the public? Any comments? Yes. When on Zoom, Kat, your microphone is available. Hi. I'm still listening. And you know, I just thought it's really ironic and hypocritical to talk about caring about equality. When I see clear segregation and discrimination happening right now with the discussion of forced mandates. And eventually, as we know, you follow San Francisco pretty closely. You'll eventually be discussing a vaccine passport or a health pass of sorts, right? So it's a joke. I think I wanted to let everyone who's listening know that it's you are discriminating against the brown and black communities because we all know about the Tuskegee experiments. We all know that we are experimenting on them in African countries and in India. And so if you wanna talk about equality, then you'd think twice about forcing people to take an experimental product, especially with such distrust in the pharmaceutical industry and their public-private partnerships with our government. Look into medical racism, the new apartheid. It is a film on children'shealthdefense.org. And also keep in mind that the CDC is heavily funded by a nonprofit called the CDC Foundation. Look at the partnerships of the CDC Foundation with organizations. It's banking, military, tech, pharma, you name it. So when we defer to the CDC for these ridiculous guidelines, let's think about who's funding the CDC and our media and the messaging and the propaganda. Gail Newell, I also wanted to let you know, I'm disappointed that you had a seminar called Don't Kill Grandma. That is simply shameful. Lastly, I think with regard to the fires that you're discussing, we should all be thinking about how convenient it is for these fires to force us into smart cities, which is inevitably a goal of the UN and other billionaires and organizations. So, oh, and also you're going to expand fire surveillance cameras. I find that highly suspect. I think the public is aware and you'll all be tried at some point and be held accountable for your ignorance and your incompetence. There are no other speakers, Chair. Okay, I'll bring it back to the board for motion to accept the County Operational Plan for Fiscal Years 2021-23. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. Second, please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you, Chair. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. 325 have been reached. That is the last item on our agenda. We will adjourn now to the next Board of Supervisors meeting, the regularly scheduled meeting on September 14th. This meeting is adjourned. Okay.