 of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We have consideration of late additions to the agenda and additions or deletions to the consent and regular agendas. Mr. Palacios. Yes, we have a few corrections on the regular agenda. Item number 11, a staff request that this item be deleted. This is packet pages 96 through 103. And then on the consent agenda, item 33, there's additional materials, a revised memo, replacement packet pages 214 through 216. There's also a revised attachment, a replacement packet pages 217 through 219. That concludes the corrections, Chair. Okay, thank you. Are there any announcements by the board members of items removed from the consent to the regular agenda? I think so. Chair, I would like to add that we remove item 25 to the regular agenda concerning the conduct of our meetings digitally. I just liked ultimately to propose one small change to that. And I'd also like to ask that we remove item 54 from the consent to the regular agenda. That's concerning the spending of $8 million on rapid rehousing using state and federal grants that we are accepting today. Okay. So then you just wanted to comment on 25, did you say, excuse me? Yes. I just had a small amendment to propose to 25. Okay. I think we can do that in the consent agenda, probably on item 54. We should have that become item number 13A, that'd be correct. So item number 54 on the consent agenda will become item number 13A, the last item on our regular agenda. And do you want to make a brief comment on the other at this point? I'm sure. Happy to do that. The item number 25 concerning virtual board meetings, it says that we would continue to conduct all board of supervisors public meetings using the all virtual model until the governor lifts the Brown Act exemptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I just believe that that triggering time might be a little bit late in reviewing executive order N2920, which does change, which relieves us of these Brown Act obligations. It says that those will be in place until social distancing, so long as social distancing is recommended even, not simply required. I do think that we could be recommending social distancing for some time. So I would like to propose an amendment that we change that to until such time as the county of Santa Cruz meets all health metrics so as to be better than the state-defined minimal or yellow tier risk level. Okay. Any comments by board members or Mr. Plosius? Just a point of order real quick from county council. Given that we haven't actually taken public comment on this thing, I don't know that we could really be amending an item at this point. So I don't feel it proper for me to be providing additional comments on this item until we've gone to the public. I respect the fact that that's how it was directed towards Supervisor Koenig, but I think that this should be at a different time. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate that point of order right now is just for pulling items from consent to the regular agenda if we want to do that. And then we could make this item either 13B or not remove it or the board could decide not to remove it to the consent to the regular agenda. And I don't think it needs to be removed. I think that somebody can make an amendment as we are always due to consent as the chair was saying and that obviously Supervisor Koenig will be making that amendment. I just, I will have comments on that amendment at the time. I just wanted to be sure that we had an opportunity for the community to address it before we formally tried to amend an item. That's right. So what we could do right now is just postpone further comment on the item until the board is giving comments on the consent agenda. Very well. Okay. So we will, okay. So then for number four, are there any other items to be removed from the consent of regular agenda? Any board members? Seeing none, we will go to public comment and then address that issue. We just were commented on this is the time for public comment and any person may address the board wants to read a public comment period, not exceeding two minutes. Comments must be directed to items on today's consent or closed session agendas yet to be heard items on the regular agenda or on a topic not on today's agenda within jurisdiction of the board. We'll take comments now for up to 30 minutes and if necessary, additional time for public comments will be allowed after the last item on today's regular agenda. Do we, do we have any comments from the public? Yes, Chair, we do. We currently have seven members of the public with their hand raised for those joining us via the zoom link. A reminder that the hand raising feature is at the bottom of your screen. If you're dialing in, please press star nine to raise your hand to be placed in the queue. The chair said you will have two minutes to speak and you will be muted automatically at the end of this time. Caller three, two, five, six. Your microphone is available. Please unmute. Good morning. This is Ellie Black. Am I being heard? Yes. Thank you. Good morning everyone. First off, I would like to thank you for mentioning the instructions for the public to contact during public comment. I would like to make a small request that the phone number be repeated during that announcement and also that at the time of the phone number being mentioned, that also the codes to raise the hand and the codes to unmute are also mentioned at that time. We do need to remember that many of the people of the public who are trying to make public comment are people who are the elders and wise people in our community for a large part and many of them do not have computers and may not have a lot of the technical experience that others use every day. I think it's only fair to accommodate everyone as much as possible in that way. As really the folks who don't have computers but still are paying attention to everything that's going on and have seen the history of this county through the years and through the decades, their input is some of the most valuable that we can hear. Thank you for everything you're doing. Hopefully we will be able to see you all face to face again. I would like to thank Supervisor Koenig for mentioning item number 25 on the consent agenda. This is something that obviously to me anyway should be something that is pulled off the consent agenda so that it can be discussed further. In all of the months during this pandemic situation, as far as I know, no one became ill or infected as a result of the public meetings. To my knowledge, if that's different, let me know. But I believe that there has been no super spreader event of any type resulting from those meetings. So those in-person meetings really should be resumed. Thank you, caller. User one, your microphone is available. As you may know, the cellular industry has plans to install 5G antennas in residential neighborhoods every five to seven houses over the next few years. Cities, including Mill Valley, California, have successfully passed laws to ban installation from residential neighborhoods. I'd like this board to pass that law, same law. Here's Dr. Martin Paul. He is a professor, emeritus of biochemistry and basic medical science at Washington State University, discussing 5G. What I've been doing most recently is in my talks, I first of all start talking about eight different types of facts which are extraordinarily well documented based on anywhere from 13 to 35 different public reviews that show that they're occurring following MF exposures. Those include widespread neurological and neuropsychiatric effects, which are becoming increasingly common in all of the technologically advanced countries on Earth. They include reproductive effects, lowered male and female reproduction, increased spontaneous abortion, decreased levels of each of the three types of sex hormones and lowered libido. And all of those things are going on in terms of milk fertility. There are multiple types of effects that impact milk fertility. So we have those. We have oxidative stress, which is involved in essentially every chronic disease you can name as a major causal element. We have attacked the cellular DNA, the DNA of ourselves of three different types, which are involved in producing the most important types of mutations that we have in human genetics, but also in terms of the most important changes that occur to produce cancer. And we have also increased levels of what's called apoptosis, often also pronounced apoptosis, which is programmed cell death, which is something that's first. In 1999, your microphone is unmuted. Color 1999, unmute, please. Guess we're going to the next caller. Caller 1192, your microphone is unmuted. Caller 1192, I think we can hear you trying to speak. OK, good morning. My name is James Hume. We lost you, Mr. Ewing. We lost this caller. Color 1192, your microphone is available. Caller 1192, your microphone is unmuted. Hi, this is Gayle Necunum, and I want to just say that this 5G is going to be very unwelcome in people's communities. It's very dense coverage of radiation, and the health effects are going to be disastrous. So I really recommend against that. Also, the Waving the Brown Act, because someone recommends it, medical or not, is legislating by medical people, authorities. You may not legislate away our rights, just because it's recommended by somebody who's unaccountable and is not approving why is going to lead to more secrecy of our government. The Brown Act is to prevent secrecy and to prevent people being excluded from the legislative process and the decisions being made. We need less secrecy. Thanks. Have a great day. Geryl, your microphone is unmuted. I'd like to speak on item 25 also. I want to thank Supervisor Keaney for this amendment. I would also support removing it from the consent agenda and voting on it. The Orange County Board of Supervisors is meeting in person. I'm not sure why our county Board of Supervisors is not meeting in person. And the population of Orange County is more than 3 million, and our population is quite a bit less than that. I think the risk of any contraction of any infectious disease is quite low in our county. So I would support going back to a hybrid model of in-person and virtual. As we can see, two of the people who've tried to call in today can't even get in and speak. So I think that point shows itself that we need to have in-person meetings. And I hope you'll please take all that into account. Next, I'd like to speak about the homeless encampment in the Gulch along North Rodeo Gulch. This encampment is on county-owned land. The people who live along North Rodeo Gulch have called the sheriff to report drug use and other criminal activity occurring in this encampment. However, the sheriff's office has failed to act. Allowing this criminal activity to continue in this encampment puts the law abiding people who live along North Rodeo Gulch at risk. Indeed, the people in this encampment started a fire on Sunday, which resulted in fire trucks being called and North Rodeo Gulch was closed. Further, the people who started this fire violated Santa Cruz County Code 7.92.305.4, which reads deliberate or negligent burning. It shall be unlawful to deliberately or through negligence set fire or cause the burning of combustible material in such a manner as to endanger the safety of persons or property. Please conduct a thorough investigation of this criminal activity and prosecute these people to the fullest extent of the law. Caller 2915, your microphone is unmuted. Good morning, this is Becky Steinbruner. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. Good morning. And I also want to second the sentiments that our board of supervisor meetings need to return to the hybrid model item number 25. It is not true in the staff report that no other meetings are being held in person with a hybrid. Central fire is and always has throughout this and there have been no problems. There are many people such as myself that can only participate via telephone. We are not able to see the presentations that your board receives via slides that is critical and will be imperative that we do see during budget season. I would like to ask that you, and I did submit a letter to you. I would like to ask that you install some sort of screen or something in the basement or someplace within the county building, such that a small group of people could with masks, socially distancing, see those screens. You're omitting a lot of information for the public view and I'd like that changed. I also want to speak to number 24, Waterproofing 701 Ocean Street. I hope that there is landscaping provided when that waterproofing is done. Many large and very beautiful trees were cut down and the building sorely needs landscaping. So I hope that's part of item 24. I'm sorry, that's item 27. I have been participating in the Board of Forestry meetings and I'm happy to hear that Santa Cruz County officials have too. I heard J.M. Brown yesterday. The Board did a vote to put that through to the administrative law office with a 45-day comment. I'm very concerned about that. Gail Newell. Good morning, Board of Supervisors. Others in attendance. I want to speak to the proclamation proclaiming April 5 to 11, 2021 as National Public Health Week. At the next meeting, Board of Supervisors meeting, there will be a presentation from the Public Health Division. But in the meantime, I'd like to say a few words about National Public Health Week. During the first full week of April each year, the American Public Health Association brings together communities across the United States to observe National Public Health Week as a time to recognize the contributions of public health and highlight issues that are important to improving our nation's health. I want to thank Supervisor McPherson for the signed proclamation and for all of the Board of Supervisors recognizing National Public Health Week for the County of Santa Cruz. And the proclamation itself, I hope everyone has a chance to read it. It highlights many of our accomplishments in the past year, not just COVID, but those around racism as a public health crisis about the response to the CZU fire and about addressing social determinants of health, acknowledging housing as health and establishing the Housing for Health Office this past year. I want to remind you as well that during our save lives campaign, we've slowed the spread, we've adapted to a new normal, we've vaccinated and now we're on the E, elevate the readiness for saving lives in Santa Cruz County. This means assuring a vibrant public health division and in reinvesting and dropping the disinvestment in public health as has been the case every year for the past decade until the COVID crisis. Serge Kagnu, your microphone is available. Who is this? Hi, my name's Serge Kagnu. I do a lot of work for the homeless and I am on the County Mental Health Advisory Board. I'm only speaking for myself though. I'm referring to number 53, which is the Salvation Army contract, a very specific little piece within that. The Salvation Army is the only nonprofit that I know in Santa Cruz that does not have unemployment insurance. We're now at a pandemic, a lot of people are losing their jobs. This contract specifically is probably gonna be a temporary thing, so a lot of people are gonna be laid off at the end of this. I would just ask the board to look into the possibility of requiring unemployment insurance as part of the contract. The Salvation Army actually does have unemployment in other states where they're required to do that. It's just California and Santa Cruz where they are not doing it. So, sorry about that, that's my puppy. Yeah, I would just, I appreciate the contract and appreciate the service they give and the living wage ordinance is something new that's signed for nonprofits. I hadn't noticed that before and I appreciate that. But just that one piece of unemployment insurance with the challenges that we're having of trying to keeping people housed and specifically not people who work nonprofits. The Human Care Alliance's non-profit wage and benefit survey showed that people who are working at the homeless shelters are among the lowest paid within our nonprofits. So this is just trying to take care of the people that take care of our most vulnerable people. Okay, hey, thank you very much. Bye. Color 1965, your microphone is available. Color 1965, you've unmuted yourself. Hello, good morning, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, thank you. I also would like to address item number 25 this morning. I would like to thank Supervisor Koenig for bringing this up to pull it off of the consent agenda and I echo all of the sentiments that were brought up by all the other callers and Zoom participants. My other concern with this that hasn't been mentioned is that since we've been all virtual, the web comments, the ability for folks to participate via the web have been taken away with no, there hasn't even been any comments to that or it hasn't been spoken to by any of the supervisors involved. There's folks that are not able to join the meetings period but would like to have their comments heard. I also would like to say as I'm waiting on hold or listening on hold, I would like to ask that if there was comments by public officials that that be put on the agenda officially so that those of us that are at work and waiting to speak are pushed further down the line. Thank you. Thank you, Matthew Weisner. Your microphone is available. Thank you very much and good morning to the Board of Supervisors and others in attendance. My name is Matthew Weisner. I'm the directing attorney at the Community Action Boards Santa Cruz Immigration Project and I just wanted to join today to introduce myself and thank the Board for their deliberate and thoughtful response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the efforts to prioritize public health and support vaccination rollout. And I just wanted to also remind the Board and the public that our agency, the Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County has continued to assist the public throughout this pandemic and the various shutdowns. We've been providing hybrid and remote services when necessary. And our program in particular, the immigration project has continued to provide services throughout all these phases, including naturalization, family-based petitions and DACA and applications for permanent residency among other legal services. So we are continuing to do our work and we serve residents of the county and beyond in pro bono services. And with that, I just wanted to thank you for your continued prioritization and support of the public health and vaccine rollout that will hopefully get us back to providing in-person services soon. Caller 1401, your microphone is available. This is Marilyn Garrett and there are different public health threats and a big one is the radiation from all the wireless microwave technology. But also, I wanna quote from a program called Toward a Vaccine Disaster. It was on thehighwire.com and this is from International Vaccine Developer, Gert van den Bosch, who's from Belgium, works with the Bill and Linda Gates Foundation interviewed by Dr. Phillip McMillan. Here are some quotes. These vaccines don't prevent infections. These vaccines out-compete our natural antibodies. We have non-specific antibodies. These are long-lived vaccine-induced antibodies. Basically, everyone getting a vaccine, that is a COVID shot, is having their innate immune system destroyed. This is a very, very serious problem. A steep incline in severe illness is inevitable. Check out thehighwire.com, about an hour and 20 minutes in. And then, do you wanna play this? A few more quotes from Dr. Martin Paul on the adverse documented effects from 5G and wireless exposure. So the reproductive effects that we talked about before. And then there are also many different hormonal effects. And then we have 35 different published reviews telling many of them. Caller, 1999. Good morning, my name is James J. Wittman. It is March 23rd. I'm addressing the Board of Supervisors in Santa Cruz, California. Can I be heard? Yes, yes. Excellent. I don't know what happened before. A question, you know, I was listening to the Pledge of Allegiance. I was thinking about it. Which American flag is the Pledge of Allegiance being stated in front of? The American flag before 1871 or the American flag with the gold fringe that represents USA Incorporated where Washington DC is the military branch of the triad including the Vatican and the Red Shield Rothschilds Bank in London, but actually in Switzerland. I don't do Zoom so I can't see which flag. I, it's, it would be great to be able to meet in person do the social distancing. I don't know what's really gonna change. I help provide some events for social connecting and social distancing. You know, we're really thinking about doing exploratory recall committee. Certainly this Thursday evening at Twin Lakes Beach, March 25th, we will be broadcasting part of these procedures and other things as well. If people want a social distance, they will probably be able to sit in their cars and from 200 yards away be able to clearly see what is being spoken here. What's going on with what the previous callers have talked about? You know, there's a book called The Five Chimneys that a woman wrote who was the surgical assistant of her husband. She was in Auschwitz. She talked about what was going on with with experimenting on human beings, which was really determined to be illegal but what's going on right now at these vaccinations? Changing the subject slightly. I found a very short three page reduced down to three page article. Thank you, Chair. There are no other speakers for public comment. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for the input from the general public. Just want to go back to items number 25 and 54, which have been requested to be put on their regular agenda. We previously said item 54 would be 13A. Mr. County Council, can we make 25, 13A and 54, 13B? Yes, you can do that. Okay. Then I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda with the recognition that item 25, regarding virtual meetings, be come 13A at the end of our regular agenda and item 54, regarding emergency payment program services become 13B at the end of our regular agenda. I would entertain a motion to that effect. Well, Mr. Chair, also perhaps- I want to get comments from the board members too. I'm sorry, we'll go ahead and get, are there any comments from the board members? I'll speak briefly to just an item on, and I appreciate that, Mr. Chair, on item 59, just like to thank public works on their work on the Plastimer system project, septic system project, and also I look forward to their continued partnership with the community out there. There still are a lot of outstanding questions that I know I really do appreciate, Mr. Edler and Beatrice's work on this to ensure that all those questions are addressed. But again, thanks to public works for their work out there and I appreciate their continued outreach on that item. I'd also like to thank my colleague, Supervisor Coonerty on bringing forward item 33. I'll let him speak more to it, but clearly we're dealing with a hate crime epidemic within our country right now. And I appreciate the work of Supervisor Coonerty bringing this item to my attention and also bringing this to the board's attention. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Any other board members want to have comments on the consent agenda? I'll make a comment. Go ahead. Go ahead, Mr. Coonerty, Supervisor Coonerty. All right, thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a couple of items to comment on. First is as Supervisor Friend mentioned, he and I brought an item on 33, recognizing the increase in anti-Asian, both rhetoric and violence in this country and we're seeing more hate and more conspiracies and then more victims. And so this is, we wanted to make a statement recognizing the significant Asian population and history in our community that we recognize this moment and we'll take steps to combat it. I should also note both in the violence last week in Atlanta than the violence yesterday in Boulder, Colorado, the continuing gun violence that hits this country that's hit our community, that's hit many people we know in our families. It's senseless and painful and we continue to need real action to address gun violence in this country. I also want to talk about item number 41. This is about the neighborhood courts program. I think this is a great program. I attended one of the virtual town halls about it and I want to thank probation and the DA and the sheriff for their work on this. I'd like to add direction the board receive a report back on the program in one year detailing the number of cases heard in the neighborhood courts, the types of crimes heard, if the defendants reoffended and whether the victims and defendants were satisfied with the process. I think maybe we can learn a lot from this program and it'd be great to get a report back and hear how it's going. And then finally, item number 49, which is to support for kids and youth who are either currently in foster care or out of foster care, just want to recognize the efforts that this county continues to take to help this exceptionally vulnerable population and I appreciate the efforts of HSD to build support for these foster kids and their families. Have you got Supervisor Caput? Thank you, Chairman McPherson. I just wanted to comment on item number 61 and that's increasing the amount for $32,000 for additional engineering of the Eastlake Avenue which is State Route 152 in Hullahan Road, College Road Project. We're about a million dollars, $907,000 short of being able to complete the work that needs to be done there and hopefully we'll get some grant money and hopefully we'll be able to get that project started and then finished. Thank you. Welcome. Mr. Cody, you had made a comment already about one of the items and do you have any further comments about the consent agenda? Yes, Chair, just a few other comments. On item 26, the Gender and Justice Commission, I would like ultimately to propose an amendment to that in that I see in the bylaws the purpose and charter of that commission is not included and I know for the folks that the chairs of commission is always helpful to be able to return to that when directing a meeting so that everyone stays on task. I'm happy to propose that in a motion in a bit. On item 27, waterproofing of 701. Yeah, excited to see this as well during the recent rainstorms. We saw water leaking in through the bolts in my office so that's what definitely needed. Item 33, I also wanna thank my colleagues for bringing this forward. One of the analysts in my office is her mother-in-law is Asian American and recently someone threw a large rock at her house. So it's a very real issue in our community and divided we fall, united we stand and I'm excited and happy to support this item. Item 58, 3212 Mission Drive, I'm looking forward to the public hearing at our next meeting on this exciting infill project from everything I've seen so far it's a well-designed project and it integrates the provision of free transit passes for residents. So it's really progressive in addressing traffic impacts and then finally, item 63 on, I'm just excited to see that we're putting improvements to Laurel Road out to bed. We've had a lot of constituent input on this side, asking when this would be done. So happy to see it moving forward. That's all. I'll make a couple of comments too. I just wanna let you know that my office did make a comment before the California Board of Forestry as was mentioned earlier, that's a really critical item for the future of those who I rebuild in the conference areas that were impacted by the fires. Item number 39, the East Siany Road Repairs. This is an ongoing effort by our Public Works Department. I wanna thank the department for continuing to work on storm damage repairs. We appreciate this in my district on District 5 and some others have mentioned that they have had improvements in their districts as well. So with that, I think I will entertain a motion to approve the agenda. Pardon me, Chair, I do have a speaker to the consent agenda. Oh, excuse me, go ahead. I thought, excuse me. Oh, I'm sorry. We did take public comment that it's supposed to include the consent agenda and public comment that we had combined both. But if we miss somebody, I guess we can go ahead and make an exception. But in the future, what we've done is we've combined all public comment in general and on the consent agenda in that one public comment item. And we haven't had public comments separately on consent. Thank you for the clarification. So I think if we do have somebody who didn't, we didn't clarify that too. I guess we should go ahead and let them speak. I'm assuming, Chair McPherson, that's your pleasure. Sure, is there anybody else that does wanna speak at this point? Is that what your point is? I have one caller. Okay, is that what you're referring to, Mr. Palacios? Yeah, normally we don't have a separate public comment on consent. Remember, we've changed that where we've combined all public comment with consent in that one item. But if there was a confusion, we can certainly make an exception for this one speaker if that's what you'd prefer, Chair. Yeah, okay, we'll allow this speaker to make a comment at this point then. Begum, your microphone is available. Last call for L. Begum. I'm here. Okay, go ahead, please. Go ahead. I have nothing to say. I don't know why they're asking me to talk. I'm just here to listen. Hey, we do have an item coming up on, I think you might want to address. Okay, thank you both. Okay, then we'll go back to entertaining emotion as amended for the consent agenda. I'll move the consent agenda as amended. This is Coonerty. Point of information for County Council, if the charter were to be added to the Bylaws for the Gender and Justice Commission, would it have to come back before the Board in order to be approved or could we approve it? Well, Supervisor Koenig, there's a motion on the floor right now to accept the consent agenda without anything related to the Justice and Gender Commission. So traditionally, if there's a second to that motion, then the motion would be reviewed and passed on. To your point, one could make a motion right now to amend the Bylaws to the Justice and Gender Commission if you had a very specific thing that you wanted to amend it to state and the Board could entertain that motion. And it would not have to come back, in other words. However, I will go on to add that if it's something that the Justice and Gender Commission has not reviewed previously, traditionally the Board would want the Justice and Gender Commission to review any suggested change. So one idea might be for you to add language to send this back to the Justice and Gender Commission to review a change to their Bylaws to include whatever it is that you're thinking of right now. Thank you. I'll second the motion, Chair. Okay, so the motion is to accept the consent agenda as amended. Please call the roll. Thank you. One moment. Oh, excuse me, go ahead. I'd like to move to amend that we edit the Bylaws for Item 26 to include the charter that send it back to the Gender and Justice Commission for review and review it again at our next regular meeting. I'll treat that as a friendly amendment to be included in my motion. Okay, is that okay with the second? It is. Okay. Okay, so we have three items that we are addressing on the consent agenda. Please call the roll to approve as amended. Thank you for clarification. Item 25 will move to 13.1 and Item 54 will move to 13.2 and the consent agenda is being approved as amended Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. The motion passes unanimously. Okay, we will now go to the regular agenda. Item number seven to consider plan for transition of indigent defense services to a County Public Defender's office by July 1st, 2022. Approve addition of one full-time equivalent public defender to be funded in fiscal year 2021-22. Direct the County Administrative Office to return no later than August 24th, 2021 with an update and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the County Administrative Officer. We have an executive summary, attachment A and attachment B as a transition plan. Did you or was Mr. Plosius, was it you or? I'm Chair McPherson. I'm Nicole Kober, an assistant appeal. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, Chair and members of the board. So I'm Nicole Kober, an assistant CAO. I'm joined today by principal administrative analyst, Ben Stafford, who's been working with me on the public defender transition plan. Also with us is Ajita Patel, our director personnel. We've been collaborating closely with the personnel department on the various personnel aspects of the plan. So she's with us in case there are questions. So today we're going to give you an update on the public defender transition plan and I will turn to the agenda. Sven, you might need to put it in presenter mode. It's showing the, there you go. So this is our agenda for this morning's presentation. We're gonna revisit our efforts to engage our stakeholders and tell you more about what's taken place today. Then we're going to go into some detail on the public defender transition plan and what that contains. And we will also summarize our recommendations and next steps for you. So before we begin on the transition plan, I just want to briefly summarize actions that have been taken today and some of the board direction we've received. So last November, the board took the first step and adopted an ordinance creating in county code, the public defender's office and the position of public defender. That ordinance subsequently took effect in December and we worked closely with personnel to develop a classification for the public defender position itself. This past February, the board adopted that classification and the salary range for the public defender position. Also on this morning's agenda was the classifications and salary ranges for the public defender attorneys one through four. The board as a part of the consent agenda adopted those classifications and salaries. When we were here last fall, we had some conversations with the board and presented various materials and we received direction from the board to continue to meet with our local partners and to bring back a detailed transition plan. We were also asked to establish a clear policy for retaining the staff at the main firm of Big M, Christensen and Minslav and we've made some great progress in all of these areas and we'll be discussing where we're at with you. So in terms of stakeholder engagement, we've held many meetings with local partners. You can see the partners listed there. We were holding regular weekly meetings with many of these individuals. Today, we've met at least 10 times with our local partners to get their feedback on our transition plan and to work through various elements of that. I think all of our partners agree that moving forward with the public model is in the best interest of our indigent clients and for the long-term health and sustainability of the indigent defense system. We've also had the opportunity to consult with various experts on our transition. That includes the state public defender, Mary McComb, Santa Clara County public defender, Molly O'Neill, Contra Costa County public defender, Robin Lipitsky, Marine County public defender, Jose Varela and Nevada County public defender, Kerry Klein. We've been able to have some fruitful discussions with them about our case management system and staffing, transition and other aspects of our plan. I think at this point, there's widespread support for the transition plan being considered today. And so we're pleased to present that to you. We've had over 20 formal and many informal meetings with the individuals I just mentioned that have led to the creation of this plan. In this section, we're going to highlight for you a process for transitioning staff with the main firm to the county. As well, we'll discuss the public defender recruitment and our plans for that. And we're going to also briefly touch on other areas of the plan. So with that, I'm going to pass it to Sven who's going to go into some more detail. Thanks, Nicole. Good morning, board. And so we'll start with staff retention, the most important piece of the new public defender office is going to be the staff that constitutes it. We've been working with the staff of the main law firm, met with them three times already to go over the new process and how we're going to try to bring them on board. That includes that they'll have the right of first opportunity for positions within the new public defender's office. We expect to provide them with conditional job offers by September 1st of this year that'll provide the certainty of employment for them and also provide contract stability and stability of work for the main firm. We anticipate of having those conditional authors having a start date of July 1st, 2022, which leads into us having a more turnkey transition model the personnel department has been working on a simplified application process for staff that will ensure that staff who meet minimum qualifications are moved forward to a hiring list. They'll then move forward to interviews that'll be based on years of experience and the desire of candidates for specific positions within the public defender's office. And that'll be conducted with each attorney and staff member on a panel that's assembled in coordination with the main law firm and other local stakeholders. The personnel is also working, as Nicole mentioned, on new classifications. The attorney classifications are on today's agenda. We're also going to be bringing forward with personnel investigator classifications and then other support staff from the firm such as legal secretaries, paralegals and other administrative positions already exist within the county structure and personnel is making every effort to simplify that recruitment process while maintaining compliance with civil service rules. And then we're continuing to do monthly outreach with staff at the main firm. And then in terms of organizational structure and other management positions, those will largely be decided after a public defender is retained. And so in terms of recruiting the public defender, this obviously will be a new partner within our criminal justice system. Personnel will be coming to the board and recommending that recruitment for this position begin next month in April, 2021. And then in terms of the recruitment process, personnel will be recommending screening tools, mainly an advisory panel to provide additional guidance on selection of the public defender, the process and is particularly important because several counties that we've talked to have had to go out two or even three times because of lack of good processes in their initial recruitments. And so it's important that we select members for the advisory panel that lack any conflicts of interest and that they possess awareness of the knowledge, skills and abilities needed for the public defender position. In terms of timeline, we believe that the public defender could reasonably be in position by the fall, so October or so of this year. There is a risk of having to do multiple recruitments which is why we're recommending to start the recruitment now and other county partners that we've talked to. As Nicole mentioned in Santa Clara and Marin and other places have really reinforced the idea that it's important to give the public defender as much time as possible to establish those relationships and be able to build the office. And so we've tried to create a clear sort of set of roles and responsibilities for the transition. We've worked on this with our partners, both at the main law firm and the Superior Court that the main law firm will continue to provide indigent defense services through June 30th of 2022 that they'll continue to provide guidance to county staff. And so we do really appreciate their partnership over the last four months in helping us work through this process. They'll help us co-develop a case transition plan so that can happen as smoothly as possible and clients can retain their continuity of representation. And then the contract will maintain their existing requirements in the contract. The new County Public Defender won't do any direct handling of cases prior to July 1, 2022. They'll mainly focus on building and strengthening relationships within our local criminal justice system. They'll also be working on the case transition plan and then they'll be developing the team and office. And while we're doing this, we're taking as many steps as we reasonably can to take care of the items in terms of conflicts and administration that we need to to enable a smooth transition. So we're working currently with the conflicts firms to extend those contracts for at least one year that'll give us an opportunity to smoothly transition the main public defense service, give the public defender time to get acclimated and then make a decision based on their professional experience and local conditions on what the best fit is for conflict services moving forward in terms of the administration transition plan. We're currently working on a case management system RFP and that should be coming before your board in April. We're working and collaborating with the district attorney on that system. We've also been collaborating with the superior court probation and we'll be reaching out to the sheriff as well to make sure that we have as many integrations as we can for that case management system. We've been working with our real property division on identifying a space for the office. We've been working with our internal services departments obviously personnel, general services and others to make sure that all of the things that we need to have in place are in place for the office to be successful. And then because we will be operating a little bit of an office next year along with along with paying for the contracts through June of next year there will be a couple one-time costs and we'll be bringing that in a supplemental budget in June for the board to consider. That'll include salary for the public defender and some additional costs for limited staffing as we start up the office. And then some other one-time costs in terms of equipment and we're looking at rolling over costs from this year's budget and identifying other one-time sources of revenue to offset any general fund impact. So I'll pass it back to Nicole. So today we're asking the board to approve the plan to transition into defense services to a county public defender's office by July 1st of 2022 as well as to approve the addition of the public defender which we plan to fund next fiscal year in 21-22. If the transition plan is approved the CAO in partnership with the personnel department will be bringing several items to the board over the course of the spring and the summer related to the transition plan. The two of which Sven mentioned the public defender recruitment and the case management RFP next month. These also include classifications of other new positions for the public defender's office as well as the supplemental budget for one-time startup costs. And we'll of course are going to continue to collaborate with the current firms, the superior core and other partners as we implement the transition. And lastly we're asking that the board direct our office to return with an update no later than the end of August. At that time we believe we should know the status of the staff within the main firm and how that transition is looking over to our new public defender's office. So we would like to provide an update on that and any other elements of the transition that we might be able to provide some additional information on. And with that we're happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you, thank you for that presentation and for your moving forward. I wanna thank the CEO team for leading this process really in collaboration with our current public defender firm our court system and other partners that you mentioned. I think it's a process that's gonna provide us with a smooth transition and our contracted system into a public system. I really do look forward to receiving more details about the transition of case management. And I realize that may not come until after our August update, but I just wanted to highlight that it's a critical component of the transition. I'm sure you know it and you've mentioned it. But thank you for this process and for working with the others that are so directly involved. It's been a great team effort to get us here and I look forward to the transition come next year. Are there any other comments from the board? Yeah, if I may. Yeah, thank you, Chairman. I've been against the whole transition from the beginning, but at this point, that's a moot point. And now I wanna make sure we have a transition that is smooth and that does not impact cases where someone really needs a public defender right now. We're in a time of great confusion with the COVID-19 and court cases being delayed. So I think it's very important, especially for the people that are facing a trial coming up or facing some kind of charges that are brought against them, that we do not have people fall between the cracks. And so I'm foregoing forward. I think a lot is gonna depend on how we treat the bigam law firm in this whole transition. And as far as timelines, hopefully if the COVID-19 is still going on, that we're able to extend the timelines. I'm just worried about if we have a timeline and if we have to rush it in order to try to fit that. But I think that's being considered. And hopefully we'll work this out and make sure people are defended according to the law. Thank you. Well, any other comments from board members? Mr. Chair, I'll make some brief comments. I mean, first I just wanted to thank Ms. Coburn and Mr. Stafford for their work, as well as the board had very specific asks in conjunction with public defender's office and the community outreach from some months back. Every single one of those issues were addressed and I really do wanna appreciate that when that comes back that way. To supervisor Caput's concerns, I think that all that's actually been built into this timeline, this seems to have an exceptionally long runway and very long transition process, a very smooth transition timeline. So I would share those concerns if this timeline were expedited, but from the beginning of this process to where we are now to the continued timeline and through next year seems like a very reasonable transition time. The only potential hang-up will be, as Mr. Stafford had noted, whether we are successful at recruiting an adequate candidate and how that will impact the timeline. But I think that the goals that are set forth aren't actually even that aggressive. I think they're very realistic from a timeline perspective and I'm very comfortable with that. I do look forward to hearing some of the public comment on this, especially from the current public defender who I know has been actively involved in this process, but I do appreciate the work of County staff on incorporating the board's concerns. Mr. Cooner, do you, Supervisor Cooner, you had a comment? Yeah, and I may wait to hear what the public comment is, but in general, I want to appreciate staff's efforts to work collaboratively and figure out a plan that works and most importantly works for the people who are being represented by our public defender, provides that continuity and excellent service. I do think that bringing on a public defender in advance will give us an opportunity to work on policy issues. I think this board is very interested in specifically around pre-trial, speeding up pre-trial holds or to getting people through the adjudicated quickly, as well as some specialty courts that have focused around the issues that we often see play out in the community. And so making sure that we have a public defender who is committed to that kind of policy implementation as well as operations, smooth operations and obviously zealous advocacy will be important going forward. Very well, thank you. Any other comments from supervisors? Chair, I just also wanted to echo the thanks expressed to Ms. Coburn and Mr. Ang for their great presentation and all the work that the CAO's office has done on this transition. It really is heartening and to see such a comprehensive effort working with all the parties involved. And I also really appreciate that an effort has been made to discuss the plan with similar jurisdictions throughout California. So I feel quite confident in the proposal as it is today. Thank you. Okay, we've had comments from the board, the comments from the public. Thank you, caller 2915, your microphone is unmuted. Good morning, this is Becky Steinbruner. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. Good morning. I'm very interested in this new program. I would like to know where the new public defender's office would physically be. Would that be within the 701 ocean building or would the county need to find another satellite office possibly causing expense in rentals or leases or whatever? I also am really amazed to see that it will fit within the public defender's office, $13 million budget. A $13 million budget is to me staggering, but I'm very grateful that this service is available to those who need it. I see that one full-time position and in the future, other administrative positions will be added. I wanna ensure that there will be no other costs that are gonna be added on to the budget that is already in trouble, as we know. And to that end, I would also like to put in a plug that your board better fund the county law library where people can go and research things and represent themselves. That's another option. And the hours have been severely limited to only four hours a day in the morning, but that is a fantastic resource and we need to fund it better. That concludes my comment. Thank you. There are no other speakers to this item. There are no other speakers? Sorry, Jay Rorty and Begum also raise their hands. Oh, excuse me, go ahead. Jay Rorty, your microphone is unmuted. Am I unmuted? Yes. Thank you. I don't know if the board heard my earlier comments. No. I am here to speak in support of the transition plan presented to the board by the CEO. First, I believe the board and the county owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Begum, Christensen, Menzloff and the conflict firms for their service over the past 30 years. In addition, their gracious engagement with the transition process assists us all. Particularly thanks to Ms. Coburn and Ms. Stafford and Mr. Stafford for their efforts in putting together the transition plan. They've taken care to meet with stakeholders and address a number of concerns raised by the defense and other communities. I support the plan and my additional comments really look forward to the coming year and some issues that may come up over the course of the coming year. On page eight, the plan notes that there is an assumption that the $13 million budget covering the contract will translate to a county agency. I think that's going to require a close second look. The plan appropriately builds in time for the public defender to come on board and prepare a budget to present to the board in spring 2022, but the board should be aware that the scope of the budget may be a significant issue. I understand that the CAO has and will continue to explore funding from the state, grants and other sources to supplement the budget from the general fund and the public defender will be a significant function of the public defender to seek supplemental funding outside the county to reduce the cost of the general fund. However, the key figure in any defender budget is the cost per case, the money actually spent on the clients. The greater the operating costs, the fewer funds available per client. And in order to assure the highest quality of representation as provided by the big firm be maintained, the operating costs of the office must be known and the total proposed budget evaluated to ensure that the office has the resources necessary to provide effective representation. At the moment, we are unsure of the true cost per case and variables such as the office space, benefit package and conflict terms could affect this. Thank you, we heard your complete comments. Thank you. Elle Bigum, your microphone is unmuted. Chair, I'm unsure if the caller is intending to speak. They keep raising and lowering their hands. Mr. Bigum, would you like to speak? Yeah, can you hear me now? Yes. Okay, I just wanted to thank Jay for the kind remarks about our officers performance over the past 45 years. I wanna say that the communication between our office and the CAO's office has improved. We've met with them frequently and will continue to do so. I think we've done a good job keeping the lawyers down on the farm so to speak and continuing working on their cases through this transition. We need to focus now on the other people, the administrative staff and the investigative staff because this transition has triggered some anxiety and job insecurity. I've addressed this with Sven and Nicole and we're gonna work on that next. I can't lose people during this transition because it will be very difficult to backfill those positions for obvious reasons. But we are communicating and we're trying to be as client centered as we can through the process. So I think all in all, at least as far as today's concern, they've done a good job and we're working with them in a collaborative manner. Thank you. Thank you. Mandi Tovar, your microphone is available. Good morning, am I? We can hear you. Okay, great, good morning. My name is Mandi Tovar and I am an attorney at the Public Defender's Office. I've been at Wiggum, Crescent and Men's Law for 16 years and I just wanted to encourage the board to take a good look at our local community of attorneys. We have a lot of very talented, diverse attorneys in our office who have worked all over the state and we are very much interested as a group in having somebody who knows our community, who knows our clients, who knows this county in a way that we do. We've all been very much dedicated to this work and we are very much, like Larry said, we're a little nervous about the transition given all the talk about possibly opening it up to people outside of this community. So I just wanted to say that on behalf of everyone on my office, while we understand there's gonna be a wide range of applicants, we feel like this community has a very diverse and very talented pool to choose from. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. There are no other speakers. Okay, I just wanted to say that an emphasize, re-emphasize again, this is no indication that we are unhappy with the offices of Bigam and Christensen who have been providing nothing short of outstanding service in their public defender's office for us. This is just a time for the public defender's office to become included in the county envelope. And so I just want to repeat and I know every other board member wants to say too that the office of Bingham and Christensen for the public defender services through the years has been nothing short of fantastic and very much appreciated. And I do really do appreciate the cooperative effort and the open discussion that has taken place to date. With that, we do have some recommendations to approve. There were three, I believe I would entertain a motion to prove the recommendations as presented. Mr. Chair. Oh, please. Supervisor Koenig, please go ahead. I'll move the recommended actions. I'll second. Okay. No other comments for the board. Please call the roll. Thank you, Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. We'll move to item number eight to consider a report and presentation on the pretrial program and number of people held in jail free trial as outlined in the memorandum of the chief probation officer. Mr. Rowe. It's Fernando Jarello going to be presenting. Yes, they should be rejoining now as panelists. Thank you. Good morning, Chair McPherson and Board of Supervisors. Fernando Jarello, chief probation here. And with me also is Sarah Fletcher, who is our adult services director who should be, I hope in just a moment, showing our presentation that we have for you. So wait for you to do that. This morning, we'll provide you with an update on our important pretrial services program. And I also believe that our share of heart and Alex Calvo are also here in case there are questions related to their roles in pretrial services. So thank you, Sarah. On August 22nd, 2017, the board directed the probation department to convene a meeting between the sheriffs probation and the courts to develop recommendations for reducing the number of people held in jail before trial. This has been an ongoing issue, not just in Santa Cruz, but throughout California and throughout the country. And we've been making many efforts since I've been here and throughout the 2000s to address jail overcrowding. And of course it became ever more important during this pandemic as we wanted to create the opportunity for space and quarantining units in the jail. So pretrial, our unit became probably our most important unit at the start of the pandemic and continues to be very busy in that time. In recent years, nearly two thirds statewide county jail inmates have been pretrial detainees in large part due to their inability to post cash bail. Individuals of communities of color are usually the populations that are most negatively impacted by cash money bail. There is also renewed effort in 2019, the sheriff convene a jail overcrowding task force of which probation was part of and we provide our partners with information and education about our role in the system with pretrial services which will go into greater detail. So next slide please, Sarah, thank you. The statutory authority for pretrial services program can be found in California penal code section 1318. While the main purpose of pretrial programs is to assure due process as outlined in the 14th amendment, a robust pretrial program can have the added benefit of assisting in jail overcrowding. Again, so very important. Throughout the state pretrial programs are run by a number of different agencies including probation departments, public defender's office shares and nonprofits or stand alone and vary in their targeted population. In recent years with a focus on cash bail, there have been a number of other probation departments that have come online and created pretrial services programs. And in fact, we've hosted many of them throughout the last decade who've come to learn and observe the work that we do. Here's the mission, I won't read that but I'll talk about what the goal of pretrial is. It's to assess all individuals that are booked into the county jail utilizing a validated risk assessment. Should they not be eligible for other release opportunities such as site and release upon when they're arrested or a release from jail? The results from the risk assessments in conjunction with a decision making framework are utilized to inform release recommendations to the court. When possible, recommendations are also made for the court for pre-arrayment releases. Why does it matter? Why should we have a pretrial program? Well, there is a lot of data that shows that pretrial decisions impact whether or not a defendant gets sentenced to jail or prison and for how long. So we know similarly situated individuals one who remains incarcerated pretrial and one who might be released, the one who remains incarcerated is more likely to get sentenced to jail and go to prison for longer periods of time. An increased length of pretrial detention for low and moderate risk defendants is associated with an increase in likelihood that they'll re-offend. So there is evidence that they are more likely to recidivate. So the experience of incarceration, removal from the community, their supports and so on. Pretrial supervision and we have the evidence and we'll show that in a second. May it reduce failure to appear rates and for done for 100 or more days, new criminal activity. So we implemented or made renewed efforts. Actually, we've had pretrial services for some time, but back in, I believe in 2003 or 2004 in response to a grand jury report, we reconvened and made renewed efforts and put some resources into the pretrial program. So going back to 2006, we once again renewed these efforts and it was a response to jail overcrowding. How do we increase public safety? There has been a historical commitment in this community to avoid unnecessary pretrial detention for juveniles and adults. And we know that many individuals in pretrial detention did not present a substantial public safety or flight risk. So we wanted to know, how can we better identify those individuals without compromising public safety? And lastly, we know building a new jail or jail beds are very, very costly. Next slide, please. Just a little bit on the historical perspective and some of the shifts we made in the instruments that we use, the validated risk assessment instrument, as well as the increase in the number of individuals served on a daily basis in pretrial and the amount of work it demands from our staff. So in 2006, we implemented the pretrial unit program, as I said earlier, and we were at first using the Virginia pretrial risk assessment instrument. In 2013, we had consultants come and work with our department and also the courts, as we really looked at new ways and perhaps a new tool that would allow us to safely increase pretrial inmates held in pretrial by using a different tool that required less of an interview type, but relied more on indicators, nine indicators that really were valid predictors of risk. So removing the lengthy time it took to interview clients really helped us increase assessments. As you see there from 500 in 2006 to just less than 10 years later, we were doing 2,000 risk assessments, increasing the population through the 40s and 60s and to where we are today, we're in 2020, we did 1,500 assessments and have an average daily population of 176. Now you'll see that the number of assessments decreased and that has a lot to do with the zero bail and other things that were put into place. So the system that we work in today and as a result of COVID looks a lot different than it has historically because of certain things that were put in place to keep individuals safe, our staff safe in the jails and of course inmate safe. Next slide please. Just wanna talk about our staffing levels. So in 2006, we had five probation officers and a unit supervisor and one support staff in pre-trial services 2009. During that most recent economic crisis or preceding the current one, we lost a probation officer due to budget reductions. We were back before the board and we were approved to additional probation officer staff but essentially currently we basically remain the same. We have the same number of staff as we did in 2006 when we had a daily population of 40 individuals where today in pre-trial we have about 180 individuals. So currently we have five deputy probation officers, two probation aides and one support staff that are operating a seven day a week operation. And of course, really too, we believe that we could probably release, safely release more people if we actually had better coverage and actually longer shifts that we could do work at different hours to provide quicker releases. Next slide please. So Sarah Fletcher will now go into a little bit more detail about how pre-trial program works and release types. Take it away, Sarah. Good morning. I apologize in advance for how I sound. I've been a bit under the weather so I will do my best to get through this. When we talk about looking at pre-trial release, we're really looking at about four different release types in addition to of course cash money bail. There are a couple of release types that our pre-trial program through probation is not involved with and that is an individual's promise to appear on their own recognizance or a condition release with conditions. And then those are for the lowest level individuals. And then we have two levels of monitoring supervised OR and intensive supervised OR that our department is involved with. And this can include use of different electronic devices as well, such as alcohol detection devices and GPS. The main difference between our supervised release and our intensive supervised release does that the intensive supervised release includes a type of home confinement. Some may refer to it as a house arrest where individuals' schedules and restrictions are, schedules and movements are more restricted. And when we look at pre-trial monitoring, it is different than the probation supervision in that our goal with pre-trial is to best support appearance in court and to remain crime free until a case resolution versus our post-conviction supervision case management which is focusing on longer-term behavior change. Now with both of course, we wanna really stay away from a blanket conditions across all individuals. We want to look for court reminders, excuse me. We want to look for ways to support appearance and remaining crime free, which include court reminders. And we track the data for cases that we override for release or detention recommendations. I don't wanna go too far into the weeds here but I wanted to provide a visual of here. It's a very basic visual of our system to really understand the layers of complexity and the importance of collaboration and the many opportunities for reviewing cases at the pre-trial stage. At the top left, you'll see the box outlined in blue is really the beginning, the arrest or citation stage. And for individuals who may be cited and released, eventually will appear in court but for individuals that go downward and get booked in jail, they have the opportunity to post cash bail or they may have the opportunity to be screened by the Sheriff's Correction staff and release with a promise to appear for those offenses that are appropriate based on statute. And for those cases that are not provided an opportunity to release at that point, they will be screened by pre-trial staff. And during that process, our staff reviews in individuals' criminal history as well as a variety of other systems such as the court system, our probation case management system and the jail system to look at the full picture of the individual and we provide a report to the court either at arraignment for a release decision or when possible at the pre-arrayment stage. For many years, our justice system partners have been working together to adjust jail overcrowding and pre-trial detention. Probation has worked with the Sheriff's Corrections and the courts closely. And initially our focus was on the looking for... I'm sorry, I'm gonna have to mute for just a moment. I apologize, I'm trying not to cough in everyone's ear or so. During our collaboration, initially our focus was on the misdemeanor population who often score higher on their risk to reoffend or fail to appear. However, it's often largely due to their substance use disorder and there are often no recent crimes of violence. During the pre-trial release, we also try to engage individuals in voluntary services through the probation service center when appropriate. During 2020, our collaborative efforts expanded to include creative solutions for those individuals pending lower level felony offenses yet without immediate or significant public safety concerns. The image before you depicts a nearly 184% increase for the number of individuals monitored by the pre-trial unit during the last four years alone. In January of 2019, the pre-trial unit implemented a new case management module as new technology not only provided a direct link to our supervision case management system but afforded an opportunity to share information with our law enforcement partners and dispatch services in ways that we had not been able to do before. Added benefits included the addition of an automated phone reporting option to enhance direct staff communication as well as automated reminders for court and other activities. For the health and safety of individuals incarcerated as well as county staff and the jail capacity was significantly reduced during the pandemic to allow for quarantine and containment units creating spaces for various screenings and telehealth appointments and virtual attorney visits. The court process was significantly impacted as well such as staggered or reduced calendars and limited physical appearances and transports. In March, 2020, the court went live with their new text reminder system. To assist in notifications as we all navigated the ongoing changes. The Judicial Council of California took steps in early 2020 to implement an emergency bail schedule which significantly reduced the number of individuals requiring cash bail to secure the release. Even after the statewide order was recalled many jurisdictions including Santa Cruz County continued to function under similar orders. New opportunities and considerations in light of public health guidelines led to unprecedented efforts to mitigate risk upon release rather than utilizing detention saving vital jail beds space for the most serious and violent crimes. Emergency housing and hotel voucher programs through the county utilizing CARES Act funding and through the probation department have also been utilized to reduce the jail census providing short-term stability to support court appearance and service engagement. Leveraging technology and creative solutions has been key for all partners. The implementation of virtual solutions did take some time and aging facilities has presented some logistical challenges. We look forward to exploring whether that by leveraging new technologies we continue to see sustained improvements as we have observed the overall decision to expand release opportunities has not resulted in a significant risk to public safety. And Sarah, I can take on the next few slides to give you a little bit of a break here. Okay, I apologize. I tried to before and I was muted. So the next slide, go ahead. I wanna talk about pre-trial outcomes, data and outcomes which has keyed to this program to important to the community as well as individuals are released who may have been incarcerated in the past but it's key to know that very few of the individuals that are in pre-trial supervision even as our numbers have increased re-offend that it's commit new offenses and the majority of them do make it to their court appearance. Those are the two public safety measures of pre-trial re-offending while they are on pre-trial services and making it to court. In 2020, our staff completed 1,550 public safety assessments. That's the tool that we use locally known as the PSA. And again, it was down considerably from previous years but that has a lot to do with the emergency zero bail. A lot of people weren't even brought to the jail, weren't booked into the jail. So there were fewer cases and many were eligible just to be released because there was no bail associated with their charges. The nearly 500 individuals whose pre-trial case was closed in 2020, approximately half completed all requirements successfully. One quarter were closed to technical violations. That's not new offenses, but that's failure to appear, failure to report as directed, or failure to comply with electronic monitoring. The failures to appear accounted for 15% of the closures. Or 76 individuals. We had, and 55 or 10 to 11% of the individuals, their case was closed due to new criminal activity. So 10% of the individuals committed a new criminal activity. We've done deeper dives into analyzing that. And those are crimes generally are misdemeanor crimes. A crime is a crime and of course, but they are tend to be misdemeanor, substance use disorder type related activities. Those are usually what folks we offend for. I'll show you the next, some of the trends that we see in data. These are seven year trends. And really we haven't seen any spikes as we've expanded release opportunity. So we have, we establish a goal in the industry, pre-trial industry, for instance, safety rate, which is the rate of which individuals reoffend. Obviously the goal stare would be no one reoffends, but our goal has been a 95% safety rate. We've gotten close in 2020, we were 90% close. So that's 10% of the individuals had new criminal activity. But consistently, the numbers have been high and we will continue to work towards that 95% or better goal. Next slide, please Sarah. Appearance rate, that's very, very critical. That means that defendants do make their court appearances when they are released on pre-trial supervision. Our goal is 85% appearance rate. And in 2020, as you can see, we've met that goal. Even as numbers increased, even with the same number of staff without increasing our staff. So again, I wanna give a big shout out to the staff in the pre-trial unit who are, they actually have an office next to mine and they're been the busiest unit since COVID started with individuals coming here to get help, assistance, putting on their electronic monitoring equipment, recharging their batteries, taking phone calls and getting in and out of the jail to expedite those releases. I just wanna thank my pre-trial unit. Next slide, please. So there's some new opportunities we've seen in the last couple of years. One of the biggest has been our probation service center which is here at 303 Water Street. Being able to use that for individuals who are amenable to maybe enhanced services or assistance during that pre-trial period which is monitoring, not supervision, but offering them some opportunities to start engaging in substance use disorder programs, different classes such as anger management, employment programs and so on. Our Prop 47 grant, the CAFE's program which is a coordinated access for effective treatment program has allowed for some expanded services. And we could not, we would not be true to the commitment here of probation of continuous quality improvement. If we didn't evaluate our work and we are actually doing a couple studies. One, we are about to begin as a pre-trial study to determine how our pre-trial programming works. Our supervision actually is impactful and ultimately we're also looking for ways could we in fact safely release more individuals. And presently we are also doing a probation revocation challenge that's funded by the Arnold Ventures. We're looking at the rate at which individuals on probation are re-incarcerated for technical violations or may in fact be sent to prison and looking for ways to improve in that area. That's an area of concern across California and across the country and a lot of individuals are, we know probation is supposed to be an opportunity to avoid going to prison and it shouldn't be a net widener. So we're making serious efforts to look at that data and see what we're doing. Next slide please. So if you remember bail reform in Senate Bill 10 which was bail reform was signed by Governor Brown in 2018 and that would have eliminated cash bail which some states have in fact done some jurisdictions have done and that's largely related to really individuals actually only sitting in custody because they can't afford post bail and this could be for low level offenses and very costly and of course sitting in custody. There's many stories of people who have lost their employment, lost housing, lost custody of their children and so on. So cash bail has had harmful impacts. Proposition 25, the bail industry actually probably has access to billions of dollars they were able to get enough signatures to put Proposition 25 on the ballot in last November which the voters actually ultimately did not approve SB 10 implementation. So cash bail still remains as a result of Proposition 25. Since then though, new bills have been introduced and an example here is SB Senate Bill 262 which was just introduced in January. It would maintain a statewide zero bail schedule for many lower level offenses and there's always exceptions to those violent felonies, domestic violence, sex offenders and DUIs as well. So there's, and I've been in conversation with some of the individual Senate for Hertzberger that put together the original SB 10 implementation bills and there's a lot of talk at the state level to see what other things legislatively could be done to really make this more an equitable and just system for individuals who are arrested and in pre-trial detention. Next slide, Sarah, that may be it. So that concludes our presentation and so now I have time for questions. Thank you. Thank you for this effort. It's really helpful to understand in greater detail how the program works and how success is measured and as we work through the stages of the pandemic I'd like to ask a couple of questions about how we define success. I know we've had some bail on again, off again an issue but I'm interested in knowing if we anticipate our pre-trial caseload staying as high as it has as we hopefully exit the worst of COVID. And then go ahead. Sure, it's remained relatively stable at around 180. There's been occasions where we've seen an excess of 200 but I believe that the numbers will stay the same. We saw an increase as the state began exploring SB 10 and there was talk about elimination of cash bail. It seems like that you shine a light on an issue people paid attention and we suddenly saw spike and increases in our pre-trial release is actually even more so than before. But recently we've seen the average be around 170 to 180 individuals on that. So Sarah, unless you have any other ideas about what that may look like or projections. I would anticipate that we would likely not see our numbers go down anytime soon given the delays in the court processing. Hopefully as we move out of our pandemic times and more cases can be processed through the court and calendars are run more efficiently. I know the court has been working very, very hard to be as efficient as possible to resolve cases and move things forward but it is difficult when we're limited by capacity. And so I would anticipate that we could see a reduction over time as those cases get resolved but we haven't seen any indicators yet that the numbers are going down. Thank you. Any other questions from the board? Chair? Yes, Mr. Supervisor Koenig. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Officer Geraldo and Ms. Fledger for the enlightening report. I mean, it's pretty shocking that nearly two thirds or at times more in our jail population are pre-trial and the report really highlights some of the great work that you're doing. Just one question, which is on the appearance rates, I saw that in 2016 to 2017 it dropped from 88.2% to 79%. It's pretty significant, nearly 10 points there. We've recovered a little bit up to 85%, which I know is the goal in 2020. I'm just wondering, first of all, what accounted for that drop back between 2016-17 and whether 2020 is an anomaly or we've actually taken some action to improve that? Well, when we first implemented the PSA court assessment, we mentioned that there's a decision-making framework that goes along with that. We have an assessment tool that gives us a score and then we have a decision-making framework that helps us balance that risk management. And when we first implemented the process, we had a more conservative decision-making framework, which was in line with other areas across the country. We were more in the middle, but we weren't the most conservative. We weren't the most liberal decision-making framework. But over time, when we saw such high success rates and such low re-offense rates and particularly low re-offense rates with violence, that indicated to us that we could release more people. We really don't need to hold people in custody if there's such a small population that is creating a public safety concern. And so we looked for ways to open that up more. And that's what we've done, working with the courts and our partners is getting that confidence in the pretrial monitoring so that we could open up the opportunity for pretrial release to more individuals. And so we did anticipate that we would see a decline in appearance, particularly with our populations who I think I mentioned earlier, they may risk high as far as risk to re-offend and fail to appear, but a lot of it is due to their substance use disorder and homelessness is a big challenge as well. But we have implemented some additional measures such as we've tried to shorten the duration between their release and court appearance, implementing the court and text reminders, both in our system and the court implemented their own text reminder system. So we're looking for creative solutions for individuals to get those dental nudges to appear, just like we all I think appeared our dentist appointments because we get those text reminders and our doctor's appointments, we get those reminders. And so we wanted to take that success from other avenues and look to improve the criminal justice system. What comes? And quite frankly, given the, just the increase in our caseload sizes, we are impressed with the success because as those numbers continue to climb, we kept looking at our FDA and new criminal activity and we're a bit concerned, but however, we shouldn't be surprised that given the level of monitoring their staff can provide to that. So they maintain well and we'll consistently work to maintain that at or above our goal. Thank you for the question. Thank you. Yeah, that's really great to hear that those results are from a process of continuous improvement. So thank you. Mr. Chair, you're on mute. Thank you. We have a scheduled item for 1045, but we're gonna complete discussion on this and then go immediately to that scheduled item on the zone board, zone five board of directors meet. Mr. Friend, do you have a comment? Yeah, I have a couple brief questions. Thank you, Chief and Ms. Fletcher. I apologize, Ms. Fletcher, you're not feeling well, but thank you for your dedication to make the presentation. This, I didn't see this information in either the visual report or the agenda report, but please forgive me if I was mistaken. You had mentioned, Chief, I think in the agenda report about the quarterly meetings with judiciary and concurrence. Is there a percentage of concurrence? Do we have a sense of where the courts are in regards to the percentage of agreement they are with the pre-trial decisions that are made? Well, yes, we have been tracking that. The 2020 was an anomaly, given that everything was turned upside down. And so it's right now, and I think Sarah has some of that information. I don't have it before me, what the concurrence rate, our goal overall has been 75% concurrence rate overall. And, but Sarah, could you, do you have that information, the rates right there? What it was? But again, just a caution that 2020 is like comparing apples and oranges to before because everything is just so different. Yes, we do. We saw an overall concurrence rate of about 60% with concurrence, with release recommendations at about 48% and concurrence with detention recommendations at 75%. Okay, that's for 2020, but so, I mean, do we have sort of a rolling average over the last, I assume you've been tracking it the same way you've been tracking the recidivism rates. So is there, you have a goal of 75, but are we meeting that or is it generally lower than that? It has generally been lower. I think our highest year might have been close to 70%, but we have not hit the goal of 75% with concurrence. Okay, and I mean, since you're having these quarterly meetings, are they providing feedback as to what the general rationale is? Well, 2020, we have not had significant meetings like the jail crowding task force really since COVID. We had our, the committee that was convened by our sheriff in 2019 sort of kind of, I wouldn't say abruptly ended, but COVID came right after that. And so we haven't had discussions other than how could we really just safely release as many people as we can and how do we bring in more troops into pre-trial to expedite those releases? And so that's sort of in the focus really is releasing as many more people. And a lot of those releases have been outside of the framework of the pre-trial assessment tool. So again, I think that's why I'm going back to, the data for right now for 2021 is a little, and 2020 is a little unique. So we'll keep tracking that and keep working with our partners. I think it's also important to consider that over time we have legislative changes and how those impact our processes and cases. And we also provide information at the earliest stage possible when someone comes into custody. And by the time someone appears in court, there's often additional information that is a consideration for release or detention, particularly where there may be person victims related to that particular offense. And so our release recommendation is made at the earliest stage. And we know that it's not, it's very complex as far as new information coming in from the DA's office and the defense attorney by the time the individual gets to court. So because there are opportunities also some of our pre-trial population, they even if they haven't been released at arraignment, which is our goal, if it's safely possible, sometimes later on down the road during the adjudication process, if more information comes to light that we can mitigate the risk of release, then some individuals are released on pre-trial monitoring during their period of the processing of the case, even if it didn't happen at arraignment. So it's very complex situation that concurrence doesn't really articulate all of those layers. Okay, no, I understand that complexity, but I mean, it also, I suppose that presents the risk of the early assessment tool in general. So my final question, and again, if this was covered, I mean, but I don't think it was, which is, do we have an actual number of those that are in pre-trial detention and the average length of their, in essence, stay before a case is adjudicated? We don't have that at the moment, that information unless I'm incorrect, Sarah. I know we don't have that and have had some challenges accessing that information. Okay, I mean, I don't know, obviously we can't, I don't know that there's anything we can particularly do to help that along, but it would, I think it'd be useful information because I can see the number of assessments, I can see the amount of recidivism, but if I've got somebody sitting in there for three years or five years, I mean, that's also an issue, right? On a pre-trial detention scenario and how many people they are, the sort of length of stay, I think those would be useful information. Thank you, Chair. Like any other comments from the board? Yeah, just very quickly, first I want to say, I want to congratulate you on good work. We're obviously in a, we're in a changing environment pre-COVID and then COVID accelerated through into chaos, many things. And I think your team has responded very well and done their best to continue to hit the metrics. It's frustrating that the state through some of these reforms just increased your caseload significantly, but hasn't increased the resources to provide the kind of oversight that I think the community would expect and that you all need for success. And so it's a frustrating situation, but given your limited resources, I think you've done a good job. A couple of quick questions. When you say people re-offend and it's primarily drug-related offenses, does that mean that they're re-offending by violating maybe terms of probation on their drug tests? Or does that mean that they're engaging in offenses that are normally correlated to drug crime? So the technical violations would be considered where we've found out that, for instance, if you're on an alcohol monitor or we do a UA test, that's the technical violation side, which may not be necessarily a new criminal charge. The criminal activity that we're reporting out is actually when they are new criminal activity. So it's an arrest or a site for being under the influence or being in possession or something like that. Something like that, but it's not like they were stealing bikes to pay for a drug habit. You wouldn't consider that a drug-related crime. We also have, we don't have it for today, but we can get, we do have statistics, and I think we've shown it before for a breakdown of what that 10% of what it was. And it is a combination. We've seen substance use disorder and property crimes, misdemeanor property crimes. Just as you say, someone stealing a bike to get their fix, basically. It'd be great if you could just yell over those when you get a chance. Thank you, yeah, it's always a little bit labor-intensive, but we do have that. And it's important for us to know what kind of crimes there are occurring. Okay. And two other questions. One is, as said, of the nearly 500 individuals whose pre-trial cases were closed in 2020, nearly half completed all the requirements successfully. Okay. And then it goes on to say 85% appear for court and on and on and on. But in terms of like, so what's the half, the half that are not meeting the requirements? What are those requirements that they're not meeting? That's a great question. And I know that chart can be misleading because our two primary public safety measures are re-offending new criminal activity, which is at 10%, and then the FTA rate failure to appear rate, which is 15%. However, when we look at the whole population, there are individuals who actually do not come successfully complete pre-trial and maybe remanded back into custody for technical violations. So not that they didn't make it to court and it's not that they committed a new offense, but they had, they were out of range. They cut their monitor off, which does happen on occasion. They had a positive UA. So those are technical violations, which our response has to be a public safety response. It's not that they're always on the first violation brought in, but we do have cases where, they have stay away from victims and we discover that they're in close proximity recalling those would be technical violations and we would generally bring those individuals back in the custody. That is that 50% population. Sarah, did I explain that right? Yeah, we're looking, those statistics are based on when we've closed out cases. So over the course of the year, as a case is closed out, we look at it as successful or unsuccessful. And if it's unsuccessful, what are those types of, what's leading to those challenges? And that's where the unsuccessful clients, that's the breakdown of. We've seen improvements in our appearance rate, but we have seen some increase in technical violations, although we do work with individuals on a case-by-case basis and we contact the judge and sometimes there's a technical violation and we continue to work with that individual. And other times, if there's a significant public safety risk, then that individual will be brought back into custody. And there are also times where someone may be brought back into custody and then if their case continues for a while, they may be released again at some point, if they do not present a safety risk down the road. These are generally not person-to-person type crimes where the individuals themselves are harming themselves when it's around drug use, those kinds of things, but that 50% doesn't involve an assault or theft or those types of things necessarily. If we don't react or respond appropriately, it could, but yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that's, to me, I'm sort of a much more open to that because maybe a technical violation prevents, gets people back aligned with services or treatment or whatever, and then you avoid the broader, you know, a more impactful issue where it's hurting somebody else as well. So I guess that's good because it makes me less concerned. Finally, my last question was, it looked like we had a dip in 2019 in both the safety rate and the appearance rate. And then I understand what you're saying about 2020 being apples and oranges, but I guess I'm wondering when we move back to normal, is that dip in 2019, you know, a result of understaffing and challenging changing nature or is that just an anomaly and we're gonna bounce back to sort of the 2017, 2018 rates? Well, you know, we've had discussions around that without going into, you know, like really in-depth research, but sometimes we also consider that the individuals we've been a little more flexible, elucin the parameters around who is released. As we said, if you have too much success in your instrument tools, then they would say, you know what, these are all, there's always a risk involved in the criminal justice system. So I think part of that might have been loosening up our decision-making framework and releasing a few folks that weren't in terms of public safety, like gonna assault, harm somebody, but were those types, the chronic recidivist, the folks that are coming in and out of our doors are the, you know, mental health, struggling with mental health and substance use disorder. And those are a lot of those folks that reoffended that we, you know, we released were in the past, perhaps they would have stayed in custody, but they were released and quickly reoffended. And Sarah, if you can confirm or add to that, that'd be great. But I think looking forward, we've learned a lot. We actually learned more from failure than success in a lot of ways. When we have too much success, as you said, we're likely holding too many people. And so by looking at the challenges for those that are not successful, we've been able to implement new technology. We've been able to, with the Prop 47 cafes grant, we've been able to work with the district attorney's office and community partners to increase diversion opportunities and to enhance services across the community and training for our partners. And so I think when we look forward, we may not necessarily be able to compare future years exactly to prior years, because we're taking lessons from the challenge areas and implementing new strategies. So hopefully those new strategies that we're implementing will actually see some greater success in outcomes for individuals. I think something else that I forgot to add around that these rates is that we are, as more and more people with zero bail put in place, so lots of folks that perhaps would have come to pretrial that were lower risk and maybe had higher success rates, they're not, we're not seeing that. We're seeing generally more and more individuals that are have a higher risk to reoffend because I guess skimmed off the top because of all the changes that are happening. And folks aren't even being booked in in many cases for certain types of crimes. We are getting more challenging cases. So that's kind of our shop talk and trying to analyze is what led to that little decrease. And those are the things we think are playing a role in that. Right, and I appreciate it. And I think it's good to experiment and it's good to learn and iterate and adjust. I think we'd like to see that 95% hit. And so it's a balancing act, I understand for you all, but I just was curious. Thank you all. Thank you. I can't hear you Bruce. Who is your advisor, Cap? Do you have any comments? Thank you. You know, Fernando, you've answered all my questions with the other board members. I just want to tell you that you did a great job. Appreciate everything you're doing. I just want to make sure I tell you that. Thank you. Well, thank you. And I will be sure to share that with my staff because they're the ones out there every single day throughout COVID. We never close our doors and I've been very busy. So I appreciate the recognition. But that goes to my staff. Thank you. I agree with you. Without a good staff, we don't look pretty poor. So you're right. Your staff makes you look real good. Thanks. Yeah, and you're being commended to the efficiency too of the staff too. What you still have and maintain and the increased workload and so forth and implementing these new directions, they're on again, off again, some of them from the state, but very well done doing it quickly and trying to do it as understandably under the same context or the same criteria. So thank you very much. Are there any questions from the public? I have no speakers from the public for this item. Okay. Very good. Let's see, we will consider the, I don't think we need any motion on this. We just really appreciate the report. And now we will move on to... Supervisor McPherson, we do need a motion. For which aspect of that, just to accept the report? That's right, accept and file the report. Okay. I'll move the representative action. I'll have a motion to consider or accept the report. Okay. Please call the roll. All right. And who is the second? I'll second. Thank you. Supervisor Koenig. Hi. Friend. Hi. Coonerty. Hi. Caput. Hi. McPherson. Hi. Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. I'm going to rate test unanimously. We will now go to the scheduled item at 1045. It's number 14 on our agenda, the Zone 5 Board of Directors regular meeting. Supervisor Friend, would you or who would be taking this? We're going to recess in order to permit the Board of Directors of the Santa Cruz County Flood Control and Water Conservation District Zone 5 to convene and carry out regularly scheduled meeting. The Zone 5 agenda of March 23rd, 2021 is on the agenda. Yeah. McPherson, Zone 5 is actually run by the chair of the Board of Supervisors. And since we haven't actually selected a new chair, technically that would mean that Supervisor Caput is still the chair of Zone 5, unless we move item 7 up to make a decision on the chairperson, a vice chairperson as our first item of business. But actually Supervisor Caput is technically the chair of Zone 5. Thank you for that clarification. Sure. I was wondering if that would be while Zone 7, Zone 5, whatever. Okay. Mr. Caput, do you have the agenda? No, everything's fine. I don't believe I'm the chair of Zone 5. Technically, you're not, I guess. Maybe I should ask the council, should we elected a chair, which would be the existing chair of the Board of Supervisors, I presume? And I don't have the agenda in front of me as well. Yes, Chairman McPherson, I believe you could take item 7 first, which is the regular agenda. Item 7 is the Board of Directors to consider election of the chairperson and vice chairperson of the Zone 5 Board for 2021. And it would recommend that the current chair of the Board serve as the chair of Zone 5. So I believe you could do that. Mr. Chair, what I would recommend is that we just do a call to order and a roll call on this item. Once we complete the roll call, I believe we can move on to moving item 7 up as the first item of business, then then you'll become the official chair of the item. Okay. We will do so. We will call that to order, no, item 7, when you're referred to item 7. So the item 1 on this agenda is a call to order and the roll call. So. Well, we'll call the Zone Board of Directors meeting of March 23rd, 2021 to order. And then please call the roll. Thank you. Director Koenig. Here. Friend. Here. Coonerty. Here. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Here. Here. Directors Jeff and Bertrand are not on the call. Okay. So now we will, can we move to elected chair? That would be needed at this point. So yes, Mr. Well, Mr. Chair, the item 7, which I believe we will move up to the beginning of the agenda. This says the Board of Directors for Zone 5 to consider the election of a chairperson, a vice chairperson of the Zone 5 Board for 2021 is outlined in the memo of the district engineer. We've traditionally just had the chair of the board and vice chair of the board. Obviously we can move to public comment after this item, but I would then nominate chair McPherson to be the chair and vice chair Koenig to be the vice chairperson of the Zone 5 Board for 2021. Second. Okay, we've got a motion to second. Is there any public comment? There's no public comment for this item. Okay, then I will move call for the, or call the roll please. Thank you, director Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you, motion passes unanimously. Okay. And chair McPherson, are you still without the agenda? Yes, I am. Okay, that's okay. I think Madam Clerk, if it's okay, then I'll just read some of the items on behalf of the chair and then the chair can actually direct the motions as they see fit. The second item on the agenda is to consider any additions or deletions of the consent on regular agendas. Are there any items from staff on that? There are no items on this. Okay, so Mr. Chair, the next item is oral communications. If you wouldn't mind calling for oral communication. Are there any oral communications on our schedule item number 14 with the zone five board of directors? Any public comment? There are no speakers to this item. Okay. All right, Mr. Chair, the following item is the approval of the minutes. Approve, have a motion to approve the minutes. Some moves, Coonerty. I'll second the minutes, assuming there's no public comment on the item. There's no public comment on the item either. Okay, call the roll please. Thank you, Director Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you, motion passes. And the final item, since we took the regular agenda item as the first item of the agenda is just simply item five, which is the action on the consent agenda and there's one item on the consent agenda. Mr. Chair, if you would direct the consent agenda for comments and a motion. Okay, if there are any comments from the board, zone five board, any comments from the public? There are no comments from the public. I'll move approval. Second. Moved and seconded, please call the roll. Thank you, Director Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you, motion passes with attendance. Okay, motion passes unanimously. Then I will say that there's no other items on the agenda. We'll adjourn the meeting of the zone five board of directors. We will go back to item number nine on the regular agenda of the board of supervisors, public hearing to consider the 2020 general plan annual report, accept and file two related annual reports and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the planning director. We have the general plan, the 2020 general plan annual report and the 2021 housing successor agency annual report. Our plan director, Ms. Malloy, is she going to be presenting? I have Natisha Williams and Suzanne Ayes on the line. Okay. We'll just wait. Maybe they need to be notified. I've been promoted. Let's see. This is Suzanne Williams, right? And Natisha? Yes. Natisha Williams. Good morning, board. I believe Natisha is going to start our presentation. Natisha, are you there? Okay. Yes. Can you hear me now? Yes. Can you hear me now? Yes. One of your devices. All right. Is there still an echo? Yes, we hear you now. And I believe I'm supposed to share my screen but I don't actually know how to... Oh, there we go. Share screen. Okay, can you see the presentation? Yes, we see it. Good morning, supervisors. My name is Natisha Williams and I'm here today to present the 2020 general plan annual report. And I'm here with Suzanne Isay who will be discussing the housing successor agency annual report later in the presentation. So first we're going to take a look at the general plan annual report. State law and county code require that each year we prepare a general plan and report and a housing element annual progress report or APR for public hearing and review by the planning commission and the board of supervisors. This report is submitted by April 1st of each year to the governor's office of planning research and the state department of housing and community development. The general plan annual report summarizes the number and status of general plan amendments processed in 2020. The status of major programs and the general plans such as commercial agricultural land classification reviews, park site acquisitions and changes to the urban services line. And it also reviews potential future general plan amendments and updates. It also includes the housing element annual progress report which presents data and information on the county's progress and meeting our regional, our share of regional housing needs as well as housing element programs that are all used, presented using spreadsheets formed by the HCD. So let's go to the next slide. The board approved three general plan amendments in 2020 related to the second part of updates to safety and hazard protection policies including updated air quality policies and addressing climate change hazards and environmental justice. It also approved the permanent room housing combining district including modifications proposed by the coastal commission as well as the public facility school employee and farm worker housing amendments facilitating a variety of workforce housing projects. General plan amendments that are currently in progress include the sustainability policy and regulatory update which includes revisions to several elements of the general plan and code modernization that will incorporate sustainability principles articulated in the vision of the sustainable Santa Cruz County plan. Also in process is the medical office building proposed on SoCal Avenue in Live Oak which requires a general plan amendment and a rezone to allow professional and administrative office uses. This project is currently in, whoop. This project is currently in environmental review. The housing element progress report is included in the general plan annual report. This section summarizes applications and permits for net new housing units in 2020 and data tables provided by the state. In your packet, we've included, sorry about that, in your packet we've included table B, table D and summary tables in the original forms provided by HCD. Overall progress in meeting our regional housing needs allocation or RENA is summarized in table B. 142 housing units were issued building permits in 2020 and applied towards RENA. Information on the status and progress of housing element programs and policy implementation intended to meet our housing goals is summarized in table D. And the summary tables provided include applications received during the calendar year 2020. The county received, excuse me, the county received 84 housing applications proposing a total of 106 units, approximately 85% of the applications were still in process at the end of 2020 and are expected to be approved in 2021 or have already been approved in the first months of this year. Some of the state reporting forms are not included as attachments to this report but will be submitted to HCD and OPR. This includes table A, which includes the housing development applications submitted in 2020 and table A2, which includes all housing permits approved in 2020. These tables are very detailed and very large so they're difficult to reproduce as attachments to the report. But some of the information is provided here in table B as well as the summary tables. So we're gonna take a closer look at table B. Table B places the 142 new housing units into affordability categories that demonstrate the county's progress and meeting the allocated share of regional housing need. Under California law, all local governments are required to adequately plan to meet the housing needs of everyone in the community. Our housing element must ensure that land is zoned and available to accommodate our share of the projected regional housing need. AMBAG develops the RENA for this area and the current RENA plan for the Monterey Bay region was adopted in June of 2014. It allocates a goal of 1,314 new housing units to the unincorporated area of the county for the nine year planning period starting in January 1st, 2014 and ending December 31st, 2023. These units are distributed between four categories, very low, low, moderate and above moderate income. Santa Cruz County completed its seventh year of the current RENA cycle in 2020. Within the first seven years of this nine year planning period, the county has permitted a total of 645 housing units. These units were issued at the following affordability levels, 72 very low, 85 low, 250 moderate and 238 above moderate income. A total of 679 units remain for this RENA cycle. As shown in this table, the 142 new units that apply towards our RENA cycle for the year 2020 were nearly double the number of units from the year before. 64 of these units or just under half of all the units counted towards our RENA this past year were PRH units. So we're gonna take a closer look at these PRH units. In 2020, the county approved the PRH combining district to recognize the conversion of obsolete visitor accommodations to housing units that are considered affordable by design and meaning that due to their small size, lower than average rents, they may generally be charged at a lower rate. Oh, sorry, lower than average rents may generally be charged. Usually jurisdictions count new issued building permits towards meeting the RENA, but jurisdictions may also count adaptive reuse units towards the RENA, which are units that are now considered housing units but were not previously considered housing units when they were first constructed. PRH units are therefore recorded in the housing element APR as new adaptive reuse housing units and applied towards our progress in meeting the regional housing needs allocation. The table shown details eight PRH progress projects approved in 2020. Of the 64 total units created, 61 are estimated to be affordable, ranging from very low to moderate income affordability levels. As you can see, the PRH units approved last year have made a substantial contribution towards the county's RENA. And with that, I believe we're moving on to Suzanne's portion of the presentation. Thank you, Natesha. Good morning, Chair and Board. So some of you may be familiar with this report from prior years. This is the report on the housing assets that we have originated when former redevelopment AP was in place. As you may know, in 2011, the state decided to dissolve redevelopment 80s and created a sort of new type of entity called a housing successor. In most communities, the county government itself or in the case of cities, the city government becomes the housing successor. So that's the general rule. And that is in fact the case in this county. And so as the county now managed the former housing assets of the redevelopment agency, the state also at the time shortly after that the solution laws were passed, passed some additional legislation to require these new housing successor entities to report on the uses of those housing assets. So that's what this report is about. The state in that legislation also directed that these reports be submitted to the state housing community development department at the same time that the APR, the progress report that you should just present when that is presented to the state departments every year by April 1st, we include this housing successor entity for the same time. This report primarily focuses on fiscal matters. So uses of the funds, the bulk of the assets held by the housing successor are actually the fund balance that was left over with the redevelopment agency when it was dissolved in the, what was called at the time, the housing set aside fund. Now that housing set aside fund is called the low mod housing successor agency fund, which is kind of a large term, but that's basically what this LMIHAF means. So basically the state is tracking with this report, are we using the funds for the purpose that is required in state law? The main business sort of dated state law is really focuses the use of these funds on development of new affordable rent housing that is affordable primarily to very low and low income households. There's increased requirements for a certain percentage of the units that are assisted with these funds to be affordable to extremely low income households. And there's no actually way to provide things like home buyer programs and assistance for moderate income as there was back in the prior to the solution of the redevelopment agency. So we are following all of those requirements or use of the funds into some of the significant commitments that have been made in the last several years that you may recall including commitment of a $5 million room to be housing development that is starting short of the 17th and capital less site where we have the project approved with the two health clinics and the mid-pen housing 57 units. We have a $5 commitment to that project from this fund. We will close escrow on that disposition and escrow on that low next month. That obviously is not going to be reflected in this fiscal year's report because this is recording on fiscal year 1920. So although the funds have been committed in 1920 the expenditure doesn't show up until we do the report next year for the year that we're in. So we report on when the funds are actually expended from the fund, not just when committed. The other significant or I should say commitment was made last year was the acquisition loan to assess the purchase of a site in South Tony. We're currently calling that project the Pippin 2 project. That loan was actually closed to enable that land purchase to occur last year. So the majority of the funds for that loan were on and are reflected in the expenditures in this report but a portion of the funds are still yet to be dispersed. So there'll be a little bit more drawn on that loan in the fiscal year. So you will see in this current report that does reflect we have an excerpt of 1.2 million for those who may not understand some of this state jargon what is an excerpt? An excerpt plus simply means it's formula set on the state law that says if you have an unencumbered fund balance on hand then the total of the revenues into the fund that you received in the last four years and that amount is conserved surplus. And we do have an excess surplus by that different 1.2 million but as soon as we close on that loan for the same thing cap next month we'll essentially eliminate that excess surplus. So we will be back in its good graces by the time we've submit this report next year. That concludes my presentation and happy to answer any question. Thank you. Any comments from the board, Supervisor Koenig? Thank you, Chair. And thank you staff for that great presentation. I do just have a couple of comments and some questions. I also want to thank staff for providing table A which was not included in our agenda packet but didn't include a substantial amount of data that will ultimately be submitted with this report. I just wanted to point out that of the 2020 density bonus projects all of them are in the first district. And I will say I find that exciting as we've seen with the Sustainable Santa Cruz Plan we really need to focus on creating walkable communities and infill projects. And so I'm honestly quite excited that so many of these projects are in the first district today and welcome those and also look forward to navigating the construction of the medical office building namely Kaiser. I just wanted to point out that we've built just 23% of the very low income units that we're supposed to, according to the Rena goals. So that's less than one quarter. If we adjust for the fact that there are three years remaining in this cycle we've still only built 33 or 34% according to the schedule. And I guess a question for staff would be if there's any suggestions on ways that we can accelerate that. Yes, Commissioner Koenig. So I will say that we will have some substantial improvements in those numbers once the building permits for the projects I mentioned. Those include that 17 thing cap and also the project PIP in two. So both of those projects will be significant if they're not 100% very low income but they will include significant numbers of very low income units. Additionally, we will also the project mentioned the density bonus projects. I believe to the three very low income units. Now, for the Rena reports those units are not actually counted until the applicant pulls the building permits those. So hopefully they will before the Rena cycle is done and when that occurs those very low income units will also be added to the table. Right now they are listed in the overall package that we send to this as approved projects so that they're entitlements but the actual units don't go on that key table that sort of tracks our Rena requirements and applicant pulls the building permit. And we do understand that the pandemic has made some of these projects a little harder to get off the ground. The economy is a lot more certain particularly because they were mixed use projects and so that commercial component they get a little higher in some projects but we are optimistic as we come out of the pandemic that those applicants will be able to get those projects off the ground will help as well. In addition to the extent that we either come through that density bonus generally whenever somebody proposes a rental project with the density bonus sort of the most strategic thing to do include very low income units in the proposed because you get the most bonus per unit if you do that that's how they set up the program specifically to incentivize very low unit production and that seems to work. The developers accept that. So we do anticipate that we will probably have some other projects come through the pipeline before the end of this cycle that also access that program. And so we are optimistic that we will get substantially up to the level of that requirement. That's very encouraging news. Thank you. One other question. I noticed there's a lot of programs that you guys are managing over there and just in general, how do you prioritize those programs that you're running in the planning department? That is a question. We have to be very strategic and our staff has been shrinking step by step as the redevelopment agency has been dissolved now for 10 years. So they have a significantly larger and it's shrinking and now we're four. It kind of reminds me of some of the Agatha Christie. Hold on, then run. Hopefully we won't get down that low but it is a time I'll miss with you and with these two disasters that year, we've had to create and prioritize absolute must do priorities, much of which in the year having disaster response, there was housing is a critical. So when there's a disaster, when there's an economic recession, you tend to get a response from the state level of a lot of sort of emergency funding and other types of programs. And that all means that staff, housing staff at the local level have to administer those programs and figure out how to roll them out. So that is a lot of what we've been doing in the past year or so, both with the fire response and the pandemic response. And so we have had as much time just a lot of the things we thought we would do on this year in 2020. If you had asked us last year what our priorities were, they were very different than the way the year actually rolled out. So we are trying to do the best we can. We're public servants like everybody else and we're trying to have our head water and keep our ball in the air and keep the programs we have to float. The priority projects, the opportunistic sense of when we have capital projects that need to close, we need to get those things off the ground. So major priorities right now are the 17th and cap project, getting that closed and often running and the PIPIN2 project, which will be coming to your board in the next several weeks for a design review. And then that'll create a lot of back office work for us in the housing section once that is on its way. As rolling out the emergency rental program, COVID relief program, which has taken up a lot of our bandwidth since January. That's a long answer to your short question question. Thank you. Yeah, I know you're juggling a lot. And I just want to reiterate that me and my office are happy to help however we can. For example, I noticed with the ADU loan program with the 300K initial budget that as you stated, or in response to some of my questions I emailed, 260K is still available. So we're happy to help publicize that and get greater participation in the program. So my question is, thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Friend? Question? Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don't have any questions, but I appreciate this presentation. I appreciate the questions of my colleague. Thank you. Supervisor Coonerty? I agree, Mr. Chair. I appreciate all the information. I appreciate the work being done at this critical time. Don't have any questions. Thank you. Supervisor Caput? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much for the report. I'm looking at all the proposals and what's happened in the last couple of years has been a balancing of each district, contributing and trying to get more low income and moderate income housing assets. The concern a few years back was the amount that has been put on the South County and that includes district two, the Aptos area and the Watsonville area. And I'm looking specifically at different projects that the city of Watsonville has approved also and the Atkinson Lane, which would be considered now Pippin number two, where 174 possible units can be built. My only concern is that we balance this out that all the districts contribute. I know in the Live Oak area, they've been building affordable housing for low income and also senior income, where a lot of seniors are on a fixed income, which is really important to consider. But I'd like to see more in the other districts also contributing to the low income and very low income housing. So if we can keep a balance, that'd be great. And also considering that when we're building more housing, that we have to consider the traffic problems that are gonna be impacting that whole area. And that's the big concern I have for Atkinson Lane. Right now it says 174 possible units total. But, and also parks. We need more park space for kids. So they don't have to travel all the way across a city or whatever to get to the nearest park. So considerations for possible schools and also consideration for parks and traffic. I know the Atkinson Lane, part of it's in the county part of it's gonna be in the city. And public safety would have to be the Watsonville Police Department, of course. And also the Watsonville Fire Department would have to cover that area. It only makes sense. And the big concern is the traffic that would be totally impact the Brewington Avenue access to Atkinson Lane. We need more, we have to have in person later on when this COVID eases up where people can voice their concerns on how access to Atkinson Lane will impact Brewington and that whole area opening that up to a lot of traffic. So I just want more public input on the areas in South County and also consideration for parks and possibly another elementary school if we'd have to have one in that area. You have any comments on that? I don't know if that's a direct question or how you might answer that. Basically, the Atkinson Lane one is the I'm for it but I wanna make sure that we have more public input and we actually listen to people that we don't have fixed numbers and then we have public comment and people come and say, hey, I have a problem with this. And then we say, well, thank you for coming and thank you for commenting. But then we have a fixed number and we ignore what the public has to say. Well, we just have to change that process, I guess. Maybe some things can't be changed. I don't know how to answer it. I'm not the one to answer it. Supervisor Caput, this Carlos Palacios County Administrative Officer. I can assure you that we will have a very robust public process with regard to PIP and number two as it gets developed. So it's still in the early stages and there will be a lot of public input and opportunities for the public to comment on the proposal. Yeah, and I know that that's gonna happen. I guess the only concern I have is that when we go through that process are these numbers fixed in stone that even though people are gonna make comments we can actually lessen or somehow work out all of the numbers. Are we approving the numbers right now? Should I respond? Go ahead, yes, please, if you can. I don't think so. But I just wanna note that I wanna be very general because the agenda item we're discussing currently is the annual report and not the PIP in project specifically. But I will say that it will be coming to your board in several weeks. And so there'll be an opportunity for public comment at that time. And I will just add by way of bound that the project at the site you're referring to was actually entitled the number of units and a plan development permit was up in 2009. So the only matter coming to the board, as I mentioned in several weeks is the design review of the proposal for the first 80 units in that project. There is no proposal at this time to build a full project was entitled just the first 80 units. However, it has been entitled for 10 years now. So I believe that's what commission I mean Supervisor Caput is referring to in terms of the numbers being fixed that entitlement has been for quite a while. Right. And the final comment and it's not really a question is the city of Watsonville is looking at approving about a hundred units also off of Maloney Parkway. And that's a city one also. So when we have allocations with the state of California if we build, let's say we build 200 units somewhere in one specific locale, that counts for money from the state of California for the entire county, not just the district where all the housing is going in. And so I just want to make sure we balance this out. We don't have everything. Well, we're doing a lot better in the last few years. I have to say when you count live Oak area and you count also Aptos, we're balancing it out. So I just want to see more balance in the other districts of the county for our state allocation. Okay. Thank you. Is that in your comments then, Mr. Yeah, I just want to make that quick. Yeah, I don't want to be confident, but there are some limitations. I know in my particular districts of the sewage and water limitations, it's really difficult to keep up with those community. I understand what you're saying. We want to spread this out as much as we can throughout the county, but there are limitations in some areas of the county and my sentiments of alley is one of them because of water and sewage or septic issues in particular. But that's not to be confrontational, but I think each district should play its part to the best of its ability in meeting this housing need that we have. I'd like to thank the planning department and the housing division in particular for the report. There's a lot of good information here about our work in recent years and that we've broadened our housing base and we reduce some barriers too within our codes and our application approval system. So I want to thank them for their efforts, their ongoing efforts. And as usual, the regional housing needs allocation or arena numbers are difficult to meet in many circumstances, but in particular in Santa Cruz County historically, but we're gaining on it. We're almost halfway there to what the state would like us to accomplish. And I'm hoping with the sustainable county plan that we will continue to increase our affordable housing through more dense than mixed use housing wherever that is going to be located. And it's gonna require a commitment by the entire community throughout the county to really address that. And there's two additional processes that I think are going to be very important though. And that's as soon as possible, we need to create what's been discussed for some time a one-stop permitting center that we've been discussing for a couple of years. And I think we can learn from our fire permitting, fire recovery permitting center about how to quickly evaluate applications for building. And then secondly, identifying our county owned land and using our land use authority to develop affordable housing. And I think we're gonna be assisted in that very much by the facilities plan that we were just heard about more about a month ago or so. So I think those are two issues that we need to address as additional processes that we need to complete and get done so we can serve the public as best we can to help us meet our housing needs. On, yes. Sorry, this is Ryan Coonerty and I just, I mean, I don't wanna belabor the point but it's important to make sure we're all on the same page. The city of Santa Cruz is approving far more housing projects than any other jurisdiction in the county, both in the city and then you recently had the UCSC building 3,000 more units up on campus. So just it is, I think I understand the point and I also think everyone is doing much more than they've ever done. And in fact, the North end of the county is building far more housing right now than any other part of the county. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. I just wanted to do one more point, beginning on page 49 of the packet, there's a mention of land use and zoning corrections being undertaken by the planning department. Do we anticipate any of these going to be, going to result in a higher number of parcels eligible for residential development? I, in light of the facilities plan that we just recently discussed that I mentioned, do we anticipate any of those will result in higher number of parcels eligible for residential development? Right, so our staff has taken a look at a number of these inconsistencies. And like we said in the report, we will be where possible, incorporating them in our updates with the sustainability update project. Most of those are just reflecting what's currently on the property. So it's not necessarily anything that would create an opportunity for additional housing unless there were projects that would come into those specific sites for additional units. Really what it's doing is reflecting the current uses on those properties. Thank you, thank you. And on the sustainable Santa Cruz County plan, what parts of that update do we anticipate will lead to more housing development, especially affordable housing? Is there a timeline for completion of that, the sustainable Santa Cruz County plan and what impact it would might have on housing development? Right, the sustainable Santa Cruz, so the sustainable. You were locked up. I can chime in if we're waiting for Natisha as a Wi-Fi to cooperate. I will just note that we have a number of different, sometimes they have similar names. So I just want to make sure I understand the question. We did have a plan that was more of a conceptual plan and not a rezoning or any kind of formal general plan that was called the sustainable Santa Cruz County plan, I believe that was approved by your board as some years, oh, I think maybe five or six years ago, possibly. However, the project that staff is currently working on in our department is what we call this sustainability update, major update of the land use element of our general plan. And perhaps is that what Joe was referring to? Yes. Okay, so yes, that plan, I guess the main answer to your question is yes and no. So the overall goal of the plan is yes, that it will have the effect of increasing the number of housing sites that we would have for our future housing element update, which will be coming through in shortly in several years, but the actual rezoning necessary to bring the zoning map into compliance with that updated general plan will be a second step. So it will be sort of a two-step process. And Stephanie Hansen, who leads up our sustainability section could talk to you in a lot more detail than I can about that effort because her section is leading that effort. I do collaborate with them on that, but I'm not fully up to speed on all the procedural details as far as their plan is currently. But that is the overall goal and just to elaborate on that a little bit, we anticipate receiving our new Rina Alley can for next housing element within the next, I believe it's within the next year. And when we will need to accommodate that what we anticipate will be a significantly larger allocation than we got the current cycle. And so it is likely that we will need to make some changes to our land use plan or our zoning map to accommodate that higher number of units. So we'll be coming back to the board over the next year to year to recommend changes necessary to do those. Okay, thank you. Understood. Yeah, thank you. Are there any questions from the public? There are no public speakers to this item. Chair, you've muted. Yeah, so I'm gonna return this to the board to skews if there's some of you here, some noise that we would take the related actions to report to the governor's office of planning and research and housing and community development and accept and file this report. Chair. Yes, Mr. Coney. I just wanted to point out one small thing to staff on the report on packet page 55, 17th and Capitola Road. It says units built 57. I understand we're making great progress on the housing, but I don't believe those units have actually been built yet. So maybe just check that before submitting this report. And with that, I would be willing to move the recommended actions. Second. We have a motion to second with that correction identified by Mr. Koenig. Please call the roll. Thank you. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friends. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Capit. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. Okay. I would like to continue with, through our regular agenda of items 10. 11 has been deleted and 12 and 13. And then we'll go into closed session. Well, let's try to get everything done before we go to closed session as well as the agenda, the consent agenda items. So we'll go ahead with item number 10 at this point. Public hearing to consider the proposed formation of six rule 28 underground utility districts, adopt resolution declaring the six rule 28 project sites as separate utility districts and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the deputy CAO director of public works. That is Matt Machado. We have a resolution underground utility districts, 2025. Exhibit A, proposed underground utility districts, eight and a half by 11. Exhibit A, proposed underground utility districts, full size online and on file. And a resolution number 280-2020 adopted in December 8th of 2020. I believe Mr. Machado will be presenting this. We all know that undergrounding is a very expensive process. So Mr. Machado, go ahead and present. I have Greg Jones on the line to present for this department. Yeah, good morning, almost afternoon, chair and members of the board. My name is Greg Jones and I'm the senior civil engineer overseeing the survey section in public works. And I'm also your county surveyor. We're here today to open up public hearing regarding the creation of six new undergrounding utility districts for the California Public Utilities Commission Rule 20A program. The Rule 20A program was established by the California Public Utility Commission to require utility companies throughout California to perform requested undergrounding projects by the cities and counties of our state. Rule 20A is specifically focused on the undergrounding of utilities in the areas directly affecting the general public. In Santa Cruz County, utility undergrounding districts have historically been formed in the town core areas for aesthetic purposes. However, due to disaster events like the recent CZU fire and the devastating storms in 2016 and 17, we see an increasing need to underground utilities for safety purposes along the county's major evacuation and commuter outs. Public Works proposed 14 different locations to the board in August 2020. Public Works then returned to the board in December 8th, 2020 with a proposal for six of these locations to be formed into utility undergrounding districts and a resolution for this public hearing. The six locations are chosen based on evacuation route planning and roads that have historical problems with downed power lines and utility lines interrupting both utility service and the road network. So the six proposed utility districts in order priority are three locations on Soquel San Jose Road, the first Laurel Glen Road to Olive Springs Road, the second Olive Springs Road to Hoover Road, the third Hoover Road to Amaya Ridge Road and then Bear Creek Road between Harmon Gulch Road and Star Creek Road and then Empire Grade between Pine Flat Road and Alba Road and last Trout Gulch and Valencia Road area between Quail Run Road and Martha's Way. Based on the information I've presented to you, Public Works recommends that the board take the following actions. Conduct a public hearing on the creation of these six said underground utility districts pursuant to the county code. Adopt the attached resolution of intention to declare property of the proposed six project sites as being individual underground utility districts pursuant to the county code and to direct public works, to work with the county clerk to notify all affected utility companies and property owners within the proposed undergrounding districts in adoption of the resolution within 10 days after the passage of the resolution in accordance with the county code. Thank you very much and I'm here to answer any of your questions. Thank you very much. Supervisor Koenig, do you have any comments? Yes, thank you, Chair. Thank you for the presentation, Mr. Jones. I'm just curious how the various segments or utility districts were determined on Soquel San Jose Road. On Soquel San Jose Road? Well, we worked with PG&E and asked them for a record of areas in which multiple power lines had been damaged, poles down, and they gave us a PDF showing the areas of most damage. So we looked at those swaths of the road and they were basically from, like I said, Laurel Glen, and then up to, I think it was a Maya Ridge. That's where the PG&E line heads off onto private property. So that's how we determined that. Got it. Is there any prioritization as far as how those various sections? Those three sections were created with? Not really, but starting from Laurel Glen Road where there's the most dense population is probably the most ideal where we would start and then head up the hill from there because once you get to a Maya Ridge Road, there's fewer parcels, bigger parcels of land up there. Okay, so it sounds like it's not determined yet. I've just had a number of constituents comment that they think it would make more sense to begin from the top and work down, and that's based on their impression of the risk level. So maybe looking at- Well, excuse me, sorry. That's fine, yeah, but go maybe assessing which segment to start with based on risk or as you said, it sounds like you've already done some of the analysis in terms of the number of downed utility lines in those different areas. So- Yes, and also a lot of this is based on evacuation. So we wanna make sure that we can get people off the mountain coming down into Santa Cruz and Soquel area in a fast manner. So having those lines underground in the areas that PG&E has identified multiple times that lines have come down. That's how we decided that. Right, that makes sense. So currently there would be no plan to underground the section north of Amaya Ridge Road up to summit. Typically- Well, according to these six sites, this is what we're proposing. There are other sites that we could propose in the future. The only thing is the limited amount of funding, of course. Right. Okay, thank you. That's all my questions. Welcome. Supervisor Brown. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Jones for the presentation. I just wanna make sure that I've got something clear because I didn't recollect in the original presentation in August, nor did I see it in this board memo that there was prioritization within the districts, meaning the undergrounding districts, not the Supervisorial districts. And the way I just understood your presentation was that there was, is that correct? The priority in the Supervisorial districts? No, no, I didn't mean that. What I meant was within the utility districts. I'm sorry. So for you outlined as six or so utility districts based on the feedback we deprived in August in conjunction with you and PG&E, they appeared to just be six that would get done, not six that would be done in a particular priority order. I interpreted your presentation now to just say something differently. I just wanna make sure I'm understanding correctly. Yeah, this priority that we have written down starting with Soquel San Jose Road and then working down Bear Creek Empire grade in Trav Colch Valencia. That was the priority that we worked out together in public works based on the history from PG&E. Okay, and perhaps I missed that during the presentation of six months ago, but I remember being presented options and providing feedback on locations, but not that there would be a priority within that list. Also, I didn't say that within the agenda report today. And so just, I mean, from a matter of just transparency, I think that that would be helpful. It's not a criticism, it's just that surprised me. And generally speaking, we don't, surprises aren't always a great thing in these kinds of environments. I do definitely agree with the Trav Colch Valencia location. I said the same thing in August. It's a very important thing. I just was surprised to hear that it's, in essence on the bottom of this list, although arguably on the top of a list of many other roads that weren't selected during this time. So I appreciate that as well. So do we have then a realistic timeframe of when at least that one would be addressed? These projects take between five to 10 years to get through design through PG&E and to completion. And we'll be pushing PG&E as fast as we can. We don't wanna be taking this up to 50 years, of course. So I suspect there'll be some overlap between projects as we have the design pretty much worked out for the first one. And if I may go back to your first question, the priority, we have a list of 19 different districts in the past and just kind of an order of priority for everybody else's sake. The last one we worked on as for public works with PG&E and utility companies was C-Cliff area and the one before that was Davenport and the one before that was Ben Lomond. So that kind of gives you a general idea of how these have rolled out in the past 20 years. Okay. Yeah, no, I appreciate the locations and I didn't mean to imply that my actual Supervisorial District wasn't taking precedent. I just, again, I could be wrong. I didn't recommend in the recollect in the August presentation and I definitely didn't see it in today's agenda report that these had an order. So I just think that that would be useful going forward so that the community also knows that we've learned that from your own presentation. But I do appreciate it, Mr. Jones, thank you. Okay, Supervisor Coonerty, any questions? No questions, thanks, Mr. Chair. Supervisor Caput. I just want to say thanks and I have no questions but thank you for the report. Okay. This is a public hearing. Is there any comments from the public? I do have two speakers this item. I also saw that the director, Matt Machado has his hands raised. He's now a panelist. Okay, let's hear from Mr. Machado. He might have further explanation of something before we go to the two public comments. Thank you, Chairman. Matt Machado here, Public Works Director. A little, I just want to chime in with Supervisor Friend's comments and how we came up with the six priorities to Mr. Jones's point. We did get some great information from PG&E but we also tried to develop a list that we could afford. And so in the board item, it talks about the fund balance that we carry with PG&E. And so the hope is that we can afford these six. These six are prioritized based upon PG&E needs in terms of damage. And this list was actually shared on December 8th as part of a board item. And that's where we first started talking about the prioritization. And that was, it was a bit based upon district boundary as Mr. Jones described. But I just want to point out that the six districts we're proposing today, we are optimistically thinking it fits within our fund balance that we carry with PG&E. And so even though they are in priority list, our hope is that we can start design and implement all of them with the funds available. So thank you for the opportunity to share a little additional clarification. Okay, we go to the, I think there's two public comments. Yes, I have two speakers. Speakers, you'll have two minutes once your microphone is unmuted and you will be muted automatically at the end of your time. Call our user for your microphone is unmuted. Hi, this is Marilyn Garrett and I have several questions as I'm listening. One is, why doesn't PG&E fix their lines? I understand there's a device that can be put on the lines when they fall down so that it interrupts the surge of electricity, thereby the brush doesn't catch on fire. And it seems like we're paying over and over again for what is PG&E's responsibility and causal problems. That's one question. And another is, I recall in Santa Cruz near the University Noble Street area up there by High Street, it was under round lines, but there were some light standards to provide street lights and Verizon came along and has put antennas that they got approved, like they get approved routinely on these light standards. So my question is, is that type of proposal in this scenario? And the last question is, I understand, well, I think that, and who's paying for this? See, I hear you say, Alice, we hope we can afford. Why is the county paying at all what seems to me PG&E's responsibility? And I'll listen for your responses. Thank you. Color 1999, your microphone is unmuted. You know, maybe we'll have, I don't know if Mr. Jones or Mr. Machado might wanna answer a couple of those questions directly. Yeah, I'll go back to the, how much can we afford part first? Currently the county, we received a letter from PG&E in 2020 stating that we had $17 million, a little more than that credit, which is dollars, basically. And that's what we can work with. And also we can borrow up to five years from PG&E on this type of a loan. We do about $500,000 a year. PG&E collects through tariffs. That's how this Rule 20 pay program was set up, to collect tariffs through everybody who pays PG&E in their bills. And that money goes to the underground, throughout the state. And each city and county has their credit. And ours right now is about $18 million all together to date. As far as the Verizon lines with the, the utility poles up on, with the antennas on poles, I can't speak to Verizon on that. I really don't know a cell tower design. And then also with PG&E, when a pole comes down, the most important thing is to shut that thing down as quickly as possible. And everybody needs to stand back and let PG&E do their work. And that's the reason we wanna get these lines undergrounded so we don't have to do that anymore. The communications can be kept current, even through storms and fires. Okay. Thank you. That answers all the questions. The other, you had one more public comment. It's caller 1999, your microphone is unmuted. Good afternoon. My name is James Ewing Whitman. I have been listening to most of these proceedings, although I've had to step away from my phone because I don't hold it. You know, the utilities underground and who's paying for stuff, I would like to think that everybody's best interest in all this stuff is being done for safety reasons. There's a great deal of underground utility work that happened, started happening about a year ago, right when the lockdowns happened. But to help answer a gentleman who couldn't answer a question about Verizon putting power on the poles in 1996, and FCC acts number 702 was passed, that made the only complaint that citizens or community members could make against these cell phone towers would be for how they looked. And I think there was a misstatement, somebody implying that PG&E has funds of like 500 million or maybe it was billion. PG&E is owned by the Rothschilds and they are a $500 trillion corporation. Well, I just wanna say that I've been here listening. I've wanted to comment. There are several consent agenda items I would have liked to have commented on, but I just didn't have time. So have a good day, everybody. Thank you. Thank you, there are no other speakers, Chair. Chair, you're muted. Okay, do we have a motion to adopt a resolution declaring the six several 28 project sites as separate utility districts? That moved. Coonerty. Second. They moved and seconded. Please call the roll. Thank you. Supervisor Friend. Aye. I apologize, Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Thank you. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. Okay, we go to item number 11 has been deleted from today's agenda. Item number 12 is to consider the final appointment of even, I hope that's right, even Simpson to the Commission on Justice and Gender as a large representative of an organization representing the target population for a term to expire April 1st, 2024. Is there any public comment? There are no speakers to this item. Any comments from the board? I'll move to approve. Second. Move to approve Caput and Coonerty. Please call the roll. Thank you, Supervisor Friend. Supervisor Koenig, I apologize. It's all right, Friend can go first. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. Item number 13 is to consider final reappointments to at large positions on the several commissions and committees here, the Childhood Advisory Council, Emergency Medical Care Commission, First 5 Commission, Hazardous Materials Advisory Commission, In-Home Supportive Services Advisory Commission, Latino Affairs Commission, Mental Health Advisory Board, Mobile and Manufactured Home Commission, Santa Cruz Monterey Merced Managed Medical Care Commission and the Water Advisory Commission as outlined for terms to expire April 1st, 2025. And I would like to just make a note to thank these individuals profusely for their commitment and dedication to serving on these committees and commissions. They're absolutely essential for us doing business in the county and it's very much appreciated. So thank you for your service and for your continued service. Are there any comments from board members or the public? I have no speakers for this item. Okay, any comments from the board, from board members? Move approval. Okay, you have a second? Second, Koenig. Second, Koenig, please call the roll. Thank you, Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. Caput? Aye. McPherson? Aye. Thank you, motion passes unanimously. Then I would like to go back to the consent items before we go to your closed session, if we could. Let's try to address those. Their number 13A is item number 25. That is to accept and file a report on the all virtual Board of Supervisors meeting and continue to conduct in all Board of Supervisors public meetings using the all virtual model until the governor lifts the Brown Act exemptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic is recommended by the County Administrative Officer. We had some comments from the public about their concerns. Those are on record. You do not have to repeat them. But I think Mr. Koenig wanted to address this. Item number 25. Yes, thank you, Chair. My concern was, as I said, with the second recommended action to continue virtual meetings until such time as the governor removes the Brown Act waiver in reviewing the order, which is N2920, it says that all of the foregoing provisions, which include the waivers mentioned, concerning the conduct of public meetings shall apply only during the period in which state or local public health officials have imposed or recommended social distancing measures. And so my concern is that, recommending social distancing measures could continue for a great deal of time, possibly indefinitely. So I don't know that the governor would actually actively revoke this order so much as let it expire at such time as it expires because we're no longer social distancing, but that could be a very long time indeed. So we've seen throughout this meeting, Chair, your own challenges in connecting considerable challenge and delay in conducting the all virtual board meetings. Members of the public have, as mentioned, not been able to see slides. And personally, I had trouble following item nine a little bit when the presenter's audio was cutting in and out. So my proposed amendment to item 25 would be to, let me see here, strike out the second recommended action. So strike out the governor lifts the Brown Act exemptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic and add the County of Santa Cruz meets all health metrics so as to be better than state-defined minimal or yellow tier risk level. So in layman's terms, once we have moved through the orange tier, moved through the yellow tier, either out of any tier risk tier whatsoever or into a yet to be defined green tier by the state that we at that time would move back to hybrid meetings. Okay, a lot of discussion on this before. Any other comments from the board members? Yes, Mr. Chair. Mr. Plosios, by the way, did you have any presentation or words on this before board members continue to speak on this? Yes, just very briefly, we did conduct in-person meetings for nine months during the period of the pandemic and we were the only jurisdiction of the cities. All the cities went completely virtual and we were the only one that had those meetings and we were able to do it. We imposed a lot of safety regulations. Unfortunately in the fall, we began to have people who were coming to the meeting who refused to comply with the mask order. So we had people who were taking off their masks during the meeting. We had people in the hallways, as many as 30 people in the hallways at one meeting who refused to put on masks. We had one sheriff deputy. We started bringing in two sheriff deputies. At one meeting, we had four sheriff deputies. So that's the only caution I would put is that that's why I recommended in January. So we had been in-person from March all the way through the end of the calendar year. But then again in the fall, we were seeing systematically people coming to the meeting with the intention of trying to disrupt the meeting by removing their face masks, unfortunately. And so that's why it began to be too difficult to enforce. We were having to interrupt every meeting constantly telling people to put their mask back on. So that's the only reason that I recommended in January that we go to an all-virtual format. So anyway, I just wanted to bring that background. And then I wanted to ask a question, Supervisor Quinn, just to be clear. So you're recommending that your amendment is that when we come out of the yellow tier or when we enter yellow tier, out of yellow tier. So- Or the better, right? Not to move into orange, but to be out of yellow tier that the state may have to find a green tier by then that we may just be in the clear, so to speak. Okay, just wanted to make, understand. Thank you. Okay. Well, Mr. Chair, yeah, I mean, I have some brief comments that I understand actually when Supervisor Koenig is stating, I don't share the same concerns. I think that we should maintain the language as it is. And for that matter, the board would have flexibility still to adjust that moving forward in advance of any sort of governor's action. This isn't an action that precludes the board from ever taking a future action. We still would have that kind of flexibility. I know that the legislature is also looking at requiring local governments to have a virtual element to their meetings anyway. It's unclear what the exact language on that will may be. We may end up in a hybrid format due to some state legislation anyway. So I'm comfortable with maintaining this as is. And especially considering the fact that it can be re-explored again at a point moving forward while we are doing very well right now and we're moving up toward the tiers that you had mentioned, Supervisor Koenig, we've also, while it is different now with vaccines, we have also been here before and backslid before. So one of the concerns I would have would be moving a little too swiftly into something. We haven't seen as the staff report indicated and for that matter, serving on the board for almost nine years now, I've seen this to be the case as well. I haven't seen any sort of reduction in participation in the meetings. And in fact, I've actually seen a lot of new people participating, which is good. And so I haven't felt the same reduction in access, but I do share that the overall sentiment that at some point, I mean, this isn't an indefinite proposal. At some point the board and all local governments will move back to that format. I just think that the language that's presented here is actually the best language for us. So I won't, I respect what you're presenting, but I won't be supporting an amendment to the regular motion. I'll just be supporting the recommended actions. Did you want to make a substitute motion at this point or do you want to wait to hear any other comments from board members? Well, since we pulled this item, we'll need an opportunity for the community that hasn't already spoken on the item to speak again at that point whenever a motion is introduced, I can introduce one or not. Very good. Any other comments from board members? Just, this is Supervisor Coonerty very briefly. I appreciate Supervisor Koenig's statements and I think we will move back. Just one thing we learned from COVID is that we don't always know what's gonna happen in the coming days, weeks and months. And I'd rather not set unrealistic expectations. The second part is we still have lots of county staff that we need to participate in this meeting. And so far those who have kids are only back in school a couple of days a week. And so them being, they may need to be home for childcare, it's just a lot of uncertainty right now. And before we start moving forward, I'd like to see where we are from a health perspective and sort of from a return to normalcy perspective and then make a decision. So I'd support the staff recommendation. Any other comments, Supervisor Caput? No, the only comment I'd say is I think we're all looking forward to the day when we're able to do all this in person. My only concern is I hate to say, yeah, let's go. We're gonna be in person. But then we say, stop and we're gonna go back to virtual. We've been, we've had a problem like in different areas this whole crisis where we say, go ahead, we're opening up and then we say, oh, now we gotta shut everything down. Then we say, go ahead. I'd rather see this through right now. And when we do actually go back to in person and everything that we're ready to go and stay with it. Okay. Any other questions? I'll just flip on briefly to college points. I will point out first of all, as far as the concerns about moving too quickly or some kind of stop, start action. I do think that tying it to getting out of the yellow tier and into green tier or in the clear, as I said, does basically meet that qualification that we will have less than minimal risk as defined by the state, less than minimal risk. And to the other point that Supervisor Friend made about possibly hybrid meetings coming and concern about specific staff members was also raised. I actually do think that we should continue with a hybrid model going forward. It might be required by our state legislature but ultimately I think we've seen it is one of the benefits, one of the silver linings of the entire pandemic is enabling more people to participate using a digital aspect. And so part of the reason that I think we should act a little bit more proactively than waiting for this, social distancing to end completely is that obviously it'll be a little challenging to move forward with that hybrid model. And I think the sooner the better. Okay, thank you. Any comments from the public? Yes, I have one speaker, Color Four. Your microphone is in mute. Hi, this is Marilyn Garrett. This should have been on the regular agenda for full discussion. I see the lockdown and virtual meetings as basically anti-democratic. The public is becoming more and more restricted and muted. And then we for years had meetings in public where we actually meet with our representatives who are supposed to represent us. And I find this very disturbing and you're talking about disrupting the meetings by not wearing masks. So since you're talking about masks, I wanna refer you to thehighwire.com and the fact that viruses are an essential part of life. They're millions and trillions. They go through everything. And I saw a clip from people making masks in a third world sweatshop. These blue masks all stacked up and on the floor and pictures of nanoparticles being broken off. They're made from melted plastic, highly unhealthy and dangerous to the lungs. We need meetings and persons. We need three minute comments like we've had. This is going the way of a totalitarian society under the cloak of COVID cover. Thank you. There are no, I'm sorry, caller 1999, your microphone is unmuted. Good afternoon, this is James Yewing Whitman. I like what Marilyn said. It would be great if we could meet every two weeks in person, whatever that would mean, whether the state is dictating as far as when that can happen. That doesn't seem like it's gonna happen. Oh, you know, that's just enough. It's just interesting to see what's going on here and what is all the things that are not being discussed because wow, there's a tremendous amount of things that are not being discussed. Thank you. There are no other speakers to this item, Chair. Okay, I'll return it to the board then. We, well, I don't, we don't have formally a motion at this point. I don't mind Supervisor Koenig's suggestion but I think that there's been so much change and going back and forth. I'd like to just stick with what we have as recommended by the CAO at this point. Surely be open to revisit this in the near future if necessary. I think we're on the right track as we speak but I would go along with what is recommended by the CAO. Well, it doesn't sound like there's a second but just for the sake of process I would move the recommended actions with the amendment proposed to strike out to government with the Brown Act exemption through the COVID-19 pandemic and add the county of Santa Cruz meets all health metrics to be better than the state defined minimal or yellow tier risk level. Okay, the motion's on the floor. Is there a second? Okay, it dies for lack of a second. So then we do need a motion to approve number 25 as presented. Chair, I'll move the recommended actions for item 25. And I'll second that. He's been moved and seconded. Please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. No. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you, motion passes with majority. Okay, board of one. We will move to item number 54 and this is a long one. Approve amendment to agreement with Community Action Board to increase the total multi-year amount to $2,485,190 for emergency payment program services. Approve agreements with housing matters in the amount of $2,969,763 to provide emergency rehousing services with Adobe services in the amount of $3,228,251 to provide emergency rehousing services and with Adobe services in the amount of $1,200,000 to help secure housing opportunities for rapid rehousing and scattered site, permanent supportive housing participants, adopt resolution accepting $6,198,014 in anticipated revenue from the Federal Emergency Solution Grant. Court of Rios Relief Act adopt resolution accepting $1,900,000 from the State Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention Program to fund rehousing services, to take related actions as recommended by the Director of Human Services. I just might say if people don't think we're doing a lot about housing, this is almost $10 million worth of programs to help those in other emergency services. So it's quite a package. Who would like to comment on this? Let's begin. Chair, Supervisor, is it Coenity or Koenig? I think it was Coenity, I'm not sure. The Supervisor Koenig who pulled the item. Yeah, I'm happy to comment on the reasons why I thought the item should be pulled. To your point, Chair, it's over $8 million. It's a significant amount of money. And I do wanna point out that there was significant frustration in our community the last time we saw an amount of money this large with the heap and cash funding for homelessness back in 2019 and ultimately the way that those funds were allocated. And so immediately upon seeing this item, I was a little cautious to see that we were accepting $8 million and immediately allocating it in the same action. And specifically, I'm hesitant to allocate all $8 million to rapid rehousing, specifically because I'm deeply dubious that we'll be able to just throwing money at this problem into housing navigators. It's going to actually create the housing supply. As we all know, our community is, by some measures, the fourth most expensive in the entire world at this point, either a deep housing shortage. I recently reviewed the housing survey that of a CCU fire survey of unmet housing needs from the 7th of January and combined there was over 200 respondents to this. And we saw that of owners who had lost their home, home owners who had lost their home in the CCU fires, only 12% are now renting an apartment or house and of renters who had lost their home, only 9% have been able to find a rental or apartment. So roughly 10% of people who lost their homes from the CCU fires are now in another rental. And many are still 30% living with family or friends or camping without shelter, 16%. So where is the housing going to come from? I mean, just throwing money at a problem doesn't guarantee that we're going to fix it. So I did dive into the requirements of this funding a little bit. And so looking at the ESG CB2 funding guidelines, it specifies that it's for rapid rehousing or emergency shelter. And while the state does place an emphasis on rapid rehousing, I would say, we know our community the best. We're the ones on the front lines. And ultimately it's our responsibility to make sure that this taxpayer money is invested as wisely as possible. I should say just that. Ideally we invest some portion of it, not just spend it. Currently we're spending it. If you look at the budget proposals for these various contracts, only about half of the contracts are actually going to helping people with housing. The other half is going to staffing costs. We're staffing up over 20 new positions. So I'd much rather be paying people who are building housing or for housing supply itself rather than paying a bunch of people sitting behind us, helping people look for housing that simply doesn't exist. Now I do wanna highlight a couple of concerns and specific issues as well. In the ESG CB2 funding document, it outlines that only 3.2% of grant funding should be spent on administration. Whereas if you total the amount in these various contracts, so for example, I believe it's close to, here we go, administrative expenses in at least the housing matters contract are 258,000 out of 3.2 million. So that's 8%. So I'm curious if these contracts even meet the guidelines of the grant funding itself, since we're spending 8% on administrative expenses instead of 3%. I find, I would just a couple more things. Some of the folks receiving this funding have actually never undertaken rehousing efforts of this size. So housing matters has done, to my understanding, some work by doing rapid rehousing with transition age youth, but never this many clients. Abode has, if I understand correctly, never worked in our county before. We offered them $600,000 of the HEAP cash funds, which they ultimately chose not to accept because it didn't figure out the sufficient amount of funding. So they don't have any direct experience working in our county, except they might have experience in other counties. But again, we're pretty much a leader as far as an affordable housing market. So those are some of my concerns. Ultimately, I think that we should delay at least, or defer at least until the next meeting, a decision on at least some of these contracts. I'd be open to moving forward with one or maybe two, but certainly not all of them would be very hesitant or really don't think we should allocate all the money to rapid rehousing for the reasons outlined. And I would much rather see some allocation of spending on emergency shelter, which as I said is allowable, as far as my reading of the ESG CV2 grant. And just put in perspective, I mean, let's say we spent half of this money that we have, four million out of eight million on shelters or some kind of emergency shelter. We could literally go and buy 880 pallet shelters, 880. I mean, granted, that's not the be all and end all of housing, but it's certainly a big step up over nothing. We could house everyone who is out here in San Lorenzo Park in one of these pallet shelters. And of course there's other communities of people experiencing homelessness. And I would actually like to call attention again to the speaker from Carol, Ms. Carol Bjorn, who spoke at public comment this morning calling out the fire that was started in North Rodeo Gulch just on Sunday. If this had been a drier time of year, that fire could have been catastrophic. And we know that many camping fires have caused problems. We had the Paradise Park fire not so long ago. And so I think as we move into the dry season, you know, it's not just the rapid rehousing of folks who are already in shelter. There is still a huge gap of folks that are sheltered at all. And I think that that's an excellent justification for spending some of this funding on emergency shelter. I would love to see us have an alternative location where people can go so that the sheriff can effectively deal with homeless encampments in North Rodeo Gulch. We can get people out of those high fire zones and reduce fire risk. I think that's everything I wanted to say. Oh, actually, one more point. The ESG CV2 funding does also say that you can spend up to $2.5 million on some kind of real estate purchase or acquisition. And so that $2.5 million could be used for the acquisition of along with project home key, the acquisition of some kind of hotel as well. So again, all this is to say, I believe we should be investing some of this money rather than just spending it all, that there is still a huge gap in emergency shelter within our community. And I do not believe that simply spending as much money as possible on rapid rehousing is going to yield the results that we're after. Thank you. Thank you. I don't know if anyone from Human Services would like to comment on that or any other board members. Any other board members want to comment on this? Chair McPherson, we have Robert Ratner and Randy Morris available to respond whenever you would like. Good, I think let's have them respond. I think you have some legitimate questions. I don't know if Mr. Morris or Ratner who wants to speak first. Hi, Supervisor McPherson and members of the board. My name's Robert Ratner and I'm happy to go first. I'm the new division director in the housing for health division and appreciate the dialogue about the proposals. A few points of clarification. I'm not sure I'll address all of Supervisor Koenig's concerns in this first round, but I'm happy to follow up with additional questions from other board members. First, I want to clarify that the emergency shelter grant coronavirus funds, we are using some of the money that's been allocated to pay for emergency shelter and to cover some of the cost of our COVID-19 homeless sheltering efforts. We've expanded with FEMA funding, CARES Act funding and other dollars, emergency shelter tremendously. During the COVID pandemic, we've seen a growth of over 550 beds during the pandemic. And the funding that we've used to expand those sheltering programs will be coming to an end when the pandemic comes to an end. And we really need to work closely with our community partners, folks who own property and that there is property available within Santa Cruz County and neighboring communities to help folks get into housing with right supports and rental assistance. So I guess point number one is we are using some of this ESG CV funding to pay for emergency shelter. We have to develop some strategies to help folks who are in our temporary shelters to get into permanent homes. And from the perspective of our housing for healthy Santa Cruz framework which the board adopted recently, I think our definition of housing is not one that includes pallet shelters is the ultimate goal. We're looking to help people get into places that meet federal, state and local standards for housing that include having safe, secure physical locations with access to electricity, water and sewage. So I think we really need to reflect on our ultimate goal and kind of what kind of housing we're trying to get people into. Rapid rehousing is one of the stated goals in the approved framework that the board adopted recently. We proposed significantly increasing rapid rehousing programming and this set of proposals will increase the number of slots by around 200, which actually still gives us a gap of 190 slots that the board had previously approved. So I think if we're gonna be consistent with the framework we adopted, we should be moving forward to fill in some of those gaps. Emergency shelters are also a gap that we need to fill but this particular funding source works well for rapid rehousing. I also wanna clarify that all of the funds are not specifically for rapid rehousing. The entire package contains a lot of different elements that are part of a rehousing wave to make sure we're not gonna return people back to the streets from our COVID-19 sheltering efforts. Included in the package is some flexible funding with the community action board to help people with things they need to move into apartments or other types of living situation, household items, furniture, et cetera. There's a contract to partner with folks who have real estate in the community to help individuals who have housing vouchers or rapid rehousing subsidies to gain access to housing in the community. And there's plenty of evidence from other counties in the state that have used this funding that rapid rehousing can and does work for many people experiencing homelessness even in high cost communities. And I believe that's the case here in Santa Cruz. And the item also refers to a wonderful opportunity we have with the Housing Authority. They're providing us with 75 rental assistance subsidies specifically for homeless households in our existing project room key COVID-19 sheltering efforts to help them get into housing with appropriate supports and services. And I would also say that many people experiencing homelessness particularly those in our COVID-19 sheltering programs have significant health issues. We have people who are over 70 who are struggling with daily living challenges like using the bathroom and getting dressed. And the supports that Supervisor Koenig refers to as not being necessary actually are an important part of the work we do to address homelessness. I think one of the things that's important to keep in mind in our framework is healthcare and providing wraparound supports to make sure people are able to get and keep housing. And for many people struggling with disabilities or functional impairments, it's those services that help them to get and keep housing that are a critical component in addition to reducing the cost of the housing. So I think I addressed many of the points that Supervisor Koenig raised. And I think it would end with if we do not move forward with this proposed package which is fairly consistent with what federal and state technical assistance providers have recommended to communities throughout California will be in jeopardy of having a large number of people who are staying in COVID shelters without anywhere to go. And we'll see a significant increase I would anticipate in the number of unsheltered people in the fall when we do not have formal authority to continue our FEMA supported sheltering efforts. And the communities that I worked in before coming to Santa Cruz, they got started with a very similar effort many months earlier than we're getting started. And they've already helped 400 households get into permanent housing from their COVID-19 sheltering efforts. And it's Alameda County, which is also a very expensive high cost community. And I'm here as well. Thank you, Robert for covering all that. There was one comment Supervisor Koenig made and it's actually a question that I had. So it must be a question on many people's mind and that was a reference to a Bode, which is one of the contract agencies. They actually a yes and a no. The yes is Supervisor Koenig is correct. We did share with them that they applied for a grant in Santa Cruz County and they stepped away from it. So that comment Supervisor Koenig made is correct. But I think it's important for the board and public to know they do have an existing service that they do provide in Watsonville. So they are existing provider in Santa Cruz County. And this was a very carefully thought out proposal to spread the dollars around to not just one provider. It's a huge lift for one organization. So in direct dialogue with housing matters and a Bode, a North and a South County provider and cab. We put this together. I do wanna share what we shared with Supervisor Koenig yesterday. And I think it's important we figure out to have ongoing dialogue as staff with board members in this public about the statement that this is throwing money away, which Supervisor Koenig said, for those of us who work in the field, Robert for 30 years, me for 32 years, it's a comment we hear a lot because it looks like it's going to just people to do nothing, but for those of us who work very, very closely with this type of population on the ground, it's understandable that it seems that way, but we are asking for your board to consider it is the way with the category of nature of this funding to help this population. And as Robert said, and I think it's worth highlighting just around the corner from us, 400 people got moved out of COVID shelters into housing, which is not throwing money away. So I would have to respectfully disagree with Supervisor Koenig's comment, but I think it's important the board hears that and Supervisor Koenig, you hear that as well. There's some disconnect in our communication with you that you see it that way. So I hope we can keep working with you, keep answering your questions. And for the full board, we feel very confident. This is the best thing we can do and urge you to vote for this. Any delay I think runs the risk for all of us having to confront a horizon where people are put on the streets because we're not bringing these soft skills and supports forward that we believe is the right package to help this population. Any comments from board members? Don't say any. Supervisor McPherson, can you hear me? Yes, I can, yeah. Yes, Supervisor Koenig. Sure. So first, I think I appreciate Supervisor Koenig pulling this item. It's a big and important item and it warranted a further discussion. So I think that's beneficial. I guess I'd say I agree with Supervisor Koenig on the fundamentals in that we're an extremely expensive community with limited places for people to go. One of my hopes is that with this sort of case management and housing navigation, we'll have an emphasis on trying to get people to places where they will be successful. And whether that's here in Santa Cruz County where they may have connections and family or whether that's other communities where they may have connections of family or may have an opportunity to get more affordable housing or section eight units sooner than they otherwise would have. I think that's where these navigators and case workers can play a really important role in going forward. Frankly, I like the idea of bringing in a new, although I take the point that they're operated in Washville, expanding the number of service providers we have with these contracts as a way to see who can be successful and what they can do. I think it's a very big lift. And I think one of the challenging things is that, while we're spending a lot of money, these are for the folks who are currently sheltered. We still have a large unsheltered population which the community and the people who are unsheltered are obviously suffering from. And so we will need to see if this works as a model that then can be applied to our continuing crisis across this community. Okay, thank you, Mr. Coonerty. Any other comments from board members? Mr. Chair, I'll just briefly comment that I appreciate the work Dr. Ratner and Director Morris have been doing and how open they've been to answer questions from me and my staff in advance of meetings to get a lot of these issues addressed. I have a lot of confidence in what this proposal is. I agree with Supervisor Koenig, it is a lot of money and this is a very complex, challenging issue. But the reason that we brought in, Dr. Ratner and the reason we brought in Director Morris in large part was because of their experiences addressing us in other locations and we created a new division for this purpose. I mean, this is in some respects can feel like an intractable problem but I think that some of what they're proposing or what is being proposed is exactly right. And also comports with the legal components of the funding. Obviously all these items are reviewed by county council as well. I mean, it's your questions on the legal side. You can be assured that these have been through that review but I'm supportive of the item and I'm prepared to move the recommended actions. Okay, let's see if there's any other, that's a motion. I'll second that motion. Okay, any other comments from the board? I'd like to just, I think these points are well taken and especially I'm a little concerned about this. If I could make a comment about the amount spent on administration, is that a concern at all or are we within the realm of what's specified in these grants? I guess that Mr. Morris or Mr. Ratner would be able to answer that. Yeah, I can answer that Supervisor McPherson. As Supervisor Friend indicated, this has been reviewed by county council. We also had a state funded technical assistance provider home base that reviewed the contract and gave us guidance on what's allowed and we're within the bounds of guidance from them and the funding authorities. All right. Supervisor McPherson. Yes. I don't know technically if this is correct but I think sometimes admin is a word, it's a semantics and often gets missed is contracts aren't allowed to have a certain amount of administrative overhead, which is very different than administrative costs to pay for staff. So I'm imagining that that's the distance between Supervisor Koenig's 8% figure and whatever it is in the restrictions. And but yes, every single contract is reviewed by county council in advance. Thank you for clarifying that. I appreciate that. I would like that there's a motion as second on the floor. I'd like to add that additional direction to have the housing for health office report back to the board no later than I think August, 2021 would be this next August with an update about the status of the rehousing wave, as you call it, specifically I'd be interested in the number of people successfully moved into stable housing as a result of the program. Maybe you're going to be doing that anyway, but I'd like to make some, have that as a specific recommendation or direction added to the motion. And Supervisor McPherson, for you and the board if this matters, a previous board action in the study session when Dr. Ratner and I presented, we had asked for directive and you approved the director for us to return to you no later than the early August board hearing to give an update on the entire three year plan and the first six month work plan. And as is our practice, we for big items that list meet with your offices before big presentations. And whether you give directive today or you give us some recommendations as we meet with you in advance of that presentation, we can present anything that's of help to give you and the public an update on these contracts in particular, but in all the work we're doing. Okay, well, I'd like to, I think it'll be done, but I'd like to specify that we get the report back in August, as you mentioned, it's great. It's in the work. So I think that's sufficient at this point. Chair, if I may address your comment as well as some of the comments by staff. First of all, I fully agree we should be monitoring the progress of this of this rehousing wave, so to speak. My concern is that we may monitor the progress, but if we've already allocated all the money, what opportunities do we have to actually adjust these contracts or make, do anything significantly different if we see that things are not going well, if we see that we're not able to successfully rehouse people as much as we'd like. I would also point out something that staff mentioned, which is these contracts, this $8 million will at best house about 200 people of more than 500 currently in county shelters. So there's still the gap. And part of what I see spending additional or some of the funds on emergency services or shelter doing is providing that fail safe. If the money expires for FEMA run shelters, we would still have a fallback of some kind of shelter for people. Of course, a pallet shelter is not the be all and end all of housing. We all recognize that, but it's a heck of a lot better than the streets. And I would also like to reiterate that something about the housing for health department, it's in the name. It is why we created a new division, housing for health. The best form of healthcare is housing. And while it's excellent and necessary to have wraparound services, you have to start with the roof over someone's head, a place where they can lock their things. So I would say one thing you didn't hear from staff is any reason why we couldn't save some of this money for emergency shelter. Set it aside, looking at the expenditure schedule, we need to spend 20% of the funds by July 31st. I think we can still do that by approving either one of these contracts or two of them, but not necessarily allocating all of the money today. I think we could also do it relatively quickly, but with an order for some kind of emergency shelter as well, which I'm happy to bring back to the board at our next meeting. I would also, you know, some questions for staff. You know, the property has been identified as available properties for people to rent. That's great. I'd love to know more about where those are. It was mentioned that 75 units have been set aside by the housing authority. Well, great, that's 75 of 200. That sounds like pretty low hanging fruit. Why do we need to go spend $3 million on case managers if we're significantly towards our goal already with just the allocation that the housing authority has already set aside? So, you know, those are my questions. What do we do if this doesn't work? What do we do about the other 300 people? Why should we not create a failsafe option? Okay, I don't know if, Mr. Morrison, right around me, I think you have a, you've spelled out the plan of attack. You've been presented it to us. I don't know if you want to reiterate any part of that or if we'd further answer the questions of Supervisor Koenig. Supervisor McPherson, I can provide further clarification if the board is interested in that. Would you like me to respond to some of those additional? I think so, yes, please. So I want to clarify that the partnership with the housing authority is 75 rental assistance vouchers for people who are between the ages of 18 and 61, who are disabled and the vouchers are for an entire household. So voucher doesn't mean one person. It's whoever's within that household with that individual. They're not specific units. It's rental assistance and the rental assistance can be used in privately owned either nonprofit or private for-profit entity rental housing. And so folks who are struggling with homelessness need support to help find units in the community. There are units in the community. We hand this community through the whole person care program have contracted with an agency to help people with housing vouchers to find housing units. It's been quite successful, much more successful than asking people experiencing homelessness to try to navigate a government program and find housing on their own without that kind of support. 75 vouchers are in addition to the 200 rapid rehousing slots. So that brings us closer to 300 households. And of course we want to help as many households as possible get into housing. I alluded to earlier that some of the ESG-CV funding is being used to pay for emergency shelter. And there are other funding sources that we are using to pay for emergency shelter. I am working with other members of the board and city leaders to look at how we're gonna fund emergency shelter after the pandemic. And I do think there is a legitimate issue for the community around how we fund and support emergency shelter long-term. Most of the funding that the County of Santa Cruz has been using to support emergency or temporary housing programs has been based on one-time state funding. And we have, as we indicated in our presentation to the board, a significant funding gap in many areas, including emergency shelter. And this particular funding source creates a great opportunity for us to work on the long-term goal for folks experiencing homelessness, which is helping people move from the streets and shelter into permanent homes and not having shelter as the aspiration for the community. And I do want to say that Supervisor kind of alluded to some funding that the community was involved with prior to these additional dollars. And that's the Homeless Emergency Assistance Program funds, which coincidentally was also around $10 million. The bulk of that funding was used to pay for emergency shelter programming, hygiene facilities, outreach. And the preliminary results we have from the use of that funding is we did not help a lot of people get into permanent housing and that funding is coming to an end. So we will be seeing some reductions in emergency shelter capacity that again was supported with one-time dollars. So I think that for us in the division, our ultimate aim is helping people to get into long-term stable, healthy housing that's not shelter. And we believe that these recommendations are gonna help us to make a significant impact in the community and we'll build out our system in a way that's consistent with what we laid out for the board and other community members in the strategic framework. And I would like to just piggyback with a question back to you, Dr. Atner. I might have misheard you, Supervisor Koenig, but I heard you say why money purpose towards what Robert just explained is of interest rather than a fail-safe. I'm not following what your point is about fail-safe because we don't see if there was a fail-safe solution with these monies counties and communities wouldn't have homelessness. The question, I'm wondering if would be helpful to your board, Robert, the comments are like all this money is being thrown away and sent to staff, but I don't think I heard you speak to how much of it is purpose to decide to help with rental assistance to bridge the gap between market rate costs because that doesn't require building housing or getting tiny homes or getting shelters. It is an immediate fix. And maybe we didn't speak to that well enough in the board memo or in our answers to the board questions because that's a chunk of the money that is the bridge. Well, if I may clarify what I meant by a fail-safe is precisely the Dr. Ratner's point just now which is there's a legitimate need for money for shelters which is because of what we have is going away. And so when I talk about an expenditure on emergency shelter, I'm not talking about paying for a hotel room. I'm talking about an investment that counts as emergency shelter, something like a pallet shelter or a conestoga hut. One of the great things about pallet shelters is they collapse, they can be stored easily, they could be moved around, they could be used in emergency response in our county in the future should say, I don't know, we see flooding in a low-lying area or another fire. So we have an opportunity to build real capacity in our community to deal with sheltering and emergency situations. And so when I say a fail-safe, I mean what happens if we don't successfully house 200, 275 people or households? What happens when the money runs out to keep them in rental housing? Because after all this program is only tracking people for two years, so what if they can't successfully stay in the housing and we don't have money for that? And what happens when the rest of our shelter money dries up and we've made absolutely no investment? I mean, we're simply saying, we'll solve that problem in the future. Why not make some investment in solving it now? Can I ask to sort of maybe try to move us forward a little bit, which is it's my understanding that there is some of the housing support funds, if this program is not successful and doesn't find housing for a percentage of this population, there will be housing support funds left over from this allocation that then could be repurposed for a variety of strategies to help with either that population or other populations. And I'm wondering if between approving this and future meetings and certainly before August, if we could have more discussions about how we could repurpose those if we don't hit the numbers that we need to hit. And I just want to confirm that's correct with Dr. Ratner or Director Morris. So the question Supervisor Cooney, as I understand it is, and Randy alluded to this as well, how much of the proposed rapid rehousing contracts is actually for rental assistance? So in general, the budgets for the programs are around $24,000 per household to help be a bridge to help them land in an affordable place and increase their income over time. So they would be able to sustain that project, I'm sorry, that housing at the end of the term of the program. And the money would only be used to your question Supervisor Cooney if people actually have housing to move into. So if it turns out that there is not an opportunity that works for someone that money would still be available and all of our contracts and human services allow for us to terminate with appropriate notification and communication with our providers. Don't expect we'll need to do that in this particular case, but there is always that option. And we can update the board on the status as you suggested, or actually Supervisor McPherson in August and where we are with the projects once they're up and running. Okay. Any other comments from the board? We have not received or opened it for public comment yet. We need to do that. Is there anybody that would like to address this from the public? I currently see no speakers to this item. Okay. I will return it to the board. There is a motion on the floor in a second. And I think you accepted the additional direction that they would get a report back in August. Is that correct? I will now. I'll move the recommended actions with the additional direction for the report back. And I think Supervisor Coonerty had seconded that. Correct. Yes. Okay. You're okay with that? Yeah. Okay. We have a motion with additional direction. Please call the roll. You Supervisor Koenig? No. Friend? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. Caput? Aye. McPherson? Aye. Thank you. Motion passes with the majority. That completes our agenda. We have three closed session items. I don't know what the pleasure of the board is. It is 1.15, just after 1.15. Would you like to take an hour break and then come back for the closed session? Or do you want to take a 10 minute break and go into closed session? Let's take a 10 minute break and then get it done. Okay. Is there anybody object to that? That's what my preference would be. We'll take a 10 minute break and get back at 1.30. Is there any reportable items coming from the closed session? No, there are no reportable items. Okay. And we will recess, we'll close the regular board meeting and go into closed session and return at 1.30 in about 15 minutes. Thank you.