 Good morning and welcome to the September 28th, 2021 meeting of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. Clerk please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Here. Friend. Here. Coonerty. Here. Hoppet. Here. McPherson. Here. Thank you Chair, you have a quorum. Thank you. We'll now have a moment of silence and then the Pledge of Allegiance. Mr. Chair, if I may dedicate the moment of silence for one brief second to the passing of Bill Matthews and absolutely wonderful, wonderful person, kind, gentle, soul, brilliant, loving father and husband who just recently passed away. Please keep Cynthia and the entire family in your prayers and thoughts. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Here's a pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic before we stand by nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The consideration of late additions to the agenda or the Santa regular agendas. Yes, Chair McPherson and members of the board on the regular agenda item number nine. There's additional materials. There's a revised attachment A, which replaces packet page 74. On item number 12, there's additional materials. Atkins Degree Results Memo 2021 attachment A. Insert after packet page 163. There's an addendum to the regular agenda. Close session and addition of one matter. Conference with legal counsel. Anticipated litigation. Initiation of litigation pursuant to paragraph four. Subdivision D. Section 54956.91 case. And then on the consent agenda, there's additional materials on item number 26. ADM 29 attachment C. Insert after packet page 317. That concludes the corrections and revisions to today's agenda. Thank you. We, item number four announcement by board members. If they want to have any items removed from consent to the regular agenda. No, I'll make a quick comment though on number. We'll wait until after the public comment. Just just for a minute. Do you have any in saying none? We'll now move to public comments. Stephanie, do you want to go ahead? Now is the time for public comment. If you wish to comment and are joining us through zoom, please find the hand icon at the bottom of your screen and click the icon to raise your hand. This will place you in this line to speak. If you're here in chambers, please line up at the podium. When is your turn? I will call you by your name and you'll see a pop up on your screen. This is if you're on zoom and you'll need to unmute yourself. Please accept this and start speaking. Your microphone will mute automatically at the end of your two minutes. Yes. Thank you. This is. the transition that's available for assist. If you want to comment and join through Zoom, search the icon in the bottom of the screen and click to raise your hand. This will be placed in the queue to talk. When it's your turn to talk, I'll call you by your name or your last four digits of your phone number. You'll see an emergency window on your screen asking if you want to turn on your microphone. Please accept it and start talking. If you have joined by phone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. She has unidop, atraves el teléfono por favor marque estrella nueve. Your microphone will meet at the end of your two minutes. Al final de tus dos minutos, tu micrófono será desactivado atematicamente. Thank you. I'll make a comment too. Comments must be directed on today's consent or closed agendas and yet to be heard on the regular agenda. On atomic, not on today's agenda, but within the jurisdiction of the board of supervisors. We'll take comments. This is going to be a little different today. We have a California Senator John Laird just going to address this at exactly at 9.30 and probably we'll be speaking for 30 minutes or so. He has to leave by 10. So we'll take public comments now. And if necessary, we'll just add on after Senator Laird has finished his comments. Thank you. Go ahead. Well, good morning. I'm Nancy Macy and I'm today speaking as chair of the Valley Women's Clubs environmental committee. It's great to be here in person. It's been a long time. I'm here first to thank the board for their formal complaint to the CPUC regarding PG&E's destructive tree clearing far beyond this right of way without notice to property owners immediately after the CZU fire lasting for months and leaving the mess behind. We appreciate the courage and concern that demonstrates and command the excellent work by the County Council's legal team. We wanted to be sure that you and the members of the public made note of the fact that every formal complaint that gets docketed by the CPUC's administrative judges is assigned to one of the five commissioners to oversee the complaint proceeding. And Santa Cruz County's complaint is being overseen by the president of the CPUC, Mary Bell Batcher herself. That means they're paying attention. We thank supervisors McPherson and friend for their requests now on the consent agenda that the board enlists the CPUC to investigate the dozens of recent power outages. Is PG&E simply trying to retrofit the old equipment? Oh, excuse me. It's important to investigate the, to do this because we wonder if PG&E isn't simply trying to retrofit old equipment when modern computerized equipment should be used as happening in Southern California. This is important to ask and you may want to state that you will no longer tolerate the antiquated distribution system that is the fundamental reason for PG&E's destructive deadly wildfires. I brought you a couple of pages from PG&E's website entitled Community Wildfire Safety Program. You'll see that in the previous three years PG&E hardened 24 miles of Santa Cruz County's electric distribution system, some of which actually burned in the fire. PG&E hopes to complete nine more miles this year but wait the poles are being replaced with wood poles and the new wires we've seen are bare wires, thus still vulnerable to almost all wildfire ignition drivers. This piecemeal effort is not the comprehensive overall modernization needed in this county's high utility associated wildfire threat areas. That should include steel core, triple insulated conductor, not bare wire. And this is being done in Southern California by Southern California Edison, successfully preventing wildfires. Thank you for the opportunity to be here in person. It's a pleasure to see you all. Thank you. I thought I was waiting for a mother may I hear? I have us an article, Gary Richard Arnold. What I have is an article here in Wall Street Journal by Joe Biden in which he says he learned to love the new world order and how he's going to replace a world order on the ashes of the United States. And that makes sense since the borders are wide open and the COVID scam is really exercising communism. The COVID is communism. The community foundation is a matter of fact, which has a justice foundation named after a highly famed Chinese communist by which you have, which you still maintain the blacks out here on the courthouse steps because you're so in ideologically together with that. The community foundation had a lady decide which one fourth or one third of businesses crashed inside the Santa Cruz County. She was paid by a secret donor. Carlos Flosio is the California, the County Administrative Officer. As a member of that board and his picture is taken next to I think Margaret True or I forgot her first name. There are so many people that are involved in this communist activities pathetic. Zach Ren worked for two people that are former that are red Chinese lobbyists. Mr. McPherson, of course, got $30,000 from a triple spy front page, US News and World Report. McPherson was also involved in creating a alternative, a counter government, a parallel government called AMBAG, both the Pajaronian and the Times in Optos reflected the authors said it was similar to something they would see paraphrasing that gobbles would have done inside the inside of Nazi Germany that people were taking literature out of other people's hands, the promoters, which was Sam Farr, staff and Bruce McPherson staff. Anyway, there's a full intelligence report on communist activity in the state of California. It includes the attack on the police, both inside this magazine here when it names those police that are endangered by antifa indivisible and a bunch of others. It includes California forward of which Bruce McPherson has been a proud member of and was founded by Leon Panetta, who gave military and policy information to a Chinese communist spy that you continue to honor. Anyone else would like to finish by being timed? Yes, it's just broken. So it'll actually be the time that's coming from my phone. Okay. Morning, my name is James Ewing Whitman. Today is September 28th, 2021. I have spoken briefly here upon several subjects in front of this Coptic Austerity Board of Supervisors Santa Cruz County. International disease codes where law enforcement can bill for choking a community member to death. And the military can bill for providing an injection that kills the community member. And that at the time about a year ago, where any two medical experts can provide the ability to lock up anyone indefinitely. I've spoken about the contact tracing. I've spoken about the August 2021 CZSU fires where I have proof that these are from directed energy weapons. I'm afraid only to be silent. Maybe sharing tonight on a radio program, certain details about how to detox from these kill stings, which we are breathing, drinking and eating for decades. What does the Bill and Melinda Gage Foundation, Community Foundation Santa Cruz County and the Aspen Institute doing playing a role in Santa Cruz County politics? Simply planning to profit heavily off the genocide of 95% of the world's population by 2030. This may be accomplished much sooner. Who are the leading mass puppets in this county besides the three men in front of me, the two that are speaking on Zoom, and John Leopold. To my left is Carlos Pinedas, a violent hired gun who used to be the executive CEO of Kaiser Permanente, Margaret Lopez. Susan Tru is the CEO of the Community Foundation, Santa Cruz County. What role then does Gail Newell play? And what role then does the sheriff corner Jim Hart play? Thank you. Any other comments from the public? There are five speakers. Thank you. Carol, your microphone is available. Good morning. My name is Carol Bjorn. I'm here to ask you to oppose any COVID-19 vax mandates in this county. I hope you all have had a chance to see the affidavit by Lieutenant Colonel Teresa Long M.D. She was a field surgeon for 10 years. She holds a master's degree in public health. She's been trained by the combat readiness center and has trained in medical management of chemical and biological casualties. She is also a board certified in-flight aerospace medicine and board eligible and occupational medicine. Based on observing, studying and analyzing available data, information samples, experiences, histories and results of treatments and inoculations provided, she has formulated a professional opinion documented in her affidavit. In the affidavit, she said, the shots carry mRNA that causes the recipient to create trillions of spike proteins. This is a problem for five reasons. First, it turns out the spike proteins are not remaining locally in the injection site but have been found circulating in the blood and virtually all organs of the body. Second, the spike proteins themselves have been shown to be pathogenic, attaching to endothelial, pulmonary and other cells, forming clots and attacking heart cells. Third, the spike proteins and their lipid nanoparticles cross the blood-brain barrier with unknown long-term effects on the brain and high concern for chronic neurodegenerative disorders. Fourth, these spike proteins interact with many signaling pathways which may trigger tumor formation, cancer and other serious disease. Fifth, according to Pfizer's Japanese distribution study of LNP accumulation, unexpected sequestering in reproductive organs and spleen raise very serious long-term concerns. Further, the labels for commonarity and biotech clearly state that the vaccination should not be given to individuals that are allergic to the ingredients. One of the listed primary ingredients of these injectables is PEG which is closely in molecular makeup, color 2915 or microphone is available. Good morning, this is Becky Steinbruner. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. I want to speak first to Consent Agenda Item 36 where the board is going to finally and thank you for taking this action demand that CalFIRE issue an after-action review of the CCU fire. CalFIRE has not done this. It says in the report, the county has done your own study regarding county fires interactions. I would like a copy of that report and request that you make it publicly available as an attachment perhaps to this agenda item. I have filed my application and I have filed many public records after requests trying to find the after-action review and that's how I determined finally it had never been done. And I appreciate you including the CalFIRE after-action report there as a model. Thank you very much. I hope that you will pursue this and give CalFIRE a deadline. Otherwise, I think they will continue to ignore this very important piece of work that needs to be done to improve future responses in any disaster in the county. I would also like to speak to item number 45 regarding water. I'm confused why Mimi Hall wrote this rather than our county water resources manager Sierra Ryan. That needs to be explained. There has already been action by your board to require metering. I don't know if this is about perhaps this is the time to do that in the staff analysis. But on August 4th of 2015, your board already required that and that was supposed to have been completed by October 1st, 2017. So I would like to ask your board to request a status report of the metering action. All in user one, your microphone is available. Allowed in their sentence anyway. This is Marilyn Garrett. Can you hear me? Yes. How rude it is to cut off people in mid-sentence. And I notice you don't do that to those who are there in person. Very discriminatory. I did appreciate Nancy Macy's excellent statement as well as James and Carol Bjorn. When we have declared emergency, it's the architecture for oppression with this permanent emergency. And we have destruction of livelihoods and destruction of democracy. I want to read an excerpt from Children's Health Defense. This is a notice for employers, universities and other institutions mandating COVID-19 masks. And it's from July 14th. This serves as notice that the mandate for any individual to wear a mask against COVID-19 as a condition of employment or attendance at a university or other institution violates federal law. All COVID-19 masks, whether surgical and 95 or other respirators are authorized under an emergency authorization only. They are not approved or licensed by the federal government. You can see this from Children's Health Defense. I'll just a little bit more here. In a letter dated April 24th, 2020, the Food and Drug Administration stated that authorized face masks must be labeled accurately and may not be labeled. Caller 1965, your microphone is available. Is star nine to unmute your phone. Good morning. Can you hear me? Good morning. I am honored to voice my support for the CZU fire victims. I ask the board to please reconsider the mandate that's going to require them to put the covenant on their titles. It seems that it is harder for them to rebuild than it was initially said. I am honored to voice my support for the CZU fire victims. Caller 5907, your microphone is available. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes. Hi, this is Kristin Sandel. I'm a resident of Ben Lomond. We have had nine non-PSPS power outages since September 7th, each lasting between three and 18 hours of fire. The fire is extremely difficult and it's a stop gap measure to avoid updating their infrastructure with lines which would not be tripped by a scurril or stray branch. It's dangerous for people with medical equipment needing electricity. It's devastating for local businesses and costing hundreds of dollars in gas and electricity. I'm very happy to be able to address this very dangerous situation. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. Thank you for all of your work on this issue. Dahlia Eperson, your microphone is available. Hi, yes. My name is Dahlia Eperson. I am running for Congress in November 2022 against Manetta, by the way. I'm going to introduce the mask bandits. Everybody who wants to mask, God bless them, let them mask. But those of us who don't want to mask or don't feel the need to mask should always retain the choice not to mask. We've already seen some devastating effects for children who are being some effects for adults including pneumonia, bronchitis, and of course there's always the exceptions, always the exceptions. My sister has extreme asthma. She can't mask. The mask bandits are simply a denial of choice and you're also telling us that we're too stupid to decide for ourselves if we should mask or not. That is such an overreach of government. Any kind of mandates like that where a freedom of choice is taken away is not the American way, it's an overreach. And so I am really speaking out against it and really pleading with you guys not to do another mask mandate. Okay, thank you very much for your time and God bless you. Thank you Chair, there are no other speakers. Okay, I'm going to go to I think I'll go ahead now and introduce. I just want to make clear that we do not have a mask mandate in the county. We request that our county employees do be vaccinated. I think about 90% of them have been. They need to have a weekly test but we do not have an outright mandate. Now it's my pleasure to introduce my friend and colleague Senator John Laird. John is not a stranger to most of us or you. He has endless energy and worth ethic and makes friends everywhere he visits. He was elected to the state senate last November and serves on 11 legislative committee almost unheard of. John served as the secretary of natural resources under Governor Brown for eight years and prior to that represented the Monterey Bay Area and the state assembly for six years. He was a trustee of the real college. He was a council member of the city of Santa Cruz and he has made public services calling since graduating from UCSC in 1972. After John's presentation he will leave for time for questions but the senator has a busy day and has to leave by 10 o'clock. So I welcome you. Senator Laird, it's great to have you here. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's great to be here. It's the first time I've been in the room since you've been socially distancing so it is an interesting setup having spent an incredible number of hours of my life in this room. I'd like to maybe go through a bunch of things and then answer questions and just as with you social distancing this was a strange time to land to the legislature. We were not allowed friends or family at the swearing in. Only 33 of the senators were there. They didn't even allow the chaplain in. I gave the prayer for swearing in this entire time. We've never been allowed more than three staff members in our Sacramento office at the same time. In fact I got an award from California a few weeks ago and it was the first time my nine staff members in Sacramento had all been in the same place together since I had been in the Senate. And as chair McPherson said I'm on an incredible number of committees and it has really helped represent this area. I'm on the rules committee which does confirmations and when the state parks director came by I walked them all the way through a big basin planning to do. And there have been a whole host of confirmations like that where that's been good. I'm the senate lead on the joint legislative audit committee which has put me in the middle of the EDD meltdown and I have a bill that will really address that. The chair of the natural resources committee socially distanced for four months so I ended up chairing that committee even though I'm not the chair for four months which put a lot of issues here. And I chair the education budget subcommittee which is half the budget and I was working with leaders in Santa Cruz county and education and county superintendent and it was one of the lead negotiators in the school reopening issue so I hit the ground running and this budget was different than any budget I've ever experienced because I was budget chair in the state assembly and we had $75 billion above revenues that were projected and so half of that or the equivalent of half of that went into reserves or was returned to the public and then the other half was used to address real long-term intractable issues. We lowered the age for Medicaid to 50. We added 300,000 students to grants in the higher education system we increased childcare slots and increased rates for the reimbursement there's $12 billion over multiple years for homelessness and K through 12 budget is just higher than it has been at any time in the University of California CSU of real concern to our community which was cut during the initial COVID budget not only was brought back to its pre-COVID levels but had a 5% increase so there have been major things that were addressed as part of that budget and I think there are some that are a real effect locally obviously there's a tremendous amount of money for fire prevention and there's a number of us that had an effort that that go locally that there be grants and that go to local areas across California there's a water package which addresses a lot of issues with regard to water and it's the one disappointment I had in the budget I had a special pod carved out for Central Coast route projects and it got moved into next year it is in the budget but it is next year and I'm working with the finance department to move that up it's eligible for projects would be the pipe from the big basin water district of the San Lorenzo Valley water district would be upgrade of wells in the Santa Cruz system there'd be projects in the Pajaro Valley Monterey Peninsula Southern Monterey County in San Luis Obispo even though this isn't within the purview of Santa Cruz County Lake's Nassimiento and San Antonio are at 9% of capacity one is a dead pool and the other one is not allowed releases unless it's an emergency and that goes into the Salinas River basin and so everybody that's on Salinas River water is tremendously hampered right now we're at the second year of this drought where we were at the end of the fourth year of the drought that was in a few years ago so that's dramatic with the partnership of Mark Stone there's 14 .5 million dollars of course the Santa Cruz area to address homeless issues and my real point was is that if you look at the homeless programs across the state it's done on a per capita basis and it's really targeted to the urban areas and if you look at the homeless population in the last census that was full in Santa Cruz the per capita population of homelessness was higher than Oakland San Francisco Los Angeles and San Diego and yet the money does not come to the area so we did a slug of one time money with the idea that we tried to budget for impact and hope in a year when we absorb the other money that's coming from the budget that real progress can be made and I know there's a meeting being set up between the city and the county and some of us to talk about how it's implemented and so that is coming and another thing through the education budget subcommittee the University of California funds cooperative agriculture extension which provides research and assistance to our farmers in the area and that has been contracting and contracting over 15 or 20 years we did a huge slug of an increase to bring it back to where it was 15 or 20 years ago so cooperative agricultural extension can be of two service to the farmers in the state and the region and I really work on that personally to make that happen if you look at the bills fortunately everything is timing and it's nice to be here on the day that the Sentinel has a headline about the Pajaro River bill that the governor signed on Friday and SB 496 and I worked with supervisor friend on that and have been working with congressman Panada it is big because if you look at the Pajaro levy project where there is five year flood protection right now and the project would bring it to a hundred year flood protection and as a county employee in 1995 I had to go down and to shift to the factoring the hundreds of people that were dislocated and housed at the fairgrounds and that is literally what we face if we don't upgrade this and they are historically disadvantaged communities and the state share was capped at 70% and so additional money kept being gotten for the project and all it would do is displace other money and not get to the 100% so what this bill does is allow the state to pay 100% and in reality in implementation you can even technically get to 109% if there are overruns or other things so this is big because that 30% is a charge that will not fall on the farmers or residents of the Pajaro valley that will now be done by the state so that is really good news and I think it really will help and it was a hard bill and I had to take amendments or negotiate amendments that really said this was unique in a way to get it signed and to insert the department of water resources director in the process who coincidentally I appointed in a past life so that is a very good thing additionally I have a bill on the governor's desk with regard to fire and I have not appeared in front of you since the CCU fire a year ago which was horrific in which we are all still bearing the brunt of trying to bring people back trying to deal with all the impacts of that and at the state level there were force practice rules and the initial draft wouldn't have allowed people to rebuild and we worked on that I have been working with PG&E as I mentioned to the valley women's club over the weekend helping to a not popular thing the only meeting I took the last week of session when we were just meeting 14 hours a day and really busy was with the new CEO of PG&E and she came to my office in the capital and I met with her for half an hour I was encouraged by one thing she headed up the utility in Michigan and she has that midwestern sensibility and affect that I think is good but as I said to the valley women's club she is taking over a ship that is sinking and pointed in the wrong direction and while there is commitments to do the right thing she is going to have a tough time making good on them and making them happen but we as an office have been working with PG&E for a number of months and we have pressured them into agreeing for more notice in cutting down trees in the emergency and for taking the trees away if it is okay we are trying to let the county in a settlement make sure that is there and enforceable and then we can move on to vegetation management and we can move on to public safety shutoffs because what has been going on in the last few weeks has just been a hardship to anybody in the Santa Cruz mountains and so I wanted to bring that voice to that meeting and make sure they knew and the fire bill that I have on the governor's desk when we do fire prevention we basically at the state level do whatever we put in the budget for a year for prescribed fire or fuels management and this would say we would have a five year or more plan we would know what we exactly have as targets for that period of time in fire prevention we would have a transparent public process a report on exactly what has happened so it is not up to the press to dig it out and I think that will be great progress and I am hopeful the governor will sign it additionally I have a bill on his desk with regard to the Williamson act and even though I would like the state to be a full partner again in the Williamson act with local governments and since before I was even resources secretary and after I left the legislature the state has pulled back this relieves some of the reporting requirements and other things to make the current system manageable and we put money to a program that I started at resources for agricultural conservation easements to try to deal with prime ag land and preserve it in that use and then the employment development department has been a complete meltdown and we during the COVID crisis and we received an audit from the state auditor and it is interesting because one of the recommendations was there would be a recession plan that in fact the minute a recession is tripped there is a plan completely in place on how to expand and deal with the increased needs that people have when that happens there was an audit recommendation in 2010 to do that and it wasn't funded by the then governor or the next governor and now the thing has happened under a third governor and so I have a bipartisan bill that is on the governor's desk that requires an ongoing recession plan updated public participatory so that this never happens again in this way I also have a bill in the governor's desk about cannabis testing and having equal standards and it comes out to a lot of entities here so that there's not a disadvantage I have a bill that's already been signed with regard to when I headed the Santa Cruz 8th project it was our dream that people would lift to old age it was not happening now 50% of the people with HIV in California over the age of 50 and so the bill and the governor signed it already puts as a category of special need older Californians with HIV and make sure services are informed of services and there's outreach under the older Americans to deal with that and then I had one very fun bill which is the governor appointed the first woman to be ahead of the highway patrol and yet the entire statute refers to he and him as the commissioner of highway patrol so I have a bill that fixes that and once I got into it I said all our statutes say firemen so I threw a cow fire in all the conservation core statutes say core men I put that in and then I worked with the general of the National Guard and it turns out their statute is so screwed up that we just agreed to do a bill next year and not mess it up with this so the governor has signed that bill as well and then maybe two other issues before when one other bill that really directly affects the task is that there's a mandate for landfills to move to organic waste and it has been considered our cities and counties have been really stressed by it and so I have a bill that does a one year holiday on enforcement of that mandate given what's been going on even though people still move toward it and that was used to leverage money so there's 70 million dollars in the budget to implement that now so it is great on both scores I got an award from the league of cities last week for doing it and we're confident that the governor will sign that and then the two sort of high profile bills this year both had to do with housing SB 9 and SB 10 and they both had some measure of overriding local land use to allow for additional units of housing SB 10 they took amendments to make it voluntary but it also has a provision that allows boards of supervisors and city councils by two-thirds vote to override citizen approved measures on housing and then SB 9 allows for 80 years additional to be built on single families owning and the amendments were taken in that bill that allowed local governments to override this requirement if there's health and safety, historic or other things and so when those came to me for the final vote given all the amendments I voted for SB 9 but I voted against SB 10 because I thought the override of local ballot measures was a bridge too far and I had conversations with the author about specific local initiatives about Measure J about the Watsonville initiative about annexation about Measure O and the Greenbelt measure in Santa Cruz and the author said that it had to be uniquely about housing but I was still concerned that that wasn't tightly written and so I am concerned about that provision the governor has since signed those bills and then lastly and I know this is of great interest to Supervisor Coonerty I sent a bill to the regents on Sunday about the Long Range Development Plan it seems like it's relatively short notice that it was just going on the agenda because I think it was hard for the city and the county to take formal action before the deadline for letters last weekend and in my letter I deferred to the city on the practical issues of transportation housing, water, fire the things that I think are the granular issues that are most at issue and I held two up for the regents and the first one was I tried to set the context for this because I sat next to a regent at an event where he said everybody knows it's just a nimby thing in Santa Cruz and I said wrong wrong wrong it is much more nuanced and complicated than that you basically have an exemption from local land use, no requirement to mitigate and you have a university of 20,000 people within a city of almost 60,000 people which creates amazing problems within that lack of requirement to mitigate and so and I said this does not exist this way with any other of the other nine campuses that aren't here for UC and I think that has to be recognized and then secondly that given the constitutional exemption that the University of California has they have no requirement to do what they say they're going to do and so I really urged the regents I did something when I was in the legislature the first time that if a university campus got bond money for a building I have language that's still on the books that say they have to mitigate all the impacts from that building before they can get money for the next building and that sets up a framework that should work for this plan that they really should face this lay out what they're going to do each phase and not move to the next phase until they've mitigated it and have a major of enforceability in that and it this is not just the issues of growth this is the issues for faculty and staff and students of having academic infrastructure in place and not just grow so that they don't have an experience that's appropriate in this either so I have personally sent that to individual regents I filed it with the entire board of regents and I have been working with them the housing project it's proposed up there there was a split photo approval and I just don't understand why in a 3,000 unit housing project can't take the 150 units that are controversial and move them to another place in the project it would make the opposition go away we support 3,000 units because they need it but just don't do it in a way that causes opposition and leads into the LRDP with bad feelings and so I am uniquely positioned as chair of the education budget subcommittee the chancellor of the USU system and the president of the UC system are my new best friends and I have been using these conversations to raise these issues so that they are clear on what it means I went on a little longer than I wanted to but I wanted to give you a comprehensive update on what's going on and how it fits here and in whatever times remain happy to have you I just want to thank you for everything you are doing in so many ways it's very much appreciated and I know you are highly respected and people listen to you up at the capitol for all aware of that I want to thank you too for supporting the expansion of broadband a high priority in the legislative list of this county and of the county state association of California state association of counties expanding broadband and these fire threatening days is going to be critical in the rural areas one thing I just saw I was watching 60 minutes and they were talking about these new helicopters that can see at night where the fires are and they can pull 3000 gallons of water in minutes and for some reason or other they haven't been able to transport them they are headquartered I think in Orange County the way I understand it I just wanted if you could look into that to get the department of forestry and the local fire agencies to get there and see as you see you happen there was the fires going on all over the place I understand but they weren't used to their full ability let's put it that way so let me just speak to that for a moment yes happy to look into it and and when I was resources secretary the entire fleet of helicopters was Vietnam era helicopters and we went through an arduous process where I think we might have even been sued it took years to basically come up with a new RFP and start the process of replacing every helicopter and so before we left the administration we bought the first ones and then Gavin Newsom to his credit got there and realized he had a little bit of a surplus and the best thing to do is to spend it for one time things and not build ongoing expenses so he took the helicopters that were supposed to be purchased over five six or nine years and moved them all forward and so it's just a question of when they're delivered and and to be honest I am not sure of their capability with regard to night flight because that was not an absolute requirement at the time but I think that they can be fitted for that to happen because the issue the other issue that you mentioned that's worth talking about is when the CZU fire happened a million acres were burning across the state and they did not commit resources here for three or four days what was burning through rural residential areas and even though I was a private citizen I was pounding people in Sacramento about it and we have a mutual aid system that relies on fire departments across the state responding and a lot of them were holding their fire units because they felt like they were in danger and so the real question is as well is making sure that never happens again and we have already approved additional conservation core additional firefighters we're trying to rejigger the prison firefighter issue but that is front and center so anyway didn't we but I'm going to go to supervisor friend and community first for brief questions because you have some issues that were in their districts specifically supervisor friend thank you Mr. Chair thank you Senator Laird thank you obviously for everything you've done in regards to the Pajaro one thing you didn't mention is this was a continuum actually you were building upon work that you had done when you were in the legislature previously that really had set the stage for the possibility of even what you were able to get through the governor most recently to underscore what you were saying fundamentally changes the trajectory of what's possible in the Pajaro River removing a significant burden from two disadvantaged communities in both counties it allows me to work more with the Biden administration to show that we absolutely have the wherewithal to make this project happen because of this state investment in previous meetings with the office of management and budget in previous administrations just even having the 70% was clearly a unique identifier for us being able to now show that we have 100% of the local share because they have a lot of projects army core projects where the locals are unable to actually deliver on their end of the deal even after congressional appropriation so this really does show that we're in a very unique position across the country to do it and it's due in no small part to you as well as just some of the members Rivas and Stone we would like to invite the three of you and anybody from the new some administration to be interested we'd like to work with your team on setting up a tour not that you need to know more about the Pajaro River but we think it would be good to bring you out there again with anybody that you think would be useful from the administration to really continue to highlight this project and as well as anything that you think would be useful from the governor's office in regards to the Biden administration we do have obviously a congressional and federal delegation on board but having that the governor's taken a position on this individual project if he has interest in or your recommendation of the administration reaching out to our federal administration on this that would be useful too thank you I'm just happy to do that happy to tour and reach out on tours and in what he was referring to is in 2006 I did to build that allowed for a share at all from the state for this project and then his budget chair made sure the money was in the flood bond that went to the voters that year so it's been a very nice continuum and nobody ever thanks the department of water resources had for anything so my guess is she would jump at the chance to tour this and do that thank you thank you Supervisor Coonerty thank you Mr. Chair thank you Senator Laird for joining us and thank you for your work and the most difficult of times it's usually very difficult to govern in the state of California the last year and a half have been extraordinary and I appreciate your focus both on statewide efforts but also remembering where you came from and helping the communities in your district all your bills have been and work and advocacy has been tremendous and as you mentioned we really appreciate the money that you delivered for us to address homelessness which is as you pointed out a far proportion to many communities our size and I appreciate your efforts to say that the city and the county need to work together to find solutions and we will do that and then we'll be looking for longer term funding to ensure that we can continue these efforts and make sure we're doing the problem solving that is needed at the individual level to address each person experiencing homelessness their needs and the opportunities we have to help them out of that condition and then reduce the impacts on the community but I'm just so grateful for your constant communication advocacy and recognition of the real issues we face on the ground thank you and let me say we've been working closely together on the north coast issues and due to both of our advocacy the coastal conservancy allocated $100,000 last week to that process. I wish it had been a little more but it was enough to really launch it in a way that we can address those issues absolutely and actually and thank you to state parks for partnering to get us the rest of the way there and thank you for your advocacy and your letter on Thursday as we just move forward I share your desire that we have to have a binding enforcement of growth to provide the infrastructure necessary so that students can be successful you're not creating educational access if students show up and they're experiencing homelessness or skipping meals struggling to find housing or classes it's imperative that if we're going to create educational access and we're all committed to it as you pointed out in your letter this is not a NIMBY the community is not taking a NIMBY position we understand the need for growth in an economy based on a knowledge based economy but it has to be real access which includes building appropriate housing and infrastructure as well as reducing water and traffic impacts. I was surprised at the level of hunger that was an issue among students and you just mentioned it and one of the things that hasn't been heralded in this budget is institutional meal sites couldn't deliver meals at the time of COVID food banks stepped up and the National Guard came in and did it and in this budget we got 300 million dollars to go directly to food banks to continue that efforts into the next fiscal year and when I was up at campus it turns out that the Cowell Coffee House is now what they refer to as a non-transactional cafe where people have the ability to eat and when I was there I said how wonderful it would be to serve in the legislature with somebody that was non-transactional and it went right over the head and so far with students. Thank you Chair, thank you Senator Laird your experience and it really shows in the way you've been able to address so many of these issues in a very tactical way and bringing more resources into your district and specifically our county addressing many of the environmental challenges we're facing today and I just wanted to ask you briefly since you have dedicated so much of your career to our environment what are you currently pursuing or some of your colleagues pursuing proactively to help reduce our emissions statewide? That is a great question because this budget did great things for water and fire to deal with the impacts and the governor just signed a bill that set up collaboratives up and down the coast to take the next steps to deal with sea level rise but that's all on the adaptation side and resiliency that's not on the emission side and the legislature did not do a good job this year on the emission side and the Air Board is doing its next scoping plan in the next 12 months which is to line out the ways that we will meet our goals we had a goal of 33% electricity in the renewable portfolio by 2020 we met it and the next goal is 50% we had the Coyote Accords put on California in 2006 and so we went back to the emissions of 1990 by 2020 we met that goal but then we have a next goal and we have a series of other ones wind energy was just signed into law and added as a goal and the question is what we do on the granular level to meet those goals and one of the hardest ones is the transportation sector is where a significant amount of the emissions come from so I think that that's where we're going to spend a bunch of time on additional charging on additional subsidies if possible for electric vehicles are different things to help us move to the next stage but stay tuned because in the two weeks we've been out of session that's the one thing about next year that I've started to talk to stakeholders and colleagues about because we have to be ready so I look forward to working with you on that. Thank you Supervisor Caput, any questions? I'd just like to voice my appreciation for all the work you've done for the residents that live near the Aho River 100 year flood prevention project this has been many years people have been looking forward to getting something done and your work on this has been a major push forward and I can't thank you enough Appreciate that very much I don't know if there's any questions from the public but he does have this 10 o'clock and he has a deadline is there any questions? I have two speakers on Zoom How many? Two You have to go I'll do it as long as I have brief questions I'll do my best brief answers Colin user 1, your microphone is available Yes This is Marilyn Garrett Hi John I applaud your heroic decades-long efforts on behalf of democracy in the context of what I think is a corporate dictatorship Please help stop AT&T corporate plans to end copper landline safe and reliable service we depend upon copper landlines for our lives basically it's the only thing I have and my second question is are you speaking and how can we contact you during this time you're in the county or are you speaking elsewhere Thank you I'm speaking all over the place and you could go to my web page and call Santa Cruz office if anybody was listening there's also one in Monterey and San Luis Obispo or the capital office and they'll let you know of places I might be speaking or I don't have a question so thanks for calling Your microphone is available Hi I've been reading and researching that our power grid is already lacking brownouts blackouts so if we're going to increase our electric car production I don't see a path I don't hear a plan about how we're going to fix our current grid situation we can't handle what we have right now and sun panels aren't really a long term answer because sun panels every time it rains you there's an ingredient in there that has it leaks arsenic into our soil every single time it rains that's what sun panels do that's a side effect of sun panels can you let me know about the electrical grid what the plan is for this yes let me speak briefly let me speak briefly to what is a very complex issue and there are plans to make sure the grid would be resilient and would handle those needs and there are really long term goals of micro grids to try to on a more regional basis make sure that there's enough electricity regionally and there are different things that are being added to balance everything so with wind and sun then batteries are required to be able to cover the time when they are least providing things into the grid and I think over time it's going to be the opposite of what we've come to be used to because if solar is really available during the sunlight hours we're going to be asking everybody to use electricity during sunlight hours as opposed to putting it off with fossil fuel until such time because it's dark or light at night and so there are real plans to meet the need through very complimentary alternatives in a micro grid and it will be a transition but that's where we need to be anyway I know we've run out of time so thank you thank you Senator Laird for everything you're doing we'll keep in contact with you whether you want it or not but you have been very receptive to it this is Santa Cruz County you don't have to ask people to be around okay thank you senator have a good day thank you okay we will maybe I should go back are there any other public comments yes there was one one more okay Becky your microphone is available thank you this is Becky Steinbruner can you hear me thank you I will follow up with senator Laird in his quarters but thank you for having him here this morning I appreciate that overview very much I would have asked him if he would help support your effort to get Cal Fire to provide an after action review of the CZU fire that's important and he can use his influence to make sure that it happens so I will follow up with him on that I'm concerned about the lack of Cal Fire resources in this county as of two weeks ago there were only seven Cal Fire engines in this county most of them had been sent out to strike teams elsewhere when Cal Fire goes most of our type 3 fire engines that are the best to take up into the rural mountain areas with substandard roads those leave they take them with them on the strike teams County Fire only has two type 3 engines so I am concerned and I hope that senator Laird will help get more resources that can stay more locally in our area to help protect our citizens thank you very much again for having him here and I will follow up privately thank you very much okay thank you there are no other speakers we will now go to the consent agenda item number 6 are there any remarks from the board members yes thank you chair of course on item 36 I just wanted to thank you chair McPherson as well as supervisor Coonerty for bringing this forward it's been mentioned several times but the after action report on the CZU complex fire is definitely much needed and then on item 45 acknowledging the drought emergency and requesting a 15% reduction in use I just wanted to use the opportunity to make it perfectly clear what situation we're in I think senator Laird mentioned it as well but we saw 77% of the average rainfall two years ago 53% last year and our drought today in the second year of the drought is already worse than it was with four years of drought previously and we are expecting 70% percent chance that we'll see another dry year this year so please please I hope everyone will do their part and reduce water use at least 15% we've been historically very good at that in our county and I hope everyone will continue to carry that forward those are all my comments thank you chair thank you supervisor friend thank you Mr. Chair briefly I'd just like to welcome Dr. Billisich Nancy Billisich on her appointment on item 35 on item 37 I appreciate the chair joining with me and the comments from so many letters in regards to the PG&E issues not just to my district but in Supervisor McPherson's district we held two town halls although to be fair they were really controlled by PG&E and so there was a lack of back and forth quite frankly at those town halls but there was a remarkable turnout I have to say that these two rural portions of our district to have that level of number of people turnout on these webinars to show the import of this issue less than 24 hours after PG&E held the webinar at least in my district explaining that they had made significant changes to the fast-trip sensors and changing their how sensitive they were that area lost power again so clearly what they're doing isn't quite meeting the mark at this point and as Chairman Ferson and I believe that realistically the only way to amplify the voices of the CPC involved at this situation to actually look into this process PG&E's got a lot of challenges throughout the state it's no different here but people rely on this power I received an email from a constituent yesterday who has cancer she requires an in-home treatment that requires power the power has been so episodic it's been unreliable for health reasons at home people are losing food to spoilage they're unable through their septic as well as their well system to operate either water or any sort of sewer-based system because of loss of power people that have been working remotely which is something that this board has been encouraging I've been unable to do so at this point the average power loss in my district anyway is almost seven hours at a time that it's gone and there's absolutely no notices to when it'll occur and if you look outside we don't even have the weather that normally causes these kinds of power losses at this point so I can only imagine what could happen not just with PSPS moving forward but just with the winter in general so it's a really problematic situation with no solution presented quite frankly from PG&E yet at this point so we're encouraging our colleagues we've been absolutely so supportive in the past on this to help us work with the CPC to do some sort of additional oversight thank you Mr. Chair thank you Supervisor Coonerty thank you Mr. Chair I have no comments today Supervisor Caput thank you number 35 I want to welcome Nancy Pillisich to the Buhro Valley Public Cemetery Board and also number 47 the repaving of the Green Valley road to Eastlake Avenue Hula Hand Road that's going to help out a lot in the traffic and then this is related to item 47 item 50 the intersection at Hula Hand and Highway 152 near the Lakeview Middle School that'll be a great improvement there for the traffic also thank you I have a couple items I wanted to address item number 24 the new updated operational plan for fiscal years 2021 through 23 this is a great pamphlet the importance of this operational plan really cannot be overstated it's really the roadmap to what this county is going to do effectively guiding what the staff has we get community input and staff input of what are our priorities and it's really encouraging to see that we're able to complete 73% of the objectives that we've had for the past two years that we set for ourselves I think it's a tremendous accomplishment I want to compliment the CAO for putting this in place to begin with when he became our CAO Carlos Palacios and every one of the county employees who has participated in this it's critical and if people want to know where the county is going or what its plans are this operational plan will give you a great idea and it's not a long read also on the autumn or 36 Supervisor Coonerty and I brought this forward because we need to be fully prepared to learn for our lessons from the last fire and what we can do to learn from what happened to CCU complex fire we have the county fire has conducted an evaluation of the local collective response for the CCU now we're requesting Cal Fire to conduct a similar review of the state's response they did have a town halls but it wasn't what they called the conventional hot wash and we think we deserve that and we want that and we thought that we were going to get it in the first place but we're requesting it again now to have them come before us on item number 37 the CPUC to investigate the fast trip outages thank you Supervisor Friend for bringing this item forward with me to work on with my office to get PG&E to schedule a community meetings which we did but as you said it was on their terms but I think an investigation by the Public Utilities Commission could provide more information and perhaps some requirements of how PG&E manages the wildfire prevention efforts I don't know I think there's a lot more answers we need and what they're seeing how they're going to correct some of the issues we're facing now on item number 41 Housing Matters I want to thank the Housing Matters they're really providing some critical sheltering in our community they're sheltering 125 people in one year and that may not sound a lot like a lot when we have identified in the last census I think there are a hundred but the amount of work it takes and the amount of cost it takes I don't think people understand how costly and how dedicated an organization or the county has to be to make this happen just for 125 people but it's too many return to the streets and as we know but we appreciate the good work of Housing Matters their team and investment from their campus to provide these additional 125 units it's very much appreciated they had a great effort to raise funds to address that and as was mentioned by Supervisor Koenig on the drought we're in a deeper situation than we have been ever and the impact it has on the groundwater levels we have now some groundwater agencies Mid County has completed its plan now we have one it's going to be completed for the Santa Margarita and we need to have that done by the first of next year so the state doesn't come in and tell us how to manage that so we are very much impressed and really hopeful that we can have a plan that meets our efforts and we do encourage you please reduce your water usage by at least 15% what we save now will be so much so valuable if we have another drought come December January we need a lot more help in that so I do appreciate that the I think that would do it for me and thank you for that with that I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda I'll move Chairman McPherson just a small modification on your item with Supervisor Coonerty on item 36 per the speaker Ms Steinbrenner's comment maybe we just also direct the Board the chair to write a letter to the Department of Forestry and also just CCR legislative delegation or state legislative delegation in case they can help with that process so hopefully you consider that a friendly amendment to just add that CC on to that letter I certainly do because I think people don't know how much we've communicated so to speak with PG&E and CPUC and others to try to get more answers thank you yeah I'll accept that amendment for sure I'm sure we'll too okay so the maker of the motion are you okay with moving the consent agenda as amended then yes I am yes I think the motion was from directly from Supervisor Caput so just confirming you're okay with that amendment to the consent agenda that minor amendment that's okay he said yes okay thank you okay any other comments alright and for clarity Supervisor Friend is the seconder Supervisor Koenig friend Coonerty Caput McPherson thank you motion passes unanimously to the regular agenda Senator Laird having already addressed us item number 8 is a public hearing to consider the report on the year 2022 growth roll adopt a resolution establishing a 0.25% for the year 2022 in the unincorporated portion of the county and authorize the planning staff to file the CEQA notice of exemption as outlined in the memorandum of the planning director we have a resolution to adopt the growth roll for 2022 CEQA notice of exemption a year 2022 growth roll report planning commission resolution and planning commission staff report of September 8th 2021 and here to present to this will be Natasha Williams a planner sustainability and special projects for our planning department good morning Supervisors the county's growth management system was instituted in 1979 following the adoption of measure J to address the resource and public services impacts of population growth in Santa Cruz County as part of the growth management system each year the county is required to set an annual growth goal for the upcoming year that represents a fair share of the state's growth the 2022 growth roll report is before you today for consideration this report examines various factors used in establishing the year 2022 growth goal for the unincorporated area and includes analysis of population growth trends resource constraints the status of this year's allocations the county's housing needs including progress towards meeting the county's required regional housing needs allocation arena a review of the demolition permits and density bonus projects approved in the past year as well as the ADU annual report this year's report also includes a discussion of the permanent room housing project applications as well as impacts of recent state law on the county's growth management system as noted in the growth goal report the unincorporated area of Santa Cruz County had an estimated negative 0.43% growth rate last year all jurisdictions except for scott's valley also saw negative growth rates and the county as a whole has seen declining population totals in recent years the state this year also decreased by negative 0.46% sorry in 2020 and that is the first annual decline since the state population estimates have been recorded population estimates for cities and unincorporated counties are determined using the housing housing unit method which means that the number of new housing units constructed each year plays a large part in determining annual population estimates the DOF also notes that the state's unprecedented negative growth rate last year is the result of three major factors the first is continuing declines in natural increase which is births minus deaths the second is continuing declines in foreign immigration which were accelerated by recent federal policy and the third is deaths associated with the COVID-19 pandemic which increased deaths across the state last year by 51,000 or 19% above the average death rate as deaths related to the pandemic decline and with federal policy changes it is expected that the state will return to a positive annual growth rate in coming years recent population estimates for Santa Cruz County indicate a continuing downward trend of population growth rates in the decades since the 1960s and 70s when the county grew much faster than the state the 2020 census is expected to provide more precise and up-to-date population numbers for our county however as sufficient data is available at the time that the GOF population estimates were prepared so these figures will be included in next year's report the growth goal report also summarizes the current status of the 2021 residential building permit allocations this year 21 allocations have been granted as of July 1 if demand continues at the current rate 42 allocations will be granted by the end of the year this is comparable to last year 2020 building permit allocations had been granted by July 1 2020 demand for allocations has remained low compared to previous decades and staff anticipates there will be more than enough permits available for the remainder of this year in accordance with the housing crisis act of 2019 senate bill 330 Santa Cruz County will continue to not enforce the measure-drake growth goal limit on residential allocations within affected county areas while it is in place originally this was from January 1, 2020 to January 1, 2025 but the recent passing SB 8 extends this to 2030 in Santa Cruz County this includes the following CDPs Live Oak Casa Tiempo Paradise Park and Amesti as shown in blue on this map all other aspects of measure-j unrelated to limiting building permit or population such as the county's affordable housing requirements are not impacted by this bill and staff will continue to track measure-j allocations and subsequent building permit issuance for reporting purposes the TZU Lightning complex fire is another aspect that we've analyzed in preparing this report in addition pursuant to Santa Cruz County code section 12.02 all residential units impacted by the CSU August lightning fire complex fires will continue to be exempt from the measure-j residential allocation system based on the analysis detailed in the report staff recommends that the growth goal be set at 0.25% for calendar year 2022 in past years the county's growth goal has been consistent with the state of California's growth rate constituting our fair share of population growth dictated by measure-j however as noted earlier there were a number of anomalies in the state's recent 2020 growth rate that contributed to population decline and state population estimates are expected to show a return to positive growth in coming years setting this past year side if you look at state population growth over the last three years the state grew by an average of 0.25% which is commensurate with our recommended growth goal it's important to note the county of Santa Cruz is in the final few years of the 2014 to 2023 rena cycle but currently more than half of the units allocated to a region have not been built also important to consider is the recent state housing and ADU laws that continue to be refined by the state including the recent passage of SB 9 that increased infill development in our area and in addition both DOF and ambag population projections forecast growing populations in our region and in light of all of this staff is recommending a 0.25% growth rate for calendar year 2022 as required by the county code representing our fair share of population growth this growth rate would result in an allocation of 130 market rate units available for the year 2022 allocations will be distributed between the urban and rural areas of the county at a 75% to 25% ratio in order to recognize the greater potential for infill development in urban areas the 2022 growth goal report also recommends as in previous years that the unused market rate allocations from 2021 be carried over to 2022 in accordance with policy 3.2 of the general plan for the year 2022 growth goal is exempt under the California Environmental Quality Act and a notice of exemption has been prepared the year 2022 growth goal was also presented to the planning commission on September 8th and wrecked the year 2022 growth goal was also presented to the planning commission on September 8th and wrecked the year 2022 growth goal was also presented to the planning commission on September 8th and recommended for approval staff therefore recommends that the board of supervisors conduct a public hearing to consider the report on the year 2022 growth goal and close the public hearing adopt the attached resolution establishing a year 2022 growth goal of 0.25% for the unincorporated portion of the county and authorize the filing of the secret notice of exemption with the clerk director. To answer you might not be at the table. Thank you for the opportunity to answer any questions. I think I will open it to the public. I would like to address this on this issue, I want to make a couple of comments myself. Pardon me Chair. I do have a public comment on Zoom. I'm happy to see the good growth goal report here. I was concerned at first that it was much shorter. What I don't see is any address of the impacts of dense infill on infrastructure, road improvements, mass transportation to serve those areas, especially with new legislation that exempts parking requirements for infill development within, I think it's a half mile or so of mass transportation lines. So we do need to look at that. I'm curious why MBeg still feels that this area will have an increase in population when clearly the trends are going down. I would appreciate that discussion on that. I also note that Measure J will not be enforced in areas due to SB 330 that are considered disadvantaged. You may be interested to know that recently the state water board added Capitola to the disadvantaged communities. So I think that that should also be included in those areas where Measure J will not be enforced. Finally, I'm concerned about the counties not meeting the Rena numbers. I appreciate that there are projects coming along, but the state is moving to penalize communities, counties and cities that do not meet those Rena numbers. And I would like a discussion by the board what they see as being able to ward that off. Can we put in those pallet shelter communities that the board has set money aside for and really get moving on affordable? Colin, you sir, one, your microphone is available. I wanted to hear the rest of what Becky Steinbruner was saying, how rude to cut off people. My basic comments are, I understand that the county has lost population by about 3.4%, but there are still increased building permits. I would like to see Measure J enforced, not exempt from enforcement. And also we need public housing, low cost housing for everyone because we're going to see massive numbers of people out on the streets as unemployment has been taken away and their livelihoods destroyed. Where are their efforts for public housing instead of big development like for Spenson and what's going on in downtown Santa Cruz? Where is the housing for the poor people who is helping food, not bombs? That's what is needed. We need a change of structure that provides for the poor and working class people. Thank you. There are no other speakers on Zoom. Okay. I'd like to make a couple of comments. Thank you for that realistic overview of housing. And it's unrealistic to think this county honestly is going to meet who and I used to serve on AmBag and do not now at this point, but to meet the housing demands of the state. I mean, they try to shove this down our throat, but it's just not realistic of what they're trying to have everybody do. And if they penalize this county, they're going to be penalized in every city and county in the state probably. It's really a frustrating situation. Everybody sees the need, but let's get real. It's not happening. I would like to say that since Measure J was passed 42 years ago, it was a requirement for 15% of the housing being affordable. And as a matter of fact, 15.6% of all new residential development has been affordable housing. So that part of the goal has been met with Measure J that we, the voters passed in 1978, I believe it was. But these growth goals are difficult to meet given the challenges we face to construct new housing units, especially affordable units. And in light of the water and transportation limitations that we have as we speak and the droughts staring us in the face, we need new sources of funding if we're going to have these affordable units. But another challenge historically has been our own system for processing building permits. And I'd like to ask a question. Do we anticipate that the new permitting center might encourage more permits year to year that's going to be in place, I believe, by the first part of next year? Do we expect the consolidation to set targets for getting closer to the growth goal? Thank you, Chair McPherson. Perhaps I can help with that. Yes, the intent of the UPC is certainly to streamline the permit approval process so that permits that have historically taken a long time will take a shorter period of time. And therefore more permits can be. That's probably the most welcome news we've heard today. That is the intent. It may take a little bit of process improvement to get there. Right. Thank you. I'll entertain questions from board members, Supervisor Koenig. Yeah, thank you, Chair. You mentioned that we hadn't met our rena goals in this cycle. And as Chair McPherson alluded to, the numbers from the state in the next cycle are about triple what they have been in this cycle. So it does appear like it'll be a serious challenge to meet those, whether it's possible at all. We, if, well, first of all, have you done the math? I mean, would even meet the next rena cycles goals on market rate housing? Is it possible that this growth goal, assuming we continue it at this rate, which is required by county code, is it at some point going to come into conflict? Yeah, that was one of the factors that we used to determine our growth goal. Mike, on the mission. Yeah, we looked at the rena numbers and ensured that the growth goal we're proposing would not prevent us from reaching our annual rena requirement for market rate. Okay, right. Because I mean, I understand that we've really fallen short on the affordable, or I should say low income and very low income number of units in those growth goals. So that makes sense. And if you've done that math for the next rena cycle, and I know that it hasn't actually been allocated to our specific area, but if we were just to say triple the amount in the current rena cycle, would this come into conflict? You know, the growth goal is set based on kind of the recent trends and then what we see coming forward in the next year. We do not have our rena numbers yet for the sixth cycle. We have an inkling given that, as you know, the overall rena number was about three times the fifth cycle. So as we continue to absorb that, we'll work on our housing element next year. We'll really try to figure out how we're going to accommodate those units and the growth goal will kind of track that and follow along. And if we can possibly get to a point where we are accommodating more growth and are able to meet that rena, then you'll see those adjustments in the next couple of growth goals. I see, so you're suggesting that because the state has basically troubled the rena goals for most of the jurisdictions that have received their numbers statewide, and because the growth goal is tied to overall state growth, that we might see the growth goal just continue to increase. The growth goal is quite low and it's been hitting in that trend for a while. As you know, we'll try to adjust our policies and regulatory environment to allow better use of our urban lands. And that along with the legislative actions that have been taken this year or the past couple of years, we'll continue to see openings and hopefully if the economy sticks with us, we'll see that growth level rise as it will in the state and other jurisdictions. We're hoping. Okay, thank you. And just one last question. Maybe for a county council actually, I mean, is if there were to be a conflict in the future and someone didn't receive a permit because of the growth goal and the number of permits that already been given out, is it possible that we could be sued for this? And would this even stand up? Is this limit legal? Well, we were sued a number of years ago back in 2005, actually, around our housing element associated with not meeting our rena goal. So the answer to your first question is, can we be sued? Is yes. And we can be instructed by the court as we were in that case to adjust some of the things that we were doing at the time. This is a growth goal. And there are mechanisms in place to address when we don't hit our goal, so can we be sued? Yes, we can be sued. But other than that, it gets to a level of abstraction in concept that I wouldn't probably really wanna go into at this point or it just wouldn't be reliable. Let me reframe the question. Have other jurisdictions been challenged on growth goals like this and lost? I have not heard of any lawsuits around growth goals or being challenged on it and governments losing. But we have a, with Measure J in place, we have a pretty robust and specific code regarding how we address growth in this county that a lot of other jurisdictions just don't have. So. Okay, all right, thanks. Maybe one last point of clarification. I know that the CZ rebuild are exempt. If someone were to choose, maybe this is five years down the road, we've seen worse case scenario. We continue to see natural disasters and someone who chose not to rebuild in the exact same location, but rather in a different part of our county, would that still fall under the exemption from the growth goal or would it then count as a new unit that marked the right unit? You were saying it would be outside of the CZU impacted area? Yeah. Based on the way our resolution is worded, I don't think that that would apply. I think it would, if it's outside of the CZU area, it would not be exempt. All right, well, we'll cross those bridges when we get back. Thanks. I think before going to Supervisor Friend, I need to formally close the public hearing. There's nobody else on the phone. Is that right? That's correct. We'll close the public hearing and then continue our comments from board members. Supervisor Friend? I'm Mr. Chair. I just appreciate the presentation. I have no additional questions. Actually, Supervisor Koenig asked a couple of things that were of interest. So I appreciate it. Thank you. Supervisor Koenig. Sure, thank you. And thank you for the presentation and the report found it very useful. Just two quick questions. One is it seems pretty obvious that at least in the city, there were like 5,000 students or so who probably undercounted because of the pandemic. So the population numbers may not reflect the reality we're back into. Can you, do you have any idea or sense of how the pandemic may have affected other population counts? Yeah, I know specifically, like you mentioned, we saw a negative 13%, I believe, population growth in the city of Santa Cruz. And that was, I did reach out to the DOF to kind of better understand where those numbers come from. And that was mostly attributed to the pandemic and then the reason that the students weren't here like they normally are. So they attributed that to the UCs, the students being missing. I don't know of any other, besides the increased death rate that they mentioned in the report, I don't know of any other specific populations that were impacted by COVID that might have changed these numbers in the DOF estimates. No, I appreciate that. And my secondary question was about the number of ADU applications. Given that the state has liberalized rules and we at the county have also tried to liberalize the creation of ADUs, the numbers of ADUs didn't seem to reflect that. Do you have a sense as to what's going on and what we can do to increase ADU production? Yeah, I know that we saw, yeah. I know that we did see a slight increase in the last couple of years. You know, and since our rates now are in the high 30s and that's commensurate to what we saw before the 2008 to 2010 housing crisis. So the rates have increased significantly. And I would say that we will probably continue to see that increase as permits move through our permitting system. Okay, but there's nothing you're hearing that is a barrier probably other than high materials and construction costs right now. I know everyone's fighting for the same limited number of contractors, but is there anything else that you're seeing? You know, I think we'll be returning with the revised ADU ordinance next week to the board and whatever actions the board can take to help keep these permits ministerial to help make the application process as easy as possible will help to eliminate some of those barriers. We'll also be returning to the board, believe in December to look at the three year report on the fee reductions that we did back then and the board will have an opportunity to look at whether to continue those exemptions and reductions. So all those things could help, but we just recommend not adding to the process in any way, if at all possible. Thank you. Supervisor Caput, any questions? Thank you for the report. Pretty much everything. I think your mic's on, is your mic on? Yeah, thank you. Okay, we've closed the public. I entertain a motion. Thank you for your presentation Ms. Williams and entertain a motion. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. Seconded. Please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Trinity. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you, motion passes unanimously. We will move to item number nine to conduct a study session on the core investments stakeholder engagement and a request for proposals framework recommendations direct the human services department to include associated allocations in the fiscal year 2022-23 proposed budget and take related actions that's outlined in the memorandum of the human services director. We have some funding areas, a core engagement meetings and survey, initial proposed funding allocation methods and distribution, core hybrid tiered funding description. Thank you. This has been a really successful program. Mr. Morris, our director of human resources. Good morning, chair McPherson board members. I'm Randy Morris, director of the human services department and I'm gonna be giving this morning's presentation but I wanna recognize that I'm joined by Emily Bollie, our deputy director and sorry to spring this on you Emily but I think with her retirement in December this might be her last public presentation perhaps. So I just wanted to take a minute to thank her. Especially- I just wanted to talk her out of that. Well, personnel told me I don't have any authority to do so despite my efforts but anyhow, I do wanna, Emily is here to help with question and answer cause she has been involved every step of the way in this process before I got here and since I've been here is real link to the history. So thank you, Emily. And before we bring the PowerPoint slide up I wanna make a few introductory comments. This effort in front of you today is the first time we've been in front of you since February when we gave a study session update on this program and there's been a tremendous amount of work that's been done by a lot of groups and I wanna recognize within our human services department a lot of the administrative staff particularly our finance staff and contract staff who have done a lot of work in the COVID environment the fires and with all the complexities what played the last few years and there's a lot of work they do to help this program move forward. I also wanna recognize this as a collaboration with the city of Santa Cruz so the city of Santa Cruz I believe is gonna be watching in today and I will be watching in at their council meeting this afternoon because we intentionally coordinate our efforts with our legislative bodies because this is a collaboration with both bodies but I mostly wanna highlight and recognize any of our community-based organizations that are listening in today and might choose to make public comment because as you will hear in the presentation today the last many months we've spent a lot of time engaging in conversations with the providers to receive core funding and those who hope to apply for might not receive today and hopefully the spirit of that collaboration is woven through this presentation. A few quick comments I wanna make I'm very mindful that I sit here a year and a half in as the human services director and this is a program that's been in existence for over three decades so I think I'm probably the fifth director who has had a role in this program and I just wanna share some of my observations over the last six months when I've really dug into this preparing for today and the actions in front of you today. Most communities, most counties do not take all of their general fund money and organize it in one big bucket and put it out to community providers. So in many regards this is quite a gift to this community many communities spread it out so it's more diffused but I also learned in the last many months what how many inherent challenges there are in trying to figure out how to take a bit of money that's not enough to help the most role in the broader community and put it out in a way that's most helpful it's been very challenging and hopefully what you're here today is our best efforts to make this some make sense. So what this topic is about is the program core CORE is the acronym that refers to collective results and evidence-based investments. This is the first effort after 30 years of a program called community programs that shifted to in those words collective results and evidence-based identify that it shifted to a collective impact model trying to get funders to all work under one framework to build in more results and to have the programs built on more evidence-based and best practice programs. Today this program it represents $4.4 million of county general fund money. There's also an additional one million plus of city of Santa Cruz money that lives in 83 different programs through 44 different agencies throughout the community. So it's a fairly large broad-based funding to help community-based organizations help the most vulnerable in Santa Cruz County. I would like to put that $4.4 million in perspective. Our department human services is about $175 million organization and we have outside of core $34 million of contracts in the community. Why I'm sharing that is I feel it's really important to set expectations that as much as $4 plus million is we are by definition a safety net program and there are still a lot of unmet needs. So there's a lot of amazing things that our community-based organizations do but I think it's very fair to respect the work they do that this isn't enough money to solve all the issues but again I think it is a great opportunity to have this money to put out into the community. So today when we start the presentation I wanna share with you that we did our best effort in a very complicated time with a lot of crises going on to have a very robust and dynamic stakeholder process to get a lot of feedback from the community-based organizations so that what's in front of you is a representation of our best efforts to think through how to move this effort forward based on an informed by conversation with the service provider network. So with those comments, Ms. Carrera if you could load up the PowerPoint and we'll sort of walk through and if you can just confirm for me to be able to move forward, let's see. So like force yourself with the wheel. Like it first. What's that? The wheel? It's not moving. You're gonna help, thank you. Okay, so today's agenda we're gonna do a brief review of the process and timeline that's played out before we got here today and what we're looking at on the horizon. We're then gonna summarize the stakeholder engagement process and highlight who has participated and this all funnels into what's really in front of your board today which is our recommendations for how to frame the next public procurement process to get feedback from you which then leads to the next steps which is to come back to your board in early November with the actual RFP to be released. Next slide. And thank you for the help. So here's the summary of the time from I'm not gonna read all these but in the spring, we had agreed to move forward with your board support after we gave the study session to get ready to release the RFP upcoming and we spent the summer going through the stakeholder process which I'll describe in more detail in a minute and today is the beginning of in the upper right of fall which is September 28th we're in front of your board today and the city will be in front of the city council this afternoon. We then in one of the things we heard loud and clear from this from our community-based partners is to really create a reasonable amount of time for them to apply for these funds. And so we are recommending that we release the RFP pending your board's approval in early November and ask for responses to be in early mid February to give a reasonable amount of time given the struggles the community-based organizations are going through we'll then spend the spring reviewing them and then coming back to your board and the city will go to their council with recommendations hopefully to start the contracts July 1st for a new contract term. So that's the basic timeline. Yeah, next slide. Thank you. So this is a picture of a core the picture of what the model is and this is something just as a reminder your board has approved as a framework to use through the study sessions over the last many years so we continue to use this. This was the level set that we use for all the stakeholder engagement to remind everyone that these are the core conditions of wellbeing that we wanna organize the programs around. We highlighted that these are all interconnected since you can see all the dotted lines and that equity is of course front and center in this network to help make sure that we have a healthy and thriving community. The next slide. So this is a little bit more information for your board and for anyone listening there is an attachment to the materials which gives a great summary of all of the stakeholder work that was done over the last many months. And so I'm not gonna go through this in detail because those materials are in the attachments but I do wanna just highlight that career boards directive we did meet with funders we talked to all the city jurisdictions with one being a city of Santa Cruz who's participating about potential for participating and joining in this effort formally. Also foundations we had meetings and you can see the numbers that were here our partnership with the city of Santa Cruz they have a community program committee that they work with a subset of their elected officials three council members that we met with as well. We then had a number of community partner meetings and you can see the number of participants that were involved. We then had a combined community partner and funder meeting and we also put out a survey to get responses for how we should prepare this framework that's in front of you today. And then in September, just before this presentation the core steering committee which has existed throughout the life of core in the last three years met. We gave a presentation to the human service commission and then we went back to the city of Santa Cruz committee in prep for their meeting today. So this is just to let you know that we have spent a lot of time trying to get feedback and weave that feedback into today's recommendations. So next slide. These were the two main questions we asked. These are sort of at the center of what we're gonna be presenting to you today which is how can we use this framework, the core conditions of wellbeing to make decisions about how to put this money out into the community. And second, how can we make sure equity remains at the center and how do you actually operationalize that? So that was what was discussed in all of these stakeholder efforts. So next slide. What we heard, the first one, a variety of ideas that might be a little bit euphemistic for it was very, very difficult to find consensus. I think we walked away with an understanding that there are many ways to look at how to recommend to your board to put money into the community given there's so many unmet needs and so many populations deserving. And I appreciated the many comments from our community-based providers recognizing that this is not an easy task to organize this to take four plus million dollars to help the community. Some of the detailed feedback we got is there was a great appreciation of community organizations who experienced philanthropic foundations creating more streamlined applications. I would say every service provider was all in on the issue of equity and very eager to work with us and be a participant in this conversation so that any of this money helps address inequities in the community. There was a very strong push for as much transparency and clarity as possible and a request for technical assistance so that the playing field is level when CBOs are applying for this money. So next slide. Okay, so I'm gonna pause because all of that was build up to say to give you history and background to say this is what we as staff are recommending to your board and this is what we're asking you to say yes or no to today and this is what we're inviting the community providers who might make public comment to share their perspectives on this. And then after today's presentation we will then work on writing the RFP based on if this framework is agreeable to you. So the first recommendation is we wanna have a contract term of three years. This allows us to reset this funding cycle to match with the county's two-year budget cycle and then core funding. So I mentioned in my introduction we currently have $4.4 million and these are four specific actions that we're recommending your board take which are kind of the ins and outs that then move the base funding from 4.4 million to just shy of 4.8 million. And I'm gonna take just a minute to talk through each of these. So the first is your board prior to my appointment here had directed the county and the human services department to allocate $150,000 to have a program called Set-Aside and it was small grants through a different process in the actual procurement cycle. So we are recommending that that money be reallocated and built into the core base funding. And you'll see when we get to the tiered investment strategy how that sort of folds into what we're recommending. Number two is a very specific action because right before this presentation a couple of months ago a program ran by Encompass the core housing pathways program shut down. It's actually ran at River Street. And so we've coordinated with Encompass and they're welcome to make comment if they disagree or agree during public comment if they'd like, but we are recommending because the program no longer exists that $75,000 be put back into the core funding base at $25,000 a year. Number three, the seniors council is the local nonprofit organization that runs the area agency on aging. We have detailed in the report the specifics of why and I'm not gonna go through all of them but it has been my experience that this is an absolute orange compared to the apples of all the core programs that we run. It is a 100% administrative program. It is a federally and state mandated entity and it is required to draw base funding to draw that federal and state money. So it just sits aside and different from all the other programs. So we're recommending the current contract that seniors council has of $131,000 be removed from the base and be reallocated to human services for a direct contract to work with them. And then the final is in collaboration with the CAO's office. We have been authorized to share our recommendation. This would all be pending your board's approval during the budget cycle, but at least for planning purposes that we increase the core base by $500,000. Like most grants we receive as human services when we apply to federal and state grants we're used to getting grants that stay flat for two or three or four years. So this is kind of the normal way funding works. But we also recognize a program that's been up and running for five years that has had no increase to the base that is reasonable to talk about a meaningful base increase. So $500,000 is our recommendation. So next slide. So this is where I mentioned the set aside reference. We are recommending that we use the current spread of core funding grants that we have today which fall into kind of small, medium and large buckets if you will by keeping a tier of small grants in the five to $25,000 range for the procurement. But that's where we fold the set aside funds into and then maintaining a tier of medium sized grants and large sized grants. One of the things we heard from the stakeholder efforts was that the community-based organizations appreciated particularly for small grant amounts having very small streamlined application processes. And we do want to disclose, we mentioned it in the board memo that we are in conversation with the community foundation and we have a meeting later this week to explore whether or not we have a sort of an alignment of some of their funding to add to our funding to work together on these small grants. And if so, we'll be able to increase the amount of money. And we won't know that until we go through our process but hopefully when we come back to you November we'll be able to confirm if we indeed have some augmentation through community foundation partnership. So we'll go to the next slide which is where we're gonna recommend how we organize the funding. And if your board approves this approach it would not only be a small, medium and large but I'll call it an extra large by adding one $750,000 deeper investment opportunity. I just wanna take a minute to explain why we've listed these three options here. These three options are representative of the dialogue with our community-based partners and funders. And I just wanna take a minute to name each and tell you why we're recommending the hybrid approach. Targeted, there was some appetite in the conversation about looking at switching from a broad base funding approach where there's a lot of money spread out in a lot of ways and a question whether or not that's really having an impact even if it's not enough money and whether or not we need to really just get bold and just shift to just two or three very, very large grants to really make a dent on some very serious issues in the community. But we sort of agreed as staff and with our partners that we're sort of not at the place to really be able to recommend to your board where would we target such small money and the impact that would have on a lot of these community-based organizations who from these small and medium grants it's very meaningful for them. So we are not recommending this but we wanted to share that this was a topic of consideration. It actually feeds into why we have the hybrid approach as our recommendation. The second is to really sort of keep the funding as is keep the funding very broad. And we as staff felt like that is not moving the effort forward. We understand and appreciate that a broad-based approach is helpful but there's also been plenty of recognition that we really need to consider targeting money to have a deeper impact in some places which leads to why we're recommending number three. And number three, the hybrid approach keeps the broad approach spreads the money around in small, medium, large but sort of carves off a little bit of money to create one large $750,000 deeper investment. We would look at this as an opportunity to let our community partners tell us where they think some of the biggest issues are where the biggest need is through the application process. We'd encourage collaboration. This wouldn't have to be one organization. We'd be much more specific in this approach to having equity and racial equity be at the center of something that this money would be worked on and really look at root causes of issues. And Ms. Cabrera, if you could click on the blue hyperlink because this takes us to, this is in the attached materials but we just wanted to let you see visually that this is how the money would be spread around if your board approves this approach and this would then be built in the RFP we'll bring back to you in November. Small, medium and large, it shows how much county funding which totals to our 4.799 and then you can see the city's funding which in their public materials for their meeting this afternoon is at 1 million plus and you can see that taking $750,000 leaves the amount of monies that are listed here. So just wanted to highlight that for the community and your board. That's what we're recommending for your consideration and if so this is how we'll organize the funding in the RFP. So if you could, yes, thank you. So then the next slide, which is our last slide. So here are the proposed next steps. I specifically wanna make sure any of the community-based organizations listening that have a lot of outstanding questions about how are we gonna recommend in the RFP the application process will look like, how will we make sure it's very clear what sort of TA is gonna be available to them, how are we gonna organize rating panels and make sure the award funding decisions are fair. We will build all of the answers to those questions in the RFP but we want to create a stakeholder process one more time to hear from the community-based organizations directly. We also want your board to know that if you get calls and if there's public comment today this is a place we say, we see as an opportunity to sit down and talk this through. We think we've developed some very good conversations and a good spirit of collaboration in those stakeholder meetings and we see no reason why we won't work together to come up with the answers to those questions and build those into the RFP itself. We are proposing and it's one of the recommended actions for your board to direct us to return on November 9th with the actual RFP itself that gives your board one more opportunity to give us feedback before the RFP is released. And I do wanna let your board know when we return to your board to accept the recommended actions in the spring that's yet one more opportunity for you to give direction and make adjustments. So just wanna be clear today does create a trajectory but it does not limit your opportunity as our elected officials to make recommendations and adjust where things are going throughout the process. I mentioned earlier the proposals do early mid-February and then we would be back in front of your board in May and the city council in May with the recommendations and then start contracts in July. So I believe that ends the formal presentation and I turn it back to your board and we Emily and I are here for any questions and look forward to public comment and your questions. I'll ask for any public comment. Is there any public comment? You're seeing none, is there any on the phone? Yes, I do have several on Zoom. Ellen, E1 Story, your microphone is available. Thank you. Good morning chair and supervisors. I'm Helen Ewan Story, Assistant Director for the Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County. As you know, CAB has been the county's designated community action agency tasked with eliminating poverty and creating social change for over 55 years. We serve over 10,000 low-income individuals annually through youth and adult employment services, immigration legal and advocacy services, community building and homelessness prevention and intervention services. CAB has been actively engaged in the evolution of the core investments framework over the last four years. With our Executive Director, Marilena de la Garza sitting on the core steering committee and I and my CAB colleagues with me today attending many core conversations and partner meetings over the years. We've greatly appreciated the level of stakeholder engagement in the process as well as the attention and commitment to increasing equity through the core framework. CAB supports the HSD staff recommendation including to increase the overall level funding for the core base allocation and the option three allocation method that will support both broad safety net service funding as well as a deeper investment in an equity initiative. CAB looks forward to continuing to partner with the county and our many fellow community-based partners through the core process in order to support a more equitable community where all can thrive. Thank you. Please come for your microphone is available. Hi supervisors. I wanted to say thanks to staff and for your consideration of the recommendation to fund the AAA through a separate process. You've heard me talk about this before. If we don't do it, somebody else has to do it and really the Board of Supervisors become the default entity to look at. So we think this investment is a good one. It saves the county a variety of funds and expenses but also allows us to react quickly if there's community needs or needs facing older adults. So if there's any questions about that I want to be here to answer those and also just share that this is the perfect time to do this that as most of you know the senior population over the last decade is grown by about 50% in the state and even greater in Santa Cruz County and the under 50 population is grown by about 1%. So we truly are at a just explosion of older adults right now and with that goes more demand for older adult services. So the timing fits perfectly and it goes a long ways towards stabilizing our organization and our role. So we're thrilled about it. And also I just want to echo and support the things that Helen even story just said but just add that age is also an equity issue and looking forward to working together with all of you and staff to address those challenges. Thanks. There are no other speakers on Zoom. Okay, I'll bring it back to the board. The assistant supervisor, Coonerty. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to appreciate staff's work and the outreach they've done across the community in a challenging time for both our partners to provide providing services for those in need as well as for county staff to respond to COVID and fires and everything else going on. You know, when we were formed this process there were essentially three goals. One was to get to more outcomes a better outcome driven process for both these funds as well as Director Morris mentioned the other millions and millions of more dollars that the county spends. The second one was to be able to evaluate and fund new and emerging needs instead of just sort of rolling it over on a more ongoing basis. And finally, the last piece was to coordinate across jurisdictions as well as other funders. And I think I appreciate the work that's been done to reach those three goals. This is an ongoing process and we'll need to be updated, you know, every cycle in order to make sure we continue to reach those goals and more importantly meet the needs of the community. But I want to appreciate the efforts that have been done thus far. And I look forward to supporting this going forward. Thank you. Supervisor Coonerty, or excuse me, Caput. Thank you, Chairman. You know, you put a lot of work in this and I think we've improved it a little bit and I want to commend you on that. Well, thank you. I've gotten community input and people seem to be like accepting the reallocation and everything's going pretty good. So anyway, thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Coonerty. Thank you, Chair. I just want to express my appreciation to Deputy Director Bali and wish you well in your next chapter. And thank you, Director Morris as well. It's clear that the two of you have done a great job listening to the community. I totally agree with all your recommendations to diversify about the size of the different investments. As well as to separate out the one that doesn't look like the others, the Area Agency on Aging. And I look forward to supporting this. Thank you. The Board of Supervisors four years ago approved this approach to begin a process of really aligning the investments to the real needs of the community-based programs and the county strategic objectives. The staff proposal to evolve the core funding model in the next phase is really, really welcome. I really want to thank you for your outreach efforts and I want to also commend the community-based organizations who've participated so much in this. I know they're invaluable what they have. And I also want to thank the CEO and the Director of Human Services for creating a regular budget line to provide a local match for the Area Agency on the Aging. One question I have, equity is a real big issue today. I'm just concerned. I mean, I think equity and age is one of them, as was mentioned by Mr. Kemp. But how are we going to measure if we're doing a better job in that regard? Is there measurements that we were only giving so much to seniors and now we're giving more? Or what's, I'm just, it's probably, it's going to be in the process that you're going to be going through in the next few months. But I just want to, I think we have tried to be equitable in the first place. So I just want to know how we're going to improve on that. The excellent question. It's a necessary question and question of the moment that I think all public systems who put public funds out are being challenged to be more specific. It's an easy word to use. The short answer is we will talk about how to operationalize equity and track equity in what we bring forward to you on November 9th. I do want to give some recognition to the community-based organizations who, I didn't say in the presentation in the interest of keeping it kind of succinct. That was a very active part of the conversation, which is how do we operationalize equity? And we've got some great feedback from them. So part of what we want to do is strike the right balance of listening to our community-based organizations tell us in the application what they see as inequities in the community, how they see they will address those inequities and how they think is reasonable with whatever funding they're awarded to be able to show progress on addressing inequity issues. So I think we just want to have a reasonable respect and deference to our service providers who know the answer to that question from what they're seeing in the community. I think what's at the guts of the challenge here is, and the reason I gave the numbers that were $175 million organization, by definition, we are completely a safety net program and there is still suffering in the community, is to try to be realistic that if this is what goes forward, $5 million isn't going to solve the issues of equity in the community. So I think we're just going to have to be realistic, concrete and respect the perspective our service providers have in their experience in the application process and setting up the scopes of work so that we can track that answer to your question. How is progress being made? Yeah, I want to thank you for doing that. And it's a big issue county-wide, statewide, nationwide. And I think it would be good if we come in with the final report just to specify how we're trying to under these hearings that you're going to have and recommendations that you're going to receive that we're fulfilling our obligation for more equity, the best of our ability. And I appreciate your efforts, but it would be interesting. And lastly, I just want to thank Emily Bolle for her services for so many years for the county. It's been much appreciated. What a professional approach that you take to so many different issues and human services. So thank you very much. Yes, Mr. Friend, Supervisor Friend. Yeah, thank you. And thank you also to Ms. Bolle for your outstanding service for so long. And I appreciate this presentation. We've come a long way in the last four or five years compared to the previous 30 in front of that. And for those of us that have served on the board for a little while, I think it's very telling that we don't have a room full of community service providers disappointed with the approach that the board is taking right now, which I think is very telling in the fact that the modifications that we made to the program, there's a lot of concerns four or five years ago when we went through this process. And valid concerns, understanding that the change could be hard as Supervisor Coonerty noted, the board had a set of goals and I believe that we're getting closer now to those goals with what's being presented today. I also appreciate the tiered system. I think it cleans up from the set aside to what the board's real goal was was just ensuring that some of the smaller or greater change programs that may not have either the resources for an application or maybe they just need a small amount of money or maybe there's a small emerging need can be addressed more quickly. It seems like that this provides greater flexibility than the board had actually done previously by locking in a very specific number and a very specific process. I think that having that flexibility to emerging needs, having the flexibility that you can base the amounts that are being awarded functionally on not just need but the number of applications and the amount that people are asking for is important. And I think this overall shift meets the board schools but more importantly, the board schools were always tied to the community need and just ensuring that this might help address that. Recognizing as a director Morris said, there never will be an investment that's enough. And as I've said in every budget meeting in regards to core, I think our goal should be one day where such funding for programs and these programs themselves aren't needed because ultimately they're providing a safety net because we're failing in other areas in our world. And so ideally we'd be able to invest in a way on the front end where these wouldn't be needed but I definitely appreciate those that are doing the work to ensure that we can prop up that net for those that desperately need it right now. I'm fully supportive of this and appreciate the work that's been done. Thank you. This is a study session, but I think it'd be a formal, we should accept the report that from human services to have a motion to accept or move the recommended actions. Second. Second by Coonerty. Please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Abbott. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you, motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much for your hard work and outreach. Item number 10 is to consider recycling and solid waste services progress report on zero waste planning and direct public works department to return by September, 2022 with a recycling and solid waste long-term planning progress report and direct public works to return by February, 2022 with recommendations for proceeding with a protest vote to increase the county's CSA 9C assessment and to return with a report on the community support for allowing the county to collect a percentage of single use cup and single use bag charge fees as outlined in the memorandum of the deputy, CAO and director of public works. Today we have Mr. Kent Edler, the assistant director of public works special services. Mr. Edler. Good morning chair and board members. Like chair McPherson said, I am Kent Edler assistant director of public works. I have with me today to my right, Casey Colasa who is the recycling and solid waste services manager for public works. And also to my left is Bill Hawksford who is our recycling and solid waste analyst. And so we're gonna give an update today on the recycling and solid waste program. There's a lot of things going on with recycling and solid waste. So we wanted to come here and provide an update. So quickly our outline, we're gonna go through some of our accomplishments over the past few years, current programs, future initiatives. We'll talk a little better about SB 1383 implementation, which is really affecting all recycling and solid waste agencies throughout the state. Talk about some planning for the eventual closure of the landfill, get some current expenses, then we'll get into future needs and some future revenue options. Next slide. Casey is gonna go over the accomplishments. Get some of the accomplishments for the department. Sure, I'm right there. All right. Regarding the accomplishments, the board has approved ordinances to reduce single use items such as bags, cups, takeout wear, which is to skip the stuff ordinances and the personal care items at hotels and motels, plus a ban on polystyrene cups, plateware and coolers. Also an ordinance that required certified compostable takeout cups, plateware, cutlery, clam shells, be used at restaurants. And the board has also approved an ordinance for three drop-off of sharps and pharmaceuticals through an industry-funded program called the Santa Cruz Med Project. The county's franchise agreement provides two program coordinator county staff positions to do outreach and education to increase diversion, recycling, including food waste at businesses, multifamily dwellings, and at special events like the Santa Cruz County Fair. They have also made efforts to address illegal dumping and littering, which has recently been focused on the North Coast beaches. And Bo can provide some more information on the illegal dumping accomplishments. Thank you. Yes, in addition to our road special crews, we have collaborated with community partners, Santa Cruz County Parks, downtown streets team, Save Our Shores, Watsonville Works most recently, and Clean Team to coordinate litter and illegal dumping abatement efforts, which includes also syringe litter. We have seen an uptick in illegal dumping, this in general over the last half year and a half, due to more daily visitors to our community and to our region from COVID. Illegal dumping has actually arisen throughout the state on the same time scale. On the North Coast, we've installed five signs at five of our most of our hotspot areas, including Scott Creek, Bonnie Dune, the Davenport beaches. We work with parks and downtown streets and both have commented back that they have seen the reduction in the amount of litter that's escaping the parks and we see on the roads. We've also increased capacity and number of pickups per week at all of our public receptacle pickups along the beaches and coastal access and such as those. And now Casey will bring us back and talk to us about current programs. So the Green Waste Recovery Franchise Agreement allows for three bulky item curbside pickups for residential company or customer. This includes items such as furniture, appliances, mattresses and barbecues. This has been effective in reducing illegal dumping along county roads of these items. We have community partnerships. We work with the parks department to provide public carts for trash and recyclables at parks and beach access areas. The Coastal Watershed Council and O'Neill C. Odyssey for the county's green school program, downtown streets team and save our shores for litter patrols of public space and beaches and the gray bears that operates three recycling centers in the county. There are also three household hazardous waste facilities located in the county that provides safe and legal disposal of hazardous waste for residents and small businesses. Green Waste Recovery provides mixed recyclables and organics curbside collection service. The county disposal sites provide recycling for yard waste and wood waste, tires, mattresses, carpet and electronic waste. Gray bears operates recycling centers at the Buena Vista landfill and Ben-Loman Transfer Station that accepts scrap metal, bottles, cans, glass, cardboard and paper. And the gray bears Mid County, Shannon Clear location also accepts electronic waste and polystyrene foam. And Bo can talk more about the educational and outreach efforts. Yes, as Casey mentioned, recycling solid waste services does manage green schools and green business programs. For the green schools program, we contract with the Coastal Watershed Council and they do education outreach at all county schools, K through 12th. And also for the elementary and middle schools, we collaborate with Banana Slug String Band as well as Zoom-Zoom that do musical assemblies that have environmental messaging. For the, we also contract with environmental innovations that conducts education and support outreach to current recognized green businesses, as well as doing recruitment outreach efforts to businesses to bring more businesses into the green business network. This year, environmental innovations is partnering with Coastal Watershed Council as well to help bring some of the schools to become green businesses as well. The county is also a member of what is the Central Coast Recycling Media Coalition, which is, it's a coalition of local jurisdictions from Monterey, San Benito and our county and all of the local cities that we pool the money so that we have more money to advertise for common environmental interests along the coast. And Casey will now discuss some more of our future initiatives. So we track a federal and state extended producer responsibility legislation and work with our Santa Cruz County cities through the Integrated Waste Management Local Task Force to create ordinances when needed to address difficult to handle and of life products. There is existing EPR policy for paint, mattresses, sharps and farms, electronic waste and carpet. Extended producer responsibility policy is needed for batteries, plastic, treated wood waste and mixed material items such as solar panels that are very challenging and have houses components and need to be recycled. We continue to monitor plastic reduction legislation and we'll bring ideas to your board for guidance. Funding will dictate the pace of these efforts as having resources to do outreach, implementation and compliance enforcement is critical for an effective program. There are several free drop-off sharps, kiosks in the county, locations are available on the SE Med Project website. Public Works is working with health services to evaluate, improve and expand this program as needed. Public Works is increasing efforts to divert food waste from the landfill. This requires amending our Green Waste Recovery Franchise Agreement to include residential food waste pickup and Keithay company contract for increased costs to process and compost food waste. Residential food waste collection service is planned to begin end of 2021 with the initial start of a few select routes and gradual ramp up to full implementation. Public Works is working with Green Waste Recovery to provide customers with educational information to place food waste in the existing green organic scar. Next slide, please. So as Casey alluded to, one of the biggest things that's affecting the recycling and solid waste group is implementation of SB 1383, which is legislation that was passed a couple years ago and it takes effect beginning of 2022. So SB 1383 at its core is really climate change, legislation that's aimed at reducing greenhouse gases. And one of the biggest focuses on SB 1383 is methane, since it's significantly more potent than carbon dioxide. And the state has determined about 20% of the methane that's released comes from landfills due to the buried organic waste. So SB 1383 is going to affect our program financially in two really big ways. First is Casey mentions that all customers are going to have to start separating food waste from their garbage and put those in the green bins. And secondly, we're going to have to process all of this organic waste. So we're going to need a facility to do so and we're looking at a location at the Buena Vista Landfill where we can do this. And related to this, we're going to have to amend our agreements with our franchise dollar green waste recovery and also our another consultant that we had Keith Day, company who currently processes our organics on a much smaller scale. Next slide, please. So currently our most recent survey of the Buena Vista Landfill shows that there's about eight to 10 years of life left at their capacity left at the Buena Vista Landfill. All of the recycling efforts and initiatives that we've done obviously affects the life of the landfill. On average, we're currently doing about 100,000 tons per year is what we put into landfill. But that can fluctuate. Some years we do as many as 120,000 tons and other years we do 60,000 tons. So all the efforts as far as, you know, diverting recyclables, some of the SB 1383 requirements if we're diverting more, keeping some of the organics out of the waste stream. Those efforts will all help to extend the life of the landfill. We're also doing efforts such as our Ben Lohman transfer station. We're taking that, the waste that comes up there and we're hauling that directly to the marina landfill. So that extends the life of our landfill a little bit longer. And I should also mention that there's some areas that all affects the length of the landfill in probably a negative way is that we're planning for a future transfer station. So as part of that planning process, we're designing where the transfer station we're actually probably going to need to at the point of this landfill. And that's going to take up some of the capacity that we have there at the landfill due to roads and siding and so forth. So we are currently working with the planning department right now to work on the rezoning efforts. Right now the landfill is, it has a split zoning. Half of it is appropriately zoned as a public facility and the other half is zoned as commercial agriculture which is inappropriate for that location. We just, we want to get the zoning to match the existing use. And so we're working at the planning department and the coastal commission to write those before we get into the permitting process to start constructing the transfer station and really moving forward heavily with the planning and design and so forth. Next slide, please. So these, we want to get into some of our, the numbers of as far as kind of costs and so forth. So on the operational side of things, we spent about $15.6 million annually just to operate the landfill and the point of this, the transfer station. About a million dollars is spent on recycling, graffiti abatement, street sweeping, litter cleanups as well as illegal dumping. There's about $800,000 we spent on engineering for our consultants for designing and so forth. Green schools, green business programs, some of those things that what Bo was talking about about $200,000 a year. And then there's miscellaneous capital costs that would include things like equipment and then upkeep of our facilities. Next slide, please. So I talked about the need for a transfer station as well as an organic processing facility. So you can see as those numbers, those are really high numbers that we're gonna need to figure out how to pay for. We also have some needs at the Ben Lohman Transfer Station. That's about a 30 year old facility. So it needs some upgrades out there as well. I should also note that on the back with the previous slide about the current annual expenses, we expect those costs to be going up as well due to SB1383 and we'll have to hire additional staff and so forth for that. Next slide, please. So what this all means and is that, so this slide shows the projected revenue and then what the expenditures would be if we're going to bond for some of the costs to do the transfer station as well as the improvements at Ben Lohman Transfer Station and the Organics Facility. So as you can see as it projects out, it gets pretty dire and so there's a large funding gap. Next slide, please. But we do have a plan. We've been working with our consultant on a revenue measure which will increase our nine C funds. That would bring in close to $5 million in additional revenue which would get us close to where we need to be. What that means for an existing single family dwelling is that the current nine C charge would go from about $57 a year to about $140 a year. We plan to bring, to come back to the board in February, 2022 with more details on this. The board has also expressed interest in a possible ballot measure to bring back a portion of the single use cup and bag charges to the county. We estimate that this would generate on the order of about a million dollars annually and we have a consultant who's just about ready to start pulling on this and we'll bring back the results of the pulling efforts back to the board for additional direction on whether or not we want to move forward with that. I mean, I'd also like to mention that in addition to these, the green waste recovery customer fees are also expected to increase about 68% in the upcoming year. Next slide, please. And we'll have Bo go over some of our operational objectives for the department. Thank you. Everything that you've heard from us today feeds into the smart objectives developed for the recycling and solid waste services division as part of the county's 2021-23 operational plan. These objectives include ensuring syringe litter is collected within 48 hours, looking at specific collection routes to target outreach to increase diversion, looking and really advocating for EPR or extended producer responsibility or legislation regarding batteries, treated wood waste and solar panels, for instance. Designing and permitting a compost facility at the Buena Vista landfill. Also completing a plan for a new transfer station at the Buena Vista landfill. And lastly, it includes fully implementing organic waste diversion for all businesses, all single family and multifamily residences within the county. Next slide. So if there's any additional direction from the board today, we'd love to hear it. And if we need to, we can chip course or change direction if we need to. Before I read the recommended actions, we really want to express our gratitude for our staff who worked out at the Buena Vista landfill and the Venlomen transfer station. It's been a tough year and a half, a tough year and a half for them out there dealing with COVID and some customers who aren't really happy about the face covering and masking requirements as well as some of the state requirements that have been put on us for instance, regarding treated wood waste and so forth. So they're just an amazing group of folks out there, men and women, and we really just want to express our appreciation for them. So moving on to the recommended actions. So accept and file recycling solid waste long-term planning progress support and recommendations on zero waste planning and direct the public works department to return by September 2022 with a recycling solid waste long-term planning progress support and direct the department of public works to return by February 2022 with the recommendations for proceeding with a protest vote to increase the county's CSA 9C assessment to fund the county solid waste facilities and finally direct the public works department to return by February 2022 with a report on community support for allowing the county to collect a percentage of single use cup and single use bad charge fees. And we are available for any questions. Very good, thank you for the chair McPherson. Chair McPherson, this is Carlos. Oh, yes. If I could just comment on item number three on their recommendation. This is on the cup fee and bag fee issue. Just to remind the board that we're also trying to coordinate, this is a ballot measure they're talking about in 2022. And we're trying to coordinate other county needs such as a possible sales tax or hotel tax also in 2022. So I just wanted to remind the board that those are also countywide priorities. And I know the department has this as a priority and they've integrated into part of their funding plan or these improvements. But I wanted to remind the board that we've also had discussions about other countywide initiatives and needs. So we're gonna have to integrate these plans into other plans we might have for either a hotel tax or a sales tax because it's a crowded ballot as you can imagine in 2022. And so there's gonna be a lot of initiatives. And so I just want to remind the board that this has to really be, and it can't be viewed by its own, right? It's a ballot initiative that really needs to be thought of and in the whole context of the 2022 ballot and all the other needs that the county has for both it's, especially it's a general fund, homeless initiatives, affordable housing initiatives. And so that's all. I just want to make sure you're reminded about that as you go into your discussions. Yeah, I'm very good. Thank you for mentioning that. I appreciate it. Any comments from the public on this? I have one speaker on Zoom. Colin, you sir, your microphone is available. Marilyn Garrett, as I'm listening, I'm thinking of that statement that corporations privatize the profit and they socialize the cost, producing all these plastics and other chemicals. And you just said, the county is spending over $15 million on all this. And I am hearing that there's now more masks in the ocean than plastic bottles. And I quote this book, toxic sludge is good for you. Lies damn lies in the public relations industry. And one of these public relations firms states, the role of our communication is to manage perception, which motivates behavior to create business results. So one example of that is all this plastic takeout, personal protective stuff, masks. Boy, what big business results. And you're talking about illegal dumping. I think the corporations are doing illegal dumping of all this plastic and other chemicals on the public. And we need to go to the source of the contamination. And as Dr. Sanduk, Steingraber states, it's intolerable to regulate, monitor, permit, known and suspected carcinogens into the environment, rather than prohibiting their generation in the first place. We need to stomp the toxins, the plastics, et cetera, at their source. This is a drop in the bucket, what you're proposing. Thank you. There are no other speakers on soon. Okay, I'll return it to the board, Supervisor Koenig, any questions? Yes, thank you, Chair. And thank you to all three for the fantastic presentation. Just to clarify a question, our CAO explained that the third recommendation here would ultimately need to go to a public vote. The second one on increasing CSA 9C funds, would that also ultimately be a public vote? Or is that something the board? That's a public vote. It'd be a Prop 218, essentially a protest vote. So you're saying like, so does that mean it would be a separate ballot? We'd mail ballots to every person in the county that would be assessed the 9C charge. And then we would count the number of, well, if we get a majority protest from all the ballots, then it wouldn't pass. So say if there's 10,000 ballots we've mailed out, it's gonna be a lot more than that. But say if there's 10,000, we'd have to get 5,000 plus one, 5,001 ballots returned back that would be opposing it for not to pass. I see, so that's why it's called a protest vote because it passes unless it's protested. Correct. Got it, thank you. And that should come, that's not right. Yeah, okay. All right. And then, obviously some really interesting stuff going on with composting. Is there any way that we would incentivize people to compost onsite? Or is there gonna be an additional charge to individual homes when we collect compostable items? Is there, yeah, how does that incentive system gonna work? Well, let Casey answer that one. It's already included in your rate. As of now, those rates may go up in the future. But the plan is because there's an existing green yard trends, yard waste cart that the food component could go in there and be collected along with the yard waste and all that material would then be composted. There is other incentives that we fund a workshop for home composting that we have, they've been on, actually they had one in person outside COVID compliant just last week. And I believe we have four or five of those events per year where we teach people, we have a master composter who teaches people how to compost at home. Okay, yeah, that sounds like a great program. I'd look forward to attending it at some point, but there's no, if I chose to compost at home, I wouldn't see any direct financial benefit because I'm saving money on my garbage bill or anything like that. Right now in the regular refuse, your food waste is going, so you potentially could reduce your service level. Okay. We don't anticipate that would happen to a lot of people though. Yeah, it was interesting to see in the report that organic or that food waste accounts for nearly half really of residential waste. So, you know, with the current eight to 10 year estimate of the afford the landfill, is that that's based on current 100,000, average of 100,000 tons per year. So if we do successfully implement the organic food waste program and our composting, all of that, could we potentially, you know, close to double the life expectancy? I don't think it would double it. I think, you know, say if we reduce it, you know, if we get all of that 50%, it's certainly going to add some years on to there. We might be able to, you know, add another four to five years on there. But again, remember that we're also going to be losing some of our capacity as we design for the transfer station as well. So it's a range. It's, you know, the amount that we get in kind of ebbs and flows with the economy as well. So it's hard to say and we get, we do waste characterization studies every fall and we get the report back in the spring. So every year we keep on top of that and we can report back to the board annually. I think is what we normally do is to where we are with the capacity of the landfill. But there's certainly, there's certainly a available capacity if we, or available, we can get extra capacity the more people divert or take organic waste out of the waste stream. Okay, thank you for the report. Supervisor Friend. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the team for this presentation. As obviously the landfill falls within my district, this has been of keen interest. And I'll have to say that I just appreciate Casey and others continuing to work on an issue that in and of itself doesn't have a general constituency behind it in the sense that there isn't people that are pushing for these kinds of things, but these are the kinds of infrastructure investments that the county doesn't make to have pretty significant catastrophic consequences on the back end. So I appreciate that planning process that has continued the entire time we've been on the board. We've made some adjustments in the last five or six years, but the next phase is essential. I'm fully supportive of moving forward with the fee on the cuff and bag scenario. This is something that this board has talked about for a couple of years. In fact, it took quite some time to actually get the initial report back. The initial report actually estimated a higher estimate than a million dollars. We had an over $2 million estimate. As I said in previous meetings, I think the majority of the community doesn't realize that the money that's collected from these fees does not go to the county. It just goes back to the point of sale. I think having some sort of hybrid approach that benefits the business while also benefiting the environmental programs would be very important. These are fees. This is money that the county's paying for anyway. So a way to take that off the table I think would be really important. Obviously I'll look forward to what the community survey shows and the business survey shows, but I think that this is something that seems like a no-brainer to me. I mean, this is a fee that somebody's already paying. It's not an increase in any way shape or form. You can make the business as whole and you can also pay for environmental programs at the same time, reminding that in 2022 we have two ballots, both in a primary and general election. So I think that there will be space during the course of the year to allocate money for environmental programs while also having a conversation about TOT or whatever else needs to be happening throughout the other ballots. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Supervisor Coonerty. Sure. So first I just want to take a moment and appreciate the efforts to reduce dumping and waste across the county, and especially on the North Coast and the collaborations with the streets team and O'Neill's sea odyssey to educate. It's been really beneficial and I want to just appreciate the proactive activity and the engagement and hope it continues and hope to see we see reduction in waste left in our beaches and our parks and waterways and everywhere else. And then I appreciate the conversation we're having about the future of diversion and the landfill. I think we're all facing a reckoning of reduced or more costly resources and the need that we have to make new investments to make our systems last for future generations and more resilient and more environmentally beneficial. And then finally, I do want to reduce plastic cups and other impacts on our environment. And I also want to be aware as the CAO mentioned of the competing needs of the county and how things can fit into one another. And I do look forward to the survey of the community and the businesses, particularly small businesses who may not have point of sale systems that are able to capture it and what that looks like for them from an implementation point of view. But thank you for all your efforts. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. Thank you. Yeah, good to see you guys. And thanks for your report. I apologize if maybe you mentioned it, but did we lose a couple of years because of the pandemic and everything like that? A couple of years of capacity at the landfill. Is that your question? Yeah, like two years ago, did we have instead of eight to 10 years left, did we have like 12 years or? You know, the study has been coming back at that eight to 10 years for the last couple of years. We have seen a bit of an uptick in the last two to three years in the amount of waste coming into the landfill. And that's the economy is doing really well right now and construction is really busy and throughout the county. So when that happens, we see a higher uptake. So we have lost some additional years or maybe I'd probably say about a year or so of capacity, but there's so many variables in there. It's hard to say, it's just an estimate and it's a range. And then there was over by the Watsonville Regional Airport, there was a composting area there. Was that us with that right now? That's not there anymore. The last time I checked that was, there's a landscaper trucking art over there that had like mulch and garden products and soil. Many years back, there was a composting area there next to the driving range, that I believe was through the city of Watsonville. But that hasn't been there for several years. Okay, yeah. And then one question, real quick one on artificial turf, a lot of places, football fields and things like that. Watsonville High School changed their artificial turf when they put a new one in about a couple of months ago. They said now, instead of going to a landfill with the old artificial turf, it actually goes back to, where does it go? To be recycled or what? Yeah, I'm not aware of a facility that takes artificial turf back to recycle, but I'm glad to hear it because I know a lot of fields do have artificial turf and it wears out and needs to be replaced. That's, you know, news I got. That could fill up a landfill real fast. Yeah, it would be a lot of material that wouldn't decompose and be problematic to landfill. Plastic material is often difficult to recycle because if it's mixed with other materials, it's hard to separate and it's a very involved process, but hopefully there are facilities that can do it. And I guess we'll get back to anything on the one use plastic. Anything on the one use plastic? We kind of lost it a little bit because of the pandemic and everything like that. You know, instead of people buying using their own coffee cup and all that. So I don't know, the plastic is still the biggest problem we have, right? Correct, because it's not as recyclable as the down cycles as you recycle it. It doesn't always get made into another cup. It gets made into another product that cannot be recycled. So we have your board passing ordinance for compostable to go where? So all the cups in the unincorporated county and plateware clamshells should be compostable and that's good because once we fully implement the food waste program, those compostable materials can go with the food waste and be composted. And I'll just make a comment. I think one of the things I'm thinking of is proactively, manufacturers are going to have to come up with a compostable material to replace a lot of plastic. I don't know how they're going to do it, but it seems like we're going to have to come up with something. Otherwise it's going to end up on those little plastic particles you're going to end up everywhere. Okay, thank you. Thanks a lot. Yeah, to address this, the ever-changing regulations on our landfill has been around for decades and it seems like it's getting more complex as we go down the road. But I have no doubt that this county is going to develop a good strategic plan so we can be forward-thinking as necessary to stay in compliance with ever-changing or always new estate mandates. I also think it's worth mentioning that the gray bears recycling operations for the county at the Bend Moment Transfer Station are going very well. And I want to compliment everybody in the public works department for making that happen and working so well. And my thanks to the gray bears and the public works for its hard work in putting together the structure for those programs and the ongoing partnership. I do agree with Ms. Garrett that the extended producer responsibility is probably the biggest thing that can change this whole scenario. And it's not going to be Santa Cruz County. It's going to be state and national. We've got really pressure those who are producing these disposable items, shall we say, and making them be more responsible or changing their method of operation. You mentioned, and I want to thank the Downtown Streets program. It's been a tremendously successful program in getting some of the homeless people to participate in cleaning up our streets and rivers and so forth. And speaking of rivers and the coastal cleanup that we had just last weekend that I participated in, the Watershed Council and Sea Odyssey and for what they did along the coast. And then for the Valley Women's Club and the Santa Rosa Valley Rotary Club and Santa Rosa Valley for cleaning up, I think they had 1,000 pounds of litter that they cleaned up along the Santa Rosa River. So that's very, very encouraging. I do appreciate your report, your insight and the challenges that we have ahead and they're upon us and they're getting more, to use that word again, challenging with the state that we have. But I think that we are certainly on the right track and I really appreciate your report. This is just a report, but I think we should have a motion to accept the report. I'll move the recommended actions. I'll second. Please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig? Aye. Friend? Aye. Unity? Aye. Caput? Aye. McPherson? Aye. Thank you, motion passes unanimously. We will now take up item number 11, the last item on our regular agenda for this morning. Consider adoption of an ordinance repealing and replacing chapters 7.20, 7.21, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5 and 2.6 of the Santa Cruz County Code relating to solid waste as recommended by the deputy CEO, Director of Public Works. We have several chapters of a strikeout version of those that I just mentioned, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25 and 26. So I do appreciate this report that we're going to get. I guess you're gonna be... Just me. Yes. Casey, excuse me. Thank you. Good morning, Chair McPherson and board members. Casey Colasa, Public Works. The ordinance before you today consolidates existing county code chapters into one comprehensive chapter for solid waste, which will be the new chapter 7.20. This simplifies the county code by combining code findings, purposes, definitions, enforcement and exemption provisions into single sections. It also updates language to align with County's franchise hauler agreements and CalRecycle's terminology for solid waste. There are some new provisions in the consolidated code to be in compliance with Senate Bill 1383 regulations. This includes provisions for diversion of all organics, including food waste scraps from landfill disposal. It also expands the universal service area for required refuse and recyclables curbside collection service to the entire unincorporated County, but has exceptions for self-haulers and exemptions for low density population areas. This ordinance also includes provisions for edible food recovery. So some other important changes include it has an expanded list of solid waste related definitions, standardized trash and recyclable container color and capacity specification requirements and updated language for required diversion of recyclable materials, which include inspection of carts and bins and provision for businesses to provide clearly labeled and color coded blue recyclables and yellow food waste bins along with trash containers at front of store for their customers. These updates to the County's solid waste code support the County's climate action strategy and zero waste plan and strategic plan element for a sustainable environment. The recommended actions are adopt ordinance repealing 7.20, 7.21, 7.23, 7.24, 7.25 and 7.26 of the Santa Cruz County code relating to solid waste and replacing them with a revised chapter 7.20 and schedule the ordinance for final adoption on October 19th, 2021. Thank you. Thank you for that report. Is there any comments from the public? I'll bring it back to you. I do have what I'm saying. Oh, excuse me on the phone. Yes. Call in user one, your microphone is available. They've lowered their hand. This is Marilyn Garrett again. I don't think this is zero waste. It sounds good, but I think it's forever waste like corporations produce these plastics and they're in the environment forever. And we have these micro plastics. We have pesticides all over recycling. It's a misnomer. It's pollution forever more and the plague of plastic especially. Ralph Nader had a good quote. He said recycling is a corporate scam. It puts the public to sleep. Why are we taking care and paying for their waste and toxins that are poisoning us? They should be prohibited from generating anything that is not proven safe in the environment. You're always talking about safety. Toxic chemical, plastics, pesticides, cell phones, cell tower radiation is not safe. It should be prohibited. That's my comments. Thank you. There are no other speakers. Thank you. I'll bring this back to the board. I appreciate public works once again for this report and they're planning how we're going to meet these state mandates. And I'm certain that this county is going to meet the moment when it comes to food waste. Actually, I think we can lead by example and I think there's an opportunity here having been one of the initial organizers of Monterey Bay Community Power and now Central Coast Community Energy. I can see where we can have some of this food waste be a resource for production of renewable power. And I think there's a real opportunity there. And I think we're gonna be a leader. We can be a leader in making that happen. Supervisor Koenig. Just thank you, Mr. Colas for the extensive rewrite on this clearly it was a long past time to clean up our house and our ordinances here. And so I appreciate the work. Thank you. Supervisor Friend, any comments? You're okay. I'll just move the recommended actions. Thank you very much. Do you have any other comments from board members? Please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Kennedy. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you, motion passes unanimously. It is just past the noon hour. We were going to go into closed session now. Were there be any reportable items? Yes, there may be a reportable item when we come back at 130. Okay, if there is a reportable item, we will report that before we go into the report schedule for 130 PM on the Atkins Debris flow flood hazard study. So this will recess into closed session and return at 130. Okay. I reconvene the September 28th, 2021 meeting of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. We have a scheduled item at 130 to consider report on results of the Atkins Debris flow. Oh, first of all, excuse me. We had a closed session. County council, is there anything reportable from the closed session? Yes, thank you. This is directed to item E on the closed session agenda. The board approved by a 5-0 vote, the filing of litigation against an entity that will be named at a later date. Thank you. Okay. All right, now to the 130 item that's scheduled, consider report on the results of the Atkins Debris flow flood hazard study prepared for the burn area of the August 2020 CZU lightning complex fires and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the planning director. Presenting will be Carolyn Burke, our senior civil engineer. Good afternoon and thank you for the opportunity to present the results of the Atkins CZU flood and debris flow study prepared by Atkins Engineering, graciously funded by the Community Foundation, Santa Cruz County and supported in collaboration with the County of Santa Cruz planning, recovery permit center and OR3. We'll open with an overview of the geologic evaluations conducted in the CZU burn area and actions taken to assist those rebuilding in areas subject to potential debris flow. In late August and early September of 2020, the state watershed emergency response team conducted a rapid largely qualitative evaluation of geologic hazards and debris flow potential throughout the burn area to determine immediate life safety and property risks in assistant evacuation planning for the winter months ahead. The work report stressed that more detailed study of debris flow hazards was necessary to refine and characterize hazards in the identified debris flow areas. Shortly after the County requested a more focused study of historical debris flow risks in the Boulder Creek area, which was conducted by the California Geological Survey and published in November, 2020. The County also conducted their own detailed field reconnaissance and geologic mapping throughout September, 2020 to support emergency planning for the upcoming winter, walking drainage basins to understand where mud would flow in the event of a debris flow and ensuring that homes in harm's way would be aware of their risk during a triggering storm event. While ensuring emergency response personnel were supported by the County's local geologic expertise, planning staff were simultaneously preparing to assist those rebuilding in debris flow prone areas. County staff consulted with Santa Barbara County personnel to determine the best next steps to characterize the debris flow hazard. And it was clear that a quantitative modeling study would be required to refine the predicted path of potential debris flows and understand the relative risk levels in different areas of the basins. This type of study had been conducted in Santa Barbara County just after their debris flow event in Montecito in 2018, implying a firm specializing in such modeling at County's engineering. Throughout the fall of 2021, County staff consulted with representatives of the National Resources Conservation Service and Cal OES, conducting field tours and informational meetings to garner support for mitigation grant funding and determine how we could bolster our case for additional support from state and federal agencies. In March of 2021, planning staff submitted a FEMA hazard mitigation grant application for funding to hire a consultant to conduct a quantitative flood and debris flow hazard modeling study in the CZU burn area. Post application consultation with Cal OES staff indicated that the funding review and approval process would take more months to complete than rebuilders could afford. In May of 2021, OR3 staff approached the community foundation, Santa Cruz County to let them know of the opportunity to provide valuable assistance to those rebuilding and debris flow hazard areas via funding the detailed flood and debris flow modeling study. The foundation jumped at the chance to assist and authorized funding for the Atkins study in June. The study was estimated to take 10 to 12 weeks to complete and Atkins was able to maintain that timeline with the final product delivered at the end of last week. As noted in the previous slide, early debris flow evaluation and mapping efforts were largely focused on supporting evacuation planning and were necessarily conservative in the determination of hazard boundaries to ensure that all standing structures at risk of impact during the winter months were identified and noticed prior to triggering winter storms. Early mapping did not differentiate between risk levels within debris flow hazard areas, resulting in a generally undetermined level of risk for home sites in these areas. Without further quantitative evaluation of debris flow hazard risks and operating under Santa Cruz County Code chapter 1610, geologic reports were required for rebuilding and identified hazard areas and communicated to rebuilders via geologic hazard pre-application clearance results. The benefits of a detailed quantitative evaluation of areas at risk of debris flow hazards are numerous from aiding rebuilders and those subject to evacuation in the near term to serving as a basis for long-term community protection via community-wide mitigation grants. Quantitative modeling of a detailed study results in a refinement of risk areas by not only considering typography as was done in early evaluations, but also an anticipated volume of material defining a geographic boundary for areas that would be subject to impact from debris flows. Modeling the flow of water and mud also provides volume and velocity data at different points in the flow channels in addition to informing relative risk and potential for destructive impacts. This data can also provide the basis for mitigation design on individual lots or community-wide, such as debris flow nets higher up in the channels. Finally, a relative level of risk for different areas prone to debris flows allows for more detailed evacuation prioritization and planning. A detailed flood and debris flow study was commissioned by the Community Foundation Santa Cruz County and performed by Atkins Engineering. Linda Potter, engineer at Atkins, is here to present the methodology and results of her study. Thank you. Hello. As Carolyn mentioned, my name is Linda Potter and I'm with Atkins and I was the lead investigator on this program. Next slide, please. The purpose of the study was to provide a post-burn runoff and debris risk analysis. And this was done for the watershed that you see on your right, which was impacted by the burn. And the work performed consists of hydrologic and hydraulic modeling, which is also known as the amount of water that's expected and where it might go, and also a creation of risk zones and areas. Next slide, please. The modeling was performed using the Army Corps of Engineers HEC-RAS 6.0, which is a publicly available software that's also kind of the industry standard for this type of modeling. And models were produced for both pre and post-burn scenarios. And the reason this is done is because higher runoff is expected from burned areas as well as a higher concentration of sediment. The model employed rain on grid, which is actually applying rainfall to the watershed and seeing where water collects and how it travels. And is routed on a two-dimensional flow grid to determine inundation areas, depths and velocities. And I'd just like to note that this modeling that was done does not replace any existing FEMA mapping. This was solely done for the purpose of quantifying risks. Next slide, please. The creation of risk zones was done in certain areas of the watershed. The risks due to the rainfall vary across the watershed. And we have three types of identified risks that may occur. This would be debris flow, flooding kind of the muddy water flow. Debris flow is different from the muddy water flow in physical characteristics and tends to be more damaging. And there are also a chance of landslides and landslide initiated debris flows, but note that that is not covered by this analysis. So the select areas chosen for the creation of the risk zones and the more detailed analysis was due to development and rebuilding areas and also uncertain flow paths. So some of the watershed was not studied in detail for debris flow. However, the entire watershed was studied for flooding. And multiple factors were evaluated during the creation of these risk zones. So all of the previous studies that Carolyn mentioned as well as a site-specific geomorphologic investigation, looking at slopes, alluvial fans and many other physical factors in the watershed. Next slide, please. There's an example of the risk zones that were created on the right-hand side. And you'll see some different colors here, with the red being what's expected to be the primary debris flow path. And so this is the path predicted by the model, the HEC-RAS model. And this is going to be the main transfer corridor for water, mud and debris. This is often the most hazardous area and also has higher depths and velocities. The next color you'll see is the orange color. These are uncertain debris flow paths. So we expect that the high hazard, if a debris flow occurs, the high hazard zone might have flow breaking out from the main channel, otherwise known as evulsions. And once they leave the main channel, they often do not return. So these orange zones or these uncertain debris flow paths are created in areas where we might expect flow to break out from the main channel. We also have what's called the inundation area. And this is kind of our mud or muddy water area that's also predicted by the model. So we expect these to have flood type of impacts during a large event. And outside of that, we have what's called the unstudied zone. So you'll see a boundary there, the yellow color. So this would be everywhere where we have the hydrologic and hydraulic model, but we did not study for debris flow. And then finally, the lower risk areas which are shown in the green color are within our studied watershed boundaries where we've looked at the hazards and determined them to be lower risk than the other ones. Next slide please. One of the other great things that has come out of the study are these depth and velocity grids. These are presented on a spatial basis where you can actually find a spot on a map, click on it and get your predicted depth or velocity which greatly aids in rebuilding efforts to know what kind of hazards you need to design for. I'll turn it back to Carolyn. Thank you, Linda. I'd like to take this opportunity to recognize the exceptional work performed by Linda as lead for Atkins Engineering and her team's willingness to go above and beyond to meet the timebound needs of our rebuilders. That can study benefits for both those rebuilding and debris flow prone areas as well as their communities in a variety of ways. An initial benefit derived from the refined debris flow hazard zones in the Atkins detailed study areas is an estimated 20% reduction in the number of potential rebuilt structures identified as being in a debris flow risk zone when compared with initial state and county mapping in these areas. The quantitative modeling employed in the study constitutes the best available data for levels of risk due to debris flows and replaces county debris flow hazard maps when screening rebuild proposals for debris flow hazards in the Atkins detailed study areas. Another benefit of Atkins quantitative modeling is as a resource for the technical community working on rebuild proposals, the availability of depth and velocity data for potential debris flow conditions provided at a scale that can be used by the consulting geotechnical engineers, geologists and design teams. The scope of the modeling conducted during the Atkins study would be prohibitively expensive if conducted on an individual basis. And the resulting data is a valuable reference for technical professionals potentially reducing the scope and cost of their reports. In some cases, the Atkins data may even eliminate the need for additional geologic evaluation. The Atkins study establishment of relative risk levels in primary and uncertain debris flow paths characterizes the level of risk for rebuild sites that cannot be achieved by qualitative evaluation alone. Determining where mud will travel during a potential debris flow event allows those rebuilding to make informed decisions about where to site their rebuilt structure and some home sites may be able to be relocated out of harm's way. Finally, the Atkins study provides a valuable source of documentation for future community scale mitigation grant applications. During the county's consultation with the National Resources Conservation Service and Cal OES staff regarding mitigation grants, it was made clear that those communities that can quantify the scale of the hazard and the number of sites that would potentially benefit from a mitigation project are more likely to receive funding than those who cannot provide this data. Primary and uncertain debris flow paths have been referenced throughout our presentation today. Because these zones will be utilized by the county geologists during his evaluation of rebuild sites, it is worth reviewing the similarities and differences between the two. Primary debris flow paths are based on debris flow volume and topography and generally are subject to higher velocity channelized flows. Because the primary debris flow path is more predictable, sites located in these areas are at a higher risk of impact from potential debris flows. Uncertain debris flow paths are based on a change in channel grade and or channel blockage resulting in the dispersion of debris via unpredictable paths. This dispersion means that sites in the uncertain debris flow path have a lower individual chance of impact. And if affected would likely experience lower depths and velocity of debris. It is important to note that while the two zones have differing flow characteristics, sites in either primary or uncertain debris flow paths are subject to potential life safety and property risks and are considered geologic hazards areas for the county geologic hazards ordinance. With a better understanding of the study results, the question at the forefront is what these results mean for those rebuilding in the Atkins detailed study areas. Geologic pre-application clearances will clear rebuild sites if they are located outside the Atkins primary and uncertain debris flow paths. And there are no other geologic hazards affecting the site. For those within the Atkins debris flow zones that choose to rebuild per the CZU rebuild directive passed by the board on September 14th, no geology report is needed to meet the requirements of chapter 1610. In these cases, the Atkins study velocity and depth data may assist the project geotechnical engineer in meeting the design requirements of the California building code. As will be explained further in the next slide, the Atkins study data may also serve to characterize the previously unknown level of risk described in the covenant required under the provisions of the CZU rebuild directive, narrowing the field of risk evaluated by lenders and insurers. Finally, should one opt not to take the CZU rebuild directive path and instead rebuild in compliance with county code chapter 1610, the Atkins study remains a valuable data source for geologists and geotechnical engineers on their design teams. During the September 14th board meeting to consider options for rebuilders to not consider the requirements of county code chapter 1610, there was robust discussion regarding the recordation of a covenant on title that confirms property owners, assume the risk of rebuilding in an area subject to geologic hazards. Staff was remiss in not providing a broader context for this type of recorded document. For the past 25 years, a declaration of geologic hazards has routinely been recorded on title as a condition of approval for building in an area subject to geologic hazards. The document is streamlined in format and content and in addition to assumption of risk and indemnification of the county includes a description of the studies conducted to characterize the hazard and where to locate these files. To date, we have not been made aware of any significant hardship resulting from this documentation being on title. The concerns heard from the rebuilding community regarding a recorded covenant include the fact that the sample covenant provided in the board packet described as an exhaustive range of geologic hazards that may be present on their parcel and of unknown risk to occupants and property. Beers were expressed regarding how such a broad statement would be considered by lenders, insurers and future potential home buyers. To be emphasized, the covenant provided as an attachment to the September 14th agenda item was intended to be a draft document that can be adjusted based on site-specific circumstances and was not meant to be a one-size-fits-all document that must be recorded as is on every property. In response to concerns raised by rebuilders, county staff began deeper discussions with individual rebuilders as well as lending and insurance industry representatives to determine how the sample covenant could be modified while maintaining the three main objectives of notification of potential geologic hazards to future property owners, indemnification of the county and assumption of risk by those building and potential hazard area. Suggested modifications to the sample covenant provided on September 14th are guided by the format and content of the current declaration of geologic hazards which has not resulted in the potential negative outcome that comes noted by others. These modifications include replacing the sample covenant with a notice of geologic hazards that would narrow the description of potential geologic hazards based on the Acton study and or other investigations which would also be cited in the notice as the basis for that characterization. The notice of geologic hazards would include a simplified format based on the declaration required as current practice and eliminate the agreement to evacuate from the recorded document. This could be accomplished via a separate non-recorded agreement. Next steps. County staff received the final Acton study memo last Thursday and will be reassessing the 46 pre-application geologic clearances where site-specific geologic reports were required revising those where necessary based on the Acton study results. In the coming days, we also plan to finalize the Covenant and declaration format to be used by those who opt to rebuild per the CZU rebuild directive. County staff will undertake outreach and education efforts among the rebuilding community including development of a frequently asked questions list specific to the Acton study on the rebuild website and hold individual neighborhood community meetings among the basins within the Acton's detailed study areas. County geologic and engineering staff understand that supporting our rebuilders includes supporting their consultants and the interpretation and use of the Acton study data. To that end, County staff will meet with geotechnical engineers and geologists to discuss the study results and determine the best way to make the raster data from the study available for their use. We strongly encourage those rebuilding in the Acton's detailed study areas to begin discussions with their geotechnical and geologic consultants right away to determine how the data may inform their design options. We understand that these steps take time and everyday counts when you're waiting to reestablish your family's home. I'd like to take this opportunity to address a concern that has been raised in the rebuilding community regarding the County's winter grading moratorium that prohibits grading activities between October 15th and April 15th. This prohibition does not extend to excavations for foundations, utility trenching or minor grading activities as might be anticipated when rebuilding in kind where driveways and infrastructure are already largely established. We will continue to listen to feedback from the rebuilding community and evaluate our practices to ensure we can provide options to keep rebuilders building throughout the season. That concludes our presentation today. And we're Interim Planning Director, Paya Levine, David Reed, Director of the Office of Response, Recovery and Resiliency and our County geologist, Jeff Nolan, are present and available to answer any questions from the board. The comments that, yeah, okay. Before I open up to the public, I just, I wanna say once again, thanks to the survivors who've been in communication with this board and staff. And other staff besides the ones before you to share their concerns about the process. It's been a frustrating experience. Our ultimate goal is to provide relief for our survivors and our actions haven't done that successfully to date. We need to make adjustments. I also wanna thank members of the Lending Insurance and Real Estate and other fields who have provided feedback to our process. And lastly, I'd like to thank the board for their unanimous support of the date of District Five and three efforts to address the rebuilding delay caused by the Geological Hazards Code of the County of Santa Cruz. And by dropping the requirement for the CZU survivors to address that Code 1610, as it's referred to, we have made a policy designed to reduce the cost, time and stress for rebuilding. And to further simplify this, I'd like to see us go back to utilizing the standard notification of geological hazards and identification that have been used by this county for many years, I think 20, 25 years without negative ramification to the prompt new owners. Since our action on September 14th, the board offices have heard from fire survivors and industry experts about the original covenant related to accepting our survivors from 1610, that it was still too onerous and potentially harmful. I say, let's just get back to the basics and help people get rebuilding as soon as possible. I think without further comment from me, I don't know if I doubt that any other board members have anything at this point, but I would like to open it to the public to see if they have any comments. Comments. Thank you, my name is Becky Steinbrenner. I do not live in the CZU fire area, but I know a lot of people who do, who did and who are trying to rebuild, and it's not an easy task. I do live in the mountains. And so what happens here today can happen to any of us in the mountains, in any disaster. So I appreciate the report. I had difficulty seeing exactly where those high risk zones are, there was really no way to identify where those are exactly. So if we could have some sort of marker on those, is it along the river, along the road, where exactly in the county is it? With some road identifications that will help people. I appreciate Community Foundation doing this study. I understand it's going to help the county get a lot of money that it would not have been able to get because that's what the grantors want. But I have concern about a private entity funding, private studies that will in fact affect public policy. And I'm not clear about the claim that it would reduce 20% of structures in the debris flow area. Does that mean there will be 20% fewer possible rebuild structures affected that we're on the list to have to comply with 1610? Or does it mean that 20% fewer of those structures that were there will be able to be built? So some clarification would be very helpful. And I find it interesting that it focused on debris flow, not landslides, which is something we really do need to know about. But the model that used Santa Barbara was much different. The vegetation was not considered velocity, topography, but I heard nothing about vegetation. The Redwood Forest is a much different system than the scrub and chaparral of Southern California. So the soils and the integrity of the slopes are much different. Thank you very much. I don't know if we might have several speakers. You just want to take down some notes and if we can answer the questions, would you prefer to answer them right now? What would be your preference? If we can answer them right away, I think it'd be good. Okay. Yeah, so to address the 20% reduction in structures that may be rebuilt, that's it was based on the damage assessments in the geolocation of the damage assessments conducted post-fire. And it was a rough approximation because we haven't been able to refine that. We haven't had the data for more than a couple of days now. So it's our best estimate of how many may potentially be rebuilt in those detailed study areas. And so from our initial county and state mapping to the refined areas produced by the ACAN study, that's where we got the 20% reduction. And then the high-risk zones are, if you go to our recovery website, there is the ACAN study memo posted and then ACAN study map books. There's also an independent GIS viewer for the ACAN study data so that you can actually type in an address and look around. And that does have the street names. And if you look on the upper right, there is a legend that includes the high-risk zones if you're interested in that specifically. Okay. Thank you. Did you have any other further comments? Dave Reed. Yeah, Dave Reed, director or three, the only other question that was brought up was around vegetation. And so it's common that these types of studies, especially in Montecito are repeated on an annual or every other year basis to take into consideration the revegetation post-fire. So one option for us would be to look at, looking at this type of a study in future years to evaluate how revegetation has changed the risk of, or the elevated risk of debris flow. Yeah. I make one, I'm at a community foundation. Listen, we are very thankful that they stepped up and they put $2 million into this study. We didn't have that. Obviously this was an unscheduled event. So we are very, very supportive and thankful that community foundation came to our support and offered the $2 million to have an independent agency do the study. The next speaker. Sure. My name is Antonia Bradford and I lost my home in the CZU fire. After the last board meeting, it seems the outrage of the community has not fallen in deaf ears. So I thank the board for continuing this conversation to modify the resolution so it not only protects the county from liability but serves the fire communities need to rebuild their homes and lives without doing long-term harm. After all, this is to be a contract between two parties and it must serve both sides of the table, not just the county. I think that it's prudent that the board delay any decision on these new proposed pathways of waivers for two weeks of the community and the professionals in the industries related to home ownership have the time to fully flesh out what this means for us. In that time, a panel needs to be created so the county can work with the fire community rather than against them. This panel should include professionals from the appropriate industries and one or two people from the fire community. These representatives need to be strong and vocal advocates from the community and not someone who is receiving some kind of compensation from the county or otherwise for fire recovery since that would be a conflict of interest. We need to work together in a transparent and honest way to protect all of our best interests because thus far it's been incredibly one-sided. Lastly, within the resolution itself, Pai Levine has given herself an abundance of discretionary and arbitrary power that absolutely must be reined back. Within the code as it stands, seemingly covenants can be removed from Wednesday but it gives no pathways in how to do that except by the discretion of the planning director. There needs to be transparent and concise protocols that show fire families that choose to take advantage of the covenant specifically what they can do to remove it. It cannot be vague or left up to the interpretation of a singular individual. The planning director cannot and should not be given that much discretion, especially if the best interests of the fire community are truly in the hearts of our elected board supervisors. I trust since the last meeting, every last one of you has been listening and taking in the feedback. Our community and I'm not just speaking of fire victims insist the county do better by us. We just want to rebuild our homes and hopefully we're getting closer to doing just that. Thank you. Hi. Mike, down a little please. Oh, sorry. I really thank you for taking another look. I know this is a really tiring process to go through. So I agree with replacing ditching the covenant. I'm still not sure why it couldn't be put on the building permit because building permits are public records and when you sell your house, you disclose that kind of information. Also when we bought our house we didn't sign a release of liability. So I'm not sure why that is necessary. And I have some great questions about what you mean by indemnity clause because the clause that I saw was really large and exhaustive and puts an enormous burden on fire victims for a lot of situations that are out of their control. So, and I think I agree with you about the disclosure should be as specific as the county can make it based on the Atkins report. I really enjoyed reading about that and I hope I can find it on your site so I can see the specifics. And I also agree about if you were denied geo clearance before the Atkins report, I'm glad that you think that we should get that reviewed. But I would also like on the disclosure something about the county's intention to find community mitigations and that that would be updated whether it's on the title or the permit when those mitigations take place. So thank you again for taking the time and doing this right. And I hope we can make a lot of people happy homeowners including me. Thank you. And I want to stand corrected. The Atkins study was $200,000 or wasn't $2 million. I'm sorry. Please, I'm sorry, yeah. My name is Elena Kishada. I live in Boulder Creek and I'm one of the lucky ones whose house and neighborhood survived the CZU fire. I stand in solidarity with the CZU fire victims. I speak on behalf of all of Boulder Creek when I asked you to please support our neighbors who lost their houses to that awful fire last year. You see what happened to them affects all of us. It's nothing short of a miracle that Boulder Creek wasn't completely destroyed. Even so, it's safe to say that virtually everyone in Boulder Creek knows at least someone who lost their homes to the fire. In fact, I dare to say most of us know several people who did our beloved Hallie who runs direct center lost her house to the fire. Her parents lost their houses to the fire. That's the house where she grew up in. Juko who owns Ease Mountain in Ben-Loman where my husband has practiced yoga for years lost her house to the fire. Jenny who owns our beloved Chinese restaurant in Boulder Creek lost her house to the fire. Several of my own friends lost their house as well. Antonia, Adrian, Cindy, Karen, Brandy, Sherry, many others came very close to losing their homes as well. I am talking about the fire coming as close to two feet through their homes. So please don't think for a second we don't care about the CZU fire victims. We do very much so. Thank you. And Connie Landis I'm here with Anderson Christie Real Estate. I am reading a letter that our brokers wrote and was signed by the majority of our realtors in our office. Dear County supervisors, we wanted to write to you to express our concerns with the resolution in Covenant for the CZU fire survivors. These restrictions need to be reconsidered to help fire survivors rebuild and not be subject to the Covenant that has potential negative financial implications below or a few of our concerns. The Covenant is heavy-handed and unfair. The Covenant indemnifies the county from anything that might happen to the lack of proper permits that it does not indemnify lenders. With an unknown cost to cure geologic issues and no legal protection, conventional lenders wouldn't finance a Covenant property when the owners need to refinance or for a future buyer at the time of sale. This would drastically impact the resale value as conventional financing would not be available to the buyers. The Covenant inadvertently affects people who lost their homes while leaving surviving neighbors untouched with no obligation to spend money to upgrade their properties to meet current geological requirements. With no deed restriction in place, surviving neighbors can refinance and sell their homes at fair market value to prospective buyers. Much of the CZU burn zone is among the most affordable areas in the Santa Cruz County to live. It's home to teachers, first responders, service employees, retirees, and others who are not as wealthy as homeowners elsewhere in the county. In addition, many of the fire survivors were underinsured to begin with and cannot afford to absorb any additional financial burdens. Our fear is that further restrictions and expenses will discourage people from rebuilding and causing debris located to other areas and reduce the already low inventory of housing. We would strongly encourage you to not rely solely on what the planning department says, rather get more community input and expert opinions outside of the planning department. Thank you very much. This is Monty Landis and I'm Chris Clayton and we're with Anderson Christie. And I also wanted to add that I thank you for, it sounds like you have been listening to the community and we've been really advocating to all of our realtors and lenders and everyone to speak up and let you know and be heard. And so thank you for that. And we hope that whatever you come up with that it will be reviewed by the community again before you decide that's what you're going to do. The other thing that I don't know if you're aware of is that we do have a statutory disclosure. We have a statutory disclosure. When we sell a house, it's called a geo hazard report and it's required by the state. And now in that, I just had one the other day that it does describe the debris flow area. If it is, you know, when you pull up a property, it does have a parcel by the parcel number and everything and you present that to a potential buyer. Like again, it's a statutory requirement. There's now a category that says debris flow in our County. So, and that helps, you know, provide information to potential buyer. Okay. Yeah, I want to thank the real estate community too for getting in touch with us. You've been very kind and really the advice is well received. Thank you. We're here, we're here for them, all of us. You know, we have all, I don't care if you are an agent in Aptos or an agent in Boulder Creek, we've all worked with people in these areas. It's our first time home buyers. I just sold a young couple of property, a burn property and they're in the process of starting to get their permits and they have their power permit and they're all excited. And I talked to them the other night, I said, don't sign anything until, you know, you talk to me. Yeah. Yeah, we're here, we're here for you guys to reach out to us as well. And we hope that you will. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Hi, I'm MC Dwyer. I'm a realtor with EXP and somebody who lost the home that my husband built from scratch with permits about 25 years ago and our mortgages now do every month and nothing has been accomplished other than a power pole permit due to the difficulties of dealing with all the red tape that exists. I don't want to repeat everything that everybody else brought up even though I had a prepared statement. It's clear that everybody now is aware that these covenants can have unintended consequences and it took us realtors talking to lenders, talking to underwriters for us to be able to understand them. So it would be ideal if we had some input, not only us realtors, but also lenders because they're the ones that get the loans approved. As it was written, the covenant would have been devastating. Somebody who rebuilt wouldn't have been able to refinance and it's even possible that their lender once reading the covenant could have actually called their loan, which means they would use all of the fire insurance proceeds to pay off the loan. And if somebody didn't have the extra money to pay off the loan, they could be put in default and then foreclosed on. And I don't think that's what we want to see. So please involve all of us. We want to help our co-survivors. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Julie Lucia. I lost my home in the Vaughan Leaf neighborhood on August 20, 2020. But you may already know that because I've spoken several times now at the board meetings. Two weeks ago, 20 fire victims spoke out against the proposed covenant. Without any discussion, you passed the item. It was obvious you had already made a decision on how you're going to vote before you even heard us speak. Frankly, it felt extremely disorganized and careless. We have never felt less heard and less valued. And then supervisor Cohn challenged us to asking that we provide evidence on how this covenant will hurt our property values. Is this how we deserve to be treated after everything we've gone through and continue to go through? I can bet that none of you would want a covenant on your deed. It's so hard to put yourself in our shoes. It's because you can't. You can't imagine to know what we're going through. Then why are these decisions continually being made without input from the fire community? It's obvious that the county is extremely concerned about their own liability. We see that we need representation and we need to be heard. Two weeks ago, I stood here and I asked all of you to hold off on a vote that a discussion needs to be had. I'm here asking you again to do the same thing. This time, I hope you hear me. I hope you hear all of us today. If you truly care about getting families home, have that much needed discussion with fire families and our real estate and lending professionals in order to make a truly beneficial decision that properly serves all of us. It's obvious we have a wealth of knowledge in this county. We all need to work together. Thank you. My name is Allison Breeze. My name is Allison Breeze. I'm a property owner in Boulder Creek. And while my home was not destroyed, I have had very strong concerns regarding the covenant as it was presented two weeks ago. I'm very glad to hear that that is now under reconsideration. I've been following closely the clear consensus coming out of the real estate and lending experts in our area and the profound negative consequences that it would have on our wider community. The goal of providing disclosers and protecting home buyers is important and necessary and the concerns of liability are understandable. It's my understanding that the real estate and lending businesses have been working together to craft alternative proposals, to present to the board to address these issues in a manner that can achieve the county's goals while at the same time without causing devastating harm to our community as a whole. The fire community needs help and they do need it quickly, but rushing into a flawed solution without completing due diligence to understand the ramifications will cause more harm than good. I urge the board to do that due diligence. I'm glad to hear it sounds like you're moving in that direction. Listen to the experts in the real estate and lending businesses, understand the full consequences of what you're deciding to do, consider alternative proposals without creating harm to your constituents because our welfare is your responsibility and your duty. Thank you very much for listening. It was debating on speaking and thank you all for all the work that you've done to help move this issue along. Everybody, what everybody has said is so true, but I would like to make a point about the fairness and the situation of something going on our title that our neighbor doesn't have to have. And this is in the event that we go to rebuild and we have to put this on our title that we're foregoing this geological report whatever that is from a legal standpoint. And I'd like the lawyers to really pay attention here. Come visit us out on our property. Come and spend some time with us because it seems like the legal tail is wagging the dog in our situation. And I appreciate the other supervisors. You guys have spent a lot of time on this and you're gonna spend a lot more time on this. It's like, let's come together and come up with an effective solution that really solves this problem for the people that are suffering. I suffer too, I'm a fire victim. So I really appreciate the time and effort. It's just important that we get it right this time. And supervisors, the other supervisors, we're gonna be involved to help you someday in whatever disaster you go through. So please thank you for your time and effort in coming up with helping us create a solution. Thanks. Thank you. Hi there, my name is Jessica. My husband and I lost our home in the CZU fire August of 2020. Like others, you already know that because I've spoken at these meetings. As she said, I'm not gonna repeat everything that everyone has already said. You guys have heard it multiple times. There are a couple of things I wanna point out that I find flawed in this covenant that you're asking us to sign off on. You asked us two weeks ago to come back with information from realtors and lenders supporting what we were stating, which we've done today. Although I still feel the county should have done that before voting two weeks ago on that covenant. A couple of weeks ago, two weeks ago, our gentleman here spoke to that as an issue of public safety and having it be disclosed to future homeowners the risk of what they're potentially purchasing. And I have some issues with this. One, the county is issuing permits for temporary housing on these same properties that burned. So if the risk is there now, why are temporary housing permits being issued with no mitigation from either the county or the homeowner? And I hope that you do not take that statement and then stop issuing temporary housing permits because I could see that happening. Not gonna happen. Okay. You have it on record. He said it was not gonna happen, guys. Okay. The other thing is not making houses that did not burn sign it. We were in a meeting yesterday and we were told that by trying to get homeowners whose homes did not burn to sign it, that it would be considered an overreach of the government and that they would just shred that document and ignore it. It's an overreach to us as well. I think his record yesterday were because we need something from the county, they can make us sign this, but because those folks whose homes did not burn don't need anything from the county, that is why they cannot do it. So I don't think it's fair that because we need something from you all, that that be held over our head. Let's see. Sorry, I took some notes because I had not prepared an official statement today. I wasn't planning on talking. One of the things we heard is that the county hasn't had people sign this covenant for many years, well over a couple of decades now. And that's great and dandy. I don't think that necessarily means that we should continue to do it that way. I think folks all too often get stuck in the, this is the way we've always done it mindset. And I think things need to change. The other thing we learned is that the covenant is for geological specifically is always triggered when there's a permit submitted for this geological. I don't think that's true. We had a septic system upgraded and installed in 2004. No geological anything was required of our property. As well as when we purchased our house, nothing geological was disclosed to us. Title transfers go through the county. There's no reason that can't be triggered at the time of the title transfer as well. You guys know every time a house is purchased goes through the assessor's office because you charge us taxes on them. So, you know it's being sold. And the last thing on here is that the not being able to remove it from our deed once the mitigation is either done or when the risk is decreased over time, which we've all acknowledged through Advkins as well, that that risk will decrease over time as several winters come by. And the fact that we can't remove it from the deed and that we might be able to revise the verbiage is a little ridiculous for us specifically and it does not count for everyone here. The land above us that would potentially be coming down is county owned. And we were told that the county hopes to have funding within three years to start the project of mitigating their land. So by signing this covenant, we're essentially being held liable for land that the county owns and has chosen not to mitigate that risk. And I'm not okay with signing off that liability of the county. It's your land, you should be mitigating it. And that's it. Thank you. Go ahead. That's all right. I just wanted to ask county councilor Mr. Reed to address the difference between the draft covenant and the sand and geological hazards. There's very little difference in between those two things are the draft on the covenant, the notice of geologic hazards that we typically require is called a notice, but they both essentially do the same thing. So it's a, you know, I'm listening to the testimony and hearing the testimony the same way the board is. And it's a little different than what staff understands our experience to be over the last number of years in requiring these kind of covenants and requiring this kind of indemnification and requiring these kind of notices to be reported and not seeing the kind of problems that we're hearing that people are worried that they're gonna experience. Answer that. Okay. Yes ma'am. Hi, my name is Carol Payne. I'm a local broker and I've been working in the Santa Cruz mountains since 1984. And I'm here mainly in support of the burn victims and to say that the covenant as it was written would definitely affect property values. And I want to stress that anything that affects property values affects us all whether we are in the zone or not because as things go down in value, it has a domino effect. And affects all of us in this county. I really appreciate that you are revisiting this. And I would suggest that you consult with an attorney, a real estate attorney who with the idea of writing something that will be conducive to real estate in the area as well as doing what you need it to do. Sorry, I'm a little nervous. Oh, you're fine. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to address us? Is there anybody on the phone? Yes, I have two on speaker. Katie Webb, your microphone is available. Yeah, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, thank you so much. So my name is Katie Webb and I'm a resident of the Burn Area in Swanton and I'm also a board of director, some member of the Davenport North Coast Association. I want to speak specifically on the portion of the study that examined debris flow risk for the Scots Creek watershed, which is the primary drainage for the Swanton Valley area on the North Coast. It's listed as zone 14 in the Acton study. There are several inconsistencies in how the study treated Scots Creek compared to the other drainages in the study. First, the Acton's report states that the debris flow calculations were not completed for the Scots Creek drainage, meaning that no refinement or further analysis of the actual risk occurred, even though doing so was in the scope of the work of the study. Second, on the GIS layer map detailing the study results, the entire Scots Creek drainage is mapped without any refinement as being within the high risk primary debris flow path as determined by Acton's. In conflict with this, Scots Creek is also mapped as not having been part of the detailed study. Two scenarios, which cannot both exist at the same time. Scots Creek is the only drainage included in the study that did not receive detailed study and therefore refinement of the county's previous worst case scenario modeling. I asked the board to return to Acton's to ask them to complete calculations for Scots Creek to achieve the refinement that was originally sought. If that is not possible, I ask that they exclude Scots Creek from their study and the resulting mapping entirely to avoid false information about which parcels lay in the primary debris flow path in which do not. Lumping Scots Creek in with the other drainages in the study as having benefited from refinement calculations when it has not as inequitable and misleading. This false mapping and lack of analysis not only affects rebuilding requirements, but also impacts, insurance availability, lending opportunities, access to mitigation funding and future development potential. I ask you to consider these study issues before accepting the report as complete and accurate. Thank you for your time. We have another call. Yes. Credence, your microphone is available. Hello, thank you. I wasn't planning on speaking today so my comments are going to be a little scattered and I apologize for that in advance. But when I heard the County Council say that the proposed notice from last meeting versus the historic notice were equal, I felt I had to speak up. So just from a very, very simple standpoint, the prior notices that I've reviewed are all in the four to five paragraph range. The proposed notice from last week has upwards of 22 paragraphs. The old notices are very simple. The first paragraph kind of says, this is who I am, this is where I live. The second paragraph says, we acknowledge there's reports. The third says, we understand the hazards and indemnify the County. The fourth says, the declaration runs with the land and the planning director can remove it. Very simple, very straightforward. Now I know I'm going to run out of my two minutes before I get through the next one, but the next one- All right, go ahead, go ahead. The next one starts with, I am the property, this is where it is and I'm the owner. The second is kind of some just kind of legalese regarding the National Flood Insurance. The next kind of talks about CZU. The way you really start getting into the issues is it goes on and on and on saying the property owner is aware, it says the property owner will pay for County Council to effectively protect, pay for, how does it go? Identifies the County and requires them to protect the County from any lawsuits and on and on. And just, I forgot to mention, those of you that know me, my name's Cretan Shaw. I'm a contractor with the Community Foundation. I've been, I was a lender for many years with Santa Cruz County Bank and the Chief Credit Officer there just to give you a little background for a minute of time and thank you very much. Thank you. Mark Swisher. This is Mark. Mark Swisher. Yes, hello, good afternoon. Thank you everyone. Mark Swisher with Cal Poly at Swanton Pacific Ranch. I would like to first reiterate what Ms. Webb had stated regarding the technical content of the Atkins Report as it relates to the Swanton area. I asked the board to reconsider, re-evaluate that particular geographic area consistent with the other areas evaluated in the technical report. In addition to that, I have a couple of questions that are, excuse me, comments specific to the CZU rebuild directive. The first being that the board consider allowing building permits for non-habitable or temporary structures through this rebuild directive and allowing those permits to be issued exempt from any sort of covenant or title restriction being recorded. In addition to that, I ask the board to please consider relaxing the in-kind restrictions on this directive as some property owners may desire to combine structures, square footage of structures for more resilient or sustainable development and or rebuild a lesser footprint, square footage-wise. Thank you for your time. There are no other speakers. We do have another speaker here. I would like to speak. My name is Renee King. I'm in Boulder Creek. I was in the Fallen Leaf neighborhood at one point and we moved and of course the fire did come within two feet to 10 feet from our current house where we live now. I'm hearing from the realtors and I met myself and talked to realtors and lenders and also talked to our insurance broker. And one of the things I'm not hearing up here and from the mention last time everybody was here was find out if insurance will be a problem with that covenant or any covenant and it will. The fire families will have a really hard time either increasing their insurance or I mean the minute you mention it, it could be that they get canceled. That covenant will have a big sway with insurance as well and that is not being mentioned here at all. So you need to think about that long and hard before you do that. People already get canceled once they put in a claim for a fire. You guys need to think about that. Thank you. Yes, we have and I know the status changes. Some of its policy is pretty good. It was all right, okay, go ahead. Hello, what's up? My name is Alex Cortinas. My dad is the cool brown guy that you tried to front like you don't know two weeks ago, but I know you know him, but that's all right. I prepared a statement and I'm probably not gonna read all of it because I don't wanna beat a dead horse and you don't need to hear all the same things over and over again. Unfortunately, I could not be here last week or two weeks ago rather because who in the world is free at 1.30 on a Tuesday? Why have you not gone out of your way to make yourselves more available to the fire community? You can answer that, that's not a rhetorical question. Nothing, all right, cool. So I think the main issue is that everyone here, at least on this side of the room is too proud to admit that they have no idea what they're doing and it's not your fault, but you're in over your heads. The planning department's never dealt with something like this before and I hope that you never have to again. I really hope that there's not any kind of natural disaster be it a fire or a flood because it fucking sucks to deal with. I didn't even lose my house, my parents did, but it's such a miserable feeling to see people suffering and you literally can't do anything to make them feel better. And you guys made it seem like you would a year ago, but my parents still don't have a house. Why? The reason is because the planning department has no idea what they're doing. Kyle Levine has an undergraduate degree from like a hundred years ago when college acceptance rates were like a hundred percent. All you had to do was fill out the form and you're there. Mr. Chair, can we pause the time? Sir, I understand the frustration, but personal attacks against people, A, are untrue and unfair, B, make me not wanna listen to anything you have to say. So if you can figure out a way to make your point without personally attacking people, I think we're all gonna get in a much better place. We heard the comments last week, we're changing direction, we're trying to find, we're bringing in outside planning consultants, we've lowered the fees, we're working on what we can do. It's, we're balancing a lot of competing interests, but personal attacks are way, way out of line and unprofessional in this environment. Thanks. Well, I'm not being paid to be here, but anyway, the bottom line is that you guys keep playing games with people, and I don't know if it's intentional, but at a certain point, one has to ask what the motivation is, because you say that you wanna make things easy and streamline the process, but then you have these like surprised contingencies where like, apparently now we need to go find outside consultants to prove to you that there's going to be impacts when someone wants to refinance their house or get insurance. That's something that the board should have researched ahead of time. Last meeting I watched it, you all talked so much about empathy, but I really don't think that it's registered with you. You really haven't taken the time to fathom what it's like to lose things that you cherish and love, things that you spent your whole life building and working towards. I don't really know what that feeling is like either because I don't own a house, but it's just really unfair that you guys keep throwing curveballs at these people who just want their lives to go back to normal. I really don't think it's registering with you how appending this whole situation has been for everyone. I mean, it really seems like the only outcome of the situation due to how long you've dragged it on this entire time is that you're just going to end up with more mentally ill homeless people in Santa Cruz County. Look, I just, I don't know what I want to hear to be completely frank. If I could wave a magic wand and give everyone permits, I think that that would be cool and I could totally do it, but I can't. I think the main issue is just the planning department and that they have way too much power in what they're doing. I think it's great that you have gone and consulted outside firms and I think it's good to continue these studies and do them in the future, come back next year and the year after, see what is growing, see how it impacts debris flow and things like that. But yes, as it was mentioned, the ecosystem and the geology in Santa Barbara County is not the same as Santa Cruz County. You can't compare them. It's good to have something to reference, but nobody is going to have all the data for that. The real reason of fire of this magnitude happened, unfortunately, is really because of genocide. The California Indians that lived here at the Eloni and across the state understand that fire is a tool, one to be used to bolster ecological health and not unfortunately hasn't happened since the colonization. So anyone else would like to address us? I'll bring the conversation back to the Board of Supervisors. Probably calling Supervisor Coonerty whose district was the other district three that was severely impacted by the CZU fire. Supervisor Coonerty. Sure, thank you, Mr. Chair. So this report at its core is an extremely technical report and a valuable report and we're grateful to the Community Foundation for funding it as a way to reduce some of the burden on fire victims as well as allow us to compete for more resilience grants and other opportunities in the future. I think it's important to take a step back. It's been 13 months since this county has suffered the largest natural disaster in its history and the victims who are our neighbors are coworkers, people that worked in the Board of Supervisors offices and the CAO's office. These are friends, these are people I grew up with, loved ones, people, coworkers, lost their home and it's been difficult for a variety of reasons for them to rebuild. And we have a duty to help people get back home as soon as possible. And as I mentioned, we've been trying by bringing it outside permitting firm, by reducing streamlining the process, reducing various barriers and fees to make that as possible along the way. And as we've worked through various barriers, we've tried to work through them and around them. And at the last meeting, I think we try to take a step forward to help reduce another barrier. And we also got good feedback and helpful feedback from the community, both fire victims and real estate professionals and lenders that have helped us move forward. I do wanna say that county staff, Pyle Levine, Carolyn Burke, Dave Reed have been and the entire county staff have worked nights and weekends tirelessly trying to help people rebuild after this natural disaster in the context of COVID, in the context of a lot of different challenges, budget cuts and everything else. And I'm proud to be affiliated with them and I'm proud of their public service. I also wanna note many of the people who have spoken today are in Supervisor McPherson's district. Supervisor McPherson and his team and my team have been working long, long weeks for more than a year trying to help fire survivors meeting and talking to people on an almost daily basis, hearing their pain and their challenges and their hopes and doing what we can. So in this context, it was mentioned, what are we trying to do? And the reality is we're trying to do a couple of things. We have a duty to the fire survivors to help them return safely. We have a duty to future home buyers and renters to make sure that they're safe in a world where we're gonna have more intense floods, more intense fires, more intense debris flows and beyond. And we have a duty to the health and safety of our residents now and into the future. We have a duty to the taxpayers to make sure that if people are bypassing part of the process that we aren't making taxpayers libel for future costs down the line. And so we're trying to find a balance of all those different competing interests in a way that works with a lending market and the real estate market. It does disadvantage either people now or into the future. And so in that context, I wanna appreciate everyone has participated and I'm going to, and because I think you're making this process better and your input has been listened to and improved upon. And so I'm gonna move the recommended action and then I'm gonna add additional direction that the OR3 planning and other county departments continue community outreach and engagement on the implementation of the CZU Rebuild Directive. The recommended actions to notify, utilize the notification of geological hazards, the recorded document and that our standard practice what is a template rather than a draft covenant that was referenced to on September 14th. Yeah, that it's, so it's the recommended actions, which is the presentation on the results of the Actions to Briefflow and the folks in Swanton who brought up issues around that. My office will work with you on addressing those questions and comments. And then item number two is to direct staff to consider information from the study when implementing the CZU Rebuild Directive Resolution 226-202 with regard to recorded documents and degrees that may vary from the covenant presented on September 14th, 2021 in order to provide additional options to permittees and then the additional direction would be that staff continue to do outreach and run any additional requirements or legal documents past people who are in both the real estate market and fire survivors and community broadly to make sure that we don't have any unintended consequences. I'll second. Hey, second by second, Supervisor Friend, did you have any comments? Supervisor Friend. I'm thinking Mr. Chair. Any comments from board? Comments? Yeah, you've been through an extraordinarily tough year and more so than most people, everybody has gone through something in this past year but what you've gone through is hard to imagine. Anyway, I'm ready to vote whenever the motions can be. Okay, please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Abbott. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you, motion passes unanimously. Very good. Thank you for your participation in being here. Back to this, I think this is gonna come in back to the board on October 19th, and is that correct? That wasn't listed as part of the direction, so. I thought it might have been, okay. Okay, very good. Okay. All right, thank you. The long and short of it is we ease the covenants. Okay, we will, thank you. We will now move to item number 13 to approve the 2020-21 year-end financial budget report and direct the County Administrative Office to return by January 11th, 2022, with a budget update for fiscal year 2021-22 and a forecast for fiscal year 2022-23, as recommended by the County Administrative Officer. I think Christina Mowry will be presenting. Good afternoon, Chair McPherson and members of the board. Christina Mowry, your County Budget Manager. I'm going to provide you a brief overview of the 2021 year-end report and a review of the adopted 2021-22 budget, which you will be considering. Just one moment, let's go. Oh, sure. Let's just close the door. Yeah. Yes, it is. Well, I have my mask on, so I'll do my best here. Has that better? Yeah. Okay. Okay. So I'm going to provide you a brief overview to the 2020-21 year-end report, last fiscal year, and a review of the adopted 2021-22 budget, which you will be considering in more detail on the next item, 14, presented by the Auditor-Controller-Treasurer Tax Collector. So next slide. So here you'll see an overview. I'll be covering some of the county expenditure estimates compared to the final actuals. Specifically, we'll focus in on the general fund financing and how the year ended. And then we'll take a look at the 2021-22 county budget expenditures as they've been finalized with all the adjustments. The general fund financing, we'll look at contingencies, the reserves, and then a summary of our challenges and possible solutions. Next slide. So here is a summary of the 2020-21 county budgeted expenditures compared to estimates relied on during the recommended budget and compared to the final actuals at year-end. The 2021 expenditure actuals were less than estimated at our mid-year report by 45.5 million, of which 56.4 million were obligations encumbered at year-end that are now carried forward and included in the appropriations for 2021-22 adopted budget. The general fund had an increase compared to the mid-year estimates, primarily from the increased costs related to the continued emergency response, primarily funded from FEMA and the American Rescue Plan Funding. The majority of unspent other funds are grant funded and are rebudgeted with the offsetting revenue to the 2021-22 adopted budget. Next slide. Here is a summary of the general fund financing for 2020-21 compared to the estimates. Overall, the general revenues budget had 34.6 million more in funding received offset by 20.3 million more in department net expenditures. Leaving the general fund net cost at 27.5 million better compared to the original budget. Before any reductions of the year-end encumbrances, which are carried forward, which we do have obligations to pay, which was 12.6 million, which are now carried to the 2021-22 budget, leaving 14.9 million in fund balance before any other year-end adjustments, which the auditor is going to cover in more detail. So of that, so I know the big question always is, well, how much do we have left over at the end of the year? So of that 14.9 million, the auditor will be addressing GASB-84. We did discuss it during budget hearings. That's the Government Accounting Standards Board proclamation that required us to review all of our trust funds and include those now in the part of the general fund. So we have some additional adjustments, so points about 600,000 of those remaining funds were restricted for those special purposes. And then we had already planned in the proposed budget to set aside $3 million into reserves of the amount that we knew we were gonna have in excess at mid-year. So that leaves us at about $11.3 million in additional funding at year-end. And the question is, what did we do with those funds? So those funds were allocated as follows and are included in the 21-22 budget. We increased our reserves beyond the $3 million by $4.6 million. And that allowed us to achieve our 10% goal with the inclusion of the funding that was provided from the GASB-84 reclassifications, which the auditor can speak to as well. In addition to that, we set us about 600,000 as discussed was restricted for those restricted funds. And then you'll recall during budget hearings, we knew we were gonna have savings of about a million dollars from the public defender budget. And we allocated that million dollars to establish for the startup costs for the new office. So that was part of that. And then we also had about 1.1 million that we allocated to increase our contingencies. This allows us to have 1% of our expenditures set aside in contingencies. And then the remaining 4 million was used to increase the property and liability fund. We discussed during budget hearings that our property and liability fund has had a lot of increased claims. And as a result needed an increase in order to have a bare minimum in anticipation of claims reserve. So we analyze that every year. Well, every other year with an actuarial report and the actuarial has stated that we should have at least 12 million in reserve. So we're gonna have four. So we're, we need to set some goals to achieve that target in the future. But we're making a little bit of progress at this point. Okay, next slide. Here gives you an overview of the 2021-22 county budgeted expenditures compared to the adopted compared to the, I should say the proposed the original recommended. The increase in the total budget is offset by increased revenues for the general fund of about 86.4 million. And this is primarily the continuation of the COVID-19 response costs funded by FEMA, OES and the coronavirus relief funds which includes the funds from the American Rescue Plan. The additional 86.4 million is provided from a rebudget of incomplete costs from 2020-21 and adjustments approved by the board during budget hearings. It includes 95.75 positions which are primarily limited term positions that your board added mid-year last year due to our response to the, for COVID-19. Other funds are primarily the restricted funds and include incomplete projects which are naturally rebudgeted from the prior year. Next slide. So here's a summary of the general fund financing for 2021-22 which is where the board has of course the most discretion. Our total general fund financing increased by $6.5 million based on adjustments during budget hearings and year-in-close and unspent costs and unreceived revenues which were rebudgeted from the prior year. The fund balance available of 16.7 million includes that increase of six and a half which is the 63%. And that's primarily the American Rescue Plan funding. Your board will recall that we had a supplemental item that part of the allocation of the funding, the revenues that we were recovering using the American Rescue Plan funding was helping us fund the 50% elimination of the furlough. So that's where that additional six million was needed. And then we are the general county revenues increased by 10 million. And this is primarily from the increased allocation of the American Rescue Plan funding that was approved by the board and allocated in 2021-22. Next slide, contingencies. So here's a summary of our contingencies for the adopted budget. After all the adjustments during budget hearings in year-in, the general fund contingencies help address any shortfalls and revenues or expenditures that could occur. And we've had a practice of setting aside 1% of our expenditures which in this case is $6.3 million. And then we have some restrictive contingencies. This is funding to address mid-year adjustments that are approved by the board in any possible emergencies that may occur and any other board priorities that occur during the year. And that's, we've set aside 4.1 million. So for a total of 10.4 million for the adopted budget. And this then shows the increase mentioned earlier the 1.1 million over the proposed budget. Next slide. Everybody's favorite, this is reserves. So I am happy to report that we are just slightly above our 10% goal, but it's important to understand a few things. Number one, so our general fund reserve policy is 7% to 10% of the total general fund revenues. And your board will recall that prior to COVID-19 and the pandemic, we were at that 10% goal for several years. And as a result of the pandemic, we needed to use a portion of our reserves in order to provide financing for the general fund. And we have been at that goal, but our minimum is a 7%. So we took as much out to get us down to the minimum and then made other reductions. The full policy, if anybody would like to take a look at it is online and it specifies how reserves can be used and how they should be restored. And it talks about the different types of reserves. So we did take 13 million out and because we took 13 million out of reserves during COVID during last fiscal year, we needed to have a plan. And our plan during the proposed budget was to take five years to restore the 13 million. And that's why we put at least 3 million into our reserves originally estimated. And because we did better this last year, we were able to put a little more. But the real reason our reserves went up so much because without the change in accounting policy, we would only be at less than 8% in our reserves. But because of the reclassification of the trust funds, we now have an additional 19 million that was put into our general fund reserves. But those reserves are restricted for very specific purposes. They're not general discretionary type reserves. I just wanna alert the board to that. And we know we need to continue to build our reserves. And as discussed during budget hearings, the auditor's office and our office will be taking a closer look at that. And we'll be bringing a revised policy back to your board to discuss a potential increase to the reserve policy. And one of the things we could consider as part of that is to look specifically at our general county revenues. Because those are the revenues that are discretionary revenue. And some policies the counties have looked at is not just the total revenues, but to look specifically at the general county revenues and setting aside within the reserves a portion of those general county revenues for reserve purposes as much as 25%. And so just as a comparison for information right now, our discretionary reserves as a percentage of our general county revenues, our property taxes, sales tax is at 16 and a half percent. That's something to note. Next slide. So, yes, we are doing better and we're still coming, we're getting through COVID and we have funding that's allowed for that, but we still have challenges. We still don't know exactly our FEMA reimbursements, how much they'll be. We've claimed approximately 50% of our costs to date and we're still waiting to get a full response from FEMA on all of our claims and to continue to claim the remainder of our costs during the emergency. We know with climate change that we're seeing increased demands and potential emergency costs could arise there as a result of other fires or debris flows that could occur. Our actual revenues that have been estimated, we've used our best estimates and historical estimates, but they don't always match our estimates, our actual final revenues. And we know from experience that our department costs will continue to increase and grow. And then on the solutions, the next slide, one of the things that's helped us and we've talked greatly about this is that we do budget 1% of our expenditures as a general contingency to help us address any of those unforeseen situations that could occur, but we are using one-time funding to fund that general contingency, so that's an important thing to remember. And our general fund reserves at this point in time, even though they have some restrictions around them, are at 10% of our revenues. And we do, as you know, are looking at revenue measures to help fund future gaps in our financing. And we do, thankfully, have the American Rescue Plan funding to help us with all of our COVID related costs and to help recover some of our revenue losses from prior years that is allowing us to make some additional investments. And we have that funding until the end of 2024. So I think that's it. And our recommendation is to accept and file the report. And we will return by January 11th with an update on the current year, 2021-22 and also provide a preliminary forecast for the 2022-23 fiscal year. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much. And I wanna thank your entire financial team for managing this county budget on some very unpredictable and unbelievable year. And I bet you're about ready to retire and I bet you wish you would have taken retirement a year ago, but we're sure glad you were here for this crisis that we've been facing. And I'm especially appreciative of the increase in our reserves to our board policy level of 10% understanding the difference in the discretionary and the general fund and so forth. But we need to be there. Who knows what might be coming next and it's really good public policy to have a reserve of that degree of 10%. And I think our team, the whole team has done a great job of staring us through this COVID crisis and the financial consequences of the fire. We're hearing some of that just a little while ago. And I can't thank our employees enough for helping us through the leanest time and the furloughs and everything else that was involved. I think this county has come out of this very, very well because of the dedicated efforts of our county employees. And I just wanna thank each and every one of them for what they've done under some very trying and unexpected circumstances that we've had to face. I would like to ask the our CAO, Carlos Palacios about I see us as doing very well and have rebounded and thanks the state and federal resources that we have received but just in general, how are other counties doing? You have an overview of that. Yes, Ms. Maui did some research on that with our joining counties, a little bit difficult to compare Monterey County is much bigger than us and San Benito so small, they're almost like a small city. In terms of reserves, both of those counties are doing better than us. They have higher reserve, San Benito has very high reserves and Monterey County also has higher reserves than us. So it shows that we have set a good goal in improving our reserves. And remember, we're at 10 over 10% but that includes this health trust money that was moved because of this accounting rule absent that money. I believe it would be near 8%. So that shows you, we still have a ways to go in terms of building up our reserves back to where they should be. But on the other hand, we are improving. We're doing well. We're very physically stable, our bond rating. We've been able to maintain our bond rating this year which is an amazing feat given all that we've been through. So in general, I think we're doing very well and we're doing better than most counties are given the constraints that we have which is primarily that we're relatively low revenue, low property tax county. But even with that constraint, we're doing, I think a very good job and I think we're doing well in comparison to other counties. Thank you very much. Any other comments from board members? Survisor Koenig? Survisor Friend? Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Ms. Mauri, as always. I know we said wonderful things about you at the last presentation and that hasn't changed in that amount of time. You will be missed, Steve. A lot of times we don't end up in the front page of the paper for budget related things and that actually starts with you. And so I just wanted to appreciate your work very ethical, very appropriate, very professional and we appreciate that. I had one question in regards to the FEMA comment there at the end. We'd always known that we, in some respects, sort of over seek reimbursement from FEMA and there's generally a factor of maybe 20% or so from right on that number of non reimbursement but your language had said that it would come in lower than anticipated. Is that lower than the anticipated already reduction that we would already anticipate? Or is that still the normal factor off of what we generally assume we won't get fully reimbursed by? And it's lower than why? Yeah, it's still the normal factor. We still don't have enough experience yet based on our claiming what FEMA's response will fully be. I mean, we have over $50 million in costs through June. We've claimed essentially half that and we've only heard from FEMA approving 25% of that 25 million and received just a few million in terms of reimbursement. So we have a ways to go with FEMA and we are in constant communication with FEMA and it's just taking longer to do these claims and we had a little bit of a delay during fiscal year in. We had to redirect our attention but we've just hired a few more staff and so we're hopeful we'll be able to get caught up by the end of the year. Okay, I appreciate that. As always, you and the CAO can always lean on us on the federal advocacy side as well but I appreciate that some of this is outside of pure advocacy but sometimes it doesn't occur. I appreciate the presentation. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Coonerty, any questions? No, thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to thank the whole team for getting us through these stormy seasons and it's been good to have a partnership with the federal and state government. And also I want to recognize all the business owners and workers and everyone else who've shown up and done their best to keep our economy alive so that we could have a tax base and jobs and opportunity going forward. Thank you. Supervisor Caput, any questions? Thank you. Yeah, what a year. And this is your last one. This is my last one, yes it is. And it was in October sometime. October 8th. It's counting. Well, you deserve a rest for a while. I don't know what you're gonna do after a little bit of while but anyway, just an incredible year. Everything was upside down. Everything was turned around backwards and it was tough to figure out where to go. And you managed to know which way to go and that was improve everything and move forward. So thanks for everything you've done. And I think we're gonna be okay. Yes, we have an incredible team of people. We're best. Okay. Good. Chained a motion to accept the report. I'll note the recommender. Excuse me. Excuse me. Just somebody from public wants to speak. Thank you. It's nice to be here in person. My name is Becky Steinbrenner. Thank you for this report and Ms. Malvary. Good luck to you on your retirement. We appreciate your service. I have some questions about that Supervisor Friend brought up about the FEMA reimbursement. A question, is that regarding COVID reimbursements only or does that also include the CZU reimbursements? My second question is with a good amount of money in the contingency fund. Why don't we have enough money to fund projects like the Rio del Mar drainage project that just got scrapped because even with great grant funding from the Federals because the people didn't vote in to assess themselves, about $200,000 total to make it go. Why can't that come out of contingency? Why can't money for this fund that the study that Community Foundation had to do because the County said they didn't have money but we needed that study to get grants. That was $200,000. Why can't we use the contingency funds for things like that to support the health and safety and rebuilding of our people? My last question regards Measure G, the countywide sales tax. What's the status of that? There is no independent oversight as was promised to the voters regarding that. I asked about it and was told, well, it's on the website and you can come to the budget hearings. That's not oversight. And zero of that has been allocated to FHIR. That was a big thing to pass that. And I would really like some discussion about the Measure G funds and how the county will allocate that money. Thank you very much. And again, good luck in your retirement. Can you answer a couple of those questions? Yes, I'm happy to. So in my comments earlier about the FEMA funding was specifically around the COVID related costs. FHIR is a separate claim. I don't have that information with me. The auditor has been more involved in that. So may have those numbers for you as it relates to contingencies, the use of contingencies or at the discretion of the board based on requests that are made. So, and we do have a capital review committee. So if there are funds needed for a particular project, any of those requests go through our capital review committee and are allocated. And we do have very limited funding for our capital improvement projects. And so there's a lot of need and requests around that. I can't address the specific project. So I don't have any of those details. Measure G is a transaction sales tax that was approved by the voters. It's a general purpose revenue. Your board did establish certain uses for those funds and we've been in keeping with those uses and we have provided a report. It's on the last page of the adopted budget that shows since inception, since 1819, the amount of funds that have been received from Measure G and how those funds have been used. Essentially, your board funded the FIT program. We have funded some park improvements and maintenance staff with those funds. We also are funding some of our housing for healthy Santa Cruz or homeless funding is funded through those funds. We also are funding specifically the Office of Response, Recovering Resiliency, that new funds and the remainder of the funds are for county essential services. So the majority of those funds are being allocated to those programs and there's very little left at this point in time, about 25% being allocated to general county essential services. Those, because it's part of the general fund, it's part of the annual audit and process and it is reviewed through the annual review of the financial statements and the auditor has an outside auditor that comes in and does that review. Thank you, I just comment on contingencies a little bit further. The contingencies amount to only about 1% of our general fund and they are operating reserve. So we have a permanent reserve, which we were just talking about, which is the 10.10% that we now have. And those are strictly in very severe emergencies and only used very rarely. In fact, I don't, we used them this year, but I don't know we've ever used them before. We try not to use our general contingency because it needs to be there to carry forward. So then the contingencies in the budget are our operating reserve. And that's our first line of defense for any emergency that would come up. So it is not just a pot of money to be allocated. We have that as an operating reserve for any unforeseen circumstances, which we may have to give us some little bit of cushion. It's kind of like having a little bit of cushion in your checking account and versus your savings account. So that then you just don't want to spend it, right? Because then you have no cushion and of course we have to have a balanced budget. And so 1% as a cushion for general fund is a very small amount, it's a minimal amount. And so that's why we have that contingency fund in there and that's why we try not to tap into it as a, you know, just to use, to fund things. Thank you. Yeah, Supervisor Caput. About four years ago when we had that big storm and it looked like the levee might break at the, on Riverside Drive and Coward Road. Was that the emergency funds? We had to give the okay on that, was about $2 million? I don't remember the specifics of how it was funded, but that is an example of why you would have contingencies to first fund an emergency like that. Later you might try and get reimbursed from FEMA or others, but you have to have the cash to actually pay, in that case, it was granted rock. And it was overnight, we had to make that decision. You have to have cash to pay it. About like 12 hours. Yeah, exactly. We did use some of the contingencies last year. Some of our restricted contingencies that we had set aside for an anticipated emergency. And that's how we funded some of the initial local match needed on the fire response costs. Okay. So. Supervisor Coonerty. I have no comments. I'm prepared to move the recommended action. Second. Second, did you have any comments? Supervisor Friend. Thank you, Mr. Chavez. I had already made some comments. I appreciate it. Very good. Please call the roll. Oh, did I, is there anybody else? And for the record, there are none soon. Okay, very good. All right. Please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Malory. Thank you. Have a great retirement. Item number 14, our last item of the day to adopt a resolution for the fiscal year 21-22, budget for the county funds and special districts governed by the Board of Supervisors, adopt a resolution established an appropriation limitations for the County Board of Governed Special Districts, as shown, adopt resolutions, accepting unanticipated revenue related to the prior fiscal year and approved transfers of appropriations related to the prior fiscal year. Cancel various appropriations due to insufficient funding or contingency balance. Balances that refer to the County Administrative Office for a report back on any additionally needed actions and take related actions as recommended by the auditor to controller, tax collector, treasurer. We have 14 resolutions and a few worksheets and just the adopted budget also of 21-22. To present this is our auditor, controller, treasurer, tax collector, and whatever else, Edith Driscoll. Good afternoon, Chair McPherson and members of the board. Edith Driscoll, the auditor, controller, treasurer, tax collector. Also with me today is Laura Bowers, your County's Chief Deputy Auditor Controller. I of course wanna say thank you to Christina Mary for her presentation explaining this budget in detail. I want to acknowledge the exemplary guidance Christina has provided to our County and we also wish her well in retirement. The item before you now is the final Santa Cruz County budget for fiscal year 2021-2022. The soon to be adopted includes changes authorized by your board in June during budget hearings as well as accounting changes resulting from the fiscal year in close process. As specifically listed in government code 29088, the budget must be approved by resolution no later than October 2nd of each year. Laura has a brief presentation to highlight the budget document presented in your agenda today. Thank you, Edith. The auditor controller is required to compile the final budget and the forms formatting and content are in accordance with California state controller guidelines. This, oh, next slide, please. This table presents budgeted appropriations. In other words, budgeted exp... Next slide, sorry about that. In other words, budgeted expenditures for fiscal year 2021-2022. The data from this table comes from the schedule one in the budget book. As you can see, we prepare the budget not just for the general fund but also for special revenue funds which include housing funds, the road funds, the transportation fund and park dedication funds as well as what we call less than county wide funds which include the library fund and the county fire fund and capital project funds. Details for the governmental funds are presented in the schedule nines in the budget book. Additionally, this budget includes special districts and other agencies that are governed by this board of supervisors such as county service areas for roads and recreation. Details for the board governed special districts are presented in the schedule 15s in the budget book. Internal service funds include the information services department, personnel insurance funds and the department of public works. Details for the internal service funds are presented in the schedule tens in the budget book. Enterprise funds are business type activities and include county disposal sites and sanitation districts. And the details for the enterprise funds are presented in the schedule 11s of the budget book. Next slide, please. This chart shows the distribution of governmental funds which include the general fund, special revenue funds and capital project funds, budgeted expenditures by function. As you can see, the highest percentages of the governmental fund budget are allocated to health and sanitation, public assistance and public protection. Next slide, please. This chart shows budgeted revenues by source that support governmental funds which again include the general fund, special revenue funds and capital project funds. The two highest sources of revenue are aid from other governmental agencies which represents funding from the state and federal government, followed by property taxes. Please note that the aid from other governmental agencies has restrictions on how it can be spent. This table shows a reconciliation between the proposed budget presented on May 11th, 2021 and the final budget as we are presenting to your board today. The table is reflected in the board letter that accompanies this budget. The proposed budget estimated a net county cost of about 10.1 million, while the final budget presents a net county cost of about 16.7 million. And a large portion of that variance is made up of the 12.4 million in encumbrances, meaning contracts and purchase orders for which the county is obligated to pay in 2021-22 that carried over from the previous fiscal year. And this final table reflects the impact that government accounting standards board statement number 84 had on the final budget. For the fiscal year ended June 30th, 2021, the County of Santa Cruz implemented GASB statement number 84, which provided improved guidance regarding the identification of fiduciary activities for accounting and financial reporting purposes. And this implementation had an impact on the fiscal year 21-22 budget. At June 30th, 2021, there were many funds that were previously categorized as trust funds and reclassified as sub funds within the general fund. These new sub funds added over 52 million dollars to fund balance in the general fund. However, the majority of that fund balance, 33 million was classified as restricted fund balance as the funds were restricted for very specific purposes. 19 million was classified as assigned for health services. And with that, I'm going to pass it back to Edith to conclude our presentation. Thank you, Laura. And I would also like to thank Laura's team. They often commented that our budget is quite large and quite extensive. And I would agree with them. And part of that is, is because the funds of the County are equally quite large and quite extensive. And when you can imagine that a change that was put into place this year, such as GASB 84 created an extensive amount of work for our teams. And I really appreciate their ability to step forward and do it successfully. So this concludes our presentation of this budget. We are available for any questions. Thank you. Thank you very much again for the great stewardship of over our budget. As was mentioned by our CAO, we're a relatively very good position under the circumstances. And again, I want to thank our employees for stepping up at a time when we really needed them to make some adjustments. And especially again to Christina Mowry, our budget manager, our new budget manager is Marcus Pimentel. If you have some big shoes to fill. And I'm grateful of really to the federal and state support that we received in the COVID-19 pandemic. Without it, we just would have been buried. So it's very welcome indeed. Any questions from the Board of Supervisors? No, I'm there in the second or third. Any public comments? Sure. Any other public comments? Public comment? Thank you very much. Like a Steinbrenner from Aptos Hills. You're all right. This is a very complicated budget. I'm a taxpayer and property owner in the mountains. And as a county service area of 48 person, I request that your board consider completely removing the CSA 48 special benefit assessment for those in the CZU fire area that lost their homes and are not able to live on their property, have nothing to protect. And that was the whole basis of that new special benefit assessment tax on top of the two fire flow units that everybody across the board in CSA 48 pays. These people have nothing that will benefit by paying this tax. They have nothing left. They should not have to pay anything at all. Now your board did approve reductions and I looked through them. They make no sense. Some who lost their homes might have been reduced a small amount. But I'm begging with you. You've seen the people here. You've heard their testimonies. They've contacted you in their office. You've heard their properties. I'm sure completely remove all of the CSA 48 special benefit assessments from the CZU fire area where people who have lost their homes and their property is in ashes. It makes no sense to continue to tax them for the benefit of protecting them. When there is nothing there to protect, wait until they rebuild and then you can tax them again. But take it off now 100% for these people, please. Thank you. No other questions for the public. We do have any on the phone. There are no speakers on Zoom. No one recommended actions. Second. I'm seconded. Please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Kennedy. Aye. Caput. Pearson. Aye. Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. Very good. That is the last item on the agenda today. So we will adjourn until the next Board of Supervisors meet. Thank you very much. Have a good day. Good day.