 I will now call to order the regular meeting of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. It's January 10th, 2023. Happy New Year. And it is 9 a.m. Clerk, will you please call the roll? Supervisor Friend. Here. Cummings. Hernandez. Here. McPherson. Here. And Koenig. Here. Thank you, trade of quorum. Thank you. Begin with a moment of silence followed by a Pledge of Allegiance. My Supervisor Friend had some comments to make. Thank you. First, I'd like to just acknowledge all those that have been impacted by these storms. We have a lot of displaced residents, a lot of emotional and physical challenges going on right now. We should definitely dedicate our thoughts to that. I'd also like to take a moment to acknowledge the passing of Marilyn Litticoat who had served on this board in the second district. She was actually the second female lawyer in Santa Cruz County and sang professionally with the Zurich Opera. Well, she only served one term and it was a pretty difficult and challenging time on the board at that time and there was a lot of division. I enjoyed every year we'd get together for a coffee or lunch and I just enjoyed hearing about the history of when she served and she passed just a couple of weeks ago so if we could keep her in our thoughts. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Anyone else? All right, we'll have a moment of silence. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. CEO Palacios, do we have any additions or deletions to the agenda today? We have no corrections to the agenda today. Thank you. Does any board member wish to remove an item from the consent agenda to the regular agenda? Seeing none, we'll proceed with public comment. Any person may now address the board. The speakers must not exceed two minutes in length and individuals may speak on items listed on today's consent agenda, closed session agenda, regular agenda or yet to be heard on the regular agenda or topic not on the agenda that is within the jurisdiction of the board. Board members will not take actions or respond immediately to any public communication presented on topics not on the agenda but may choose to follow up later. Please proceed. Good morning. My name is James. It's January 10th, 2023. I'm addressing a full house of the Board of Supervisors. All males, that's great. It's gonna be much easier in the future to communicate with you men directly. Don't believe a word I say, do your own research. There's a lot of stuff going on that's really incredibly beguiling. There's an American state national, Mr. David Strait. He was told that at one time he had more open lawsuits in the United States than any other individual. He's not a lawyer. That's pretty much the biggest criminal class on the planet. I don't know. I don't think it would be that difficult to figure out a way to exceed that by a factor of 10 just in this county. So what's really changed? What's really going on? This country is run by the Rand Corporation and the Department of Defense. And we've had a lot of countermeasures that have been delivered to not just the people that live in the United States but all over the world. So it seems really sad that the Department of Defense is having a war upon its own citizens in the world. So it's just nice to be here. Nice to see all of you. And congratulations to the two new men in the room. That's great. Thank you, Mr. Whitman. Anyone else here in the public? All right, seeing none. Is there anyone on Zoom that wishes to address us? Yes, Chair. We do have one speaker online. Call and user ending in 2915. Your microphone is now available. Good morning, this is Becky Steinbruner. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Good morning. And I can't see you, but I'm happy that the board is meeting in person this morning. And I want to comment on Consent Agenda Item Number 4040. I am opposed to the county parks donating $50,000 to a study to look at trails for our county parks. Always says they don't have money to take care of our parks. In fact, they've instituted a commemorative program where they charge people to rededicate benches. And it's a lot of money, $1,300 for a bench after 10 years. You have to pay to keep the memorial plaque on it in the memory of the person that you loved. I don't think that donating $50,000 to a study to look at trails in the county is a wise use of our county parks money. I think you could probably get as good of information from the public who uses the trails and those who live near them. So please do not approve Item Number 40 or at least ask how this is really going to benefit the people. I want to also speak on Item 44, the crosswalk improvements. Please keep in mind those who are blind, low vision and have mobility challenges in these crosswalk upgrades. I've become aware of the needs of the blind through the Lions Club affiliation. It is a different world for them. And what makes sense to sighted people does not work at all for those who cannot see. And a huge problem is visible at the intersection. Thank you, Ms. Steinburner. Colin, user one, your microphone is now available. To board of supervisors, members, Bailey Pei and Justin, I've spoken many times before you at your city council meetings and provided you with documentation on microwave radiation harm from exposure to cell phones, antennas, cell towers, I call them murder towers, everywhere, including in the public right of way on Freedom Boulevard in Aptos where I reside. No neighbor has consented to this violation of our health and property rights and constitutional rights. As our county is partnering with Cruz IO, providing them with a half million dollars to install these hazardous 5G radiation assault antennas and towers throughout our county. I now again implore you to halt this 5G onslaught by Cruz IO and the telecom corporations. And I recommend you read a book by Dr. Thomas Cowan and called The Contagion Myth why viruses, including coronavirus are not the cause of disease by Dr. Thomas Cowan. And I'm looking at the chapter on electricity and disease, electricity and disease. And it refers 5G hazards, thank you. We have no further speakers, Chair. And I'll return it to the board for action on the consent agenda. Does any member of the board wish to comment? Supervisor Friend. Thank you, Mr. Chair. A brief comments on two items, item 43, which deals with the Westridge Drive project. Again, this investment in South County is unprecedented and completely needed. And as we see even today with the potential of the Papua River flooding, just the need to continue to have services in the South County. It's absolutely important. I'd like to welcome Supervisor Hernandez here. And this is a big part of his district and his constituency to make sure that we provide these services to South County. On item 44, I'd like to appreciate Mr. Wiesner who's here from Public Works. He's worked very hard with our office and other offices up here to ensure that we can bring forward these cross-rock improvements. These are currently very difficult to see locations and these kinds of high profile improvements will really improve the pedestrian safety in these areas. Once they're put in, I think it'll significantly improve especially in my district and in the area that I share with Supervisor Hernandez in South County on Green Valley. These are highly used areas by pedestrians but they're actually poor visibility areas. And so improving these areas that Mr. Wiesner is leading will make a big difference. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Supervisor Friend. Your Honor, this is McPherson. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to comment on three items on the consent agenda. First of all, now I remember 19, the FEMA claims. So I want to thank for the update on the FEMA process but I have to say that we should all really be concerned of this long process taken, how it's taken, how long it's taken to get our claims evaluated and the appeals evaluated. There's $70 million in expenses on appeal or in the pipeline that represents a large part of our operating budget. It puts a real crimp on our planning for the budget for this next fiscal year. And as I will mention our regular agenda today that especially concerns me how long it takes to receive FEMA support for damages that we have received in the last 10 days. We're not getting some things back yet for the, that are years old. Counties really can't shoulder the burden of emergency response on their own for the extended periods of time. And I really especially want to thank Supervisor Friend and his staff for working diligently to unlock some of those funds for our County. He's been very effective with the National Association of Counties, NACO, and I really appreciate his efforts. On item number 20, the statement of the vote of the election that we just had, just a couple of statistics that I think would be of an interest to our County residents. The turnout in Santa Cruz County was 63.5%. We all would like to be at 100, but that's much better than the California percentage overall of 51%. So congratulations to the voters who turned out. I wish those other third or more would do the same thing the next election cycle. And secondly, of the 104,000 votes cast, the 96,000 were cast by mail. That is really an amazing statistic. And we have over 90% of the people voting by mail. And I especially want to thank our County clerk Tricia Weber and everybody in her office for the elections process that she established and followed through on. And we didn't have any issues here on the election results. And that's good to hear, but I want to congratulate those 63.5% of people who voted. I've really urge you, the other third to turn out next time in two years. On item number 32, zone haven. Months before the CZU fire, then Cal fire chief Ian Larkin and I co-hosted a series of meetings for the County staff to learn about zone haven and the next generation of vegetation mapping in the County. It was our proactive attempt to be better prepared for the next fire season. But when the CZU fire broke out, our County was still in the process of considering zone haven. So we weren't officially using it, but chief Larkin was able to talk zone haven into using its platform to facilitate evacuations during the CZU and therefore, what's really important, we were able to evacuate more than 40,000 residents without a panic in that situation without incident or injury. And likewise, it's been important tool in the last couple of weeks that we've issued evacuation warnings in orders for parts of our County related to the flood and debris flow concerns. I'm really happy to see that this contract is moving forward and it's one of the most critical investments we can make to address our emergency response tools have in our tool shed for the emergency responses that we're witnessing today. So zone haven is very important. It tells us where some of the most susceptible areas are and how we can respond to them as quickly as possible. And I wanna thank, going back to the CZU fire and today, the evacuation orders that were put in place a couple of years ago, the fires, not one, there wasn't one fender bender. The activity of our emergency responders, the sheriff and fire departments in particular was just phenomenal. And I just wanna thank them again for what we're going through today and then what they did a couple of years ago as well. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Supervisor Cummings. Just Supervisor, if you could just press the gray button on the bottom of your microphone. Thank you. Can you hear me now? I just wanted to follow up on Supervisor McPherson's comments about zone haven. One of the things that we had also heard about that is that now that we've had some experience using zone haven with the fires and now with the recent rains, members of the public at least one in particular reached out and just encouraged us to also follow up with the residents who've been using this technology to understand how their experience has been so that as we're continuing to use this and improve that technology over time, we're taking into account people's experience with using it. And so look forward to seeing how this develops so we can continue to help residents and communicate effectively with them during times of disaster. Thank you. Thanks, Supervisor Cummings. Supervisor Hernandez. You know, I also wanna follow up on the West Ridge project. You know, I think that in addition, I think it makes sure that we have less vehicle miles traveled when people can work in Watsonville and don't have to travel to Santa Cruz. So I'm really excited about the project and we're investing in South County and providing services. But also, you know, we're providing the place that we can live and work in the same location as well as traveling to Santa Cruz. So thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Hernandez. Just a few comments. First of all, I want to echo the thanks to Supervisor Friend for his leadership working with the White House and federal partners to speed up the reimbursement of some of those FEMA funds. You know, but I think it's important to note that, especially as we're here in the middle of another disaster, FEMA is an aid, but only reimburses 75% at best. And as this item points out, we are still trying to get reimbursed for both the CZU fires and the COVID shelters in particular. And in fact, we're paying $1 to $2 million per year in interest right now just to cover some of those expenses. So hopefully our federal partners will be a little bit faster in reimbursing us for those past disasters and helping us with the present one. But I'm 26. I also want to thank Jennifer Martin for volunteering to serve on the Women's Commission. She has an impressive rear and cybersecurity and will enable her to connect with our county with federal grant opportunities for career training that will empower women with good paying jobs. On item 27, I want to thank Tracy Weiss for volunteering to serve on the commission on the environment. Her day job as executive director with the O'Neill C Odyssey means she'll bring many connections to schools to this position, which will help us broaden our outreach for county programs related to climate and the environment. I'm also looking forward to her work with the Office of Response Recovering Resilience on carbon sequestration of potential for natural lands, particularly ocean in wetlands. And finally on item 40, which is to engage in a regional contract to study trail opportunity. I'm actually very excited about this project. We hear consistently that trails are one of the most valued public resources. There was a study as part of the sustainability update that showed that people prefer to trail more than anything else, even the grocery store being within a 15 minute walk of their home. And so this look at new opportunities for regional connections for trails will be great. I think for our community and I hope that we can also undertake a county-wide trails master plan so we really drill down, particularly on our own parks and more opportunities for trails. Those are all my comments. Is there a motion on the consent agenda? Like to move the consent agenda, chair. Motion by Supervisor Hernandez, second by Supervisor Cummings. Any further discussion? Seeing none, I'm just at point of order here. We no longer need to have a roll call vote since we're all in person. We're holding a hybrid teleconference meeting right now. So I would recommend that you continue to hold roll call votes, even though the five of you are present for this meeting. All right, thank you. Clerk roll call vote please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Cummings, Hernandez. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Koenig. Aye. Consent agenda passes unanimously. Thank you. We will now proceed with item seven, which is to consider selection of chairperson and vice chairperson for calendar year 2023. It is this board's custom to rotate the chair and vice chair positions from year to year so that every district has an opportunity to undertake the responsibilities of chair and chair power equally. It was a great honor to serve as chair of this board for the last year. One of the jobs of chair, of course, is also to work with our board office analyst, Caitlin Smith in this case and the rest of the board office. And it was my honor to work with her to implement a new software platform that will better help us track constituent issues and manage communications with constituents. So I hope that new supervisors setting up their office will take advantage of that. I'm happy to dive into it further. And it's also my great honor to nominate Supervisor Friend for chair and Supervisor Dresden Cummings for vice chair. Any further discussion? Or Mr. Henders? Yes, Mr. Chair, if I may. I just wanted to spend a second actually acknowledging your work over the last year. I think you did an outstanding job as chair, both managing efficient meetings and really providing an opportunity for the community to participate, especially in the hybrid way that we did it with a lot of respect and a lot of dignity. I thought you did an outstanding job as chair and I just wanted to acknowledge your work this year. Thank you, Supervisor Friend. I think that as well as well as second motion, I think that was made. I don't believe we have an official motion, but if you approach this. Supervisor Friend to be chair. Let's kind of excuse. Supervisor McPherson, if you could please press the gray button on your microphone. Excuse me. Thank you. Yeah, I should know by now. Okay. I'd like to know how many Supervisor Friend to be chair for the 2023-4 session of the Board of Supervisors and Justin Cummings to be the vice chair. I'll wish my Supervisor McPherson. And I'll second the motion. Second by Supervisor Hernandez. Any further discussion? Oh, sorry. Yes. Any public comment on this item? Well, my public comments has changed using Whitman as Zach Friend had a really crappy physical presence here last year. I don't know why he's wearing a mask, but maybe he'll have more of a physical presence this year. Seeing no one else here in chambers. Is there anyone online? Yes, we do have a speaker online. Carl and user ending in 2-9-1-5. Your microphone is now available. Hello, this is Becky Steinbruner. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. I know that this is pretty much an automatic rotation that occurs. And I applaud that it does rotate through the different districts. And I do hope that Supervisor Friend will be present in, physically present in the board chambers for the meetings as being chairman. I would also like to request that this board re-institute a three-minute public comment time. You know, the city of Watsonville, the council members, and the provisor Hernandez, you're aware of this. They give equal time to themselves as what they give the public. They hold themselves to the time limits. And I suggest that that is a very fair time and respectful thing to do. So please, at the very least, re-institute a three-minute public comment time. Especially in the open public time, when we are given a vast opportunity to comment on a number of things, on the agenda, consent agenda, closed session, and anything not on the agenda. Two minutes is really not enough. Thank you very much. And a welcome to the chairmanship of the board. And it's a pleasure that all of you are there today. Anthony Steinbruner. Colin, user one, your microphone is now available. Marilyn Garris. And I agree with Becky Steinbruner. I called for you to reinstate the three-minute comment period and also restore the right of the public to speak, the consent agenda items like we used to instead of just having what appears to be an elite board of supervisors comments. Also, I have to say, I feel very poorly represented by my supervisor, Zach Friend, and outraged that he led the move to put in Verizon 4G antennas all over in this Freedom Day Valley McDonald area, 13 in a square mile, pulsing radiation constantly and interfering with our health. This radiation also caused the death of birds and bees. You can check out cellphonetaskords.org for much documentation. Public health and the well-being of the community is the reason you are there. It's your... Ms. Garrett, I would remind you that in fact, we actually don't have the ability to regulate cell phone facilities on the basis of public health and safety. And so really your comments are probably better directed to our state representatives. You need to speak out for our well-being. Thank you, Ms. Garrett. We have no further speakers, Chair. All right, then I'll return to the board for deliberation and action. We had a motion by Supervisor McPherson, nominating Supervisor Friend as chair and Supervisor Justin Cummings as vice chair, seconded by Supervisor Hernandez. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk will call vote please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Hernandez. Aye. McPherson and Koenig. Aye. Item passes unanimously. Thank you. Then I'll now pass the gavel to our new chair, Friend. Thank you. Supervisor Koenig, I will move on to item eight, which is a consideration of a resolution ratifying the proclamation of two local emergencies for the December 2022 and January 2023 atmospheric river winter storm events as proclaimed by the county administrative officer as the director of emergency services on January 3rd, 2023. And the second on January 6th, 2023 take related actions as outlined in the memo, the CAO. We do have the board memo as well as the resolutions and the emergency proclamations. With us today, we have Dave Reed, who's the director of OR3, Matt Machado, who is our deputy county administrative officer and also the director of our CDI and Chris Clark, who's our under sheriff. Mr. Reed. Good morning, board. Good morning, chair. Welcome to Supervisor Cummings and Supervisor Hernandez. This morning we're gonna take a few moments to overview what has transpired since the 26th, 27th of December. Wanna really highlight the efforts of my colleagues here sitting with me and their staff, as well as staff not represented here today and then give you the best estimates to our current damage and the next steps with regards to the state and our next steps. So just as a review of the storm events that have happened so far and even over the course of this evening, we had this past evening, we had additional weather events causing outages, but as a reminder, on December 30th and 31st, we had an atmospheric river event that caused significant flooding along the San Lorenzo River, the SoCal Creek for the first time in 40 plus years, Aptos Creek, Coralitas and Salsa Poitos Creek, we had significant landslides in the valley, in the San Lorenzo Valley and throughout the mountainous region and numerous road failures. On behalf of the CAO office acting CAO, Nicole Coburn proclaimed an emergency on the 3rd of January and we'll be discussing that as part of the resolution today. Then again, on the 4th and 5th, we were forecasted to have another significant atmospheric river event. The magnitude of rain was not realized based on the forecasting, however, the extreme winds from that storm event combined with extreme tidal swell and high tides around the full moon caused catastrophic damage to our coastal zone, additional slope failures, but the brunt of that storm was felt in our coastal zone. We proclaimed again, County Administrative Officer Palacios declared another emergency on the 6th. We did that in light of the fact that we're trying to follow guidance from the state regarding some of this, the sequencing of these events, our expectation and our impression is that this is one continuous event, continuous emergency, but we proclaimed again. And then on the 8th and 9th, we had another atmospheric river event occur, more significant flooding in the San Lorenzo River, additional landslides in the San Lorenzo Valley, cutting off big portions of the San Lorenzo Valley. Soquel Village flooded again, so twice in one week, not something we've seen again in over 40 years. We had flooding again in Aptos Creek, Coralitas and Salcepoides, and this storm impacted the Pajaro River flood basin, causing the evacuation of close to 30,000 people, and we've had additional landslides. So a significant amount of impact to our community over the last 10 days or so, and the efforts of the sheriff's office, our community development and infrastructure and our entire county family has been tremendous and the coordination between county organizations, county agencies, as well as the city of Watsonville, the city of Santa Cruz, the city of Capitola and the county of Monterey, has been integral in our response strategies and keeping life and property and folks safe. So I wanna first show quickly some highlighted pictures. There are far more out there, but I wanna highlight the geographic distribution of our damage. The coastal zone was spectacular and has drawn national media attention, but our community members throughout Santa Cruz County have been impacted from mudslides in our mountainous regions to road failures along our county-maintained road network. And we'll get into some of the specifics of those in a little bit. To flooding, as I said, in Soquel Village and in South County. And then the wave surge and storm surge damage to our coastal zone. This is the Rio del Mar Aptos area. These are waves from that event crashing into some of the homes. This is the home that was pushed off its foundation by that storm event. I also wanna take a brief second to highlight some of our partners. We coordinated with the Metro during that middle storm event to evacuate over 200 elementary school kids from Marin County to keep them safe. So Metro has been a great partner in coordinating that movement. We moved them out of the valley to Scotts Valley, coordinated with the city of Scotts Valley on that. And then we got those kids home safely before the brunt of that storm hit. And obviously we've been working very closely with our Cal Fire partners and the state on delivering tons and tons of sand. So this is just a picture of sand being delivered to the Davenport Resource Center to provide sand and sandbagging capacity to the community up in the North Coast. But we've had sand delivered throughout the county by our CDI staff as well as state support. With that, I'm gonna hand it over to undershare of Clark. Well, good morning, board. And welcome, Supervisor Hernandez and Supervisor Cummings. Chris Clark, undershare for Santa Cruz County. And really I just wanna give some of the highlights of our activities and really that of your law and fire teams throughout this entire event. Frankly, it really unprecedented event, as you know, impacting folks in all the communities that you serve, that we serve. To see some of these pictures, it really doesn't do it justice. I was driving around yesterday, I know likely you've been out looking at your impacted communities. And just the impact of the people living there is just unprecedented. So Cal Village flooding twice in a matter of eight days, just incredible, the storm surge that we saw impacting Beach Drive, La Solas in the city of Capitola and Santa Cruz, just really unprecedented. I'm gonna highlight a few things that we've kind of been focused on over the last eight to nine days, our evacuation planning. I'm gonna touch on zone haven, unified command staffing and then jail operation. So as Supervisor McPherson said, really if there was a teacher when it came to us for, and we're good at critical incidents, but the CZU really, I think prepared us in a kind of a really sort of terrible way in terms of really the importance of unified command, getting everybody together. And I will say, just to kind of note, back up just a minute, is that is unprecedented, a lot of this damages the impact. We've only seen one death, which granted one death is frankly too many. But I mean, to think that so far we've gotten through what we have with only that one death is pretty remarkable. But in terms of evacuation and planning, as we saw this storm approach and on New Year's Eve, as we knew we needed to evacuate people, our teams really sprang into action. We developed unified command, which essentially is just all the law and fire partners coming together, getting on the same page and really looking at, how do we share resources? How do we coordinate response? How do we work together to really get the help to where we need it, right? And in that sense, and in terms of unified command, it is something that I think in this event, where law and fire is, there's more, it comes as more second nature to us. It's a multi-jurisdictional incident, obviously as you know, through this event. And so I think it just highlights the importance of multiple entities working together to move in the same direction. And so we got into unified command, we've had unified command meetings with all the law and fire partners here in the county every day from New Year's Eve on. In terms of staffing, we went our office, as well as I know other police agencies went to 12 hour shifts for us. That gave us a lot of flexibility. At the peak, we had about 29 deputies working during day shift, about 16 at night. Obviously we needed to get through the evacuations and I'll talk about the evacuated areas here in just a second, but obviously we needed the staffing and the flexibility to get into those areas to notify people. And so that's ultimately where we started was noticing folks doing the messaging through social media, through press releases, having our deputies go door to door doing that bilingual. And in terms of even Watsonville and some of the effective communities down there making sure that even when we went to an evacuation morning, we handed out literature, both in English and Spanish, letting folks know what to expect, where to go and things like that in terms of when they needed to leave, what could they do and where could they go? And so we hit about 560 homes and I'll go through the areas. It doesn't seem like a lot, but frankly it was a fairly big lift. And I can tell you that we're working on the numbers, but it seems like about half the residents stayed at least from what we're getting back. But again, that those evacuations started and just to kind of give you a kind of a time sequence as you saw Mr. Reed talk about kind of the weather systems as they played out. When I talk about the unprecedented nature of kind of just the flow of operations to think that we've had evacuations New Year's Eve, we had evacuations again January 3rd, evacuations again January 5th for the storm surge and then evacuations again as recent as yesterday. And so, and we're going to continue to watch the weather as we go forward. Frankly, I'm interested to see, I mean knowing just how odd this whole event is, I think the real question is how does this play out in the future? And really what does this look to us and folks that live here? So with regards to the evacuated areas over the course of those four different events, I can tell you that in the San Lorenzo Valley, we saw flooding in Bin Loman in the Mill Street area. Felt and Grove and Paradise Park took an unprecedented amount of water I was out there yesterday, probably at least four feet. I could see as folks were kind of trying to clean up mud and other issues there. Riverside, and then Paradise Park and then the Riverside Avenue area in Bin Loman saw water as well. In terms of the central portion of the county, downtown Soquel as I mentioned, flooded twice as you know. And then Soquel Warf Road. In the Aptos area, we did evacuations in the Rio del Mar area where we saw two, at least a couple feet of water there in the Rio Flats. Beach Drive was hit hard by storm surges as you've seen the pictures, as well as La Solas and the Potbelly Beach area. And then working towards South County, really the impacts of the Salis Plateus Creek, Coralitas Creek and really the Pajaro River for which we continued to monitor even today. So that's a little bit of the highlights of the areas that we evacuated in terms of the jail operations. I can say that we breathed a little bit bigger of a sigh of relief there when we did some research thanks to Public Works and Mr. Machado in terms of really trying to define what our threat is at the main jail. And what we learned was that the levee is higher on that side. There was some development that went into that to better protect the main jail so that we didn't have to look at doing, even though that was a concern, doing a major evacuation to the main jail, which is, as you could imagine, a pretty serious undertaking. So with that, it's a little bit of the highlights. We still have weather to look towards. I can tell you that in terms of law and fire, we're committed to continue to do the message that we've been doing, the door-to-door messaging, and really committed to helping people get through what frankly has just, it hasn't happened before. And so we're gonna continue to do that and committed to doing that, and thank you. Thank you, Chris and Dave. Good morning, Chair and Supervisors, Matt Machado, your CDI Director, and welcome Supervisor Cummings and Supervisor Hernandez. This morning, I'd like to give just a brief overview of the efforts of community development infrastructure, which, as you all know, is the merge of the Department of Public Works and the Department of Planning together. And it's been a great team. There's a lot of great support out there. Through these series of storms, the efforts through the department have included our roads crew, our drainage crew, our flood control group, our solid waste team, our sanitation operations, our geology team and our building section. A lot of people in the field working around the clock. The roads crew in particular worked around the clock for all these storms from the beginning, from New Year's Eve on to date, we have 11 sites with permanent longer-term damage that we'll need to make repairs on. Through each storm, we saw upwards of 45 storm damage roads closed due to trees, wires, landslides, various storm damage related. And then the next day, the crews get out there and they clear that up and get those roads open. They've been working nonstop, trying to get those roads open. I will share quickly that we have one road in particular Redwood Road, where the road is collapsed and has trapped people. And so our crews have been focusing on those areas to get them open, to get people access. And that's what they've been doing for the past week. Currently in the roads operation group, we have 11 emergency contracts with private contractors to help assist us with tree removal, debris removal, repairing roads when we can. They've done a lot of work up in the Lompico area that's been a constant problem up there with closures due to all sorts of challenges. In our drainage group, they've been very, very busy with debris removal at all river crossings at all culverts. They also have been doing levy patrols throughout the night, 24-hour levy patrol. Our flood control team, they've been monitoring the rivers and streams around the clock. Our solid waste group, interestingly, they've been providing amazing support with landfill operations and dumpsters as needed. And so it really does take a team and the Department of Community Development Infrastructure has that team in place. Additionally, our sanitation group, they manage some water systems and many sanitation districts. Davenport was hit extra hard in the first round of storms. We actually were cut off from our primary water source. And so we, thankfully, we have a secondary source. We went to the secondary source for a number of days until we could clear the intake up in San Vicente Creek. And so that's been a very large lift. The sanitation group also has been clearing all of our sewer pump stations. We have about 60 pump stations across the county and they notoriously take debris in from the storm. And so they're constantly out there removing debris, keeping the generators working for power just so that our systems will continue to work. Our geology team has been out in the field continuously, weather permitting, of course, monitoring landslides and unstable ground, mostly up in the mountains, but also along the coastline. We've had a lot of issues as Director Reed mentioned, the coastal areas got impacted heavily and our geology team was there to ensure safety for our community. Our building inspectors and building section have been out inspecting buildings. They've issued 132 yellow tags. That means that that's moderate damage to homes and has some limited use, but people are still able to stay in those homes for the most part, but we'll have to follow up and look at those repairs. They've also had to place eight red tags and that's of before this last storm. All the numbers I'm sharing this morning are as of yesterday, so it does not include last night's storm. So eight red tags means you cannot occupy, so we'll be following up on those. We do expect more building inspections, more red tags, more yellow tags. We actually expect even more permanent road closures and Dave will be discussing some of the costs on those issues here soon. I wanna end on a couple of notes. With regard to our permanent damage repair, we will have to prioritize these repairs. The magnitude of them is such that we won't be able to fix them all at once. And so similar to 2017 storms, we have to prioritize and do the worst first for various reasons. We have a lot of factors that'll go into that and we look forward to working with each of your district offices to explain the why's and the where's and the wins because that's important to all of our community members, all of your constituents. Also, we'll continue to assess damage and clean up the storm debris, even from this last storm. The winds have really impacted the trees across our roads and so there's a lot of cleanup work. So it'll take us a number of days. We do look forward to keeping your board informed and all of your offices informed on our progress and our efforts going forward. Thank you. So I just want to take a quick second to highlight your emergency operations center staff and what's been going on to coordinate a lot of the efforts on behalf of the community, in addition to the work that has been articulated by under Sheriff Clark and Deputy CAO Machado. Our EOC staff has been amazing over the last 10 days coming in over the holiday and over weekends. The biggest lift for us just as a context is really the shelter and care operations as we issued the evacuations as under Sheriff Clark mentioned. We need to stand up shelters. So our health and human services departments have been phenomenal. Staff has been working very hard around the clock. We set up seven shelters, either collaboratively with the cities or individually during the first two storms and then due to the scale and magnitude of the evacuations associated with the Pajaro River, we prepared for or opened eight additional shelters or not additional, but eight shelter locations in preparation. We had over a hundred folks, close to 150 folks at our fairgrounds last night. And that takes a tremendous amount of logistical support. So our general services staff director Beaton and his team has been instrumental in managing the logistics. They have been pushing state resource requests up on behalf of the county and behalf of the cities. So as a context, because this has been so impactful across the county and to our cities, the cities cannot make resource requests to the state. We have to make resource requests on behalf of the cities to the state. So they have been managing the logistical efforts on that regard with regards to sand and other care and shelter resources. And then obviously public information is a huge effort, all of you serve in that role as well. And we've had a large team trying to get information out as quickly and efficiently as we can, update our website, created a landing page as all of you know, and we've been trying to update that continuously as shelter information changes as press releases come out. So our EOC operation staff, I just wanna highlight their efforts as well and appreciate the care and effort they've put in over the last 10 days as well. So as deputy director Machado said, we've got best estimates for damages and this does not include city damages yet. So similar to resource requests, the cities will all be issuing their initial damage estimates to the county and we'll be submitting all of that to the state. These numbers represent our best estimates right now. So road damage in excess of 21 million, park damages at 16 different sites and three coastal access sites in excess of 6.8 million. The San Lorenzo Valley Water District sustained over a million dollars in damage to some of their primary water distribution infrastructure. And again, this does not include all of the information and it does not include the most recent storms on the eighth and ninth. We're still gathering the information around those emergency contract numbers and then the city information is coming forthcoming. The other thing I wanna highlight and it was brought up by Mr. Machado is that we've received at one rain gauge as an example, we've received over 20 inches, over 23 inches in fact of rain in the last 10 days. In 2017 at that same rain gauge, we had over 50 inches of rain in six weeks. So this is unprecedented but not on familiar territory and we're not out of the woods and we're certainly not setting up 2023 to be better than 2017. It certainly could be worse. So it's something that obviously we're all looking at very closely. Our hills and mountains and streams are saturated and full and even smaller events now that come and hit us in short succession could have much more impactful damage effects. So to date right now, the state declared an emergency, an open ended emergency and ongoing emergency on the fourth of January. So there hasn't been a completion or a time window defined for that yet. And then we did get the federal emergency declaration on the ninth and what that means, they're following the federal government is following for us here in California, a similar model to what they do nationally for hurricanes. So ahead of an hurricane, they'll declare a state of emergency that's open ended and gives the authority to cover category B, which is kind of the emergency opening expenses. We expect that a disaster will be declared by the federal government. And we are hoping and expecting that the window of that disaster declaration will include all of our storms to date and anything, hopefully not, but anything moving into the future so that it encompasses all the damage that we have, they sustained. Next steps, obviously we're closely monitoring the weather. We're all begin developing recovery debris removal operations program. And we're gonna make sure to support recovery rebuild efforts. It's different than the fire where most folks, again, not everyone, but most folks did not lose their entire home and all of their belongings, but the damage is significant and they will need to do repairs. And then obviously we'll be working on the state and federal claim process as we move forward on behalf of the cities and the county. So again, before you, you recommend the actions and ready for any questions. Thank you, Director Reed, Director Machado and under Sheriff Clark. I imagine there are supervisors with questions, Supervisor McPherson. Yeah, first of all, thank you for the coordinated effort and thank heavens, we have that amongst us with the cities, counties, fire districts, whoever it might be, water districts. Thank you all for the coordinated effort. As bad as it is, it could be much worse if we didn't have that going for us in Santa Cruz County. I just listened to Director Machado. We have 600 miles of roadway in this county with unincorporated area and people say, well, gee, why didn't you fix this to get ready for this kind of a storm? There's just no way to do that to know where the trees are. So I hope people, and for the most part, people have had patients, but it happens and the immediate response that you've had is really impressive from your public work department in particular, and I really do appreciate it. The amount of rain that has fallen, do we have any idea, and this is kind of an offshoot of the storm damage, but what impact has that had in the law of climate? How much has it, do you know how much that's come up? It was down to about half or less, I think. Yeah, we got confirmation as we were concerned about this last storm in the effects on the San Lorenzo River, we did get confirmation that lock limit is 100% full and spilling over its doorway. Yeah, okay. All right, well, I just appreciate your prioritizing the damages, we were landlocked for the most part in Santa Cruz County, I know, I know there's just a few routes in and out right now, and I do appreciate not only the coordinated effort with the departments within the county, but our coordinated efforts with the cities too, because I know in the South County, probably next to the error along with San Lorenzo Valley has been hit the hardest of the two areas in the county, so I do appreciate everything that you have done. The red tags and yellow tags, it's hard to say how long it'll take for them to get back, I mean, these storms are gonna continue, so are those homes that are next to them, I'm thinking of Beech Drive and Rio del Mar, where the one house was just taken off its foundation, were there any other threats similar to that? Yeah, up in the San Lorenzo Valley, we had a number of pretty major damage sites, houses sliding off their foundations or being jeopardized by landslides and earth movement, so I would say maybe not in the same magnitude, but very close to say magnitude, our mountain communities were hit pretty hard structurally. Well, it's probably not even a proper thing to say, but thank God this didn't happen within a year after the CZU fire, because I can't imagine what the debris flow impact would have been, but it's terrible enough as it is. Thank you very much, everybody, for the efforts that you put in. Thank you, sir, if I was next person, sir, if I was recording. Thank you, Chair Friend. First, I wanna start by thanking everyone in the Emergency Operations Center. I know you guys have been working very long hours through multiple weekends now and through the New Year's holiday. Thank you for your frequent communications, including our assistant CAOs, assistant Theo Coburn, and Benson. It's really been all hands on deck and I think it has showed. I know particularly the action between storms, as was mentioned, clearing the roadways, getting the sandbag station set up was really appreciated and people felt like we were there for them. So thank you. Question in particular about SoCal Village, I know with that rapid first flood that we saw, we believe that it might have been caused by some debris build up some wood under bridges. Do we still think, I know between storm events, we made an effort to clear those. Do we still think that's what caused it given that we saw the second flooding? Sure, I'll take it and run at that. No, we don't know that it was the debris that caused it. When we actually did some investigative work after the calm of that storm, it looked like it was not just from the debris, it was just from the amount of water coming down. We don't know exactly that slug of water that if it was just due to straight rainfall or if it was some accumulation that released, it's hard to say, but at least down in the village area, I'm sure debris was a factor, but it wasn't a primary factor. It was just the sheer magnitude of the water that came down in a flash flood type of a situation is what we can see the evidence shows us. I'm sure we'll follow up into your point. We did have crews after the storm cleaning up, removing as much debris as possible, and so I think that probably set us up a little better for the next one, but to be honest, again, even the next storm was really about volume of water and not just a debris analysis. God, that sort of answers my next question, which is if there's anything we can do to more proactively manage some of the creeks and riverbeds in order to prevent this kind of flooding, but taking from your answer that no, it's just a matter of the volume of water. That's correct. Okay. Do we have any sense as to where we're issuing this emergency proclamation and that starts the long process for the state and federal claims? Do we have any sense of how long it'll be before businesses and residents can apply for some kind of assistance? Yeah, I think one of the key things that we're waiting for, and then this is the coordination with the cities is once we ask for support, ask for financial support at the state and federal level, we have a time clock associated with that. And by that, what I mean is that we have to submit all of our paperwork and the initial damage estimates to the state. So we wanna make sure that we get best estimates from the cities, coordinate submitting that ask and submitting the request for support soon, ideally this week that we send that stuff up, but we wanna make sure to not be premature ahead of the cities and put them in a stressful situation to getting that information to us. So my hope is that we're able to put that together very shortly and then be able to make those requests and get those resources coming back down for businesses and individuals. And then, I mean, businesses and individuals will actually have to apply themselves for some kind of assistance, right? Yeah. So when might that window open? So I can't give you a firm window, but we will be asking for SBA support. So that's the business side. And an SBA program is what they describe and call it. And I don't unfortunately have information on how quickly from ask to program implementation that takes, but I'll be finding that out and updating your offices. Okay, thanks. I look forward to getting that information out to people. I know they're eager to understand more about what they can do next. And I think at this point, the best is just to document everything for claims. I mean, I do, you know, surprise McPherson mentioned the, you know, it's a good thing this didn't happen right on the heels of the CZU fire. The good news is it's not the first time we've dealt with rebuild after disaster. We've got the contract with four leaf. You know, I do think that we should consider extending that contract to victims of this disaster so that we can, you know, just use that accelerated rebuild process to apply to this as well. I look forward to working with supervisor friend on bringing something for the board to consider. I also think, you know, ultimately, every way possible, we should look for opportunities to build back better. You know, it's clear now with the 2016, 17 storms and this, I mean, we were still digging our way out of the repairs for the 2016, 17 storms. I think we were about two thirds of the way through that. And now to get hit with this again, I mean, any opportunity we can to look for making our infrastructure more resilient and incentivizing people to move to safer areas if needed as well. So thanks again, everyone. Thank you, supervisor Connick. Supervisor Cummings. I just wanted to start by thanking county staff and the Emergency Operations Center for all the hard work and time that you all have been putting into responding and to helping our community address this crisis. I know that, you know, as people, I've been reaching out to me, I've been able to reach out to county staff and get responses pretty quickly to be able to get back to people and help them meet their needs. And I will say with the consolidation of all the websites onto a single landing page has really been helpful just to give somebody, give people just one place where they can go to a one-stop shop of information. I think it's been really helpful for people to understand how they can find information about roads and resources. And so it's been really helpful to see that get stood up so quickly. So thank you all for that. Thank you for all your time that you've been putting in. A number of my questions have already been asked, but I do, I didn't wanna ask, you know, what can we anticipate in the next coming days with weather events that might be continuing to impact the community? Yeah, I think we're watching that closely. We've been coordinating daily, oftentimes at three and five in the morning with our National Weather Service partners. And what we're learning, right, is they're doing the best they can to forecast for us and forecasts don't always meet reality on both ends of that. They sometimes are more intense and sometimes less. But as under Sheriff Clark mentioned, we're looking at the next most impactful storm over the weekend. But we're all becoming armchair meteorologists and we're recognizing that the best available data and make the best available decisions in terms of life and safety are sometimes in that kind of 24 to 48 hour window when the models, the climate models are more accurate. So we'll be watching closely to see how that progresses in the forecasting and keep you all apprised as to what the weekend looks like. And then the next question I had, we've stood up a number of shelters, some of which have actually helped sheltered unhoused and we've been having people, I've had people ask me, you know, where can we volunteer? Are there opportunities to volunteer to kind of help in understanding that a lot of folks are, there's a lot of work that's being put on our staff and sometimes having some volunteers could help alleviate some of the stress with that. And so I was just curious if there are opportunities for people, if they want to volunteer, who should they contact and what can they expect to do? Or is that not something that's being offered at this time? No, that's absolutely being offered. There's actually a link on our website on the landing page that you referenced to the Volunteer Center. But there are also and not to diminish the or not to highlight the efforts of our community partners. There are a lot of community partner organizations throughout the county and particularly in the South County that are working very hard on behalf of the community and on behalf of the folks that they serve. So certainly if folks want to volunteer broadly, they can go to the Volunteer Center and find an opportunity perhaps. But also a lot of those organizations, if they have relationships with folks like Community Bridges or Community Action Board as two examples of many, you know, those community organizations are out there serving and they could volunteer certainly with those folks as well. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Cummings. Supervisor Hernandez. Thank you. I also too would like to thank everyone from the County employees, from the CAO's office, EOC, the road crews and all the public work staff and especially the sheriffs that were out there at five in the morning alerting people out there in South County. And of course, all our partners, Cal Fire, Metro, all the other agencies that were involved. And you know, for all your work and all your collaboration too with all the other agencies too. I had a couple of, you know, yes, some concerns and some questions that I had is from, it'd be good if we can assure that anything that like the press releases and social media posts that we have them bilingual too for folks out there in South County, a lot of folks were asking me for bilingual materials. I know the website has, you can translate it, but for stuff like social media posts and stuff like the press releases, if we can have them in PDF in Spanish so we can, you know, share those with folks. A lot of folks, a lot of the nonprofits wanted that stuff as well too. You know, in South County we have 85% Latino so it'd be of us to have those materials over there. The other thing I think, Supervisor Koenig was asking about it, but I wanted to ask, you know, there's the creek over on Chittenden, or Chittenden Dam, there's a, I guess the USGS has a site where they monitor the river, the creek there. And I guess the county monitors the Paro River at the bridge is, you know, given that the creeks in South County are prone to flooding, especially the South Sepueltas Corralitos and the New Coworkreek, is there a way that we can monitor that and set up a form of scale that the public can look at on a website that we can, you know, the public make it safe for the public to look at because, you know, I get these alerts from the USGS about the Chittenden that gives me some kind of idea about the Paro River. And so it'd be good if, you know, we can make it public to see where these creeks are at because it came all of a sudden at college in the lake and area at Hulahan, it just came all of a sudden without notice. So if there's a way that we can monitor that and set up a scale system, you know, whether it's, I think it's at Chittenden, it's 25, it becomes the danger zone, but 32 is like major flooding. But if there's some kind of system that we can set up in the future. Yes, so that's a great question. And we do have a system in place today. If you go to the public works webpage and under the flood control, it's called One Rain. And you can get rainfall data, but more importantly to your question, you can get all those stream gauges and there's different ways to look at it. And to be honest, the one I like is to see all the different gauges at once with the numbers and you click on them and they go from green to yellow to red. And then if you click on one in particular, like if you really interested in the Pajaro, you can see all the different stages with definitions and descriptions and things to worry about and where the risk points are. And it's really informative. And one I really like about the Pajaro watershed is that it goes well beyond our own county borders. It goes all the way down well, well then through San Benito into Monterey County and it shows the entire watershed, which goes down, it's gotta be 40, 50 miles. And you can see the San Benito Creek flowing and you can see the reservoirs above the Pajaro River flowing and you can see all that data in one spot. It's very, very helpful. And I'd be happy to show you the inner workings of it. It's public facing. Everybody has access to it. It's very easy to use. It's click and point and see and it's useful. You can see, and with just a little bit of looking at it, you can see as the water is coming down through the system, you can expect it. And so beyond just a national weather forecast of rivers and streams, you can almost make your own assessment, not that any of us are the experts for it, but from a community standpoint, you can anticipate as these creeks start to rise, you can see the rate of rise and it's very helpful. It's a graphical map-based tool. So happy to walk you through that. Okay, so it's similar to the USGS one where they put that rating system, like 25 feet, your danger, 33 feet is flooding. Yes, user-friendly, very user-friendly, okay. And just for you and the community, we've linked the site that he's mentioning on that landing page under the monitoring. There's a little tab on that landing page that has all of our evacuation and shelter information. There's a monitoring and there's a link in there as well. So there's- Do you know where the monitors are for Celsius Pueres and Coralitos creeks? Yes, in fact, if you want to zoom in the map, you can see exactly where the gauge is on the creek. I don't have it in front of me at the moment, but I'll tell you the one that I watched the most closely is the Pahar River at Chinden because it's far enough out where you can see it and there's a lot of good descriptive information to see the water, but in terms of the other creeks, we've got gauge information that you could zoom in and understand exactly where they're taking those measurements from. Well, the reason I bring it up is because I think, we're going to have the federal flood project, but I think the creeks are always going to be concerned and we're either going to have to work on them or make sure that we have some kind of good gauging and monitoring of these creeks. Well, just a bit of a side note, but you mentioned the federal project and so some of those creeks are going to be addressed. In fact, phase one is the Coralitos Creek all the way back to Green Valley. Oh, let's go ahead. It's a very large magnitude project, so to your point, yes, we'll have to continue to improve our monitoring skills and keep that up because even with the project in place, we'll still have to keep an eye on it. Thank you. In terms of the McPherson, a second. So the Sausipates gauge is about Lakeview and 129 in essence in that area and the Coralitos is at, right off of freedom and basically airport or hula hand right around that corner. We're combined. Everybody's McPherson? Yeah, I don't want to get on the wrong side of the federal emergency management agency or FEMA, but we haven't seen what we've really asked for from 2016-17 and now we have this another crisis. Is there any way that we have changed our method of application or to make them more responsive? Yeah, I'd like to ask Marcus Pimentower, County Budget Manager who's been working on this very hard to try and get us our reimbursements and working with our federal partners and our legislative representatives. Yeah, it's really a nature of FEMA's overwhelmed with the COVID event that has impacted every community across the entire country. They have a lot of staff rotations. It's a concern we have. We were concerned before COVID. We're concerned during COVID. Now we've been very concerned with CZO. We've had claims that are nearly 70 million that I keep using the word stuck for no better lack of a term. You're in the process and there's just not a lot of activity. I'm thankful for the supervisors and their staff in particular Supervisor Friend's office who's been very helpful in helping us get some congressional support and that congressional support is there. So I think we've got a great, a strong story to tell. And for us it's just advocating and making sure our voices heard. There's really no problem. There's no problem with how we're submitting and the timeliness of which we submit very timely. It's just a nature of FEMA's very overwhelmed and maybe sometimes we don't have a lot of enough voice or recognition. That's understood. Thank you. And one other thing is terrible as this is, I got to go back and say to thank you to the voters in 19 or 2016 for approving Measure D and for the state legislature approving Senate Bill one. I mean, if we wouldn't have had the road improvements that we were able to accomplish in the last six, seven years, this could have been much, much worse again. But so I think that needs to be recognized. Thank you, Supervisor Farah. Before I open up for the community, I'll make some brief comments. Also appreciate the work, in particular the work of the Sheriff's Office and South County, I mean, going door to door, being with us as we did that outreach to those communities, being in constant contact with our office has been remarkable. I do have a brief question about the Redwood situation. I mean, is there any timeline at all, even a best estimate as far as providing something in, or is there at least an engineering analysis to understand what might be provided over that opening? Sure. I think by midday, we'll know which plan is gonna work the best, and then we'll have a better idea of how quickly we'll get it repaired. I think our best option today is probably using rock to fill it back in. There's just not enough stability to put a temporary bridge out there. So we think it's probably a fill and get access that way. But I think by midday, we should have a sense of that and we'll let you know. I appreciate it. I know that Director Reed had mentioned communications and the PIO and I appreciate the work of the PIO team. And also that we're in, there are different people that are experiencing this disaster in different ways and there are different phases of it. We've got people that still haven't experienced it yet that are about to experience something in the coming range. If people that are in the middle of a disaster and people that are in the recovery stage and I wanna make sure that we are, as a county, addressing all three of those phases in our communications and making sure that we're proactively providing for whatever people's needs are. It's understandable that when you're in the middle of a current event that the others don't have maybe the same level of priority, but I think to the degree that we can think about bifurcating or trifurcating, that's a word, just made a word of, into a situation that communications allows for those different situations. Because in all of our offices, we're hearing from people in different phases of it and to supervisor Cummings question about what's coming next. But I just think that that's something that we could improve on that regard. I'd like to open it up for the community now for, is there any member of the community that would like to address us on this item before we take these recommended actions? Please step forward. Good morning. Thank you everyone for that wonderful update. I just had a question. Does Santa Cruz County have a community emergency response team so that the community and citizens can be ahead of some of these natural disasters and the inevitable responses and predictable calamities that happen when I resided in a Northern California community, we had that. So the community members were in their own neighborhood groups meeting on a regular basis and practicing for these kinds of emergencies to be in immediate help. One thing I noticed is I was trapped up in the Bonnie student area by two roads cut off via trees falling down on power lines. And it seems to me that these are preventable through proactive planning and strategy to keep the power lines clear so that communities aren't shut off for indefinite amount of times on power. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else like to address us from chambers? Please. Yeah, my name is James. And I really appreciate the three individuals who were describing what's going on in the macro. I would love to expand that. I mean, in the micro, I would love to expand that in the macro. You guys didn't mention that PG&E has actually brought down a lot of equipment in the past couple of weeks, a lot from out of state as well. But to address the community member, I've been living in Santa Cruz Mountains 92, 93, excuse me, under 394. I'm probably called emergency services 50 times for lines that were down. It's just really commonplace. So it's interesting that we're discussing the really short-term events going on, but it seems quite phenomenal that in this board and what seems to be indoctrinated that we are heading towards global warming, which like most of the things that go on in this room are the exact opposite of reality if people would just open their eyes and do their own research. So I do thank the individuals for everything that is going on, but are individuals really being prepared for what could continue to happen? I mean, how is this going to change our drought situation? Are the people that decide to drain our reservoirs going to do it again like they did in 2020? Who knows? Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody else in chambers? Seeing none, is there anybody on Zoom? Yes, Sherry, we do have speakers online. Call-in user ending in 2915. Your microphone is now available. Hello, this is Becky Steinbruner. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. I appreciate this presentation. And I want to thank PG&E for really coming to this county in full force. I like their staging area at the former Skyview Drive-In. That's a great place. I was happy to hear that the county fairgrounds is being used. The county has an MOU with the fairgrounds for just this purpose. I hope that the kitchens they are being used to provide food rather than what happened during the CZU fire pre-packaged meals that created a lot of waste were brought in. And I'm glad Cabrillo College is also being used. This issue really brings to the forefront the importance of our keeping the Watsonville Airport open and available. So please, in any future land use decisions, support the airport. Aptos Creek Channel at the Soquel Drive Overcrossing needs attention. I was looking at that yesterday and the flow of the creek is now directed toward the restaurant side. And I'm quite fearful that that could cause some scouring and the stabilization there. Proactively, I wonder why the pumps on the New Year's Eve storm failed to function. And I was told that was part of the problem for the flooding that occurred along the Bridge Street area in Watsonville. And so I would like the supervisors in Department of Public Works to implement a proactive maintenance schedule for those pumps even when we're not in flood stage. I want to also ask whether it is a wise decision to centralize our county communications to the county warehouse out on Grimmer Road next to Holand when it is now at times flooded and inaccessible. Thank you, Ms. Steinbrunner. Is there anybody else online? Yes, Colin, user one, your microphone is now available. This is Marilyn Garrett and thank you for the report. And this is indeed a dire situation and much appreciation to all the people who are working during this disaster. You said FEMA is overwhelmed by the COVID event. Somebody said that from my reading that was a pandemic. And when resources and lockdowns actually harm people, not help them and deplete funds that damages the public. I read this book called Living Downstream and ecologists look for cancer in the environment by Sandra Steingrubber. And she said, people got very good at rescuing those coming downstream who were in stages of drowning, but no one goes upstream to see who's pushing them in. And her book is a journey upstream to see what's causing the cancers. Now, in this instance, what is causing or some of the causes of these multiple disasters? And I wanna refer you to something that lands inside. It's a website called geoengineeringwatch.org with Dane Wiggington. And he talks about climate engineering, which there are patents for being the elephant in the room to these disruptions. Patents are held by Harf, Raytheon and Lockheed. And he said- Is there anybody else online? This is our last speaker. Mondo, your microphone is now available. Hello, can you all hear me? Yes, we can, thank you. Okay, I was especially moved by the staff member that was talking about how there's red tags and yellow tags being issued throughout the county. And as we all know, we're facing an aging community and it's gonna be extremely unlikely that an elderly folk is gonna be able to repair a busted roof, a house off a foundation or a road that's been washed away. And to this point, I had a family member who just graduated with his master's degree in architecture. And I saw him over Christmas and his mother who owns a property here as well as construction had a stroke. And I was like, and I talked to him and I said, hey, you know, maybe you should consider moving back. We have a lifetime worth of work for you here and you can be close to your family. And his response was, in part of my language, there's no way in hell I'd ever move back to Santa Cruz County. He says the only way you can get anything built there is if your name's Barry Swenson or if it's some sort of government-funded big housing project. The numbers just don't work out for a small guys. And to that point over the years, we've seen our labor force either age out, retire, or if they were young enough and healthy enough, they moved away to areas where we're building a sustainable even during the good times. And I find it ironic that we're facing a disaster now, but we're also facing a disaster from the past because we no longer have the labor force now to move us forward. And I know that some of you are reaching out to get federal funds and man, we are really hoping for you on that, but realize that that money is not gonna go near me far as far we don't fix our housing crisis. And to that point, Felipe, you're also on the board with the Cabrillo trustees. Please let the construction program at Cabrillo know that the community, that we love them and support them and wanna help you. Thank you and I know. Are there any other speakers online? We have no further speakers, Chair. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Before we bring back to the board, just to address a couple of the questions that were raised. Yes, we do have a pretty robust CERT program in the county. You can go to Santa Cruz County CERT.org to learn more about it. And PG&E does have the ability online for you to file a request for tree trimming along power lines that you can do directly. Are there any members of the board that have any other comments or it would be appropriate now to make a motion? To advisor Cummings. Yeah, thank you, Chair. One last comment, which was before we went out to public comment, I was just reminded that we also had heard some comments on the communications when certain zones are becoming either under warnings or evacuation orders. That in addition to using the codes from Zone Haven, they were also using the names of those neighborhoods because for some people they might not know exactly what zone the neighborhood is coded for. But if you were to say, you know, it's, I don't know, near some streets in Bonneton or Davenport Landing or what have you, that that might get people to, it might trigger them to know that that's, that they're a part of that evacuation warning area or that they're being evacuated because there were some comments that were made that, you know, during some television shows where we get the emergency notifications and the banner runs across the bottom that it was just showing the zones and the codes for those zones rather than any description of the neighborhoods. So just wanted to mention that so that we keep that in mind when we're communicating with people about what zones are under warnings or under evacuation orders. Thank you. Thanks, Supervisor Cummings. Is there a motion for the recommended actions? Oh, move the recommended actions. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Koenig and a second from Supervisor McPherson. If we could have a roll call, please. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Hernandez. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Friend. Aye. Item passes unanimously. We will now move on to item nine, which is to consider selection of Team Sobrante, which is doing business as Artful Catalyst, LLC is the public artist for the Live Oak Library Annex and improve the contract with Team Sobrante for an amount not to exceed $80,000 and take related actions. This is outlined in the memo of the Director of Parks, Open Space and Cultural Services. We have the agenda item report, the artist proposal and the contract. And I believe we have Director Gaffney, the Director of Parks of our Parks Department and Commissioner Paula Woods as well. Director Gaffney. Good morning Chairman Friend and welcome Supervisors Cummings and Hernandez. Great to have you here. Jeff Gaffney as a Supervisor Friend pointed out, the Director of Parks, Open Space and Cultural Services. First of all, I just wanted to share my true honor and support for what we did at the OC and what we're continuing to do. It was really special to get a chance to work with Deputy CAO Machado and Under Sheriff Clark and Director Reed this last week or so. And it's a lot of work and we're all a little exhausted so it's nice to be here and not be at the OC but I just want to let you know incredible staff that they have working for them and I felt really honored to be a part of that. And today we get to do something else which is another wonderful thing that we get to do with government. We get to talk about arts, which is really exciting. And so without any further ado, I'm gonna introduce District One Arts Commissioner Paula Woods. She's gonna come up and talk about two proposals. One for Aptos Library and the other one for the Live Oak Library Annex which is coming back to you because we needed some direction on that and we listened. So thank you, Arts Commissioner Woods. Thank you. Good morning, Board. My name is Paula Woods and I'm a County Art Commissioner. The Arts Commission is pleased to recommend for your approval today an artist proposal for the Live Oak Library Annex. A call to artist was issued and an art selection panel convened. Proposals were reviewed and the finalists were interviewed by the panel. Team Sobrante was selected to continue in the selection process. At the November 7, 2022 meeting, the Arts Commission reviewed the panel's decision and voted to recommend that your Board approve the selection of Team Sobrante as a public artist for the Live Oak Library Annex. I'd now like to introduce to you the artist team who will give you a brief presentation of their proposal and then answer any questions you might have. So I'm honored to introduce David So and Linda, AKA Team Sobrante. Good morning, Board. It is truly an honor to be presenting our work called Letters for Live Oak Library Annex Public Art Project. Is that going to be stable? Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Since our presentation was rescheduled to January 10th, we had a little time and the artists, they are the actual artist team, husband and wife, decided to make a small model of what the actual final project would look like. Because we believe that looking at a model is much more helpful to visualization process. I'm going to give you a brief background about this project. The sculpture will be created using approximately 3,000 various sized metal letters. And then they will be arched with a piece of metal welded to form the final sculpture that will be seven feet tall, approximately eight feet. And then once it's completed, let me give you the process first. The sculpture will go through a sandblasting process. Then several layers of powder coat will be applied in sparkling ocean blue. This color was to honor the Santa Cruz community that wished to see more colorful art in their environment. The finished sculpture will be seven feet tall by 7.8 feet wide, which includes the letters on the ground and 8.8 feet deep. So this is going to be a quite large sculpture. The sculpture is depicted as a bent figure in the process of putting down on the ground inspirational words that describes the accumulated knowledge, information, aspirations and ideas that every community seeks to realize. Communities are formed from small family units that ultimately contribute to the larger world communities. This sculpture letters shows us in words our potential to contribute to our community. This is one of the reasons this work needs to be part of the Live Oak Library Annex. So that the communities can come together at their local library. As you can see, I don't know if you have the map. Oh, the map is on the screen. This will be located at the drop-off location and the entrance. But with safety and flow of traffic in mind, we believe this is the most appropriate location for the sculpture. And considerations, this will be powder coated so that it will be pretty much impervious to the weather. And so we felt like it was an important safety issue as well, so that it's not sharp. So, and that is the very brief introduction to the letter sculpture. Thank you very much. And if you have any questions, we'd be happy to answer. Thank you, Supervisor Koenig. Thank you, Chair Friend. Thank you, Team Sobrante, and thank you to the Parks, Open Space and Cultural Services Department for undertaking this process again. I think that, and I also wanna thank Commissioner Paula Woods and Arthur Solway from the first district who volunteered and really did some outreach to make sure we had as competitive as possible a group of applicants. I think we had, we did succeed in that and there was a lot of really compelling proposals and there was a lot to choose from. So you guys have triumphed over, I mean, some other very great artists as well. I know there is tension around, well, should we do something that celebrates that the natural history and environment of the Live Oak environment or something that celebrates what's gonna happen in this space and in the library annex itself. And I think this vision is simple but compelling and deeply moving. I feel that even more just seeing it in person here. I think every time I would be dropped off at the library if I was a student studying or just going to find some quiet time be inspired by this statue. You said that it's the figures putting down letters. I also see that he's picking up letters acquiring knowledge as he goes into the library. And I think it's, as I said, a simple but profound comment on how we are made up of the things that, of the words that we've gathered over a lifetime. Thank you. I think this will be a really wonderful addition to the Live Oak community. Thank you. Thank you. Couldn't agree more. Any other supervisors have comments where we open it up for the community? All right, we'd like to open it up for the community. Is there anybody in chambers that'd like to address us on this item? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, is there anybody online? Yes, we do have speakers online. Anne, your microphone is now available. Hi, my name is Anne Hazels and I'm with Radius Gallery. And I'm just speaking on behalf of my experience working with both David and Suja Choi. I had them in an exhibition just very recently. And I just want to speak to their professionalism and the reception to the community. Their work would be an absolute honor to have in our county. Their art is really a reflection of interconnectedness or the hope for it, which is so very perfect for the annex at the library here in our county. And I think this is a really powerful form of expression. It's the richest way to unite us. And I really look forward to seeing one of their sculptures here. Thank you. Thank you for those comments. Thank you. Other speakers, Madam Clerk? Colin, user two, your microphone is now available. Congratulations and art is so vital to life. I think of this quote that might have been I'm the signer, Schweitzer, the best refuge from the miseries of life are music and cats, but I think we could add art into it. So I'm glad to see that this is happening. Unfortunately, the libraries have so much wifi and antennas. I avoid going because it makes me feel quite sick from the radiation symptoms, but I'm glad to see art. And I wanted to take this opportunity to say you need to change the message when people call in because it states you will be muted throughout the meeting. It doesn't tell those phoning in press star nine to raise your hand. Please change that. People are not able to speak to the board, which is their right because of this misinformation. Please put on their star nine to raise your hand so that you won't be muted throughout the meeting. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Garrett. You have no further speakers, Chair. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Stunning, stunning pieces of artwork. Thank you for submitting that. I'll bring it back to the board for consideration. I'll enthusiastically move the recommend of actions. We have a second. I'll second it. We have a motion from Supervisor Koenig and a second from Supervisor Cummings. If we could please have a roll call, Madam Clerk. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Hernandez. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And friend. Aye. Item passes unanimously. Congratulations. Now we'll move on to item 10, consider the selection of Leah DeWitt as the public artist for the Aptos Library Project approved an agreement with Leah for an amount not to exceed $106,000 and take related actions as outlined in the memo. The director of parks, open space and cultural services. We have the report, excuse me, we have the board memo, the artist proposal and the contract. Please. Paula Woods again, County Art Commissioner. The arts commission is pleased to recommend for your approval another outstanding artist proposal, the one for the Aptos Library. The artist previously approved for the Aptos Library public and art component as that his contract with the County be terminated. Leah DeWitt was a finalist in the selection process and was interviewed by the panel who found her proposal to be highly high quality and appropriate for the Aptos Library. The arts commission reviewed her proposal at the November 7, 2022 meeting and voted to recommend your board approve her proposal. I'd now like to introduce you to Leah DeWitt who will give a brief presentation of her proposal and answer any questions you might have. And I'm not sure is Leah here? Oh, she is here. Good. I didn't know if she was gonna get down to the hill. Hi. Hi there. Thank you Paula. All the way from Boulder Creek. All the way from Boulder Creek. It was adventurous. Say the least, I'm so a little rattled, I think. Thank you all for the time. I appreciate it. Thank you Paula. Thank you Jeff. So my name is Leah DeWitt and I'm an artist living and working in Santa Cruz County as they said in the suburbs of Boulder Creek. I'm thrilled to be presenting to you today my proposal for the Aptos Library. It's a two-part proposal and I believe the clerk is gonna help me advance. Oh, thank you. Okay, super. Great. Well, we'll see if I can handle this. Okay, so I'm proposing two series of steel and glass sculptural panels for this project. And basically I wanted to celebrate the natural beauty of the Aptos community. It's part of the design of the library. They're celebrating the redwoods to the sea, the nearby Monterey Bay in the design of the library. And so the two components of my proposal celebrate both those natural assets of the area. And so here's the first set of sculptural panels that would comprise the fence line on Soquel Drive and be adjacent to the outdoor teen area of the library. And here I've designed an abstract wave design that would flow through the panels. It'd be uplifting, inspiring. And in the next slide, I'm shy of even answering this. There we go. In the next slide, I'm showing, what I'd like to do is reach out to the advisory council of teens to work with reaching out to the Aptos High School art students about soliciting them for ideas for additional elements to add to the panels. Here I've suggested kelp, garibaldes and enemies, lively, bright, playful, whimsical, happy imagery that would flow beautifully with the abstract wave design. And let's see, next slide. Okay, this shows the location. So this is along Soquel Drive, right there in the outdoor area of the teen section of the library. The seven continuous panels, or excuse me, the seven adjoining panels would be, we could prize about 18 feet long, six feet high. And I didn't say it. So made out of weathering steel, aka core 10. So meant to go to rust and with kiln form glass panels. So natural light will help those to glow and be more vibrant as the changing light throughout the day, or with the changing light throughout the day. Okay, so the next section is the children's garden. I designed two sets of their panels with a central gate element on hinges. And with this, I tied in the portion of the library theme that is the redwoods, celebrating the redwoods. So I designed little critters, floor and fauna from the redwoods environment and banana slugs, mushrooms. Excuse me, the kind of redwood bark, especially this time of year, how it gets greened up with the rain and have a nice flowing design, have it be inspiring and uplifting. And there'd be two sections of the panels with the gates that are approximately five feet wide, six feet high. And they would communicate with each other through that redwood bark element that would be flowing through the designs here, the redwoods' sorrel and ferns that you see in the redwood environment. And let's see, this shows the location having both sets of panels with gates flanking the children's garden area, excuse me. That's pretty much it, the proposal. Basically, I think that what I've proposed here works really well with not only the library design celebrating the natural environment of the redwoods to the sea, but also designs that really, I think, speak to patrons of all ages from children to adults captivating them with bright colors and iconic imagery that's really meaningful to the Aptos environment. And not only that, I think these designs integrate really well into the built environment, the design of the library. And I didn't mean, thank you very much for your time. That's pretty much it. I would be honored to create this artwork for Aptos Library and I'll take any questions. Thank you. Thank you, do any of my colleagues have comments before I make comments? Surveys or Koenig? Yeah, Leah, I just want to say I've seen your artwork throughout the community but the new Kaiser facility downtown here, the Felton Library, it's really inspiring every time, particularly like the butterflies in the Felton Library. And it's great that we're going to have an installation here that really displays such a breadth of your work. And as you said, I mean, these look great on the screen but I know that they look even better with the light shining through them. And as you said, they'll change a little bit throughout the day. So enthusiastically support this as well and we look forward to seeing it. Thank you. Thank you, Surveys or Koenig. You made the mistake of saying you're a fifth district residence. Now we have to hear the prayer. Yeah. Surveys or Koenig, if anybody goes to the Felton Library, they'll see how magnificent that she did there too. And it's just really nice that a touch of all the creek is coming into Aptos. Thank you. Any of my other colleagues, are you all right? Let me just say, I had an absolute pleasure to thank you, Damon, for a recent tour of the Aptos Library. It's going to be just a magical place and this is only going to add to it. My son is very excited about the children's area, as you can imagine, and has been involved since the very beginning in the entire design idea. Every time we got a new design, I'd have to show it for his vetting, even though at the time he was seven and just turned eight. But he's going to love this. This is perfect. This is going to create the kind of memories exactly what we want for a once in a generation opportunity of a library remodeled to also uplift, not just local artists, but this reflection of our community in a way that your art does. It's a beautiful submission and we appreciate that you took the time to do it. Thank you very much. Is there anybody from the community, though, would like to address us on this item in chambers? Is there anybody online, Madam Koenig? Yes. Call and use your 2915. Your microphone is now available. You are on me. Thank you. This is Becky Steinbruner. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. I also had to speak on the other previous item, but was not called. So I just submitted some written comment and mostly thanking Supervisor Koenig for his actions earlier that has led to a much better piece of art at Live Oak Annex Library. So I am delighted to hear about this coming at the Aptos Library. I like that, especially that the artist is willing to reach out to the art students at Aptos High. I think that's marvelous and would also encourage her to contact the Junior High and maybe even the elementary schools to get them to become involved. That will pull them into this whole project and encourage them to come visit and make use of this wonderful new facility that's coming to our neighborhood. I just, also whenever I go to the Felton Library, I appreciate the art there. It's beautiful. And at the Live Oak Library, the access to the children's area that is you're walking through a plexiglass seaweed wall is marvelous and also very functional in terms of isolating the sound that can come from that area. So thank you, I support the arts and I'm delighted that you're going to be the artist in lead at this project. And again, thank you for involving local art students and students interested in submitting their ideas for art at our library. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other speakers? We have no further speakers, Chair. Thank you. I'll bring it back to the board for consideration. Is there a motion? Right back. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor McPherson and a second from Supervisor Koenig if we could please have a roll call. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Hernandez. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Friend. Aye. Item passes unanimously. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. We'll move on to the last item of the regular agenda before we go into closed session. That's item 11, which is to consider approval and concept of an uncodified ordinance reinstating the Board of Supervisors delegation of authority to the auditor, controller, treasurer, tax collector to invest funds in the county treasury and to schedule an uncodified ordinance for the second reading and final adoption. On January 31st, 2023 is outlined in the memo of the auditor, controller, treasurer, tax collector. We have the board memo and the proposed ordinance and we have a presentation from Mr. Scholar Auditorial Controller. Welcome, good morning. Good morning. Good morning chair and board members and welcome to our new supervisors. The item before you is an administrative one. It presents an uncodified ordinance to reinstate your board's formal annual delegation of authority to myself, the auditor, controller, treasurer, tax collector. This delegation is to invest the funds held in your treasury pursuant to government code and specific sections of the Santa Cruz County code. Due to an administrative oversight, this annual request was not made since 2020. I therefore request this be reinstated and an ordinance is attached to facilitate this. I'm available for any questions. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any board member questions on this item? Seeing none, is there anybody from the community and chambers that would like to address us? All right. Is there anybody online? Yes, chair. We do have a speaker online. Colin user ending in 2915, your microphone's now available. Well, this is Becky Steinbruner. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. I remember that supervisor, former supervisor Coonerty once made a clarification to this code asking that there be some level of monitoring how the investments were made more particularly to what causes or corporations they would support and making sure that those investments are in line with our county's social and environmental interests that we have all expressed. So I would like to respectfully ask that your board consider forming an ad hoc committee to again, refresh those filters if you will or parameters of how our county's money is invested and reported back to your board and to the public on a regular basis. Thank you, Ms. Steinbruner. Are there any other, all right, we'll close public comment and bring back to the board for action. I'll move the recommended actions and also just come that we do have a treasury oversight committee which I'm happy to serve as the board's representative on. So certainly something that we can consider where those investments are being made with that committee. I'll second it. We have a motion from supervisor Koenig and a second from supervisor Hernandez if we could have a roll call please. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Cummings. Hernandez. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Friend. Aye. Item passes unanimously. Thank you. The board will move into closed session. Is there anything anticipated to be reported about a closed session? Not today. All right, our next regular agenda will be on January 31st at 9 a.m. That'll close the regular meeting.