 We're going to bring to order the March 26, 2024 meeting of the County Board of Supervisors. I'd like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Here. Friend. Here. Hernandez. Here. McPherson. And Cummings. Here. Next item on our agenda, a moment of silence. I'd like to ask if there's any board member who'd like to dedicate the moment of silence today. It's seeing none. I'd like to dedicate the moment of silence to John Frile, and I'd like to ask the County Ministry of Officer Carlos Palacios to say a few words on behalf of John Frile. Thank you, Chair Cummings. Members of the Board, John Preal was a very important person in the history of Watsonville Community Hospital. He was the CEO of the hospital from more than a decade in the 90s, and he oversaw a very difficult time period before the Affordable Care Act was in place. And if you remember, in those days, a great majority of our population did not have any health insurance. And so the hospital was seeing very difficult financial times as they were serving a very vulnerable population that often did not have any health coverage. The hospital at that time almost went bankrupt, and in the end was sold to a private entity as kind of a last resort to keep the doors open. Mr. Frile oversaw that process. It was a very difficult time. And then he came back when we turned, when we were able to save the hospital from bankruptcy through the efforts of your board that you authorized us to make some extraordinary efforts to rescue that hospital, along with other community partners such as Salud Padalejante and the Parapak Community Health Trust and many others as well. He actually got involved and became a member of the first board of the health district. And so his leadership and his knowledge, he was a longtime CEO of hospitals. He brought a lot of historical knowledge of the hospital as well as the health care marketplace. And he just did an extraordinary job and was an extraordinary person. And so I guess when we all leave our time on earth, we all want to be remembered as having done something to make the community a better place. And he certainly did. He'll be much, much missed in our community. And he did some really, really good work and important work for all of South County. Thank you for those words, and he will be really missed. And so with that, we'll take a moment of silence for John Frile. And I'd like to you all to stand and join us with the Pledge of Allegiance. I believe that it's to the right of the United States of America, to the Republic that stands on one nation, God, and is equal with liberty and justice for all. Before we move on our next item, I'd like to read in land acknowledgement, the land on which we gather is the unceded territory of the Waswas-speaking UP tribe. The Amamutian tribal band comprised of the descendants of indigenous people taken to Mission Santa Cruz in San Juan Bautista during Spanish colonization of the Central Coast. It's today working hard to restore traditional stewardship practices on these lands and heal from historic trauma. Next item on our agenda, I'd like to ask the County Ministry of Officer Carlos Palacios if there's any additions or deletions to consent and regular agendas. Yes, Chair Cummings and members of the board, there are two corrections on the consent agenda. Item number 36, there's additional materials. There's a new attachment. Contract 24H0343 cover sheet and insert after packet page 372. And then on item number 40, there's additional materials revised attachment A, Santa Cruz, Cal, dash, SIP, replaces packet pages 417 through 440. That concludes the corrections to the agenda. Thank you. I'd like to ask if there's any board members that would like to remove an item from the consent to the regular agenda today. Seeing none, we'll move on to item five, which is public comment. This is an opportunity for members of the public to comment on items that are not on the agenda or they're able to comment on items that are on consent or the regular agenda. Just noting that if you comment on regular agenda items at this time, you will not be able to comment on those items when they come before the board. I also want to mention that today we have translation services available for Spanish to English, English to Spanish. I'd like to ask the clerk how these services can be accessed. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much, Chair. For anyone, any individuals requiring translation services, please just indicate that at the beginning of your public comment time so we can have our translator begin her services. And I would also like to remind folks that accessing translation services will not impact the amount of time that you have to speak. Your time will be paused while the translation is completed. Thank you. Thank you. I'd like to ask the first member of the public to please approach the podium. Yes, my name is Carl Barris. I'm a local builder and I've been in this county for 50 years. I've approached the board of supervisors in the past about situations within the building department, which need some addressing by the supervisors today. I'm currently talking in a specific project, which was reviewed by the county and I'm the builder. It represents about a three-acre parcel that was reviewed and bid on by six separate contractors, all of which were bidding on what we call a stormwater, a really huge remediation program. They all came up with almost the same bid and it was almost $200,000 for a single family dwelling. That particular dwelling has a 1,100 feet long road, about 9,000 square feet, and the county came back with a plan which was approved for nine separate remediation zones. And the cost of that remediation looks like it's $200,000. So the family can't afford that and I just approached many times the county personnel and they said it's the guidelines set forth by the county, which require that much remediation. I think that's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker please, personal podium. Thank you. My name is Edwin Pitts. My wife and I have lived in Blue and Gold Mobile Home Park for 23 years. The Cyclone Fencing, which was put up by Union Pacific, has been the recognized rail corridor property lines for over 50 years. The fact that the RTC was unaware of the actual property lines until last year, even though the corridor was purchased over a decade ago, underscores the understanding that the fencing indicated property lines. Thus, there were never any encroachment issues. Half a century of use, in fact, by residents now being told to pick up and move. This has already begun to destroy equity in our homes. Many residents have no recourse. We lease this land. We are not landowners. Moving these homes by separating sections basically destroys the integrity of the homes. Many residents have no recourse if our homes are moved. We know that one well documented cause of homelessness in today's society is a catastrophic financial hardship, which occurs in an otherwise stable living situation. All the homes in these parks have met all the requirements of the landowners when they were installed. And then they were signed off as they were installed, placed and hooked up properly. We can't move forward. We can't move to some other place. There are no open places in the parks in the county of Santa Cruz. We notice one solution that is being ignored and that is continue to use the same corridor borders which have been observed for over half a century. Why is this being ignored? Let's all recognize that this much money does play a part. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, Honorable Board of Supervisors. My name is Emily Chung. I am the Public Health Division Director in Santa Cruz County Health Services Agency. I'm here today to thank Chair Cummings and the Board for recognizing next week, April 1st through 7th as National Public Health Week. We honor National Public Health Week every year at this time to recognize the contributions of public health professionals and advocates across the country, especially in our local community, and to raise awareness about the critical role of public health to improve the wellness of our community and to protect wellness. The theme for this year is protecting, connecting and thriving. We are all public health. The theme really resonates for us in this community and how we have addressed public health concerns widely as individuals, as constituents, as community organizations and local electives. We've seen it in the work we've done in the COVID-19 response. And even today, as we are addressing Shagala outbreaks here, as well as the day-to-day work that our public health team do in terms of emergency preparedness, health education across a broad number of health topics, addressing prevention of opioid epidemic and youth behavioral health issues. We're doing daily work that is not just public health employees. It is our community members. We have numerous community-based organizations who address public health every day. So we want to thank them for today in addressing health equity and helping us achieve better health every day for everyone. So I want to thank you all and invite you and the community to recognize anybody you know who works in the public health profession and recognize their work. I want to invite up one of our colleagues, Danielle Maydon, who is going to share a little bit more about the work she does as a health educator. Thank you. Hi, Board of Supervisors. Thank you so much for having me today. My name is Danielle Maydon. I'm a health educator with tobacco education and prevention. During my short time here, I've seen just how important the work that we do is in assisting with prevention of tobacco in the youth space as well as our peers and colleagues. So yeah, I want to talk a little bit about National Public Health Week. As Emily mentioned, part of the theme is we are public health. How many of you this morning have brushed your teeth or worn a seatbelt to work? These are just a couple of examples of where we see public health make an impact in our daily lives. You can learn a little bit more about National Public Health Week. Next week, we have a social media campaign where every day we feature a different theme and we have a couple of events that are going on. Downtown Farmers Market will be there. That's Wednesday, April 3rd from 1 to 5. And we'll also be at the Watsonville Certified Farmers Market on Friday, April 5th, 2 to 5. So yeah, we hope to see you there and engage some community members. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you all for your hard work on this very important item. Hello and good morning, Chairman, Board of Supervisors and Madam Secretary. My name is Charlie D. Walker II. I am a good, hard, dedicated IHS worker and a proud member of SEIU Local 2015 of Santa Cruz County. We are here today because IHS's contract will expire soon. We want to keep you as keep us in mind. We are essential workers that take care of the most vulnerable in our communities. We care for the disabled and elderly with personal assistance and other services that can so they can live safely in their homes. We feel that we deserve better wages to support ourselves as well as our families with the cost of living going up. A raise of $20 an hour would help us make forward steps in life such as better education and training, pay bills, buy groceries, better transportation to go to and from our clients home also help us to have a warm place to lay our heads and not be in the streets. Fast food workers will start making $20 an hour for work they do. And we at IHSS refuse to be left behind with the many jobs we do such as household chores, personal care, like dressing, bathing, paramedical services just to name a few. Inflation has gone through the roof and it's getting harder to make ends meet with the 1875 an hour. So in conclusion, I would like to say be that new board of supervisors of Santa Cruz County that makes a difference by IHS workers in 2024 because we want more in 24. We want more 24. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Maria Hernandez and I'm a home care provider. I see the importance of having our family members or our vulnerable people in their own homes. Why is this important? Because I worked in a house of care and they don't care for what they deserve. Why? Because there's not enough staff, because there's a lot of them. They're dependent on one. We have to do it. You can take a break so we can translate. Thank you. Good morning board. My name is Maria Hernandez. I'm a home care provider. It is important for having our vulnerable family members to be in their home. I worked in home care and I know that they don't have sufficient workers. As my co-worker mentioned before, we are here to remind you we are working and we deserve that you consider us as workers so that we can continue to move forward. With your support we can all live a life in dignity for us and for our loved ones. That is all. Thank you and have a good day and we look forward to seeing you in our negotiations. Honorable supervisors, today over 2300 people in Santa Cruz County work hard to provide your grandmas, grandpas, brothers and sisters with whatever they need to live in their homes with health, safety and dignity. Like my mother, Kathleen Stratton, who worked for California Rural Legal Assistance and served this county for 17 plus years. We are in home support service workers and we humbly ask that you remember us during our contract negotiations in May or June. And that you provide us with a wage and living conditions that allow us to meet the ever increasing cost of food, clothing and shelter in our community. In other words, we want you to allow us, pardon me, to also live with health, safety and dignity. Thank you very much. We're here for the railroad. Am I supposed to talk now or wait? Can you speak into the microphone we couldn't hear you? I'm here with the Castle Mobile Estates. Am I supposed to talk now or wait? This is for item 10 that's related to the RTC. Right. You could speak now if you'd like or you can wait until that item and speak. Just know that if you speak right now you can't come back and speak again on that item. Okay. Thank you. All right. Are there any other members of the public who are here in chambers who'd like to speak to us today? Please come forward. Hi, Board of Supervisors. My name is Beth Friedman and I'm an IHSS Worker. And I think I'm speaking to just have the consideration for the contract renewal because it is expensive to live here. And I know my main client who I've been with for a while, but I have an unusual stick to witness that a lot of people don't. Retention is an issue. Like when you find a caregiver, you want to keep them because you're building a relationship that's meaningful and it's intimate when you're doing things like these personal home care tasks and stuff like that. And I know just to even on behalf of my client, like the wage increase would make a difference for the level of retention that the other care team members would have that don't have the same level of stick to it. Probably so. Anyway, I'm speaking to that retention cost of living. And thank you for your consideration when the contract comes up. Thank you. Yeah. Alright, seeing no other members of the public here in chambers like to speak to us. I'd like to see if there's any members of the public who are online. We'd like to speak to us at this time. Yes, chair. We have speakers. Colin user one your microphone is now available. There are Santa Cruz County is a vital agricultural area dependent upon bees and pollinating insects among other factors. Here's a quote from Albert Einstein. If the bees disappears from the surface of the earth, man has no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more humanity. Mobile communications are a key cause for the global disappearance of the bees. This board should be prohibiting and removing this cell phone cell power antenna, etc. wireless documented death technology. Here's a recent publication from cell phone task force dot org. The newsletter is entitled and this is from Mark's 20th. Where have all the insects gone? Satellites are taking them every one. The least noted and greatest assault on earthly life brains on us from the sky. This is Arthur first and birds writing. Nature's wire is strong above us from horizon to horizon carrying the electricity that helps power our bodies. And the information that informs our growth, healing and daily lives now carries dirty electricity. Millions of frequencies and pulsations that confuse ourselves and organs and dim heart nervous systems be we humans elephants. Thank you so much. All in user 9902 your microphone is now available. Good morning. My name is Nina Beatty. Two weeks ago, the Coastal Commission allowed PG&E to dump Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant sediments at Morro Bay and Montana Day Oro State beaches. This 40 year accumulation of sediment will be dredged from the intake Cove very near the outfall and barged up the coast to Morro Bay and dumped 1300 feet offshore and waves will carry it onto the beach. The plant contains radio isotopes tritium cesium strontium 90 and others from the outfall discharge and air fallout and leaks from the plant supervisor coming second in the motion to approve and then voted to approve this. Can you imagine the uproar if PG&E wanted to do this in Santa Cruz at Lighthouse Field National Natural Bridges or Aptos State beaches or near Pleasure Point or at Carmel or Malibu or Santa Barbara. The commission could get away with it because Morro Bay is a small isolated town, not near any urban or high visibility areas. Supervisor Cummings, you wouldn't have done it to Santa Cruz County. I find it a shocking action against the public, against the ocean and against the earth. We have no further speakers chair. Okay. With that, I'll bring it back to the board to see if there's any supervisors like me comment on the consent items and I'll start to my left with supervisor McPherson. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have several items on the consent agenda. I just like to address the public number 34 of the public defense pilot program funding. I want to thank the public defender, Heather Rogers for bringing this request to the board and providing information about how these funds have assisted on the work of resentencing efforts. It's a big task. I support the state continue to provide full funding needed to meet the mandates in the way that doesn't create shortfalls in the public defender's office or the county overall. So thank you again to the public defender. And I'd like some additional direction, if I could, on that to ensure that those letters that they're going to be sent to the legislative leadership that they also be sent to the offices of Senator Laird and assemblywoman Gail Pelerin. So that's on their radar and the state budget negotiations. On item number 35, the mobile syringe services program update. This was highly discussed for many, many months previously and I want to thank the health services department and staff who've been working on to evolve our SSP program into one of the more effectively that meets more effectively our communities needs. This issue has been largely board directed as a policy matter for many years. And I want to thank our board for giving our staff the flexibility to model a program that is designed to reflect the best practices while addressing emerging trends and community concerns regarding our operations. I do appreciate the growth of outlined in the report related to new unduplicated participants, as well as syringes collected and distributed. I'm especially pleased with the participation that the county program has amid the interruption in exchange services by the arm reduction coalition, which was directed by state regulators overseeing the program. I'm also glad that the downtown streets team is reporting a decline syringe filter litter around the community. It would seem that our efforts to meet people where they are through mobile exchange is helping in that regard. And I do really appreciate the downtown streets teams efforts and that the report also outlined some barriers to offering mobile services to in specific locations of Santa Cruz and Watsonville, as well as other logistical challenges. And our staff is working on those details while also supporting our fixed site locations on at M line and freedom. I would like our board to have a more detailed discussion on whether there are additional policy or revenue resource adjustments that we need to make the support the program and make it even stronger. So again, I'd like to offer some additional direction to have the HSA, the health services agency to return to the board in September with an item on the regular agenda to review the pilot program and any policy recommendations from the staff that they believe might strengthen our efforts to increase participation. Number 41 Metro. Thank you to our human services staff for working with Metro to provide the service to our South County Government Center. This is another example of making strides and our efforts to better serve South County residents. Much appreciated Metro is doing some phenomenal things and free rides and for students and others to it's they're really doing a great effort with some grant funding that it's received. Number 43, the Quail Hollow Grant program Quail Hollow Ranch program. We want to thank our parks department for pursuing a grant for the trail work in Quail Hollow, a phenomenal park in my fifth district. We know the community of volunteers who help maintain the park appreciate us do the regular park users. We have a consistent, highly dedicated group of volunteers for the Quail Hollow Park, which is an outstanding park. There's items 46 to 51 all. They all address the storm repair contracts and boy we have many of them. I want to we should thank and acknowledge and appreciate the huge amount of work our public works team has gone through in preparing and executing contracts for repairing damages in the atmospheric river. We know we've had seven national disasters in the last seven years and how we keep up with it is it's not fast enough for many people but it is amazing of what we've been able to do. What this public works department has been able to accomplish with the funding that it has these contracts really do reflect our focus. The county is placed on addressing these repairs as quickly as we can with the resources that we have and I'm much appreciate the public works department. The item in the last one is number 52 the short term rental compliance. I think the planning staff for implementing compliance strategies on an issue that was prioritized by the board, thanks to the leadership of supervisors act friend to reduce the impacts of unpermitted rentals. I'm glad to see that the efforts have resulted in identifying and pursuing unpermitted short term rental owners as well as encourage a route to clients who are possible. This is not just a matter of protecting community character and addressing affordable housing impacts. It's also about realizing transcend occupancy tax revenue that taxpayers should benefit from to support our core services. That is all I have to say on the consent agenda. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you supervisor first and supervisor Hernandez. Yeah, just two brief items. I want to speak on number 36 and 41. You know, our CEO mentioned the passing of Mr. Frail and all the work that he done for the Watson community hospital and I'm glad to see that we're continuing this tradition and and supporting the hospital in youth behavioral health services that are going to be provided for our county and for South County as well. So and then the other one is 41. I really want to thank our CEO and the former Metro director Michael tree for reaching out to us and and providing these services. I believe that if I'm not correct that it's going to be one of the 30 minute circulator electric buses that goes through and once they get their second bus. They'll have it'll be 15 minute run times there that will run into the South County service center. So thank you to, you know, the Human Services Department and Michael tree. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor. Thank you, Mr. Chair to comments on two items versus item 21, which is the update on the artificial intelligence work that the county's done. I just want to say that the county has taken a leadership role at both the state and national level in regards to this. In fact, our local policy that we created is now being used as a model policy for both through CSAC and the National Association of counties. I think that the work that our information services team and our CEO's office is doing on this is very innovative of ensuring that we can maintain privacy and protections. We're also trying to harness this emerging technology and the advantages they can bring to the broader community. It's very unique. And I think that it's a model to follow to have an inside working group of early adopters helping really pressure test this internally and ensuring that the value set of the broader communities maintained. And so I just wanted the broader community to be aware of how much the country is actually looking towards Santa Cruz's leadership on this. I serve on both the state and national commissions regarding this and our policies and the work that we're doing, including today's update is constantly being used as a model for other communities. So appreciation for the staff on that on the 52 on the vacation rental item. This was an update that I had requested because the previous update didn't have a lot of information on the enforcement side. We appreciate that this is a more robust and I understand that that staff has been hired to kind of address this just as a point of kind of history and context for a couple of my colleagues that are newer. And just a little over a decade ago, there were no vacation rental regulations in the unincorporated county and and we had gone through multiple iterations of first establishing and then strengthening them and then realizing that we didn't have true revocation processes for bad actors. That's all been built in and so now turning back toward the planning department the planning staff. The tools have been given by the board for enforcement the tools have been given by the board for revocations to the expectations that they can be used for those purposes. Otherwise, it doesn't really make sense to have these kinds of regulations we've created caps have created guidelines. We know that it can impact neighborhoods and impact affordable housing so the degree by which it seems as though this process has started it will be an extra port to see how those tools are fully being utilized but that's why we the board gave those tools to the planning department was to make sure that they got effectuated. Appreciate it Mr. Thanks so much. Supervisor Koenig. Thank you chair. I want to begin with I'm 26 and thank our chair for putting this item on directing directing the chair to send a letter to the US Coast Guard expressing opposition to the proposal to replace the Santa Cruz whistle buoy with a virtual aid to navigation with the harbor partially in my district I've heard from a lot of the boating community about how essential the mile buoy is I mean in fact our community already rejected the first proposal to get rid of it. So it's a little frustrating that we're seeing this proposal come up again. I was planning on sending letter individually but I think it has a lot more strength coming from the entire board and I really want to thank chair Cummings for your leadership and fingers on. I'll just touch on a couple of the other items my colleagues also mentioned item 36 ratifying agreements with Watsonville Community Hospital for services for the Interim Behavioral Health Youth Crisis Diversion Project. I want to thank the Health Services Agency for working to get this contract in place. I know that they're been working overtime to get a long term solution to youth mental health in place in our community and we're doing that with the Youth Crisis Stabilization Facility in Central County at the Sheriff's Center where we'll have more beds available but we do need that interim solution and so really HSA has stood our Health Services Agency has stood two solutions at the same time and I just want to recognize that incredible work. It's necessary because right now unfortunately youth in crisis are going to the emergency room at Dominican Hospital probably one of the worst places for people to who are suffering from a mental crisis. And so this just goes to show the interconnectedness of health and our entire community and the fact that Dominican Watsonville Hospital and the county are all working together to create these solutions is fantastic. On item 41 I'm also pleased to see this this agreement with Metro which will provide regular service to the South County Government Center. We're doing a lot of amazing things at Metro and I'm incredible that 40% of our potential customers or visitors to South County Government Center actually see that they would use Metro to get there. So this is an incredible opportunity to expand service there and I want to thank our County staff for putting this together. And finally also really happy on item 52 to see the short term rental enforcement program report. You know you can make laws all day long but if there's no enforcement they don't add up to much and I know there's a lot of constituents in my district who are breathing a sigh of relief to see that these there's finally some teeth to our local short term rental ordinance that 88 citations have been issued and I understand that the first relocation of a short term rental permit happened very recently. So we do need to define the limits here and remove permits from bad actors. So again I'm really happy to see this program in place. That's it. Thanks. Thank you very much. I have a few questions and some comments and I think I'm going to start with number 23 which is as a HSA recruitment and retention committee report. It was great to see this report come forward but I did have a couple questions and so maybe if staff is available for these. I'm the first I was just wondering if staff could explain the automated screen process and how it kind of works because one of the things I found with you know like USA jobs for example sometimes applications get submitted they look for keywords and you might have good candidates who just because they didn't know how to you know plot the application properly so that they would make it to the next round can get filtered out. So I'm just wondering if you can just speak to that a little bit. Sure. Good morning. A Gita Patel personnel director. So in our letter we notated that the pilot that we're using to do the automated process we are actually currently because it's new to us and because there can be unintended consequences on demographics. We're also manually double checking right now because it's new. So what's happening right now is as applications are coming in for the mental health client series. We are pushing them through into our job apps automated plat recruitment tool software tool and it's screening for education and experience and of course it's looking at the words and to see what's happening. Our staff are double checking those right now because it's new for us to be doing this and so far it's good and I think the goal that we have is as we continue to utilize it. Thinking about when we're having supplemental questions where folks are writing a narrative. We want to grow to being able to use it but we are checking that whole issue on buzzwords. We're finding on education experience a very narrow view of it. It's working well. So feel assured that we're not kicking people out because we're doing the manual check right now and I think we're going to have to take some time and get to a place of comfort to know that we can use this and know that we haven't kicked folks out who could otherwise be qualified. So we're taking it slow. That's great. Thank you so much. The last question I had was around the recruitment because I know that I saw on the report that CSU students were being targeted. But I was just wondering if there's any kind of high school targets or community colleges, you know, for the four year institutions where we're targeting just so we're maximizing in our reach. Absolutely. In general, for all of our positions, we are getting back out into the community post COVID and we are hitting high schools to start growing our talent pipeline here in our community. We're hitting the normal community colleges around the area. Of course, Cabrio being one of our biggest and last year we did our first Cabrio college internship fair on campus and that was a great success. So in our letter, what we were referencing is the fact that for the mental health client series, there are very specific schools who hold programs for which we're going to need to recruit from because the mental health client special series, we need bachelors and masters for the level two. So the CSUs that we're trying to target for this particular classification, we're trying something new where we're outreaching to ones like Sonoma, Fresno area that we have not traditionally gone out there. So we're doing all the ones in our neighboring areas as we always would. Great. And I just have two more quick questions. The next one is just wondering how this process has helped with staffing levels have we seen an increase in staffing since the implementation of this program since last year. So we started implementing these new strategies in the fall. And so we're going to need to measure and see if we get any new positive outcomes from these strategies a little too early right now, but I will say that if we harken back to the December 12 letter, we actually had a chart in there that showed just in general, we're making more hires in the mental health client series. And I think that that may just be a post COVID sort of folks weren't looking for jobs. Now people are looking for jobs. Again, we're seeing the pace pick up a number of applications that we receive this pasture have increased. So I think in general there's good news, but these strategies will have to measure in the next few months. Thank you so much for your hard work on this. I know that this is an important topic for many people in our community and make sure that we have, you know, enough mental health workers to help meet the need and so that the current workers aren't getting burned out. So we really appreciate your work on this. And I also just want to, you know, ask that you keep us posted on the grant for new hires and for the mobile crisis intervention program. That's something that many people have said that they want to see happen. I'm gonna, my dear colleague will answer the question. That was just a comment. I just said, yeah. So, but you can, you can, I mean, you want to speak to it. Please, please come to the mic. I'll start and I do want to highlight. Good morning, but for the record Monica Morales Health Services Agency director. I do want to highlight that Ajita is correct. We actually when we came to you and you saw the grant your report behavioral health division was at a 30% vacancy rate. We're now at 23% vacancy rate. So we're seeing a lot of significant progress. Obviously, we still have some areas of growth for us specifically in some of these classifications that are a little harder. Like our client or mental health client specialist, but making great progress and I'm kicking out to Karen to talk a little bit about the grant and what we're hoping to do in terms of bonuses and retention. Hi for the record Karen current deputy director of behavioral health. We are our crisis services staff manager Daniel long applied for a grant for specifically for retention and recruitment bonuses. And so we were awarded that grant. I think it's $500,000 off to get back to you on the exact number. So we're now looking at like how to implement that. So, and then there's also a variety of loan repayment programs through the federal government and also through our local state Cal Mesa that offers repayment for people that are in public positions in behavioral health and so we're also exploring those. That's great and thank you so much for your work on this important topic and thank you for helping to secure that grant so we can keep our workers around. The next item, item number 25, I just wanted to thank public work staff for bringing this office's attention. This is related to marine flares and marine flare disposal. And so, you know, shifting that cost from the county to the state. I think it's a really important thing for us to do. I also want to thank Dan Haley item number 26. He actually brought the mile buoy item to my attention and asked if I would write a letter and I thought, well, why don't we just put on the board and get the board to write a letter. I really want to thank him for bringing that to our attention. I remember 35 certain services I share the sentiments expressed by Supervisor McPherson about this program and how it's rolling out and I just want to express how grateful I am to have this program in our community, knowing that we're making contact with individuals out there who need help and we're meeting them where they're at. And I think, you know, it's really important that we're building relationships with some of these individuals because hopefully that will, you know, build trust and will help people get into treatment and ultimately into housing. And so just want to thank our staff for all their hard work on that. Item number 36, the youth behavioral health at Wattenville Hospital. I just had one quick question around whether that is a lot facility and then the number of individuals that can be served at that location. Good morning. Again, Monica, we're on this health services agency director. So I think we'll clarify a little bit. We're working on a long term solution, which is going to be our 5300 SoCal facility for a permanent youth crisis and residential facility. We're hoping that that goes live sometime late summer or early fall of 2025. In the meantime, we know that there's still a dire need for us to have civilization facilities for our youth. So we're partnering with Watsonville Community Hospital to put in place a temporary site. So that's where it's not a locked facility. It's just a stabilization facility right now that we have in place. So hopefully, hopefully we'll have it in place by April. Thank you. And then how many beds or how many? So it's basically as individuals need support. The idea is that we are going to encourage our community to start using Watsonville Community Hospital. There's no limit. We do have an average of about 3 chairs set aside for this. But on average, we're noticing and it gives and takes throughout the year, depending on honestly, kind of the season that we average about 20 a month. So, you know, hopefully the three chairs should be sufficient just based on what we know of current data. Thank you very much. I did want to go back to item number 34. I'd share the same sentiments expressed by Supervisor McPherson on this item and just also in addition to the to the to sending letters to the offices of Senator Laird and Peller and I just would also like to add that we send letters to speaker Rivas and supervisor and Assemblywoman Addis just given that they all overlap with our county. And so I think that would be good that we're trying to hit all at the same time. Next item item number 43. I'd also like to share my appreciation for the parks department and securing the grant for Quail Hollow. It's just really great to see that our county and our staff are continuing to own resources and from other sources and that we're able to fund some of our open spaces. Item number 44. I just had a quick question about when this is the North Coast facilities plan and I was just wondering when should the board expect this item to be on the agenda. It's been kind of long and outstanding and there's a lot of work that's been done on this plan. It's within my district. And so I just like to see if staff could clarify when this will be coming to the board. Thank you for that question. Go ahead and chair Cummings members of the board. My name is Rob Tibmore my park planner and leading the North Coast facilities management plan. We expect to bring that item to the board on April 30th for acceptance and file and there'll be a presentation on that item as well. Thank you so much. Thank you. And then lastly, just item number 52 related to vacation rentals just want to thank the staff and want to thank my colleagues on the board for all the work that they've done over the years on enforcement and and having some policies around vacation rentals. I continue here concerns from residents whose neighborhoods are turning into vacation rental ghost towns where they once had a neighborhood and now they have a bunch of empty houses and I think that the fact that we're in a housing crisis we really need to try to protect as much of our housing stock as possible. And for those people who do have vacation rentals that they're having the minimal amount of impact on our community. And so with that, I just wanted to also make a comment on some that was raised during oral communications. I want to first thank SCIU 2015 for their support on our sales tax measure. They along with many other community members were supportive of that effort and with that being passed by the voters can really help us have ongoing financial support for many projects and services that we want to provide. And so I guess one thing I just like to mention is that hopefully when this comes to the board that we can have a compensation study so we can see how those workers, which currently just compared to other communities within our vicinity so that we can make sure that they're up to parity and that we're not. And we're able to retain and recruit folks based on those wages. And then finally, I just want to ride the board in this in the community with an update. Last week I was able to take a trip to Sacramento to lobby on behalf of the county and also lobby with the seat of Santa Cruz for more funding for their armory. And for the county really we're emphasizing, you know, the impacts we have around disaster relief and the need for funding through Cal OES reimbursements. I'm also advocated on behalf of the county to receive more funding for homelessness, especially that's village, which is a specific project where with funding shortfalls, maybe the state can help kick in some additional funding to help support that project. And then was able to express our concerns with our state elected officials in CSEC around the marine protected area designation and AT&T's care of last resort issue. And just wanted to make sure that folks understood the position of the county on both of these issues and in particular with the marine protected areas that our county really wants to be working with. For the petitioners who are asking to expand marine protected areas, we really want them to work with our local elected officials, community members who are going to be impacted and our local scientists to determine what would be most effective for our community in terms of how we can conserve our environment and also allow for people to engage in those environments. I think that we have a community that's done a really great job of conservation, especially within our marine areas. And it's really important that if we want to make any changes to our regulation that's done in collaboration with the folks here who are doing that work. And so with that, I will end my comments and I'll turn back to the board for passage of the consent item. We have some additional language added to item number 34 by a supervisor Pearson and supervisor Cummings and we also have some additional direction added to item number 35 from Supervisor McPherson. And so I'd like to look to my colleagues to see if someone will be willing to move the consent. Second, so we have a motion by Supervisor McPherson, second by Supervisor Hernandez and my understanding with that motion to also include the additional direction. Okay. Any questions, comments? Seeing none, I'll turn to the clerk for roll call vote. Supervisor Koenig? Aye. Hernandez? Aye. McPherson? Aye. Friend? Aye. Cummings? Aye. That motion passes unanimously. All right. So moving on to our regular agenda, I'd like to invite up Rachel Kippen, co-chair of the Santa Cruz Tobacco Education Coalition and local anti-tobacco youth-driven efforts throughout Santa Cruz County. This will be a presentation to the board and to the community. And so thank you, Rachel, for joining us today. Thank you so much for having me. Good morning, honorable supervisors. My name is Rachel Kippen and I'm the co-chair of the Santa Cruz County Tobacco Education Coalition and I'm also an educator with the Santa Cruz County Office of Education. Thank you. Tobacco Youth Prevention Education Program. And I'd like to first start by thanking Supervisor Cummings for the historic proclamation of take down Tobacco Day on April 20, excuse me, on April 1st that was proclaimed today. And I'd like to give you some background information of youth-driven efforts to take down the tobacco industry. Okay. And I'd be remiss to not, of course, thank so many of our partners. I'd like to let you all know that this is just a highlight presentation. This is by no means exhaustive of all of the work that's happened throughout our county, but just some really great examples that we have. So, of course, our Santa Cruz County Tobacco Education Coalition extends throughout the county with public health leaders as well as environmental leaders working on tobacco control. Our Santa Cruz County Office of Education's 2-Pay program works with youth specifically in regards to prevention, intervention, and cessation tobacco products. And our Pajaro Valley Prevention and Student Assistance Organization does a ton of work in South County on these exact same issues. And they also hosted the Empower Watsonville Teen Leadership Program, who have done tons of work in this arena. And our local nonprofits, Watsonville Wetlands Watch and Save Our Shores, who've been incredible partners on tobacco product waste cleanup. Okay, so I certainly remember being a teenager and I imagine you all do as well. And during that time, adults might have come to your classroom and said, don't smoke this, don't drink this, don't have that. And you might have said in response, well, I don't even know what it looks like to be 30 years old and I can't imagine that I ever will be so nice for you to share that with us, not super relevant to my life. We've noted amongst our organizations that were really effective when we use the local environment as a reason to think about pushing back against the tobacco industry, especially here in Santa Cruz County where so many of our youth care about it. So just to give you a couple examples in the photos here, you'll see an elementary student from San Lorenzo Valley Elementary who's doing a tobacco product waste cleanup. We have students from Dewitt Alternative Education Program and All Girls Program where they're doing a sample off of the Santa Cruz War for Plainton. We make the connection between plastic pollution in our Plainton samples coming from tobacco product waste items like cigarette butts and vape cartridges. And that last photo is another all said student group star community and they're looking through a Plainton sample for plastic. So they monitor, they clean up, and they collect this data so they can come forward to our elected officials. And just a few more examples, every year we partner with Save Our Shores, our local cleanup organizer who has done more cleanups probably than anyone else in the Monterey Bay region. And we host our annual coastal cleanup day with them. You'll see in this photo a young child who has created an art display. This last year we had for every tobacco butt picked up, students created these very cool messages on fake cigarette butts to place in the sand where they found the butt so that the public could see the impact of what's usually a small item that most folks just walk right by. And also our students are noting the other types of tobacco product waste beyond cigarette butts. Like I mentioned, vape cartridges and packaging plastics that are found in our environment that we found at our beaches like natural bridges. And that last photo is Cyprus, another alternative education program who's taken great leadership cleaning up Sunny Cove Beach and addressing cigarette butt waste at the Starbucks parking lot there. Certainly want to mention that this is an entire county effort. So in South County, New School, an ALTED program in PVUSD has taken leadership of Watsonville Wetlands trails and cleaned up in that middle photo hundreds of cigarette butts from the plaza collected by Watsonville High School and Miss Satina C. And that last photo pleasure point we have again star community, they monitored and picked up tobacco waste and take that data and brought it forward to push local resolutions to address tobacco product waste. I would be remiss to of course not mention El Nido, who is a alternative education program in Cabrillo campus across from the plaza. They've done now a multi year study where they have cleaned up quadrants of plaza collected cigarette butt data and brought that forward to Watsonville Council. And they also created some really compelling outreach campaigns you'll see a little cigarette butt container that they created that was bilingual and messaging that they brought to smokers in the plaza encouraging them to take their butts with them. They also did outreach at the Watsonville Earth Day Day of the Child Festival at their own booth and they came to council and they presented their data in Watsonville. They were one of the reasons that Watsonville passed a resolution declaring tobacco waste and environmental and public health issue. And that's been declared by almost every jurisdiction in this county and we're still working on it. And last but certainly not least Santa Cruz County has been a leader in banning the retail sale of flavor tobacco. And that's because our youth have stood up and said, No, thank you. They're recognized that they have been targeted by the tobacco industry with flavors like bubblegum and cotton candy and unicorn poop and lollipop 14,000 plus flavors that are not targeted at myself for you folks. But at folks who are under the age of 25 with their brains still forming with a higher likelihood of having addiction throughout their lives. So here you see folks from Watsonville wetlands watch who came to Watsonville City Council and new school as well as our empower Watsonville teens. They really pushed for that local flavored ban. As a result of teen and youth leadership, we were one of the strongest flavor bands in the state. We were the second as an entire county to ban flavored tobacco and we were the largest by population. So these final little notes to take away from this presentation, youth are targeted by big tobacco and they know it. They relate to educational themes such as caring for others caring for their younger family members, their siblings and caring about social justice and environmental issues. And because of them, we've been able to accomplish so much in tobacco control. They also demand that we do more. And so I want to thank this board for being leaders that you all have been in your individual communities and as a governing body. And I'll just end by reading a statement from one of our Watsonville wetland teens. Hello supervisors, my name is Emil Juarez and I am a climate activist and work with Watsonville wetlands watch. I'm here writing you today with the hopes of encouraging you all to advocate and be part of take down tobacco day. One very problem common problem I see in marginalized and struggling communities is the use of substances such as tobacco. The self poisoning of the body and mind in addition to the harm to the environment due to manipulation by big corporations. I've seen loved ones suffer due to the praying of these products and their lives such as tobacco filters that claim to be easier and safer for the smoker. Giving a lie for the dying smoker to hang on to nothing changes until it's too late. Like my beloved family or my cousins claim that they can't live without smoking or vaping. I'm afraid that they won't be able to release themselves from this harm until they find themselves in terrible danger. So I call on you to serve your community by being part of the process to take down the manipulation and destruction onto the people and our climate just so that a rich corporation can make money off of our suffering. Well, I think that's really eloquent for a teenager. I certainly couldn't speak like that at that age. So I just wanted to offer this brief highlight and take any questions. And again, thank you so much Supervisor Cummings and everyone for your time. Thank you so much for your work on this really important topic within our community. I'd like to see if there's any board members who have questions for Ms. Kippen at this time. I just want to say thank you for your collective effort, especially getting the youth involved in this. I remember cleaning up with the beaches and the tobacco cigarette spots were a predominant issue that we had to face. And what they do to our fish life and the aquatics in general is just amazing or terrible, terribly amazing. But for the interest of public health and environmental protection, thank you. And every one of your colleagues that has participated in this is very much appreciated and I'm glad we're on the front page with this. Thank you. You know, in South Carolina, we have the cleanups every month and I think there's a couple of those scheduled on weekends where if we can get some of the youth to participate, that would be great. Yeah, awesome. Thank you, Chair. Yes, thank you, Ms. Kippen. The incredible work you've done so much over the years to continue to bring this to the forefront of our community's minds. I've personally participated in a lot of beach cleanups with you. I think one of the most recent ones which Chair Cummings was there as well. It was really great getting youth involved, just putting signs by all the cigarette bus that they saw. I mean, it's alarming how many there are actually on the beach and when you start training your eyes to see them, you realize they're all over the place. So we're excited about the work that our community is doing moving forward to address this issue. I know I've got some calls scheduled with a number of our tobacco retailers to look at options for addressing this in a more significant way. Thank you. I just wanted to appreciate your passion on the item and how consistent of a voice you've been in the entire time that I've been on the board or most of the time that I've been on the board. And a lot of the things that the board has done are the issues that we brought forward and the bans and the changes that you're working with public health have come because you've raised these issues and worked with county staff and elevated it to our consciousness. So I appreciate you reflecting it back to us, but we wouldn't have done it without you bringing this to us. So know that a single person's made a pretty significant difference in helping shape not just local tobacco use, but also helping shape state policy as a result of the work we've done. So thanks for the work that you've done. They're passionate for it. Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and share those comments and, you know, I'll open it up to the public. I know this is a presentation, but I'll invite members of the public who'd like to comment on this and you'll have two minutes and then we'll bring it back for some final comments and so Thank you. Open up to the public. If any member of the public like to speak on this item, please approach the podium and you'll have two minutes. Mike, Mike Rotkin. I just want to say what's most impressive about this program is the way they engage young people. So many of our programs are adults talking down to kids telling them what they ought to do or not do or whatever. And this is such a great model for how you can organize people to do something in their own defense and get them active in doing something about it. So I want to say that. Thank you. Good morning, honorable supervisors. My name is Dr. Heather Thompson and I am the school based health manager at Santa Cruz County Office of Education. I want to first just acknowledge Rachel Kippen for all that she has done for our community and certainly taught me in my new position. I wanted to also say that I was hired in response to the COVID pandemic and the many issues associated with student health over the last several challenging past few years. One of the things I love is overseeing the tobacco use prevention education program, also known as to pay to pay is funded by the CDE. And you can see the excellent work that Rachel Kippen and many other agencies have done with the to pay grant funds. I also want to continue to note that there is a real rise in vaping across our youth, including both nicotine and cannabis. And one of the pictures in our presentation you saw the vape cartridge. What big tobacco is doing is exploiting our youth and it's shameful on a daily basis their marketing and they're telling our youth that by vaping and smoking it's going to decrease their anxiety. And this is a lie actual doing vaping and smoking and it leads to an increase in mental health exacerbations. And we must continue to address youth addiction head on and with compassion and non judgmental positive regard for our students and they're being exposed at a much younger and much earlier age. And this deep regret to inform you that we are seeing referrals across the state for vaping for third graders and elementary school children. So I want to express my deep gratitude sharecomings for this historic proclamation of takedown tobacco day. And I want to thank each of you supervisors for the work that you've done in partnership with multiple agencies over the years to help control tobacco in our school communities and our community at large. As you've seen from today's presentation, our youth are demanding we do better and that we do more to fight back against big tobacco. I'm truly inspired and in servitude of their leadership. And I just like to think I'm cut off but you can wrap up. Okay, just I would love to end by reading a brief excerpt from a high school student letter you all received. Greetings, supervisors. My name is Katsali McGanya, resident of Watsonville. I'm here today to express my support on takedown tobacco day. And I want to express my disdain for tobacco and how people are targeting young people like me with nicotine to get them addicted so they can buy more product. I hope that there will be a change soon and I also want to express my support for the legislation to get rid of tobacco, which I know is almost impossible. But I'm tired of picking up cigarette butts off the ground and I'm tired of seeing people my age smoke and get addicted to these awful products. Thank you for reading my letter. Have a nice day. Katsali McGanya. Thank you. Thank you so much. Good morning, supervisors. My name is Tara Leonard and I'm a senior health educator in tobacco education and prevention at the county health services agency. And I'm here today as well to commend supervisor Cummings on his proclamation declaring April 1st takedown tobacco day and voice my support for ongoing efforts to stand up against big tobacco throughout Santa Cruz County. As my friend and colleague Rachel highlighted in her presentation. County youth have been absolutely central and organizing for some of this region's most progressive tobacco related policies, including banning the sale of flavored tobacco products that primarily target youth. Thanks to our dedicated youth and committed community partners. Santa Cruz has been a leader in this issue, paving the way for the statewide ban on the sale of flavored tobacco. And I thank the members of the board for their leadership on that issue. And the youth have also brought awareness to the health equity and environmental justice issues surrounding tobacco waste. They've facilitated tobacco waste cleanups, they've collected data, they've created outreach materials provided education to peers and to the community. And they've championed efforts to address the most persistent pollutant in our watershed and on the Monterey Bay beaches, cigarette butts. So I also want to share an excerpt from a letter sent to the board from one of our local students. I'm writing this letter to address the growing problem which looks never ending. I'm a steward with Watsonville wetlands watch where I and 11 other high school students spend our time learning about the environment and teaching fellow students about said environment. Time and time again, wherever I go, I see tobacco products littered on our streets. I'm in support of a ban on tobacco, and you are the ones in control of this. Think about the family that you love. Do you want them to see all of this mess? Thank you. Thank you so much. Any other members of the public would like to make a comment on this item? Seeing none here in chambers of any members of the public who are online would like to comment on this item. Yes, yes chair we have speakers. Colin user one your microphone is now available. Marilyn carrot. This is a good move. Did you know cell phones are referred to as big tobacco too? I'd like to see an effort like this to remove cell phones and the technology. I have a book here toxic sludge is good for you lies damn lies and public relations industry. By John Sauber and Sheldon Rampton 1995, we could say toxic cigarettes are good for you. Lies damn lies toxic cell phones are good for you. Toxic AI is good for you and go with a long list. The book open with an introduction by Mark Dowey called torches of Liberty. So we have to ask how did we get here on on the surface? It seems like an ordinary public publicity stunt for female emancipation, the pre depression equivalent of women's liberation, a contingent of New York debut times, March down fifth Avenue in the 1929 Easter parade, each openly lighting and smoking cigarettes. It was the first time in the memory of most Americans that any woman who wasn't a prostitute had been seen smoking in public. It was dubbed the torches of Liberty contingent by Edward Bernays. It's brilliant behind the scenes organizer. Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud's later admitted that he had been paid a tithing son to orchestrate the March by George Washington Hill, President of the American Tobacco Company, but long before the public learned who had. Any other speakers online. We have no further speakers here. I'll bring it back to the board. This is a presentation. It's not an action item. If there's any other board members like make any further comments seeing none. I just want to thank Rachel you and the folks in this community for all your hard work on this effort. You know, it's a thing, especially now that we're, you know, we know that cigarette butts are made of plastic and that they are the number one piece of trash that we're finding on our beaches. We're expanding knowledge on how these plastic break down to micro plastics to get into the food web, which eventually gets into us. You know, it's really critical that we are really addressing this issue that we can take a stand on and, you know, we've, we've tried bands on smoking on beaches and we still continue to see this. We've done a lot around education to try to reduce smoking and seeing it being effective, but I think that by empowering the youth in our community to really understand the environmental impacts and the public health impacts and how they can make a difference is really critical on us trying to, you know, continue to make a difference on eliminating tobacco from our communities. And I'll just say from a personal perspective, I lost an aunt to lung cancer that was attributed to smoking. I lost my father from cancer that was attributed to smoking. And both of them started smoking at a very young age probably when they were teenagers. And so I think it's really important that we were continued to address this and also recognize that tobacco is more addictive than heroin. It is one of the hardest things to kick in terms of addiction. And so trying to educate young people on this at an early age is so important. And so just thank you for all of your work. Thank you for raising awareness about the tobacco prevention day. And I look forward to continuing to work with you and other members of our community so that we can continue to combat against big tobacco. Thank you. Okay, so with that, I just want to also make sure that the public is aware that we do have two time certain items. One is the Santa Cruz County flood control and water conservation district zone seven item that's at 1045 times certain. And then we also will be taking a break today and we will be reconvening at 130 for an item related to study session housing for health, Santa Cruz strategic framework. But with that, we'll go ahead and move on to our next item, which is item number eight public hearing to consider the 2023 general plan annual report, except in file two related annual reports and take related actions. And this is going to be from community development and infrastructure. So I'd like to invite staff up for this item. Thank you, chair. David Carlson with CDI. I'll be giving the presentation today. This is the general plan annual reports that we do every year and submit to state agencies by April 1. Yes, I do. Sounds like I'm on a little delay there. Okay, ready to go. Sorry about that. So the general plan on your report is actually three reports that are being presented to the board of supervisors today all required by state law and county code. There's an annual report, excuse me on the status of the general plan and progress in its administration and implementation. There's the housing element annual progress report that includes statistics on production of new housing units in 2023. And reporting on implementation of programs in the housing element of the general plan. These two reports are combined as attachment a to your to the board memo, and then there's the housing successor agency annual report. The planning commission conducted a public hearing on February 28 and recommended some middle of this general planner plan annual report to your board. Major activity on the general plan on general plan amendments in 2023 included the approval of the sustainability update by the coast commission. And our update of the housing element and continued work on our updating our public safety element as for implementation programs. There were no applications to change any agricultural land classifications. There were no applications that triggered any formal park site reviews. All projects in the current CIP have been found consistent with the general plan. In the coastal zone, there were no projects that eliminated lower moderate income housing in the coastal zone. So there's still a delay on this. We're experiencing a few technical difficulties. So if you all can hang tight with us for a second, let me appreciate it. We got a thumbs up from the press room. That's something things are good. Okay, so this slide summarizes the housing element annual report. And the major tables that are included in that report table a and a to they contain detailed information on housing development applications, discretionary development applications. All ministerial building permits issued and housing construction completed their large and detailed and so they're not reproduced in the staff report but will be submitted to the state. Table B, however, is the important summary of that data and places all the new housing units presented by issued building permits in 2023. Into a portability categories demonstrate the county's progress and meeting the allocated share of the regional housing need arena for the planning period. And then table D contains information on the status and progress on implementation of all of the programs in the housing element. So this is table B summarizing the county's rena progress and column one there you can see the assigned rena numbers for the planning cycle by income group. And then in column two list the number of issued building permits for each year of the rena planning cycle and places those units in affordability categories. And then column three is a total number of units permitted in each income category, and then column four is the total rena remaining in each income category. So for 2023 building permits were issued for a total of 142 housing units that includes single family dwellings ad use apartments condominiums and townhouses. You can also see in recent years numbers populating a wider range of categories and that's because the determination of which category to place the non deed restricted units mainly ad use has become more sophisticated. New houses go in the above moderate category. But for ad use we use various data to place them in the above mod, mod or low income category based on the size of the unit current market rents and affordability criteria for our area. This will be the last year reporting on our existing fifth cycle housing element and starting next year will be beginning to report on our progress on our sixth cycle housing element. So a graphical summary of the table be data with the rena targets represented by the color dots on the right. This graph shows progression towards during this cycle. We got very close to our targets in the moderate and above moderate categories represented by the gray and yellow lines respectively. We overproduced in the low income category represented by the orange line. And in the very low income category represented by the blue line. Those are the subsidized affordable housing projects typically developed in partnership with nonprofit housing developers. Those units are difficult to produce and they typically come online as multi unit projects at various points in time and that's why you see kind of that step wise progression of that line compared to the more gradual regression of the others. This summarizes the ad you construction over the years and it's really increased in recent years starting in 2018 because of all the state legislation and updates to the county code that encourage that type of housing unit. And that's added significantly to our rena numbers actually. So table D and the housing element annual report is where we report on the implementation programs in the housing element. And there's 56 programs in the previous housing element all of which have been implemented. And I'll just highlight some of them here to increase the availability of housing where the news. There are the new zoning tools and the sustainability update the density bonus program ad you do regulation fee reductions are safe structures program. The permanent room housing combining zone district and the tiny homes on wheels ordinance. And to encourage and assist housing development housing funds are used to subsidize affordable housing projects and incentivize ad use. The county code has been updated to loosen the non conforming regulations and provide for minor exceptions to the code. In various sections of the code have been updated to address housing on public facility sites farm worker housing and in planned unit developments. The county is active to preserve affordability of mobile home parks and the housing section works to preserve affordable units and foreclosure. Provide loans to first time home buyers and short term rental assistance. Equal housing opportunity and special needs populations have been assisted through incorporating ADA accessible units into projects providing units for foster youth seniors farm workers and extremely low income populations. And then on to the third annual report today addresses the low and moderate income housing asset fund where assets of the former redevelopment agency replaced. And it's a continuing source of financial assistance to affordable housing projects. More so in the past when the fund was was larger. The fund undergoes an annual audit. And this is the summary of the status of the fund for fiscal year 2223. The revenues or deposits are the result of loan repayments, rents, sale of property and interest on the fund and the expenditures cover activities in the housing section. Almost services and housing subsidies. And so the recommendation is to conduct a public hearing on the general plan in your report. Accept and file these reports and direct staff to submit the reports to the relevant state agencies and that concludes presentation. Thank you. Thank you so much. Are there any questions from board members on this item. Just some comments and maybe question. Thank you for the planning department for the report in which lays out the complexities that we have involved in addressing our housing needs here in Santa Cruz County. But I think the public should understand that the enormous amount of effort it takes toward our general plan goals to keep tabs on the state mandates which are continually coming down from Sacramento reporting requirements asset management and market trends and I applied the efforts by the board to lean into our housing crisis with strategies and partnerships that we've done designed to improve affordability and increase supply and reduce barriers. We have a special circumstance here though I think the reports that with average income and affordability of housing we are at the bottom of the tier. How much we don't get any slack from the state because of that reality do we. I mean it's just really difficult for us to build so called low and moderate income housing comparatively or is that taken into any kind of formula. I'm just trying to just thinking that the housing prices are huge and our income levels comparatively are low. How much of an impact does that have if at all or can it be measured in any way. Thank you. This is Susanna housing manager and I was great. Thank you. Good morning chair board members. I think the short answer is unfortunately no we don't get any special waivers and although it may feel like we're in a very unique circumstance there's actually quite a lot of communities, particularly along the coast and in some of the very desirable areas of the state that similarly have this imbalance between home prices and local wages and household incomes. You know there's varying viewpoints on how to solve that some people economists and so forth feel like if you can add a lot more supply it can bring that more into balance than it might be currently. Other people have other theories about how to address it but we don't get any any pre past to get out of that I'm saying element compliance because of those factors. I understand and expected really but I just had to get a reality check of what we're facing here. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions or comments. Thank you chair. Since Miss E say joined us a question about the affordable housing funds so we've got about $800 $800,000 available there. I know, typically those go to larger projects for pre development funds when it's difficult to get capital move a project forward. What's the smallest size project that we've typically considered for an allocation of those funds I mean we're seeing a lot of progress on the adu front right. The small, you know, individual builders are really helping us to address this crisis, but they were be eligible for some of those funds. A couple of questions there. So the board may recall it approved funding for a new adu program I think it was about a year and a half ago now the adu incentives program and that program I think over three years we're spending about $700 and some odd thousand dollars to fund that program. So that is providing some really significant assistance to a number of homeowners who are participating in that program through education project management technical assistance feasibility analysis. And so, so in a way, yes, we are, you know, providing assistance and the goal of that program is to produce at least 20 adus that in exchange for getting the assistance through the program will be committing to rent the adu out to a long term resident meaning not just use it as a guest house or you know something like that for a period of at least three years for a median or lower income rent. So we are spending some dollars on that. And I think the idea is that's a three year pilot. And if it is successful we could potentially extend it for another three years or expand the program in some way. Hopefully we'll have money in the bank to do that at that point. We've also spent some smaller dollar amounts that may not be reflected in the 2023 calendar year numbers. But for example, we provided a pre development loan of about $100,000 to one of our home key projects, which is sort of an adaptive reuse of an existing residential care facility that's pretty small in scale. It was a 20 bed facility and the project is converting that to a an 11 unit home key project. And they just recently got their home key award. So we do do some small scale projects as well as some larger scale projects. Great. Thank you. I mean, definitely have a long way to go. But I mean, since I've joined this board, we have really dug into the general plan the housing element and I think we have set ourselves up for major shift in our community and how we build housing. And there's, I mean, glimmers of hope, even the fact that we've achieved 90% of our current rena goal. Of course, we're going to have to work really hard to get 90% of the next rena goal. But also I mean, seeing the number of ADUs constructed last year almost double what it was a few years before. That's definitely signs for optimism. Thanks. Thank you. Any comments to resident and there's any comments or questions. At this time, oh, actually, I do have one question on this item. I'm just wondering what opportunities there are for us to track whether, especially when it relates to the non deed restricted units. We've used over time. I think there's some concern with ADUs being built and then converted to short term vacation rentals, or that they fall into these categories of, you know, low or moderate. And I know when I was in the city council sometimes they would say well it's affordable by design, but we do see, you know, 425 square foot studio apartments renting at $3,000 a month. And so I'm just wondering how we can track whether those the new units that are being built are staying within those income categories, especially when they're not deed restricted, which means they pretty much are open to the market forces. Sure. So a couple of things to think about in in answer to this question. One is sort of the big picture and overall market forces. When you're in a very constrained market where the demand far out exceeds the supply like with any other good or service, you know, if demand is far in excess of supply prices are going to go up. And that's going to impact units across the board on the market. Apartments, homes for sale ADUs what have you. When you're in a time of excess supply, which believe it or not we may forget but not too long ago about 15 years or so ago we were in a major recession and all of that dynamic was reversed. And prices really came down across the board rents were more affordable home prices were more affordable. At that point we were in a situation where the measure J inclusionary home prices were higher than actual market prices. So, you know, things can flip flop and the thing I think we have to keep in mind in making policy is that, you know, we can kind of tinker around the edges with those market forces but at the end of the day those market forces are very strong and it's hard to completely change the market like just through, you know, minor policy changes here or there to dive down into the details a little bit more. We do track what the market rate rents are year to year as we're doing the analysis for these reports or for the housing element update or for whatever other purpose. And we look at what are units on the market renting for in the various categories whether it's ADUs apartments, single family homes that are rented out and what have you. Over time I mean I've been doing this for about 10 20 years plus now, you tend to see that in most cases and not talking about a coastal ocean front view property but in a generic sense. You tend to rent for a little bit less than an apartment in a, let's say a newer high quality apartment project of the same bedroom count or square footage because there's a little bit of a less sense of privacy for example if you're renting with a homeowner in the unit next to you you're sharing the yard they may have restrictions in your lease about you have a guest sober things like that. So there tends to be a little bit of a discount. For ADU rentals as compared to renting the comparable unit as either an apartment or a single family home of the same size. That tends to be relatively constant over time so I think that's one of the reasons that people tend to say like ADUs are affordable by design. That's not to say they're going to be that every ADU is going to be affordable to everybody right they may be affordable to a moderate income family, they may be affordable to a lower income family, depending on the location and the quality they may be affordable to a very low income family it really just depends. But at the same time I think a lot of policy housing policy folks do have some reservations about over relying on ADUs to solve a housing supply problem, because they're they're never going to be available on the market in the same manner that other rental stock is going to be right people may be more choosy about who they rent that ADU to the same types of fair housing laws do not apply to a single family property with an ADU that apply to a big apartment building. So you know and a lot of times like for example we we permit these ADUs that it is in the state law and in our code that they cannot be used as vacation rentals. Of course you have to have an army army of folks to police that and enforce that. But the other thing is even if they're not used as a vacation rental. They can be like the family can pull it off the market whenever they want and just use it as a guest house for their friends and family that come to visit people may use it as an office or you know the she shed the he shed whatever. So they're always a little bit squishy in terms of relying on that as a major component of your housing stock, which is why we took great efforts in our sustainability update and code zoning code update and housing element update to make it a lot more for folks to build a lot wider range of housing product types here locally than has been the case in the past so more missing middle housing your triplexes four plexes eight plexes more apartment buildings. You know we haven't had a market rate rental apartment complex of 10 or more units built in the unincorporated area for decades. All of the market rate major apartment construction has been substituted subsidized that we've assisted your mid pen projects you're eating projects things like that. So I think with all these code changes that puts us much better position to actually attract some market rate development which can scale up to the degree that is necessary to really meet this huge supply gap that we have. Thank you for those that response. Okay at this time, I'm going to open up to the to the public to see if there's any members of the public who like to comment on this item which is the public hearing to consider 2023 general plan and your report. So there's any members of the public who'd like to speak to us on this item you can come up to the podium and you'll have two minutes. Hi Mike rock and the problem that we're facing here is basically regional over the last four decades. Santa Clara County created over a million and a half more jobs than new houses. Those people are looking for housing from San Francisco to Morgan Hill from the foothills of the Sierra de Santa Cruz County. I want to give you guys credit where it's due. I think you're doing a good job of trying to address this problem, but it's huge and getting some kind of I don't know how you would do it, but getting some kind of state legislation that requires the jobs housing balance in the counties of California is the only real solution here because it's shorter that you're next to the biggest economic engine on the planet, the biggest economic engine on the planet, and they just create more and more jobs and those people are looking for housing. And you could you could quadruple the amount of houses the number of houses that you built here, and it still wouldn't really solve this problem. So I think the county's done a relatively I'll give you credit words to a relatively good job of trying to address this with limited resources. And it's easy to point fingers at the board and go, you know, we have a housing crisis, why don't you guys do something but it's just not that easy. And I think the public should recognize that this bigger context is really what's causing this problem. I mean, if you don't address that, it's going to be really hard to make a difference. I don't say this to sort of tell you what you've done great so slow down or keep up the good work and even expand expand it. But I think you are moving in the right direction. And this board's made a real difference in the last couple of years compared to what was going on in the past, moving in the right direction on this question. Thank you. Thank you so much. Any other members of the public who like to speak to us on this item here in chambers. Seeing none of them any members online who'd like to speak to us on this item. Yes chair we have speakers. Colin user one your microphone is now available. I think Garrett, despite your sincere efforts. What is happening in terms of housing is totally inadequate to provide for housing. But you refer to the big picture or what's really causing the problem to the overall economic problem. People who are on the house and hungry of course are feeling sad and depressed anxious worried about the future. And, you know, they might be suffering from capitalism. I have this flyer in front of me. Symptoms of capitalism may include homelessness, unemployment, poverty, hunger, feelings of powerlessness, fear, apathy, boredom, cultural decay, loss of identity, loss of free speech, incarceration, etc. If we took the military budget and what billions were just more allocated for Israel to slaughter Palestinians and money to go to Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. That money, half of our tax money approximately could end poverty, provide home housing for everybody, affordable housing. This is not affordable. And of course the pandemic, the lockdown, AI will put thousands of more people out of work and into homelessness. We need to look at the bigger picture and change this structure of a disastrous system. Thank you. Thank you. We have no further speakers chair. Okay. Thank you very much. I'd like to bring it back to the board on any any comments or motions we made on this item. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. Okay, so we have a motion by Supervisor Koenig, second by Supervisor Friend. I'll just make some final comments since we have a time certain item in a couple minutes. I just really want to appreciate the staff's work on this item. I do think though that as a community we really need to get creative around how we're going to address the issue of having housing that's affordable for the people who we need to actually make sure that our community functions. It's great to hear that there are provisions within our ADU laws that say that newly built ADUs can't go towards vacation rentals. But I think in this category of having non-de-restricted homes that we're including within our regional housing numbers. We really need to make sure that those homes are staying within those affordability categories because in the absence of doing that, we're really saying to the state, hey, we built this. This is supposed to be affordable. They rubber stamp it and then people can go and do whatever they want. And so does it actually remain affordable? Or are we just doing this to check boxes? And I think we really need to be conscious about the housing that's getting produced and how we can ensure that housing can remain within those affordability categories. And I know that there's the whole supply and demand theory, but I think we also have to take into account that one thing that I've learned is that if developers know that they're going to build housing and that's going to lower prices and they're not going to get a return on their investment, they're not going to build. And so this notion that we can oversupply and that'll bring prices down. I just would like to see if there are communities where that's been done. And because if it has been done, then let's use that as a model. But I have a feeling that in many places that's not the case. And then finally, I'll just say that one of the things that has really become an issue is the fact that we have a speculatory real estate market that tries to make the properties that should be for people. For investments. And we need to really see how we can address that because until that is dealt with as well, we're just going to see people coming in and trying to buy up as much stock that is affordable to so that they can sit on that. And then later down the road, sell it for millions of dollars. We have homes that were built 40 years ago that went for like, you know, in the tens of thousands that are now million dollar homes. And so that's something that we're going to have to address because we don't see wages going up as quickly as we see the price on homes. And so with that, in my comments, I just want to express my appreciation, but I welcome the community to let's come together and let's try to figure out some creative solutions so that we can make this a more livable place. And with that last quick, please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Hi. Friend. Hi. Hernandez. Yes. McPherson. And Cummings. Hi. Thank you so much for that item that brings us to our next item on our agenda, which is a time certain item. Bye. It's 1045. So this item is the board to recess in order to permit the board of directors of the Santa Cruz County flood control and water conservation district zone seven to convene and carry out a regularly scheduled meeting. And with that, I will turn it over to chair friend to chair that item. Thank you, Mr. Chair. We will call to order the flood control and water conservation district zone seven board of directors for our regular scheduled meeting of March 26, 2024. Clerk, if we could begin with a roll call, please. As a reminder, zone seven members must be in person to participate. Director Koenig. Here. Cummings. Here. Hernandez. Here. McPherson. Here. Colbertson. Here. Harris. Lucas. Siri. And chair friend. Here. And Bob, you can come up if you'd like. Although you definitely have a powerful voice. We'll put you on the mic. All right. So the first item is whether there are any changes today's agenda. Director Machado, any changes? No changes today. All right. We have oral communications and opportunity for members of the community to address us and items that are not in today's agenda, but within the purview zone seven, our flood control district. In South County. Is there any member here in chambers who like to address us? I see none. Madam clerk. Is there anybody online? We have no speakers chair. All right. Move on to the first item of the agenda, which is the approval of minutes. Are there any comments on the minutes from directors? I see none. As a member of the community, you like to address us here in chambers on the minutes. Anybody online? All right. Bring it back for a motion. I'll move the minutes. Second. We have a motion from director Cummings. The second from director Hernandez. We could have a roll call vote, please. Director Connick. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Hernandez. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Colbertson. Keras Carter. And chair friend. Aye. That passes with one abstention. Move on to the first item of the regular agenda, which is to consider nominations for election of the zone seven board of directors chairperson and vice chairperson. We have the agenda item board memo director Michelle. Thank you, chair. And so the item before you is, is an item to recommend a chair and vice chair for this coming year. This is in conformance with rules and regulations of our zone seven. I believe our vice chairs absent today. And part of the recommendation is to recommend the vice chair call for nominations. So chair, I defer to you to, to start that nomination. All right. It's been our, our standing practice, although it's not written in anywhere, sort of in the bylaws that one of us will serve as chair and that the general of the city of Watsonville representative will serve as vice chair, which has been traditional seems to work for us. Assuming that there's no disagreement with that, we'll still need a nomination for a chair and the vice chair for this year. Are there any nominations? We'll nominate the supervisor Hernandez for chair and it's the, and maybe we can keep the same vice chair. So then a secure scarter unless there's another nomination. I'm hoping that suggestions. The current chair want to still remain chair like he is for Irvma. Yeah, I would happily remain it. But if that's, if, you know, that's, that's fine. If you want to remain chair, I'm more than happy to know the vice. Yes. The vice chair is generally, well, it can be anybody we want. We've just traditionally done the city of Watsonville representative. I will say that maybe from an attendance perspective, there may not be the end of the world having supervisor Hernandez be the vice chair. But I mean, we just traditionally have done it where it's been the city of Watsonville rep. It's not written in any sort of stone. So it's just the pleasure of the board. Yes. I have one question. Yes. Well, we then need to revisit this next January to be appointed chair and vice chair. Correct. We do it every year. Yeah. Um, I'm sorry, Bob. I'm the director Colberson. I didn't. Bring me in on this. My term ends, although there are definitely people that are trying to get rid of me early. My term ends in January of next year. So Bruce and I are here with you until next term. Yeah. And normally with this item does come forward in January for it to just happen to go ahead and bid year for something, not mid year, but March. So we would need a new then nominate seven nominations. I'll nominate chair friend to serve as the chair and supervisor Hernandez to serve as the vice chair. Are there any other nominations? Is there any member of the community like to address us on the side of in chambers? Is there anybody online that'd like to address us? Yes, chair. We have speakers. Kirby Harris, your microphone is now available. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Hello. We can hear you Kirby. Go ahead. Can you hear me? Yes. Oh, um, I'm Kirby Harris. Um, I would like to see when you do the selections again next year, I would like to see that a representative from Watsonville occupies that position. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Kirby. I mean, supervisor Hernandez does definitely live in Watsonville, but I understand that what you're saying is traditionally we've had the city of Watsonville representative. Are there any other comments online? Yes, chair. Dr Nancy be your microphone is now available. Good morning. I just wanted to say that, uh, chair friend has been outstanding in his position. And it doesn't seem like the city of Watsonville has had a representative on a consistent basis. And for that reason, I would support whatever that means, but I think this is a good recommendation that chair friend and vice chair Hernandez. Thank you, Dr. Sitch. We have no further speakers. Sorry. Nancy re raised her hand. Dr. Bill Sitch for you. Did you complete your comments? I did. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, that's a good answer to the board for action. Then we have one nomination. We'll consider that as the motion then for a supervisor friend to maintain his chair and for supervisor Hernandez to become vice chair. If we get a roll call, please. Director conan. Hi, Cummings. Uh, Hernandez. Hi. McPherson. Culberson. And chair friend. to the Pajaro River Watershed Flood Prevention Authority Board by the Zone 7 Board. We have the agenda item board memo just as a just for a point of clarification to this board because we both serve as county supervisors and members of this board. We appointed Director Hernandez as the Board of Supervisors' appointment but this board also makes an appointment as well to this authority. Director McFurt, I'm sorry, Director Machado. Thank you Chair and directors. So the item before you is our Zone 7 Board appointment to the Pajaro River Watershed Flood Prevention Authority Board. This agency was established in July of 2000. Intergovernmental Agency whose purpose is to focus on flood prevention and control. It is an eight-member board and each member serves a four-year term and as Chair Friend mentioned we're looking to fill our Zone 7 appointment position today. And so the recommended actions is to call for nomination of a Zone 7 board member to the Pajaro River Watershed Flood Prevention Authority Board and to direct the clerk of the board to notify the Pajaro River Watershed Flood Prevention Authority of the board's action and staff can answer any questions you may have. Thank you. Our current appointment is Dr. Bellisic I believe on behalf of Zone 7. That's correct. Okay. Are there any nominations for this role? They can't be Director Hernandez, but it can be any other member of this board or anybody else that lives within. We have the authority to appoint anybody we want although they recommend somebody that lives within the floodplain. I mean... Would Nancy want to remain on the... I would be happy to nominate. It doesn't require to be an actual sitting member does it? It doesn't appear, it appears you have flexibility. It appears the other appointments are to be by board members, but this one for Zone 7 doesn't seem to have that additional clarity of being a board member of Zone 7. Well I guess we don't... Do we open it for nominations right now? Yeah, I mean I think that... Oh nominating Nancy then if she is willing to do it. Yeah, she's attended every meeting so I think that she would be a wonderful person to maintain. Is there a second for that nomination? A second. A second from Director Culberson. Are there any other nominations? I see none. Is there any member of the chambers I'd like to address us? I also see none. Is there anybody online? Dr. Bill Stitcher, would you accept this nomination from the board? We have a public speaker online. All in user 2, your microphone is now available. I think Nancy Bill Stitch is fine for the position and I would urge her and others in terms of flood prevention and control to view geoengineeringwatch.org with Dane Wiggington and the dimming is one of the videos on that. It's very important but he explains and cites patents of how the extreme flooding, drought, adverse weather conditions are related to these geoengineering operations. I would like to see people in your position call for a halt to these operations. Very destructive and the evidence is at geoengineeringwatch.org. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other speakers online? We have no further speakers. I'm sure Dr. Bill Stitch would love to continue to do that's given her interest in the position. So see no other speakers if we get a roll call vote on that nomination please. Dr. B just raised her hand. Okay Dr. Bill Stitch, you just made it in under the wire. Go ahead. Sorry, technical problems. I would gladly accept this nomination and greatly appreciate your confidence in me. Thank you. All right we'll bring it now back to a vote. If we could have a roll call please. Director Koenig. Hi. Cummings. Hi. Hernandez. Hi. McPherson. Colberton. Hi. And Chair Friend. I will go to the last item of this agenda which is item seven, adopt two resolutions for confirming the 24-25 assessment rates and for setting public hearing date and direct the click of the board to publish your required public hearing notice. We have the zone seven board member on the two resolutions to the notice of public hearing, Director Machado. Thank you. Thank you Chair and board members. The item before you is setting the 24-25 rates, the assessment rates for zone seven. This year it's proposed at a 3.7 percent increase which is the CPI, calculated CPI for this year. The recommended actions are to adopt a resolution confirming the previously established zone seven benefit assessment rates for the 24-25 fiscal year to adopt resolution setting Tuesday, May 14th, 2024 at 10.45 a.m. or thereafter as the date and time for public hearing on the 24-25 benefit assessment rate report and finally to direct the click of the board to publish the notice of public hearing once a week for two weeks prior to the hearing in a newspaper of general circulation. Staff is available answering any questions you may have. Thank you Director Machado. Any questions from board members? I see none. Is there a member of the community in chambers? Also seeing none. Anybody online? I'd like to address this on the resolutions. There are no speakers online. All right. Is there a motion from a board member? So moved. Do we have a motion from Director Hernandez in a second from Director McPherson for the recommended actions? If we get a roll call please. Director Koenig. Hi. Cummings. Hi. Hernandez. Hi. McPherson. Colbertson. Hi. And Chair Friend. Hi. And that concludes the Zone 7 regular meeting. Thank you everybody for understanding. I hand it back to you Chair Cummings for the regular meeting. Thank you very much. All right. So at this time we're going to be moving on to Item Number 9. Considering concept ordinance of the Board of Supervisors of the County of Santa Cruz repealing and replacing Santa Cruz County Code Chapter 9.54 related to the regulation of motorized bicycles, motorized scooters and electric bicycles and schedule a second reading and final adoption of the ordinance for April 9th, 2024. This is an item that was brought forward by Supervisor Koenig and Supervisor Friend. It's all turned over to you all for any further presentation. Thank you Chair. And I believe my office did send some slides. Does the clerk have those available? Great. So we're here to talk about opportunities to regulate e-bikes We've seen a fabulous amount of uptake and adoption of this new type of bike which can travel anywhere from 20 to 28 miles per hour depending on the type. 270% increase in the last couple of years in terms of number of sales throughout the United States. And of course we just see and hear more about e-bikes in our community every day. The problem is that 20 to 28 miles per hour is pretty darn fast, especially when people are riding on sidewalks. This is an image that was generated by a chat GPT of a potential conflict between a someone on a e-bike and a pedestrian. And we've certainly heard, my office has heard many complaints of just this type of situation. Of course there's also people walking dogs on sidewalks and so when the leashes are involved or multiple people or strollers, the problem can can be compounded. Next slide please. So I mean I've heard all kinds of requests from requiring a license to use an e-bike to just impounding e-bikes if there's any kind of a conflict. That's actually not legal under state law today because state law defines e-bikes as personal property not as vehicles. And so we actually can't move forward with any type of way to address the issue like that. Really the sole tool that we have to regulate e-bikes is defining where and where they cannot be used. And so looking at chapter 9.54 in our county code which is related to motorized bikes, which technically under state law is actually different from an electric bicycle, different type of vehicle. It seemed time to update this chapter with some description of where electric bikes can and cannot be used. Next slide please. You know furthermore we're seeing the rollout of the B-cycle program in the unincorporated county which is fantastic to finally see this program rolling out but it also means hundreds more electric bikes will be on our streets and so I really felt that this was timely to address now before we see the full roll out of this program. So the proposed solution here is to repeal the current 9.54 and replace it. And really the operative additions to the next slide are basically to prohibit the operation on sidewalks and in-parks of electric bicycles. There are a couple of electric bicycles and electric scooters or motorized scooters with a couple of exceptions. First of all, if there is not a bike lane on the street and there's no pedestrians on the sidewalk, you are allowed to use the sidewalk, right? There's sort of a safety issue and we would allow folks to operate their electric bike or electric scooter on the sidewalk when there's no bike lane and no pedestrians present. And within parks, again you know a lot of these are walking paths and so we wanted to discourage have the default be to prevent people from riding electric bikes or electric scooters on those walking paths. However, the parks director does have the opportunity to post that either these vehicle types are or personal property. Either have these types of getting around are allowed on these specific paths and also bikeways would be accepted. So if it's clearly denoted as a bikeway then you could still operate either electric bikes or electric scooters on those bikeways. We're not changing the penalty for this and we have consulted with CHP and the Sheriff's Office which would generally be the ones enforcing this new ordinance and they agreed that having some additional tools would be helpful. And I'll put that turn it over to Supervisor Friend who co-authored this item with me and many comments you want to add. Yeah thanks Supervisor Cohn and I think that the initial image of that person being terrified, there's no way you can vote no now just knowing that that's what we're projecting here. But there is a significant amount of work at the state level right now to create a regulatory framework around these. There's a number of bills to try and do everything from helmet requirements to licensure requirements to education and but it doesn't really specifically address just these conflict points on sidewalks. I mean the real takeaway here is just trying to remove risk and safety issues. Remember the time council member Rockin dealing with this with some of the early versions of some of the motorized transportation models in Santa Cruz City sidewalks and this is just the next part of the iteration to help kind of broadly define what this and future technologies may provide but still be permissive in very specifically designated areas for for bikes which is the safety enhancement local code. Nothing within the current state legislative requirements which would usurp any of the local ordinances as we had adopted so I think that we can feel comfortable bringing this forward today. Thank you. Thank you Supervisor Cohn. Thank you Supervisor Friend I want to open it up to other Supervisors to see if there's any questions or comments on this item. Yeah I just this is a great program because it's a really concern I mean I know a huge concern. I'm just is there any program or thought about how we're going to continue to get public outreach and what the rules and regulations are. I mean I don't know if that goes okay like that. Well I just don't know where we can do this consistently or how is that going to be developed or how can we educate people that these are the laws of bikeways. So right now the CHP has been running educational campaigns on this exact issue and has state funding to do so. I think that Supervisor Koenig and I could partner with them just on an expansion to have an understanding of what would be now a local ordinance in regards to this. So be happy to do that. The county itself was not setting aside funding specific for an educational format but I think we can piggyback on what the state's currently doing. Will this extend on to the trails because I know it was a big issue in South County at the Levy Trail and so I don't know if it's going to cover our unincorporated area trails. Well the ordinance defines what's a bikeway and what is well state law technically defines what a bikeway is but our ordinance connects specifically into that and so if it's not a designated bikeway then it would not be allowed both under state and local code unless well unless specifically designated by the parks director and posted as such. To answer all your questions I guess I had one follow-up question. I know that for some folks who have mobility issues and use these types of bikes to get around for the purposes of mountain biking I'm wondering if there's any potential impacts on people being able to use them on mountain bike trails. I mean it sounds like if it's designated for biking you can use it for those purposes so maybe I just answered my own question but then I'll I guess I'll just turn over to you all to see if there's any potential negative impacts on people being able to use e-mountain bikes on mountain biking trails. I'll bring up the parks director to just answer that question just to confirm or Mr. Tidmore but I mean I don't believe so and morning chair board Rob Tidmore park planner so the the use of electric mountain bikes or any e-bikes on recreational hiking equestrian walking trails would be prohibited unless it's specifically allowed posted by signs so that's different from a bikeway which is a bike a bike lane and meant to convey bicycle traffic. Thank you. Well that concludes all my comments and all my questions and I'll just comment that I want to just appreciate you guys bringing this forward I mean and especially with the amount of you know unincorporated parts of the county that are in your districts I think it's really important that we're trying to make sure that we're as we see more and more e-bikes roll out and as we see our own county e-bike program roll out that we're making sure that it's going to be done in a way that maximizes safety for pedestrians and so just want to express my appreciation for this item and so with that I will open it up to public comment to see if there's any members of the public who like to speak to us on this item which is the ordinance of the Board of Supervisors of the County of Santa Cruz repealing or replacing Santa Cruz County Code Chapter 9.4 related to the regulation of motorized bikes motorized scooters and electric bikes and I'll invite the first speaker to please approach the podium. Thank you. My name is Michael Lewis I live in Live Oak like to thank Supervisor Koenig for bringing this agenda item forward Gene and I have been lobbying for this for over 10 years now and it's gratifying to see it finally and before you so I'm in support of in general of this ordinance however I am opposed to the exceptions and I'll tell you why the exceptions for motorized bicycles on sidewalks where there is no bike lane is not necessary because the bicyclists can ride legally in the street and the street should be designated with sharrows and with signage that indicate that the bicycles can take the lane you can ride you can ride in the street you can walk your bike on the sidewalk or you can take another street that doesn't have such restrictions on it the sidewalks are designed for pedestrian usage that's why they're called sidewalks they're not side rides there are no sidewalks where pedestrians are not at least potentially present though it only takes a second for pedestrian to step out of the business doorway through a gate in the hedge or fence or out the driveway of a private home directly onto the sidewalk and into the path of speeding bicycles the bikes weigh from 50 to 100 pounds and can carry over 100 pounds of cargo or passengers and as super provider current pointed out they travel 20 to 28 miles per hour and they can be easily modified to go even faster than that but even at half that speed it would take less than two seconds for an e-bike to come from where I'm standing to where you are now and be right on top of you there's no chance for any kind of evasive action on the part of either pedestrian or the bicycle operator the purpose of this ordinance is to protect the public's health and safety and welfare so it's imperative that there be no exceptions to the prohibition on operations of e-bikes on any sidewalk within the county jurisdiction for clarity and understanding I ask you to remove section 9.54.040 from the ordinance and pass it without this unreasonable exception thank you very much thank you hello supervisors i'm gene brockelbank i support absolute prohibition of motorized bikes especially the new heavier and speedier faster e-bikes on county sidewalks exemptions a and b of this ordinance unfortunately essentially encourage and allow e-bike users to ride on the sidewalks so these need to be rewritten before they come back to you for a vote um do we want walkable immunities or not we walk 355 days of each year using the bus if one or one way round trip will be greater than five miles like we did today we took the bus here we'll walk home and buy groceries on the way home we walk the talk we need to have sidewalks that are safe that woman that you saw in the illustration that's me unfortunately now at 79 i have two disabilities osteoarthritis in my right hip and neuropathy in my feet i cannot respond quickly and easily to a speeding e-bike exemption b is very ambiguous because it doesn't say i mean this is a planning department it doesn't specify what sidewalks will the infrastructure department uh allocate for use so um we have to make this ordinance stronger and michael is a bicyclist he knows and he bicycle he bicycles three or four times a week so we're not just speaking as pedestrians he knows how a bicyclist can use the roadway safely and allow the sidewalks for pedestrians i urge you to send this back for a little unambiguousness on b and thank you very much for listening thank you any other members of the public care uh president chambers would like to speak to us hi mike rockin um supervisor konig's newsletter brought me down here today there's the downside of public communication um yeah i think that given the constraints of what you can and can't do under state law that this what you're doing is the right thing to do this is a real problem this is not just some trivial issue it's i mean i think i think all of us have seen examples of like the tragedies or near tragedies that happen from this kind of a problem and i do think that the exemptions that you've laid out do provide a balance i think that's a question of public education uh there are certain sidewalks where you know even if there's nobody present right now it doesn't make any sense to ride a bicycle or a mat sidewalk but there are others where it really the traffic is really dangerous and you also want to protect and it's like the people riding these bicycles are not evil folks they they just their bikes present kind of a risk so i would say the balance that you've struck here is a reasonable one um and we should try it for a while and then perhaps it does need amending perhaps the two speakers before me are correct that this is too big an exemption will cause too many problems but i think you should try it the way you've you drafted it now and see what goes thanks thank you any other members of the public here present would like to speak to us please approach the podium hi um i'm terry thomas from capitola and one of my main concerns is if you would please include some kind of educational training so that people know that left right and stop are part of the etiquette for bike riding and that would be most helpful because i'm looking at all the cyclists that i see on the road or the bike lane or the sidewalk that have not a clue how to use hand signals so people behind them know what they're going to do thank you thank you any other members of the public here in chambers would like to speak to us on this item okay sitting none we'll see if there's any members of the public online would like to speak to us on this item yes chair we have speakers david your microphone is now available uh good afternoon can you hear me yes we can hear you okay great um yeah i wanted to uh thank supervisors uh conic and friend for raising this issue i sometimes joke that uh children on motorcycles on sidewalks wasn't on my bingo card as they say ebikes is a great technology uh but as you say creating the tools to help and manage and de-risk conflict points is in important directions um there's fine tuning possible i'm sure and that's fine but my main comment is uh thank you i live here and i support this thanks well in user two your microphone is now available i wouldn't like to see you right now take the recommendations of gene and mike to remove the exemptions about the sidewalk and having the electric bicycles be able to go on the sidewalk i'm even older than you gene and it is terrifying to think of being walking along the sidewalk thanks for that definition and be bold over and possibly die from this kind of interaction permission i'd like to see you right now discuss that remove those sections or come back a worry i have about the electric bicycles is the electromagnetic field exposure and i think of the book the invisible rainbow a history of electricity and life and the effects and also i see teenagers on these bikes doing these stunts like driving along the side of the traffic and they're on one back wheel um i think there are a lot of problems with these with these bikes and i wonder about the electronic ways from them as well anyway i'm listening for you to take these suggestions these recommendations right now to remove these exemptions and genuinely protect the public now thank you we have no further speakers chair all right thank you very much um i'll see if there's any further comments or responses from board members to any of the comments that were made well i was just going to say that uh definitely hear the concerns of uh some members of the public that bikes the electric bikes can move very quickly especially in a constrained environment like a sidewalk where people are moving in and out of buildings or etc that this this could still be an issue um current ordinance on the on the table was written with safety of all in mind and we recognize that there are a lot of young riders um out there as well and there's just simply locations where especially if there is no bike lane it would be on you know as parents as community members we really wouldn't want them riding in the street there so i'm prepared to move the ordinance as is and again if we continue to see problems we could always make further members to it in the future um and one thing that we could consider whether it's now uh or in the future is uh changing the definition of what it means to operate an electric bike so right now we don't define whether or not uh operating includes using the motor right so um i think that in the future we could say okay there's no operation that the definition of operating an electric bike means includes using its motor and so and then we could ban you know all operation from sidewalks so that it would still sort of allow these edge cases where there's no bike lane for people to use the sidewalk but just not with the motor that's a place we could go um if if it was desired um again i think we do have to be iterative with this if it's a new technology so i'll move the i'll move the recommended actions is there before a second okay super motion by supervisor conan second by supervisor friend um i just want to make a couple comments um before we unless you all have any further comments on this item okay so um i just want to again thank you supervisor conan and supervisor friend for bringing this forward i want to thank members of the public who commented on this item and um i aligned myself with um supervisor conan and also um mike rock and we made the comments that you know this is the first step in this process and i think that for us um you know i think that it's it's really commendable that we're actually moving forward trying to create some policies around this technology to begin with and we can continue to see how this current policy um will be implemented within the community i think it's also an opportunity to encourage us to start expanding bike lanes throughout the county and so that we can try to address that issue of getting people off of sidewalks when it's dangerous putting in more protective bike lanes and so that is one way that we can also try to address some of the concerns that were brought up in the room and then um i do think that it's really important that we um do a lot of public education and outreach and so i don't know if this needs to be incorporated as a friendly amendment but i do think it could be good for county staff to engage with ecology action which is a partner within our community that you know really um promotes um bike education and then you know see if they can help us get the word out about the these new ordinance and so again i'd be happy to see if there's a friendly amendment that we could direct staff to engage with ecology action um on a plan to promote public education around this ordinance and bring back um a recommendation during the budget hearing so that we can see how we could pay for it um if that would be amenable to the make the the authors of this item otherwise i mean i think that if we can just send that out as a signal that can also be good as well yeah i believe that most of there are several programs that are currently funded i mean you mentioned ecology action uh chp's outreach efforts i believe in our own hsa the house services agency does some outreach around bicycle education um so i would consider what i'm totally happy to consider a friendly amendment that we incorporate um education about this new law into current education outreach efforts about bike usage great that can respond okay all right so we have a motion by supervisor conig seconded by supervisor friend with additional direction to engage with um education bike education partners to um incorporate um education around this new ordinance into their current activities and with that i'll ask the clerk to call roll call vote supervisor conig i friend all right Hernandez hi mcverson hi and comings hi that passes unanimously okay so we're moving on to item number 10 uh this item is a public hearing to consider environmental impact report adopt findings and statements of overriding consideration and mitigation monitoring and reporting program approve the project permits and the agreement with cal chains for the coastal rail trail segments 10 on 11 project and take related actions and this is a presentation by uh commune development infrastructure looks like we have some park staff and before we open it up for presentation supervisor friend i understand you have a conflict of interest and so i'll let you yeah thank you mr chair i unfortunately need to recuse from this item so i'm going to step out for it i have a potential conflict because i live within my primary residence is within 500 feet of the rail line so i have a potential financial conflict on these items so i will step out for this for a crucial thank you thank you with that i will turn it over to staff for the staff presentation on this item thank you chair comings members of the board good morning my name is rob tidmore i'm a park planner and the project manager for coastal rail trail segments 10 11 i'm joined here by kate elliot director of environmental compliance and planning from harrison associates who is leading the environmental review for the project i'm also here with matt michado deputy ceo and director of community development infrastructure and rebecca hurley deputy director of parks we're here to present the coastal rail trail segments 10 11 project for the board's consideration um prior to really jump again the details about the project as part of the last item i heard a lot of comments and requests for education as part of this new ordinance and i just wanted to remind the board and the public that as part of the coastal rail trail segments 10 11 project the atp grant that we requested for the project includes almost a million dollars of bicycle and pedestrian education and outreach for elementary school students in the area includes 10 schools as well as within the community so um and we're also working with the college action on that so over the next four years the community will be educated in safe biking and walking and while um when this issue about e-bikes came up and it was discussed on the board i reached out to college action to see if they could modify the scope to include specific trainings about e-bikes and they currently don't have that program developed and it's not in the scope but um to the extent that they can accommodate that under the existing scope and certainly we can include education about this new ordinance in that education programming so hopefully that'll help with that um and so um before we begin diving into the details i want to acknowledge all the fantastic people agencies and consultants that have contributed to this large and complex project many of whom are here in attendance today and available to help answer questions the county is the lead agency for the project i've been working closely with the following staff steve weasner and russell chen from transportation stephanie hanson matt johnston and juliet robinson from environmental planning allison tom and rachel fatui from stormwater and many staff from county parks the county is partnering with two responsible agencies to deliver the project the sander cruise county regional transportation commission or rtc since they are the owner of the rail line and they provide critical oversight and project funding here today from the rtc is grace blakesley a senior transportation partner and their rail trail lead on the city of capitola since roughly half of the project passes through their jurisdiction katia hurley he just Jessica khan and kailash mozunder the design consultant for the project is rm design group they're led by mike charade and morgan stocky this is the same team who completed the monoray bay sanctuary scenic trail master plan and then rounding out the team is the environmental consultant harrison associates led by kate with erin maginti and jesson devilla from ecosystems west and nicole weston steven trefors from rincon should have done that first uh so here's the outline for today's presentation i'm going to provide an overview of the coastal rail trail followed by a discussion of the particulars of the segments 1011 project then i'll hand the presentation off to kate to go over the project's environmental review and the results of the final eir i'll then review the permits that are up for approval today provide an update on the project's funding and costs and discuss how that relates to the baseline agreement that is up for your consideration i'll present some potential ideas for how to fully fund the project and conclude with a schedule update now for a brief coastal rail trail overview starting with some background in context the monoray bay sanctuary scenic trail or mbs st is a multi-use trail project that extends around the entire length of monoray bay and santa cruz and monoray counties the rtc led development of the trail master plan to identify a trail network in santa cruz county that would serve as the mbs st and meet the goals of providing new active transportation facilities and foster appreciation of the coast the rtc as owner of the santa cruz branch rail line which extends 32 miles between davin port and the northern part of santa cruz county to paharo in monoray county identified a trail along the santa cruz branch rail line as the spine of the mbs st network this 32-mile long trail is referred to as the coastal rail trail the mbs st master plan was adopted by the county of santa cruz and the other jurisdictions through which it passes in 2014 and 2015 the master plan organized the trail alignment into 20 segments with logical beginning and end points so that it could be instructed in pieces as funding became available this slide provides an overview of the coastal rail trail project development the areas shown in red indicate that the project is funded through construction and areas in green have been completed i want to point out two projects in addition to the segment 1011 project that the county is involved in at the northern end of the map is the segment five project which is being led by the rtc the project is out to bid and bids are actually being opened today i believe at 2 p.m the county has entered into a maintenance agreement with the rtc to maintain the project once it's constructed the second is the segments eight nine project roughly in the center of the map which is being led by the city of santa cruz but a portion of the project is in the county's jurisdiction county staff are currently working with city and rtc staff on a three-way cooperative agreement which will outline the roles and responsibilities for delivery of the project this agreement will be brought to the board for approval once all the details are negotiated you can see from the map that the region is advancing a significant portion of the coastal rail trail which will transform the community's bicycle and pedestrian network this is in large part due to recent competitive grant awards by the county the city of santa cruz and the rtc the segments 1011 project just to the east of segments eight and nine represents roughly four and a half miles of the almost 18 miles of coastal rail trail that are funded through construction and will connect people from davinport to aptos once built at the southern end of the county the rtc is now engaging with the community to develop segments 13 through 20 as part of their zero emission passenger rail and trail project this will also include the trail and rail alignment over the capitola trestle shown as segment 11b in the center of the map now going to move to a focused overview of the segments 1011 project this is a map showing segment 10 in green which starts at 17th avenue and goes to 47th avenue the capitola city limits are overlaid on the map for reference in dark gray segment 11 shown in purple starts at 47th avenue and passes through the city of capitola in new brighton state beach before ending at state park drive all told segments 1011 are 4.7 miles long the project includes a phased approach to trail development under the phased approach there are two different ways in which the rail corridor could be developed with the trail the ultimate trail and an optional interim trail both of which are included in the environmental impact report as part of the proposed project and therefore analyzed at an equal level of detail the first way to develop the trail is shown on the screen and that is to proceed directly to building the trail next to the rail line which we're calling the ultimate trail configuration this is consistent with the mbsst master plan and is also the configuration for which the county applied for and received atp grant funding with the ultimate trail configuration the existing rail line is preserved the trail is built next to the tracks maintaining the required offset distance from center line of tracks the trail is generally 12 feet wide but is reduced in some areas due to concerns and widened in others where there is room fencing is required on the side of the trail next to the rail line and on the far side of the trail where grade changes make it necessary for safety like shown in the image on screen on the right under the ultimate trail configuration the project is 4.2 miles long and would include new bicycle pedestrian bridges the second way in which the corridor could be developed is to implement an optional first phase as part of the project where the existing railroad tracks are removed and an interim trail is built on the rail line this approach would require rail banking of the corridor in order to be able to remove the railroad tracks under this scenario the trail is generally 16 feet wide but is reduced to 12 feet in several areas due to constraints fencing is not required with this option except where grade changes make it necessary for safety under the interim trail configuration the project is 4.7 miles long because it includes half mile of trail across soquel creek on the existing capitol atresl the existing rail bridges would be converted to bicycle and pedestrian use if the rail line were later reactivated the optional first phase would be followed by future parts where the interim trail is removed the railroad tracks are rebuilt and the new trail is built next to the rail line in the ultimate trail configuration there have been a number of questions and comments from the public about why the project includes the interim trail given the results of the measure devote in june of 2022 and the county included the optional interim trail because it was requested during the eir scoping process which occurred in november of 2021 prior to the results of the 2022 measure devote and further the county included the optional interim trail in the eir to provide maximum transparency to the public and decision makers about the environmental impacts and the design of the two alignments but now i'm going to get into more detail on segment 10 the project includes a new north south crossing of the rail line between shanaclear and corcoran to bring prove bicycle and pedestrian connectivity in this neighborhood the trail will also connect to thompson avenue on the north side of the tracks at rodeo gulch the ultimate trail will feature a new bicycle pedestrian bridge and the interim trail will convert the existing rail bridge to trail use there will be new trail crossings at 30th 38th 41st 47th and 47th avenue which will have cross bikes and activated flashing crossing lights to alert drivers and i'll show an image of those improvements in a couple slides the trail alignment the ultimate trail is located on the inland side of the tracks for the entirety of segment 10 and then switches to the coastal side of the tracks at 47th avenue where segment 11 begins the ultimate trail configuration also includes relocating the railroad tracks for almost the entirety of segment 10 from where they are currently located in the center of the corridor which is shown in red on the plans on your screen to between five and a half to eight feet towards the south or the coastal side of the right of way in order to fit both the trail and the tracks in this narrow corridor these are two views of the 41st avenue railroad crossing looking east the image on the left is existing and the image on the right is with the ultimate trail in the relocated track in the image on the right widened sidewalks have been added on both sides of 41st avenue which shortens the crossing distance and improves the visibility of trail users as they wait to cross the street as with all the crossings green cross bike pavement markings and led flashing pedestrian crossing signs will be added to improve safety these will be similar to the existing intersection improvements that are already built on portions of the rail trail in the city of Santa Cruz here are two views of jade street park and 47th avenue looking west existing is on the left and the ultimate trail shown on the right crucially the existing redwood trees will be retained and there will be no fencing on the park side to provide maximum permeability to this important community asset on the bottom of the screen the trail switches from the inland side of the tracks to the coastal side of the tracks at 47th avenue and there is an expanded sidewalk corner being added to the southeast corner of portola and 47th which will in effect slow cars turning from portola onto 47th to improve safety for people using the trail and there are green cross bike markings at the trail crossing segment 11 shown in purple starts at 47th continues on the coastal side of the railroad tracks to opal street where a new improved and widened concrete staircase and formalized rail crossing connects to opal street in the dual box neighborhood the plans for the area are shown on the right of the screen in the image the formal rail crossing will be subject to cpuc approval but we think has a good chance of being approved due to the high volume of historic use this is also where the ultimate trail transitions to using existing sidewalks and bike lanes through capitol a village and the interim trail continues over the capitol a trestle which i'll describe on the next couple slides under the ultimate trail configuration the trail ends at cliff drive and trail users will be directed to use existing surface streets bike lanes and sidewalks through capitol a village and up to the monorail and park avenue intersection where the trail restarts a new trail bridge over so cal creek was excluded from the ultimate trail configuration due to the infusibility of canner levering a trail bridge from the capitol a trestle like was done at the san lorenzo river as well as a difficulty of constructing a standalone trail bridge due to the limited right of way next to the existing bridge so due to these constraints the rtc is proposing to replace the existing trestle with a new combined rail and trail bridge over so cal creek as part of their zero emission passenger rail and trail project the segments 1011 project will be improving the existing bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure along the route shown on the screen in green through several methods methods most significantly the project will be restriping a roughly 350 foot long section of cliff drive from the end of the trail to the start of the existing sidewalk and cliff drive in order to create a separate or foot wide pedestrian path next to a five foot wide class bike lane creating separation between cyclists and pedestrians where currently there is none similar to other portions of the rail trail like in segment eight in front of the boardwalk where there are existing bicycle facilities that are part of the trail the project will be adding green paint to the existing class 2 bike lanes and class 3 bike sharers to improve the visibility of cyclists and better delineation of the bike infrastructure and the project will also be installing rail trail branded wayfinding signage through the village to help trail users navigate from one end of the trail to the other alternatively with the optional interim trail configuration trail users would remain on the rail alignment over the capitol trestle and continue to monorail park this would involve removal of the tracks making necessary structural repairs to the trestle and then conversion of the structure to a bicycle and pedestrian bridge in addition the conversion of the trestle to a trail bridge is included as part of the ultimate trail configuration under design option a in the eir under this hybrid scenario the ultimate trail would be implemented up to opal street and then transition onto the alignment of the existing tracks which would be removed the trestle would be repaired and converted to trail use just like with the interim trail configuration and then the trail would transition back to the ultimate trail on the coastal side of the tracks just past the monorail and park intersection the inclusion of design option a provides environmental clearance under sequa for the trestle conversion as part of the ultimate trail project and therefore maximizes flexibility for decision makers to determine the best future use of the trestle moving east out of capitol village from monorail avenue segment 11 passes through the narrow rail cut to grove lane and along the park avenue bluffs at coronado street a new ramp will connect the trail to the park coronado intersection and the new brighton state beach parking lot the project then crosses new brighton state beach access road on either a new bike ped bridge for the ultimate trail or a converted existing rail bridge for the interim trail and then passes below the state beach campground across new brighton road traverses the porter says an open space to estates drive and continues into the c-cliff neighborhood where a trail connection is proposed of poplar drive and the project ends estate park drive segment 11 includes new trail crossings at grove lane new brighton road the state's drive and marvista drive which similar to segment 10 incident cross bikes and activated flashing crossing lights were needed the ultimate trail is on the coastal side from monorail to marvista and switches to the inland side from marvista to state park drive it includes several viaducts over the stream crossings shown on the map in red and large retaining walls in several places to deal with the adjacent steep topography speaking of steep topography from monorail to grove lane the the steep hills and abundant trees in this area make this one of the more challenging portions of the project the design team explored three different alignments for the ultimate trail in conjunction with the city of capitola and rtc staff to determine which alignment had the least environmental impacts we looked at the trail on the inland side of the tracks the trail on the coastal side of the tracks and a trail along park avenue at road grade the trail on the coastal side of the tracks requires the least number of tree removals and has the least impacts and that is the proposed alignment however the steep topography necessitates the use of retaining walls to hold up the slope the original design shown on the left utilized a single tall retaining wall and the latest designs shown conceptually on the right utilize two smaller walls to raise the trail above railroad grade which reduces cost avoids the need for underground anchors below adjacent private properties and makes the walls less imposing to trail users between grove lane and coronado street the project added design option b which places the ultimate trail on the inland side of the tracks as opposed to the coastal side at the request of the coastal commission due to concerns over bluff erosion at this location the project team is currently working with the rtc and coastal commission staff to determine how estimates of bluff erosion in concert with sea level rise might impact the project and influence the coastal commission's approval of the project and the images on screen the ultimate trail configuration shown on the left and design option b is on the right and these first images show how the two alignments would connect to grove lane and the existing sidewalks on park avenue the second images show how the two alignments would provide an 80 accessible trail connection to the park coronado intersection and a new formal crossing of the rail line like the opal street intersection this new crossing is subject to cpuc approval but again with the well documented existing use we think the crossing is likely to be approved the project is also working with state parks to improve the highly popular and also highly eroded informal access trail to new brighten with a concrete staircase so people can more easily get from the trail and neighborhood to the beach and then finally this last slide shows some example conceptual images of the viaducts that are proposed for the ultimate trail configuration over many of the stream crossings or where the adjacent rail line is built on a steep embankment these avoid the need to build large retaining walls that would result in greater tree removal and greater impacts to repair and habitat as is appropriate for a project of this magnitude and impact and especially given the widespread public interest we've held numerous public engagement events over the last two and a half years in order to give the public an opportunity to understand the project and provide their input these events i think there's 20 of them are shown on the screen moving into the environmental environmental review process so the county as the lead agency determined that an environmental impact report or eir was the appropriate california environmental quality act or sequa document for this project because it provides for a robust analysis and public review process the consideration of alternatives and the potential for significant impacts and now i'll hand it off to kate elliot who led the preparation of the eir to describe the project's environmental review process okay thanks rod that's a really good overview as rob mentioned i'm kate elliot with harrison associates and the eir team also includes ecosystems west for biological resources and rencon consulting for cultural resources and other topics i'll briefly review the purpose of sequa and where we are in the eir process and provide a high-level summary of the impacts identified in the eir and comments received the eir was prepared in compliance with sequa which is the california environmental quality the purpose of sequa um a sequa eir is to inform decision makers of potential environmental impacts of a project identify mitigation for potentially significant impacts and to engage the public and agencies in the process this graphic provides a general overview of the eir process with the opportunities for public involvement in the right and purposes the eir process started when the county issued a notice of preparation in november 2021 and held a public meeting to obtain input on the issues to be addressed in the eir and the project alternatives to be considered then the preliminary trail design was developed and the technical studies were conducted this provided an opportunity for the trail design to be modified to reduce environmental impacts the draft eir was completed and circulated for public review on october 16th 2023 providing an opportunity to comment on the sufficiency of the eir sequa requires a 45 day public review period and the county extended this to 60 days once the public review period was complete the final eir was prepared the final eir includes comments received on the draft eir responses to those comments and any resistance to the eir the final step in the eir process is the county's certification of the final eir so as stated this will be a high level summary of the potential impacts identified in the eir as rob already described the proposed project includes the ultimate trail configuration with an optional interim trail because sequel requires that the whole of the project be evaluated the eir evaluates both at an equal level of detail including all three parts of the optional interim trail the state sequel guidelines identify these 20 environmental topics for evaluation using the sequel guidelines the eir identified 48 potential impacts most of these impacts would be less than significant as shown for the topics in green or reduced to significant with mitigation measures as shown for the topics in gold impacts that can't be reduced to a less than significant level with mitigation are significant and unavoidable as shown for the topics in red and these impacts apply to both the ultimate trail configuration and the optional interim trail the potential impacts for each environmental topic are based on a series of questions in the sequel guidelines the threshold for determining if an impact is significant or less than significant is based on the sequel guidelines relevant regulations and technical expertise a potentially significant impact can be reduced to a less than significant level with mitigation for example construction noise impact could be reduced by requiring noise reduction measures for construction equipment used close to residences such as mufflers acoustic shelters around stationary equipment no unnecessary idling and use of electric power when feasible if an impact cannot be reduced to a less than significant level it's considered significant and unavoidable the most of the 48 potential impacts identified in the eir would be less than significant or reduced to less than significant with mitigation measures these are shown on the side here with lts for less than significant and lts m for less than significant with mitigation the six impacts that can't be reduced to less than significant level are to aesthetics biological resources and greenhouse gas emissions shown on the slide here with snu for significant and unavoidable the impacts and required mitigation measures are generally the same for both except the interim trail requires two additional mitigation measures the first is for potential impacts to the capitola trestle bridge which is a historic resource the ultimate trail would have a less than significant impact because trail users are directed through capitola village on surface streets rather than over the trestle bridge which requires rehabilitation to be used the interim trail would require the trestle bridge and requires an additional mitigation measure cr1 which is design input from a qualified historic preservation professional on the trestle rehab and design thus the interim trail has 14 less than significant with mitigation impacts instead of 13 like the ultimate trail the other additional mitigation measure is related to hazardous materials both the ultimate trail and interim trail require mitigation measures to conduct soil sampling and implement necessary remediation so the impact would be less than significant with mitigation for both the interim trail also requires mitigation has one c which is evaluating and capping the deeper soil and ballast disturbance that's required to remove the tracks the proposed project with or without the optional interim trail would result in significant and unavoidable impacts to aesthetics biological resources and greenhouse gas emissions from substantial tree removal regardless of the specific number of trees removed for the ultimate trail interim trail or even just part one of the interim trail the amount is substantial enough to be considered a significant and unavoidable impact for aesthetics tree removal would degrade local views of scenic resources including dense trees and vegetation along the rail corridor and would be inconsistent with local policies pertaining to tree and vegetation removal for biological resources the tree removal could adversely affect monarch butterfly roost habitat wildlife movement and would be inconsistent with local tree protection policies for greenhouse gas emissions although the project supports vehicle use reduction goals identified in the county and city climate action plans the tree removal would be inconsistent with climate action plan strategies that include tree preservation removed trees would be replaced at ratios and locations determined in coordination with the regulatory agencies however the impact is still considered significant and unavoidable because the exact location of replacement trees is uncertain at this time and the timing of growth to maturity cannot be predicted with certainty sequel requires the lead agency to identify and consider project alternatives chapter five of the eir identify several alternatives considered including those suggested as part of the scoping process it explains why some were dismissed from further consideration and why these three alternatives were carried forward and analyzed in the eir alternative one trail only includes removal of the rail and construction of a 16 foot wide trail on the rail line this alternative differs from the interim trail which is also 16 feet wide in that trail only assumes that rail removal would be permanent rather than temporary thus there would be no construction or reconstruction of rail at a later time alternative to rail with trail on the opposite side of the tracks was suggested during the scoping process it also addresses another suggestion made during the scoping process which was to maximize connectivity to the coast by locating all of segment 10 on the coastal side of the tracks instead of the inland side finally the no project alternative is required by sequa and it assumes that the project corridor would remain as is with no trail the draft eir provides a comparative summary of the impacts for the proposed project and the project alternatives as expected the no project alternative would have the least environmental impacts overall the impacts of the ultimate trail interim trail and alternatives one and two would be similar in terms of the number of impacts that are less than significant less than significant with mitigation and significant none avoidable sequel requires the county to identify an environmentally superior alternative that is not the no project alternative to do this we looked more closely at the impacts related to tree removal and ground disturbance the slide compares tree removal the ultimate trail removes 803 trees the interim trail removes 957 trees 288 for construction of the interim trail part one and another 669 for construction of the ultimate trail it removes 154 more trees than the ultimate trail because it would have a larger footprint 16 feet wide instead of 12 feet wide and because tree removal would occur on both sides of the tracks particularly in the escalona gulch area along park avenue in capitola alternative one trail only removes 288 trees and alternative two trail on opposite side of the tracks removes approximately a thousand trees regarding the trees removed for the proposed project approximately half are native trees and the other half non-native of the 803 trees removed for the ultimate trail configuration 400 or native of the 957 removed for optional interim trail 464 are native this slide compares the interim trail and alternatives one and two listed in the first column to the ultimate trail configuration looking at the middle column the interim trail and alternative two would have more impacts to aesthetics biological resources and greenhouse gas emissions because there would be more tree removal alternative one would have the less least impact because there would be less tree removal looking at the far right column all three would have more construction related impacts than the ultimate trail because they would result in more ground disturbance ground disturbance causes construction related emissions erosion and loss of topsoil noise and risk of discovery that is a buried cultural paleontological or tribal cultural resources more demolition also increases construction related emissions noise solid waste and potential release of soil contaminants the interim trail and alternative one have a 16 foot wide trail which has a wider construction footprint it disturbs both sides of the tracks and extends an additional 0.5 mile by continuing in the rail corridor over the capitol attressal bridge rather than directing users to surface streets through the village the interim trail also has two additional construction periods associated with implementing all three parts alternative two requires more earthwork and ground disturbance for the additional retaining walls required to support slopes this also results in more impacts to sensitive habitats and waterways along the way as mentioned earlier a sequel requires that an environmentally superior alternative be identified but it doesn't specify how a lead agency should do this the county decided to use a similar approach to the city of santa cruz that they use for segments eight and nine and that the rtc used for segment five north coast these measures are one minimizing the significant non avoidable project impacts and two determining which is environmentally superior for most topics and each of these measures have a different outcome using the measure of minimizing significant non avoidable impacts alternative one trail only was determined environmentally superior because it results in substantially less tree removal however it should be noted that alternative one results in increased impact impacts to the monarch butterfly habitat at the escalana gulch area because it requires the removal of large wind buffer and roosting trees on the north or inland side of the tracks that would not be affected by the ultimate trail configuration which is entirely on the coastal side of the tracks in this area using the measure of environmentally superior for most resource topics the ultimate trail configuration is considered environmentally superior because it requires less ground disturbance and demolition overall which results in reduced impacts to more environmental topics as shown on the previous slide those topics include air quality cultural resources geology and soils hazardous materials hydrology and water quality noise tribal cultural resources and utilities utilities is for generating more solid waste so the draft EIR was circulated for a 60 day public review period which was extended from the 45 day minimum there was a public meeting held on November 16th 2023 to share the results of the draft EIR and to accept verbal comments in total there were 321 commenters that provided feedback including four agencies eight organizations and 309 members of the public the 321 commenters included 678 individual comments there was a wide variety of comments from supporting or opposing the project to commenting on the issues addressed and the impacts disclosed many of the comments are similar or concern the same issues including those listed on this slide for these comments master responses were developed and provided at the beginning of the responses section in the final EIR as mentioned the final EIR includes volume one with all the comments received and responses to each of those comments volume two is the draft EIR with some minor revisions made for clarification and volume three is the EIR appendices I suspect thank you Kate so we've reviewed the project's environmental impacts but it's also important to acknowledge the many the many benefits that this project will bring the project will improve aesthetics by facilitating public access to scenic vistas and views of the coast critically the project will enhance air quality and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by reducing the amount of vehicle miles traveled and their associated emissions as more people use the trail for active transportation instead of driving but also help the county achieve land use goals by improving connectivity across established communities and neighborhoods through the development of a new alternative transportation corridor and some of the additional north south crossings of the rail line that I mentioned previously it would benefit public safety and services by reducing conflict between motorists cyclists and pedestrians providing new and improved access to parks and recreation facilities schools beaches libraries and other amenities and create access to the trail corridor for emergency response and finally the project will improve circulation for cyclists pedestrians and motorists by providing a new multi-use trail that is separated from vehicular traffic so there are several actions under CEQA that the board will consider today the first action is certification of the final EIR prior to approving a project the board is required to certify the following that the final EIR has been completed in compliance with CEQA that the final EIR was presented to the board the board reviewed and considered the information contained in the EIR prior to approving the project and that the final EIR reflects the lead agency's independent judgment and analysis the resolution certifying the EIR is included as attachment three the second action is adoption of findings a statement of overriding considerations and the mitigation monitoring reporting program or mmrp since this project has several significant and unavoidable impacts that kate detailed CEQA requires that the board makes findings for each of the significant impacts in order to approve the project the findings are included as attachment four and conclude that the project will minimize significant adverse impacts to the environment with adoption and incorporation of the recommended mitigation measures which are outlined in the mmrp in addition the board is required to adopt the statement of overriding considerations also part of attachment four which documents why the benefits of approving the project outweigh environmental impacts the resolution adopting the findings statement of overriding considerations and mmrp is included as attachment six and includes both the optional interim trail and ultimate trail configuration and the third action is approval of the project to date the project has included both the optional interim trail and the ultimate trail analyzed at an equal level of detail in the EIR and with adoption of the aforementioned resolutions both alignments would be environmentally cleared under CEQA which would provide maximum flexibility for project delivery however to move into the final design permitting and right-of-way phases of the project it is necessary to select for the board to identify a single alignment for continued development so staff recommends that the board approves the segment 1011 project in the ultimate trail configuration because it is the alignment that is consistent with the project's grant funding which i'll describe in more detail later in the presentation and because implementation of the interim trail is not feasible unless the rtc votes to rail bank the corridor which has not yet happened in addition staff recommends that the board approves the design option b which is the inland side of the tracks between grove lane and coronado street as an alternate alignment for the project pending discussions with the coastal commission on what they will permit through this area so in summary the recommended actions are to adopt a resolution certifying the coastal rail trail segment 1011 final EIR adopt a resolution adopting the findings statement of overriding considerations and mitigation monitoring and reporting program for the ultimate trail configuration and the optional interim trail for the coastal rail trail segments 1011 project and to approve the coastal rail trail segments 1011 project in the ultimate trail configuration with the inclusion of design option b is an optional alignment pending direction from the california coastal commission so in addition to seek whether or will be looking at project permitting so board approval is requested on two permits today the first is a riparian exception permit the findings for which are included as attachment seven the second is a biotic approval and adopting the sequel findings of fact and statement of overriding considerations is required because the project is inconsistent with the county sensitive habitat protection ordinance which requires that all significant impacts are mitigated which is not possible for this project both findings note that the project is reducing impacts to the maximum feasible extent and where impacts cannot be avoided the project is providing mitigation for impacts as much as feasible finally a coastal development permit or cdp which is required for this project is not being considered for approval today because the project will pursue a single consolidated coastal development permit from the coastal commission rather than seeking three separate cdps one from the county one from the city of capitol and then a third one from the coastal commission for the part of the project that crosses so cal creek where the coastal commission retains their original permitting jurisdiction a consolidated cdp is preferred for efficiency and because the public review process will be clear and less confusing coastal commission staff and city of capitol have already expressed support for the consolidated cdp process so the recommended actions for permitting are to approve a riparian exception and issue a biotic approval for the coastal rail trail segments 1011 project in the ultimate trail configuration including design option b based on the attached findings statement of overriding considerations and conditions now for an overview of the project's funding and costs project funding by phase is shown on the table on the screen for reference the project is almost completed the project approval and environmental documentation or paed phase in december of 2022 the county was awarded a 67.6 million dollar active transportation program grant from the california transportation commission for for the project in the ultimate trail configuration the 67.6 million dollar award is the largest atp grant in state history in addition to the atp grant funding the rtc has programmed 17.3 million and measured the active transportation funds for the project which is fully funding the paed phase and supplementing construction funding and serve as a match for the atp grant funds total project funding is 84.9 million dollars now estimated costs by phase are shown on the table on the screen as you can see the cost estimates for the project have increased particularly for construction this is a result of several factors the general and significant increase in construction costs across the county state and region in part due to lingering supply chain issues from covid inflation and infusion of federal stimulus money a tight labor market and the unavailability of contractors in addition the project design has progressed since the draft schematic plans that the original estimates in the atp grant were based on an additional scope has been identified including a new viaduct east of the oak trail more retaining walls and a complex drainage system that's needed to accommodate both the trail and a future rail line we estimate an additional 21.6 million dollars is needed for construction right away costs have also increased due to the amount and the cost of environmental mitigation that will be needed to offset the environmental impacts an additional estimated 6.4 million is required for this phase it's important to note though that the project is still in preliminary design and the project team will continue to explore ways to reduce cost we plan to explore a formal cost reduction exercise known as value engineering with the rtc over the next several months we will also be refining our estimates as additional bid information comes in obviously the hope is that we start to get into a more favorable bid climate and bits are coming down which would help our estimates remains to be seen if that will be the case but as i mentioned previously the segment five project is opening bits today and that would be a really important data point for us to help refine our estimates and so even though these are preliminary numbers and subject to change as we move through final design i wanted to share this information now so the decision makers in the public are fully informed so the atp grant that the county received for this project is partially funded by senate bill one caltrans and senate bill one require that the implementing agency leading a project that is funded by sp1 and has a budget in excess of 10 million dollars sign a baseline agreement with caltrans the baseline agreement requires that the implementing agency documents the project costs schedule scope and benefits and certifies that the funding sources cited in the baseline agreement are committed expected to be available and that the project is fully funded and that the implementing agency agrees to secure funds for any additional costs of the project because of the unprecedented amount of atp funding awarded to this project it is critical that the county approves the baseline agreement to secure the grant funding and keep the project moving forward however there is no money in the county budget to fund this project's budget gaps and the county lacks a dedicated funding source for this type of project the county intends to work with the rtc to fully fund the project through a combination of cost reduction strategies and by seeking additional funding sources that will avoid spending county funds on the project the following is a brief overview of strategies that could be could be used to reduce costs and or increase funding for the project and just as a note no board action is requested for any of the following strategies they're shared for informational purposes only and in fact many of these decisions will not be made by the county board but will go to the rtc commissioners for approval staff will continue to work with rtc staff to flush out these strategies and any additional future actions that the rtc commissioners may vote on so one option and i would say this would be the most preferable is to seek additional grant funds rtc staff recently submitted a federal raise grant application for 19 and a half million dollars which included 8 8.4 million for segments 10 11 another option would be for the rtc to vote to fund the project with additional measure d after transportation funds rtc staff estimated in september 2023 that the fund has approximately 68 million dollars in additional capacity which is reduced to 38 million if maintenance of the trail is included as a measure d cost this would be sufficient to fund the segments 10 11 project but would reduce the amount of measure d funding available to develop the remaining rail trail segments as mentioned previously the project team in conjunction with the rtc will continue to explore ways to reduce costs through value engineering that would not result in a scope change to the project in addition project costs could be reduced by eliminating the cost of railroad track relocation from the project this would save approximately 7 to 8 million dollars as i mentioned towards the beginning of my presentation the project currently includes the relocation of approximately one and a half miles of track in segment 10 to make room for both trail and tracks in the narrow right of way however there are three potential ways in which this cost could be reduced or eliminated from the ultimate trail configuration the first would be for the rtc to enter into an agreement with roaring camp as the rail operator to relocate the existing tracks so they are not in conflict with the trail limit this would happen independently in the advance of the rail trail project the county and rtc staff are exploring the feasibility of this approach with roaring camp alternatively the rtc could pursue an agreement with roaring camp as the rail operator to remove the tracks as part of the rail trail project and defer the track reinstallation to a later time either as part of the rtc's zero mission passenger rail and trail project or as part of general corridor maintenance work again the feasibility of this approach is being explored with rtc staff in roaring camp and finally the rtc could vote to rail bank the corridor which would allow the rail trail project to remove the tracks were there in conflict with the trail and not replace them this would also allow the project to eliminate the fencing between track and trail and potentially save an additional two million dollars rail banking would also provide the ultimate trail configuration with better flexibility to avoid conflict with the future rail realignments that are likely to be required for implementation of the rtc's zero mission passenger rail and trail project particularly in portions of segment 11 through new brighton state beach where the rail line has multiple curves this additional flexibility could result in additional cost savings for the rail trail projects of course there are schedule risks associated with rail banking and it is unknown if the rtc could rail bank the corridor in time to avoid delaying the project regardless of which approach is taken eliminating the railroad track relocation from the rail trail project reduces the risk that the project will install costly rail infrastructure that is not compatible with future rail uh with future passenger rail requirements and has to be replaced as part of that project and the last way in which the corridor in which the project could reduce costs would be for the rtc to vote to rail bank the corridor and request that the county pursue the interim trail for segments 10 and 11 the interim trail has a total estimated cost of 51.7 million dollars compared with 111.7 for the ultimate trail this approach will be subject to the same schedule risks of rail banking mentioned previously and critically would require that the california transportation commission approve using the ATP grant funding to build the interim trail alignment it is unknown whether the ctc would approve such a scope change if the ctc is unwilling to approve that scope change the interim trail would require an additional 34.3 million dollars for segments 10 11 which is more than the amount needed for the ultimate trail configuration so the recommended actions are as follows to approve the baseline agreement between the county of santa cruz and the california department transportation for coastal rail trail segments 10 11 project in the ultimate trail configuration authorize the deputy ceo director of community development infrastructure to execute the baseline agreement with caltrans on behalf of the county and direct the deputy ceo director of community development and infrastructure to request that the santa cruz county regional transportation commission fully fund the coastal rail trail segments 10 11 project so finally concluding with the project schedule the ATP grant funding has several deadlines associated with it including that the project completes the environmental review process this spring completes final design right away and permitting by 2026 and starts construction in 2026 therefore it's critical that the project keeps moving forward and avoids project delivery risk wherever possible certification of the eir and approval of the project by the board today would mark a very significant milestone for the project and completion of the california environmental review caltrans is the project lead for the federal environmental review under the national environmental protection act or nipa and a categorical exclusion is expected to be issued by caltrans in april that would mark completion of the paed phase we expect to request our first ATP grant funding allocation at the june 26 27 ctc meeting this summer and start final design and right of way afterwards with completion expected in 2026 construction would start in 2026 and take three to four years this concludes staff presentation staff and consultants are available to provide additional information and answer questions thank you thank you for that very detailed presentation and also for all your hard work on this issue that i know is very important um in our community um with that i want to open up to board members and see if there's any questions uh for staff on the presentation and on this item to resident person yeah i um thank you uh ted more and ted more and uh miss elliott for this extensive and thorough statement uh really i know how much work can and over the years has gone into this but i have some extensive comments uh not that i'd like to make uh to thank the public work staff and everybody else that's been involved in this the rtc and the numerous elected officials we've been talking about this for years it's certainly one of the most complex and debatable uh issues we've had with and since i've been on the board for the last 11 years uh and i just want to make a i just support every one of the four major studies to examine the use of the rail corridor the scope feasibility of passenger service and rail service and determine the best approach to take on this um at each decision point i've summarized my concerns over the accuracy of the cost and that's not to criticize anybody but we've seen how costs have increased substantially and other rail related projects throughout the state the ridership data that we're receiving as well as the real impacts on the highway nine or highway one excuse me uh congestion i've expressed my issues also with the south county segments of this corridor not receiving the same kind of attention as other segments have up to now and i've repeatedly supported the preservation of building and operating the passenger rail service when and if we can afford to build it and whether it will make a significant difference in our community but i but i really do care and i think we all do care about what it will cost and how those costs might negatively affect other essential transportation infrastructure um the concept report due in december will answer many of these questions and i know we're talking about let's don't put this off and i know i know there's some deadlines that you've mentioned here and the data will not be up for debate uh until this has been after the prior studies were published uh from those but i look forward to the information in the concept report because the decision we make today must be informed by the facts and not the wishful thinking that many of us we've been hearing about for over the years and regarding the item before us today i support most of the staff recommendations should say a few of the staff recommendations but i have concerns about the recommendation regarding the strategy to fund the 28 million dollar shortfall um i also have deep reservations about the environmental impacts of the options before us um and again this is not any criticism of the studies that have been done we are being asked to lead uh as the lead agencies to use our best judgment regarding the which options we should follow and the best for the community in regard to our environmental impacts as well but i i want to make sure that i understand the situation accurately so i'm going to summarize several points made in the staff report the board is being asked to approve the ultimate trail project a request that the rtc backfill the 28 million dollar budget shortfall that's number one we must make this request to the of the rtc because the county staff want to get an allocation of its active transportation program grant from the california transportation commission and in order to do that the county is required to sign a baseline agreement with cal trance um the baseline agreement with cal trance requires that the county document the project cost schedule scope of benefits plus certify that the project is fully funded and the money can is committed to the project um which in turn really requires uh that the regional transportation commission agree to use at least 40 percent of its measure d active transportation fund backfill the 28 million dollars uh if additional funding needed to build the ultimate trail in segments 10 and 11 uh the consequence of that action would be to lower the amount of measure d active transportation funds available by 40 to build additional future segments especially in the south county and possibly compromise the necessary repairs and maintenance along the rail corridor that need to be addressed in the meantime there are several steps in progress that will provide additional information um and resources that could alter the decisions the board and the rtc make regarding commitments for the measure d active transportation funds uh the most significant funds are steps i should say and progress that i saw listed in the staff report our county staff went to work with rtc staff to do a value engineering to try to lower the budget shortfall i think we can all agree on that the federal raise grant decision of war i think it's up to 20 million dollars in june could change the funding strategy um a number of options to eliminate the cost of track relocation that are under discussion with roaring camp would provide an alternative approach to using the existing atp uh grants to build this trail uh we can use now without compromising future the future of passenger rail or seriously impacting the measure d active transportation fund for future projects environmental mitigation reports and permits needed will take quite a bit of time certainly many months the board could approve all staff recommendations made today so those would proceed without deciding the funding strategy now last but not least and i'm finally there uh the passenger rail concept report is due in december which identifies the true feasibility and cost impacts of building and operating passenger rail as well as providing a better data on ridership congestion mitigation impacts on highway one and the travel time between watsaville santa cruise which currently is estimated on the rail to be at 45 minutes the same as bus on shoulder express service that's been mentioned of another meetings in other words the concept report gives the community an accurate assessment of the feasibility which mean we can preserve the option to building passenger rail but i don't think we can afford to do do it right now which in turn uh we would alter our and our strategies on what we build now and what we choose to fund in the completed projects so um given all of the steps still in process to be resolved should the board consider approving the staff recommendations to keep the planning process going but defer the decision on funding ask uh on the funding ask of the rtc until the issues i mentioned are resolved each of which could they change the funding compensation um i understand that a delay in funding request to the rtc would delay the county asking for an allocation of its atp grant from the california transportation commission in june but maybe that's acceptable giving that without a little more time to resolve the issues that are in progress issues could be drastically could drastically change the project at what we're going to decide to build or not build and how we fund it to completion so um i uh i think you've answered this in part but uh the the staff did you help the board understand why we shouldn't approve all um all of the staff recommendations accept the funding request to the rtc so the progress can continue yeah thank you for that question absolutely so i think that the the most important piece is well there's two pieces here the the first is that we're scheduled to go to the ctc to allocate for final design and right-of-way funding in in june so if we don't make that deadline we have to request an extension of the ctc which is not ideal especially given that the target on this project for the amount of money that they've given us we want to give the ctc every indication that we're going to deliver on this project successfully but more critically the project final designer right-of-way are funded with state-only funds which have an expiration of the summer of 2026 so if we pause our allocation for final design and right-of-way that gives us less time to complete those two phases and particularly on the right-of-way side that can take a long time and so i would i would highly recommend against that and and just to clarify something too because i think what we're what we're asking for today is is a recommendation to go to the rtc to ask them to fully fund the project we're not saying that all that money has to come for measure d that's why we outlined all those different alternatives here i think we would absolutely uh continue to seek additional grant funding we would be working with the rtc to do that like we have done with the federal raise grant and we'd be looking to to save costs for the project so while we're saying you know fund fully fund the project we're not saying that all that money is coming out of measure d right now thank you mr sir rather than others so you know first i have to say i thank you guys for all all the work you've guys done in public works planning and working with all the different agencies as well rtc and i fully you know support this eir um you know but first i have to say that i do agree with uh supervisor mcphearson's statement about equity uh that we got to also look at south county because you know we got like five segments and a partial of one segment in south county and we still have two more to go plus to finish that one eighteen i think um because it's just in the middle of nowhere it's like an island segment not connected to the city so i think we have to move forward at some point on that as well um but you know i think that um generally i mean i'm in favor of all this right because i think that um you know we have to move forward with this project and i think i'm in favor of the the ultimate trail you know option b um my only question is is the uh one of the slides you mentioned that um the bridges are in trestles are under not under the perbie of the cir or they're under the scope of the rtc or something like that and i and i say this because you know one of the things that has come out last year is that there's new pedestrian bridge designs that are considerably less cost than previously thought before um but i i'm just wondering about that if if the cr covers the trestles and bridges um so to answer that question um in part yes so there's there's three bridges for this project there's the bridge over a rodeo gulch between 17th and 30th avenue and that would include for the ultimate trail configuration a new prefabricated bicycle pedestrian bridge and for the interim trail conversion of the existing concrete and steel rail bridge um and then the bridge over the new brighton state beach access road similarly would be in the in the ultimate trail configuration would be handled by a prefabricated pedestrian bridge and in the interim trail be a conversion of the existing rail bridge the only bridge that is not included as part of this project is the capitol attressal and that's because well it's a couple reasons one you can't cantilever an existing uh you can't cantilever a pedestrian bridge off of that wooden structure like was done at the sandlands or river simply because the structure doesn't have the structural integrity to support a cantilevered bridge on the side and it's it would be very difficult to build a standalone and very expensive standalone trail bridge next to the existing trestle due to the limited right of way so the way that's being handled is to include a full replacement of that structure in the zero emission passenger rail and trail project to include both a combined rail and trail bridge that would accommodate both trains and the trail traffic so my only concern and it's not even a concern right it's uh is is well my only concern is not moving forward with this because you know recently the caltrans ctc has been heading towards a lot of uh funding active transportation and multimodal transportation projects and now it seems that even the feds are doing the same thing the federal government is also doing the same thing and trying to fund more uh i can pedestrian activities as well um including you know rail funding as well at the federal level so my concern would be is like that we stall this project and we don't can move forward because i've heard from specific from some ctc members that if we don't meet that deadline that it puts future projects at jeopardy to get funded so that's my only concern is that just move forward and thank you for those comments uh supervisor coning do you have any questions or comments on the side thank you chair i'll start with some questions um so the first is about environmental impacts and we received a letter from the sierra club asking about um will this total amount of trees that need to be removed both for uh the ultimate trail and the interim trail configuration are there any opportunities to reduce the width of the trail and therefore and in certain spots save a large number of trees um i mean for example you know talk about the interim trail through escalona gulch and how because it's wider at 16 feet uh you have to remove a bunch of trees on the north side of the gulch and what if it's only 12 feet the same width as the ultimate trail or yeah in that location how many trees do you save do we have any understanding of you know where small widths uh width reductions in the trail could lead to big savings and trees good yeah thank you for that question supervisor coning um the i can give a quickly give a high level response to that and then we can look up some details um in a few minutes but essentially that this question this was a master response in the draft year because this was raised by several commenters and uh overall when we looked at reducing the width of the optional interim trail from 16 feet to 12 feet i think it reduced um numbers of tree removals by 16 percent in the corridor i think that was an i think that reduced tree removals by about 47 trees so instead of 288 trees being removed as part of part one it would be 241 trees um and it critically wouldn't reduce impacts to less than significant and unavoidable so it'd still be considered a significant unavoidable impact um but to get to your the first part of the question which is you know do we have opportunities to modify the design to to reduce tree removals to some small extent right so the the eir the purpose of an eir is to is to be conservative and disclose maximum possible impact so we were conservative in our estimates there is the potential that as the project moves into final design you know we can modify um you know we'll look more critically at retaining wall designs and extensive grading and realize that we can save a couple additional trees but i don't expect there to be a large scale reductions in tree removals as the project moves forward okay thanks that's helpful um the second question is about safety and really about trail width i mean we were just having a before this item we were discussing e-bike regulations and i mean we've seen concerns about e-bikes on you know particularly west cliff uh and east cliff iranigulch i mean those facilities are respectively 14 feet 17 feet uh i guess iranigulch is only about eight feet but then it's got two foot shoulder on both sides which is very different from a metal fence um what percentage i mean can you give some sense of you know how much of the ultimate trail is 10 feet how much is eight feet how much is 12 feet um yeah um not an exact percentage but i can i can tell you that it's the vast majority of the length of segments 10 and 11 um the really the only places where we narrow to less than 12 feet are where we approach intersections where we go down to 10 feet and and actually that's purposeful um the idea there is that the reduction in trail width forces people to slow down as they approach intersections and not continue through an intersection at high speed without stopping and looking for traffic so i think we're at close i would say between 80 to 90 percent of the of the length of 10-11 or or 12 feet wide okay thanks um and then about cost i mean and a lot of recent project i mean assume we're still working with engineers estimates here right i mean obviously we haven't put this project out to bit so are the estimates taking into account uh some of the current bids we're seeing or you should be depending on the bidding environment you know i mean we could ultimately see costs increase further when we actually put the project out to bid right i mean you mentioned segment five on the north coast going out to bid very soon so that'll go to a sense of the climate right now um but yeah i mean can you speak to that a little bit how much are they how much are we taking to account some of these higher bid prices that we're seeing yeah great question thank you um so the reason the estimates increased so much between when we submitted for the ATP grant and and now is that we used recent highway one bid prices to to guide our estimates and and as many of you know those projects were over over budget significantly beyond the engineer's estimate and so we're taking those numbers and we're adding further escalation to those numbers to project ahead into 2026 when we expect to go out to construction and those escalation numbers use the current amount of inflation that we're currently experiencing so unless inflation you know goes to the roof again then we think these numbers are conservative and project what was likely to happen moving forward okay and the final question about timing and you mentioned that we need to what is it by by summer of 2026 use all of the funds specifically for right-of-way acquisition and was it for per design yes final design yes right and what percentage of the 67 or so million dollars is that and then what what is the deadline for using the remaining funds i think ps in the final design is about three million dollars and right-of-way is close to two million dollars so there'll be five million dollars total less than less than 10 of the overall funding but just just again as a note you know any lack of meeting deadlines in the overall program you know doesn't just jeopardize the funding for that phase it jeopardizes the ctc's confidence in our ability to deliver the project so so I wouldn't recommend that and then the the construction funding we have four years to to complete that piece which will be more than enough time we anticipate it takes between three to four years to complete construction so we do we have until four years after the the funds are the the contract is awarded to the contractor to complete construction I see so that's kind of that 2026 to 2030 correct yes gotcha and then as far as right-of-way acquisition I mean there's some some portions of the trail or I should say the the rail line right-of-way where dark sea doesn't own it in fee right we own easements does this right-of-way acquisition account for potentially needing to resolve issues with neighboring residents there where you know again we only own an easement and don't have the actual right to build a trail across their land so yes the the two years we're allocating for the right-of-way phase does take into account the fact that we may need some additional or the RTC may need some additional right-of-way rights so on some of those properties we also are expecting to need a small sliver of property along 41st Avenue and then over a long popular drive where the the right-of-way is constrained in those locations so that what how does the how do we come up with the current right-of-way acquisition costs mean yeah it's again it's it's an estimate based on best best guess not best guess but best estimates of what we can come up with so we we anticipated I would say that the 1.8 million dollars in funding that we have should be sufficient to cover the right-of-way acquisitions for the project but it's not sufficient to cover the cost of environmental mitigation right the planting planting of trees creation of new wetland habitat riparian habitat and all that yes got it okay well um you know just a couple brief comments here man this is really an alarming amount of environmental damage I mean removing 803 trees including 584 recognize the significant trees I mean really in direct contradiction to our general plan to our climate action adaptation plan you know even to some codes in the city of Capitola it's it's quite significant and of course including the damage to a habitat for all kinds of well both animals and as I think what we've heard and we'll continue to hear people as well and then you know in addition to the environmental impacts of course we just have this funding issue I mean 38 million or remaining in capacity I think we have to account for some kind of maintenance of our own public works department here is argued that the RTC uses active transportation funding to allocate some maintenance dollars because we simply don't have those funds here at the county right um so I think it's wise that we do that so 38 million dollars remaining then in capacity we're requesting 28 million dollars of that and of course the other shoe that hasn't dropped is segment state nine which we expect could be at least 10 million dollars over their current estimate so they could come in and grab the remaining funds I mean that's no money left for remaining segments in south county zero not even for planning we talk a lot about equity and I think that uh you know people like to cite 2022 measure d but 2016 measure d the actual funding that's moving this project forward everyone in this county expected they were getting a trail all of Aptos, Salva and Watsonville I think that you'd have a lot of people who would be pretty shocked to find out that they're paying the tax the same as everyone else and are now not going to have the facility near their house um so yeah there's some options to mitigate that to get more grant funding um and that was also just up in Sacramento I can tell you at least in Sacramento that mood's pretty dire um you know I think what we've seen here in as far as winning uh largest active transportation grant in state history those days are gone at least for the immediate future um it's a very different budget environment in the state capital I don't think that times are all that different in the federal capital Washington DC either so I mean we look forward to hearing if we can't have the same success winning federal grant dollars on this segment as we have on segment five of course there's specifically access to um federal national park our national monument up there on the north coast that a lot is to win some of those dollars um but you know I think this you know these cost overruns are very concerning um and I would have misgivings of going to Caltrans right now and signing uh the initial agreement saying we got all the money and we clearly don't um I mean the RTC could allocate this additional funding I'd be curious to know um what RTC staff and other commissioners ultimately think about allocating the remainder of these funds um because at this point we're talking about basically training the remaining the training the account so thanks thank you supervisor coming I'm gonna just ask um I just have one brief question now we really want to make sure that we get out to members of the public to hear from the public and we get back to allow the board to have a brief break before we have our time certain 130 item so I guess the one question I have um first just want to appreciate the work that's gone into us um very supportive of the staff's perspective I have more comments I'll make after we hear from the public the one question I do have is related to the tree replacement and I'm just wondering just do the fact that being new on the board I'm wondering since there's um you know a large amount of non-native trees that are going to be removed in terms of replacement if there's an opportunity for us to not have to replace the non-native trees if there's an opportunity for us to replace the non-native ones with native ones because I think from biological perspective we really want to try to promote native species and you know not have non-native not actively replace non-native and exotic species within our communities especially I would imagine the large number those are eucalyptus and those habitats are not very hospitable to many understory native plants I mean they do provide benefits in terms of monarch habitats if they're in the appropriate configuration and they could provide habitat for like great blue herons but I imagine that there's other species that could similarly provide those types of benefits while also allowing for greater recruitment of native species and so I'm just wondering if that is an option. Great question so I'm not aware of any requirement that says we have to replace the tree species that was removed with another of the same species I think our overall goal with the mitigation program will be to maximize habitat function and habitat value which would lead us to planting mostly native trees like you like you said there may be specific instances like in in monarch butterfly habitat where blue gum eucalyptus or other species are called for but we would we would certainly be aiming to plant a majority of native species part of the mitigation yeah. Great those are all my questions and I'll share my comments and so at this point in time I'd like to open the public comment period and invite members of the public to come up I'd just like to see what the people who are here today how many people want to comment on this item you know and then how many people do we have online they're they're raising their hands yeah um about okay I'm just given that the time that we have a time certain item at 1 30 and the board needs a little bit of a break for lunch between now and then reduce the time to one minute and so members of the public will have one minute we'll start it I will start with two and if we if we're running short on time I'm going to reduce it to one minute so we'll start with two minutes please be concise and then um and then if time uh it looks like it's running low then we're going to reduce it to one so please step forward at this time. Thank you Mike Rodkin member of the public and uh first of all the surprise here is that the environmental damage from the interim trail is not all that much uh better than from the ultimate trail that was that's the surprise of the CIR I came here expecting to find interim trail well that won't be you know that won't cause so much trouble but tearing up those tracks and the uh the uh problems with the environment from that are like huge secondly um measure D the public has pretty much told you they want the ultimate trail here and the idea of going to the interim I think is really just going in the face of the public and measure D vote was not that long ago and this isn't about roaring camp it's about the public your voters 75 percent of them 74 whatever the exact number was um I think in the most recent campaign um supervisor uh Tony but successfully I think he was telling the truth you know I did a good job of persuading the public that he hadn't stood in the way of this uh train project and I think it's kind of unseemly that less than a month after the election there's a possibility here a vote that actually would kill the possibility of a future train and the real issue that's left for my 40 seconds is we have to project our willingness and our excitement and our commitment to building this train and the kind of trail next to it that makes the train possible and given that situation what's at risk is the money we've already received from the state and even more so our future money it depends upon this whole multimodal approach that's gotten us this funding I think we can get that in the future and I think it really requires us not to spend money now but to basically make a commitment to move ahead rather than going backwards to the sort of the feed idea for measure d thank you thank you my name is Michael Lewis from live oak I hope that you've all had a chance to thoroughly read and understand this massive 2500 page documents that were presented with I've studied it fairly well and I've come to conclusion that the feir and the findings of facts are inconsistent and contradictory with misstatements of fact and unsupported assumptions in fact it appears that the findings of fact was written before the final eir was published for example the description of the alternative one trail only assumes permanent removal of the tracks even though it goes on to say that the tracks are not permanently removed because at any time in the future they can be replaced this is a misstatement of fact that was repeated in the presentation this morning this afternoon this calls into question the overriding the statement of overriding considerations which states that alternative one is infeasible because it precludes future rail which it does not so the the statement of overriding considerations is false because it bases on the findings of facts that contain false statements so I can only conclude that the eir was carefully crafted to favor the proposed project and dismiss the optional interim trail and the alternative one out of hand so leading to the my observation that this is a flawed document that must not be certified and passed to the RTC in its present form send it back to get those mistakes and misstatements corrected thank you very much hi jean brockel bank ditto to everything that michael said in terms of i'd like this board to return the findings of facts and the wrongful assumptions in fact they use the word we assume in findings of facts and supervisor McPherson says we need facts return it to the maker for corrections do not accept the statement of overriding considerations because they are based on the misstatements in the findings of facts state your initial support for building the less harmful interim trail it's not 803 trees that are going to be removed by the using building the ultimate trail well it's more than that and the reason it's more than that is because the eir did not inventory the smaller trees it only inventoried the adult and elders not the children and free teams that live amongst the adults and elders the statement of overriding consideration says the benefits of all this death the slaughter of the urban forest throughout live oak and all the wildlife and the biome of the living soil that will be deboldosed it's supposedly these the benefits of this outweigh the cost you're going to hear about some human costs from the folks behind me and i hope that you'll listen to them but for right now i'm saying you have the power to alter this runaway train we had a bullet train presentation this afternoon no one no one could really have absorbed all 2,500 pages and make a good decision today put it off until we have the concept report until we have the facts thank you very much thank you hi my name is christina gill would you please pull the mic down so we can thank you hi my name is christine mcgill i live in castle estates i bought my home october 22 no one told me that the park management or the park owners the title company or the realtors that my home was enrichment on the rtc property this has affected my mental and physical health i can't afford the cost to move my home i can't afford to lose my home and i can't sell it under these circumstances i have um one second this problem should have been identified and dressed by the railroad santa cruz county and the rtc and the property owners years ago you are now appending innocent people's lives the other mobile homeowners and i are not the responsible parties where are we supposed to live when you split our homes down the middle and move them the cost to move a mobile home the engineering involved to reset it in place and ensure that it sounds electrically plumbing and from the environment is a great expense where are we supposed to live while this is happening i do not have the funds to pay for this i live on my husband's social security i am not responsible party i walk 38th avenue every day with my dog and i see empty buses that well there might be one or two people but they're pretty empty they then those buses go somewhere where who's going to ride a train train that's on the outskirts of santa cruz um if you must you know i urge you to postpone this agenda item then vote to to require that the interim trail option down the center of the quarter would be built this will will move a trail along while also giving myself and the park owners more time to deal with the layout the lays before us with our thank you so much being upside down thank you my name is terry thomas i'm a 50 year resident of capitol living on park avenue across from escalona gulch and a former planning commissioner there are two issues i would like to resolve for you number one implement design option a put the trail on capitol atresol now that it has been determined that rail banking is not required this will prevent the overcrowding safety hazards and difficulty for seniors and the disabled that rerouting bikes and pedestrians into an already chaotic traffic situation in capitol a village would cause should a train ever be reactivated then the path could be rerouted to the village using the trestle for the trail would be so much safer and user friendly number two then reroute the pedestrian and bike traffic onto the already existing sidewalks and bike lanes on park avenue from monorail to coronado it's not nearly as busy as the village it would be in keeping with the mbsst master plan regarding use of existing roads by maximizing new brighton and monorail bay views but more importantly it would protect and leave undisturbed escalona gulch's monarch butterfly roosting area as well as avoid the destruction to long establish wildlife corridors and habitat plus the disturbance to avian nesting sites along with segment wildlife can't speak for themselves so we have to the proposed elevated trail along park avenue sections up to 12 feet eliminate future vegetation and would be highly destructive expensive and compared to the use of the existing street amenities it would be much cheaper and safer for all to switch the trail to go on the trestle and then move it on to park avenue so great trade capitol of village over congestion by using the trestle for saving escalona gulch and its trees by use like utilizing park avenue and thank you thank you so much i'm in a race with the parking good afternoon supervisors my name is maria rye miller i've been in castle mobile states for 24 years and the deir considers the impact on mobile home parks and castle and blue and gold to be less insignificant and not worthy of mitigation um but for any of us in this room we humans it's never insignificant to face moving our home losing our storage shed or yards and possibly even losing our home or in our investment the ripple effect will also increase the rents in the park affected to cover the costs the park owners will bear the costs will be ongoing and passed along to all residents not just on the corridor who will pay the price of losing affordable housing and likely be forced to move as well as they attempt to age in place so there's a lot of ripple here so speaking to the personal impact moving one's home can be a life or death matter especially for those who are elderly disabled or in poor health like my 90 year old father hoping to come and live with me i can't now and good conscience have him move in with me or only to face having to move mad again we are in limbo can't move can't sell the unmitigated stress just survive in the constant change years of building going on in our backyard or what was our backyard is truly significant in life altering my father will have to go live in a facility sounds dramatic it is however we hold on to a single hope that you will help us to avoid the disaster of this impact to our communities by voting to require that the interim tear trial be built this option will be the least invasive most economical preserves the habitat provides a legacy that we can all truly be proud of for years to come like they are in Monterey for example and for those of you impacted here please raise your hands if you want to have the impact interim trail in this room anybody ma'am if you can please this is not for you to address the board okay thank you sorry um and so um please make the right choices and help us out thank you thank you next speaker please approach thank you welcome my name is Mona Orozco my husband and I live in the blue and gold and we have for 28 years in this past year's first time I've heard about what has happened we thought we'd be living there very comfortably until whatever happens but we plan to live there because we've paid off our mobile home years ago we're going to lose our backyard and if it is we won't have to move our mobile home but individuals if they put a a fence or a barrier there they will be able to go right into my bedroom they will be able to go right into my bathroom because the windows are right there next to the railroad um and we have to pay for the cost to to take down our our backyard in a permanent shed that we had put in there 10 years ago it's not feasible we don't have the money for it um we're not going to move it somebody wants to move it that's fine but we're not going to move it we're 75 years old and we're not going to be able to take care of any of that so that's all I want to say um I enjoyed hearing all the comments today um and hopefully um where we solve it we can stay where we're at I don't know thank you welcome thank you supervisors my name is solid in sale I live in the city of Santa Cruz and I'm a strong supporter of robust multimodal public transit in general and our rail and trail in particular I agree with the findings of the final environmental impact report determining that the ultimate trail is the environmentally preferred alternative for segments 10 and 11 the ultimate trail configuration for our county has received support not only of county staff but of staff of the RTC and the cities of Santa Cruz Capitola and Watsonville and has directly contributed to our superior rankings in competitive grant applications I strongly support approval and encourage the board to both approve all the actions recommended by staff and request the RTC to fund the project county voters challenged to make their preferences known voted overwhelmingly in 2022 to say they wanted county transit to include both trail and rail so certifying this EIR in the ultimate trail configuration directly aligns with the overwhelming will of our voters finally board certification of this EIR today is a time critical step in building the next phase of our integrated multimodal transportation system without your certification today we risk losing the largest grant in the history of the state active transportation program when the California Transportation Commission considers this item at their June 2024 meeting please don't lose this huge sum of construction grant money already awarded over the continuing objections voiced by the same Greenway believers who doubted the odds of our current success with grant funding thank you thank you good afternoon my name is Lonnie Faulkner I'm a scientist and environmental educator and I urge the board of supervisors to approve the EIR to move forward with segments 10 and 11 of the trail beside the rail now called the ultimate trail the California Transportation Commission chair who approved the funds for the grant for this project stated publicly that Santa Cruz was given the money to buy the rail corridor with the promise that we implement clean passenger rail in a meeting with Cal Trans last April they anticipated that our passenger rail be active and connected to the state rail network in about 10 years not 25 or 30 and Monterey is moving forward with their rail at our hub at Pajaro and to the rest of the state let's not get left behind Santa Cruz an interim trail would waste more time and more money preventing us from implementing this important passenger rail project and possibly at all we're experiencing an exponential rise immediately in global warming and rail has been and always will be the most energy efficient and least environmentally damaging form of moving large numbers of people distances it's simply physics it's ironic when we hear Greenway members including Supervisor Koenig prior executive director of Greenway opposing the trail beside the rail when the proposed Greenway trail was a 26 foot wide 32 mile long asphalt road by and far the most destructive environmental plan ever proposed in reality any asphalt trail we put on that corridor is going to have environmental implications a single most environmentally wise thing we can do with that corridor is to implement passenger rail as quickly as possible which means if we're going to have a trail it needs to be located adjacent to the rail we must mitigate the tree loss and removal of the trees and prevent a heat island and implement street trees to help provide traffic calming and heat islands along our roadways so please I urge you to support segments 10 and 11 of the trail today thank you thank you hi hello can you hear me hi my name is Teenie Andrietta and I want to thank Mr. Rob Tidmore for your very hard diligent work I agree with the final environmental impact reports determination that the ultimate trail is the best option removing 803 trees consistent with the master plan it is environmentally superior I don't support the optional internment trail because it is a significant removal of 957 trees 288 from part one then 669 trees from part three segment 10 and 11 received the largest grant ever in California history from the state's active transportation program and certifying the ERR is critical to our receiving this construction grant the voters overwhelmingly support rail with trail we support all of the staff recommendations for agent agenda item 10 California and Santa Cruz counties approve proposition 116 which specifically stipulates that it is a rail projects within Santa Cruz County that facilitate recreational commuter inner city and inter county travel the California Transportation Commission released funds to the RTC with the condition to initiate recreational passenger rail service and to follow all 116 requirements California Transportation Plan 2050 aims to advance social equity and this is very important especially to South County who are very disadvantaged we cannot forget them lastly I want to say authentic planning is never about our generation it's always the next let's not hold the young as hostages to our privilege thank you thank you so much good afternoon hello um my name is alexandra fisher i'm the only one um who is in my friend group i was able to make it to this meeting um but i would also like to let the know the county's board of supervisors know that myself and my friend elie davies rosa rice pilepco jeremiah daniels and toba papilsky are all young voters who live in soquel and aptos and we all support the rail trail specifically recommendation for which is approval of segment 10 and 11 in the ultimate trail configuration we do not support the interim trail two of my friends actually live near the train tracks and said that they have if they had a train they could have taken it to this meeting in order to beat the northbound morning traffic um Jeremiah is a disabled veteran and he needs more options to be able to get around the county i talked to a lot of people my age and we all we all agree that having a train is common sense many people i've talked to who have lived in places that have trains talk about how life changing they are and to not have a car how um how much money that saves not only do trains cut down on time spent in traffic but they also cut down on our carbon footprints there's a lot of talk about the environmental impact of the rail trail just now from the supervisors i would just like to reiterate that cars and massive highways are way worse for the environment than the rail trail will ever be those same highways are also much more expensive than the rail trail to maintain and to widen when they inevitably fill up with traffic building the rail trail means we are investing in building a more sustainable and accessible Santa Cruz for those of us who live here today and also for future generations of Santa Cruzians thank you for your time and please support segments 10 and 11 in the ultimate trail configuration thank you thank you my name is Jeff Perry um i am speaking on behalf of my brother Christopher Perry who cannot be here today because of a scheduled eye surgery that he desperately needs he sent you an email on march 4th he spoke at the last regional transportation commission and he was the first person to speak i encourage you to watch his recording uh before you vote today chris lives in the blue and gold star mobile home on 38th avenue a lot 119 he has lived there for seven years and five months he is not the property owner i am the mobile home owner we lease the space from the property owner the owner of blue and gold chris is 53 years old he's developmentally disabled he's a client of imagined supported services and he lives on social security income he can work six hours per week he works at a nearby pizza my heart um before our father died he helped me buy this house so that christopher could have a nice safe place to live he likes it there he has nice neighbors he can bike to work or to shop uh when we bought the home the property owner and the manager never told us that it was encroaching into segment 10 of the rail corridor we just found out about this two months ago um what has happened to the value of our home we can't afford to sell it or buy another mobile home we'll pay to move the home a few feet forward to get it out of the corridor this become our responsibility this was problemless created by the property owners moving my brother's home or making it uh me move it as impossible it would turn our lives upside down what would we do uh where would we my brother go and how would i pay for i need more time i hope the rtc and um the supervisors will um build the optional interim trail for section 10 for the rail corridor thank you very much thank you all right at this moment in time seeing no more members of the public would like to comment on this item here in chambers we're going to move it to online and i'm just i mentioned it earlier that you know that we might have to change it to one minute i think at this point in time i'd like to reduce comment to one minute my apologies to those people who are online who wanted to speak for two but we do have um we're in a little bit of a time crunch here so um we'll give speakers on one minute matt f your microphone is now available board members my name is matt barrel i'm speaking today for friends of the rail and trail uh we submitted a letter to your um for your consideration we want to reiterate our support for the staff recommendation and we urge the board to pursue funding opportunities to bridge the project's budget gap this increase in cost is not only true of this project but of all capital projects including highway projects across our region and we also encourage you to pursue funding opportunities with regional transportation we have written a letter in support of the front race race funding grant application and we will continue to support those kinds of opportunities thanks for your time and support of moving this project forward ryan your microphone is now available hi this is ryan people's with trail now we uh we support what guide president former rtc executive director recommended years ago which is the intro trail and the reason he did that was because it's the fastest way he also stated at his last meeting that it would absolutely meet the scheduling requirements i hope you all remember that for building the trail the intro trail the issue is is you're trying to build a trail to accommodate a train that will never be approved by the california coastal commission because it violates the coastal act in the way of sea level rising and beach access and we all know that you just heard it from the consultant when he said that they have to get approval just for the trip you're basically going and spending all this time and money for a trail and it's delaying your look only 1.2 miles of the trail has been built in a decade and we're north coast we're still don't have that trail so we're going and we're trying to build this trail to accommodate a train that's never going to exist so we never get a trail so let's build the trail now interim trail thank you thank you johanna your microphone is now available thank you so much uh good afternoon supervisors um i've been reading the eir and i decided to go back and reread the the master plan um i what struck me is how far away we've moved from the original vision of the trail um the master plan was in vision and the estimates for such were about 18 million dollars for these segments 10 and 11 and today we find out it's um let's see 111 million dollars and despite the largest ATP grant ever awarded we're still short 28 million dollars uh so now that that we know the environmental cost of financial costs i think we should evaluate the benefits and what are the benefits of the ultimate trail is it a class one trail described as in the master plan no despite the great work by trail planners the constraints of the corridor cannot accommodate a trail that meets the minimum width requirements determined by uh caltrans even with design exceptions so thank you for your time thank you kami your microphone is now available hi good afternoon to all you there thank you very much for taking my call and i'm i apologize i'm a little under the weather that's why i couldn't be there so i'm not going to give you a lot of facts um you've already gotten all those facts you've got them from both sides um you know i live in castle mobile estates i live on the traps i know of what i speak and what i know of what i see from the tracks um and so i think a lot of the people who are actually wanting you to move forward right now don't really have the reality of what's going on the reality is it's going to encroach this alleged encroachment by rtc but it's going to encroach upon our lives tremendously and and i ask you with the supervisors to sit back and just think for a moment please if i was to live on the tracks how is this going to affect me and what decision would be best i am asking and imploring you to go ahead and go for the interim trail we all love the bikes and we love the walking and that's great so for that i ask you to do that thank you so very much thank you john your microphone is now available hey guys good afternoon this is my excellent well my time is up sorry but i'm just gonna get going uh i remember back to when the interim trail was through capitol the village and the ultimate trail was adjacent to the rail corridor over the trestle uh i still don't understand why that isn't the ultimate trail like as far as just the the semantics of it that seems like the proper word just that is our ultimate goal but whatever uh i don't really care about the trees greenway and we do not get along i'm really into math state and federal budgets are bleak and a grant awarded in a record surplus is a silly thing to rely on in the future uh every dollar spent on a train is one less dollar we spend on things like housing economic accessibility essential services uh making our environment more resilient so my solution is i think there's four of you sitting on that dais a two to split solves our current dilemma that's uh that's what i would recommend thank you david your microphone is now available uh good afternoon can you hear me okay yep okay yeah i'm david van brinkins of santa cruz uh sorry i'm dialing in today from bentonville arkansas where i'm literally just a few yards away from the world famous world class uh northwest arkansas razorback greenway i want to thank supervisor conic for clarifying on multiple occasions that is 2022 initiative measure d was specifically to select between the temporary trail and the ultimate trail configurations and uh we all voted enthusiastically for the permanent trail not the temporary one some residents homes have inadvertently trespassed onto rtc property understandably they may be worried or even panicky i do hope that you are reassuring these encroaching residents that although they are definitely in violation that you and the county will work with them and especially the park managers to resolve and minimize their disruption when we move forward with this project as recommended by our esteemed staff of planners and engineers and as selected by the voters we're really looking forward to our rail trail our very own santa cruz greenway thanks very your microphone is now available thank thank you very much this is barry scott i'm in aptus and i uh i'm asking that the supervisors you unanimously approve all eight recommended actions uh in this agenda item um and i'm not going to repeat others uh talking points i do want to add something new though and that is we uh the city of santa cruz enjoys a great deal of completed trail and the uh city of watsonville only has about 18 percent of its uh well less than half of its segment 18 completed and i only hope that uh the rtc with the support of supervisors and the order supervisors and county public works uh take every effort to complete segment 18 because it it's just not fair that the city of santa cruz has something like 70 percent of its trail segments done while watsonville waits for trail completion so go for it vote yes thank you very much that's all then your microphone is available then for nasa your microphone is now available as a reminder it is star there we go go ahead uh i've written about this and to you in a report you should read it but the final design in the ir for the ultimate trail creates a public nuisance from the standpoint of safety and i've written about that it's not in with the master plan which calls for cal trans class one and that's a problem you better be careful as a board as you move forward that you you're aware of this and that you don't get future liability for the county now now um the other thing that i recommend is that you have an independent safety review to ensure the final i a ir meets cal trans standards especially for width and concrete walls thank you please read my report to you we have no further speakers okay thank you everyone who commented on this item and for your participation today i'd like to bring it back to staff um to see if maybe you can provide some uh response to some of the concerns that been raised especially as it relates to the mobile home park who i think we've heard from a lot today yes thank you um so i think as everyone is aware that the mobile homes are encroaching under our c property and as the the the challenge in this area is the the right of way is is very constrained in some cases this is why it is 35 feet and others it goes down to 32 feet so it's very difficult to fit both the the trail and the railroad tracks in this corridor so that that requires using in much of segment 10 you know the entire corridor to fit both in in the um in the right of way we did as part of the environmental review process locate the ultimate trail up against the edge of the right of way purposely to provide environmental clearance for you know the entire right of way so um and and the rtc is is working to resolve those encroachments as part of a separate process so they're not they're not the removal of encroachments is not being handled as part of this project however my understanding is that uh there's there's been some conversations at the rtc about um modifying the design to reduce impacts to property owners so if we get that um direction and request from the rtc then then we would work with the rtc to to look at ways in to modify the design to reduce impacts on encroachments i i think it's i think it's reasonable to say at this point that there's not going to be a way to modify the design to remove all impacts to encroachments there's just not enough space in the in the corridor to do that but um you know if we get direction from the rtc to to modify the design to reduce impacts to encroachments we can we can look at that great and i just want to say that i'd appreciate the fact that you know there is an opportunity to through the rtc to address some of these potential negative impacts and so for those folks who spoke today specific to those impacts i would just encourage you all to you know continue to pay attention when this item's on the rtc board's agenda and to express your concerns to rtc members because there there could be a way that we can resolve some of the concerns that were raised before us today um i guess i'll just share some comments and feedback first i just really want to appreciate um everyone who's worked so hard on this and for all the information that was provided to us today on this item based on those staff's report and the staff presentation it does appear that the ultimate trail is the best option for consideration here today and i just want to reflect on some of what i heard which is that you know we really want to be respectful of the voters who voted on measure d to move forward with the rail and trail option and i think it's you know really important and it's our responsibility to continue to honor and respect the vote that was made at that point in time when we think about equity and we we talk about equity you know if we delay action today there's a good chance that this is going to jeopardize one of the largest grants that we've been able to receive in the history of the state of california for this kind of project and what that means is if we jeopardize that funding we will be putting to waste a lot of past funding that's been used on this project it will jeopardize our ability to get future funding and um and i think that's a real concern when it comes to equity because what that means is we will have here in north county we will have segments that are completed and it's going to jeopardize the potential to have segments in south county for residents down there and so i think it's really critical that we continue to move forward with the staff recommendation today and so that we are demonstrating to the state of california we're demonstrating to the voters that when we receive these kinds of funds we're going to use them responsibly and we're going to demonstrate that this is why state and federal government should give us more money to help us back fill these gaps in my experience um and i'll just you know as it relates to another issue that um i spoke about earlier with going with the city of santa cruz to discuss um funding for homelessness at the state level the number one thing that they appreciated was that we're moving forward that we're not trying to delay our projects and i think in this case we need to continue to demonstrate that we are able to use funds responsibly when the state provides them to us and we need to leverage the projects that we've completed to be able to show that you know we're capable of taking these funds and using them responsibly and so please help us within these um instances when we have these gaps in funding and then furthermore i just like to say that you know if we delay you know these decisions it also means that the cost of everything is going to go up at the same time so you know if we're saying well we don't have enough money right now we should delay it's like well the costs are just going to continue to go up over time so why should we use that as an excuse to delay rather than continue to move forward and as snap has mentioned um they're looking for creative ways to help backfill some of these gaps and i think that we should allow staff the opportunity to really go out and explore other funding options explore ways that we can reduce costs but continue to move forward so that we're not you know wasting money and allowing for the cost of this ultimate real option to go up over time and then i'd also be concerned if we you know pull rail out because um the voters definitely said that they didn't want that to happen and i could see us you know getting sued potentially if we decide to go against the voters will and so um for me i'd be happy to entertain a motion to move forward the staff's recommendation on this item so you made a motion no i can't make a motion okay um you know i think ultimately we're approving a EIR right it's not really a business plan or a concept report and i'd like to see us move forward and you know not delay the process um you know i i think i i want to see the projects in south county happen but i'm also concerned about future projects i'd like to see highway one i mean 152 get its road diet in south county uh it's a future future project that needs funding right and so i want to make sure that happens and you know i want to see that one one day that highway nine will have protected bike lanes or a sidewalk on one side so those are things that i'm also concerned about the future and so for that and because i i believe in this process that we're doing and this project um to be a more sustainable multimodal project uh i'm going to go ahead and move uh to adopt the findings all finding statements of dr for segment 10 and 11 including options b and all riparian exceptions in including all the permits agreements and all related actions so is that essentially moving the staff recommendation yes staff recommendation she's even motion for the staff recommendation so second i'll go ahead and second the item and then i'll open up for further um discussion from board members any further discussion okay seeing none we'll bring it to a roll call the supervisor konig no uh hernandez yes midferson and comings yes so that motion fails or that motion that motion fails on that item i so we'll bring it back to the board for uh motion yeah i um again i just uh this is no um hit on the work that's been done uh it had to be done but we're finding out more information which but um i think that um well i would like to make a motion that we accept the staff recommendations on one and two that's the public hearing today and the certification of the uh segments 11 uh 10 and 11 final eir uh but with additional direction to one investigate the options to reduce the rail size at escalona gulch to preserve more trees and reduce the more severe environmental impacts a resolution to the ongoing discussions with roaring camp regarding various options to reduce costs and a resolution to working with the regional transportation commission on value engineering and design again to reduce costs um and then lastly to request that the rtc provide a written analysis regarding the impacts to the 68 million dollar measure d active transportation program fund associated with the funding request from both the county and the city of san jacuzzi to finish the north county segments of the trail we move that that motion all second so the motion by supervisor mic first and second advise from riser county i just like to get some clarification on the motion that's before us and just want to see if staff can provide some information on and how that's how that differs from the staff recommendation because i know that within the staff recommendation that um you know there's executing agreements there's um the sorry i'm just looking through this because there's the statements of overriding consideration that needs to be incorporated it's not just the um the eir so i just want to understand how this the the recommendation that's before us is differs from what's been recommended um yes thank for that question so if we're just approving recommended actions number one and number two you would certify the ar but you would not um you would not complete the uh california violent review process so there would be no adoption of findings and no statement of overriding considerations so you would not so we would have to come back and and do that um at a later point for the board and then there'd be no approval of the project and this would prevent us from obviously signing the baseline agreement and moving forward with the grant funding um and and some of the actions requested here i anticipate um taking some time particularly working with rowing camp um to resolve the railway location so it's hard for me to anticipate the amount of time required to complete these um these um uh directions from the board but it definitely would mean we're not going to the ctc in june to request additional grant funding okay that's a great comment thank you um what i would move a friendly amendment that we include item three then recommended action three i believe that's what would be required to basically complete the environmental impact report process i think our consultant has done an excellent job and provided us at least the information we need uh as far as these various options um you know i'd be part of why i seconded the motion is i think okay let's let's not delay as far as the environmental impact report let's get that behind us um but you know before we go ahead and um basically make a commitment to ourselves and to and to caltrans that this project is funded uh i think we need to actually determine well what are the options for value engineering uh what is roaring camp willing to do i mean that's a huge piece of it this eight million dollars of track relocation we need a hard answer not not a we'll work with you answer we need like we're going to commit two to four million dollars or this much time to move those tracks um matt i heard i finished with a question which is why why can't we make june if we get some of these answers back sooner rather than later great question um the the baseline agreement is signed by caltrans and it takes two to three months to complete the process once once we have signed it on our end so um there's just not enough time to to make any changes right now we're we're down to the wire as we are to make the june ctc meeting so delaying uh delaying the baseline agreement is is is delaying the grant the grant funding and i'll just share too because um myself and grace and and staff from the city of sanacruz have been involved with roaring camp in these discussions and they they excuse me they have been open to to conducting the the rail relocation work um as as the rail operator to remove the cost from the project obviously we haven't completed negotiations yet but i would say so far they've been a willing partner in in those discussions so if we don't make june do we make um august to be honest with you i haven't i'm not i'm so focused on june i don't have a i'm not sure when the next ctc meeting would be they're generally quarterly so i think it would be october um we'd have to submit a an extension request for the grant funding to allow them to push back allocation to to october and then as i mentioned previously we're now we're talking um reducing the amount of time that we have to complete the final design a right of way by three to four months which is it's going to prove challenging for the project schedule so any questions i don't know further questions i just like to ask um um so it sounds like there's a friendly amendment to add number three that correct but i'm just wondering what the rest of the i mean there's another eight um recommendations here and i'm just trying to better understand how these all kind of fit in with one another because it sounds like we're just moving one two and three then how do the other five um staff recommendations that we're not incorporating how does that impact our ability to move forward with this project because i mean it seems like this there's if we don't do this properly there's a potential that this is going to kill the project or it's at least going to delay it substantially which could ultimately also result in significant negative impacts of this project and so i just like to better understand as we're moving into this vote how these recommendations are going to share share if i may just provide a little information shouldn't it but after june the next meeting is august 15th thank you okay and it's june 27th so a month and a half correct i i don't anticipate being able i mean i think i think the questions that we're trying to answer as part of this this this new motion are our big questions honestly and i know the 27 28 million dollars that we need for this project it is is a huge question mark but the reason we presented the recommended actions in the way that we did was to say let's go to the rtc now let's get a commitment to fund the project let's not risk this grant funding let's not go to the ctc and say hey you know we we committed to coming to you in june to request this additional funding actually we're not going to make it now you know there's now there's question marks on our ability to deliver to this project and there is frankly there's a lot of there's two years for us to now to work with the rtc to go after additional grant funding to work with rowing camp to reduce costs for the project to work with the design team to value engineer the project so the the idea here is is not to say we're going to use all 28 million dollars of measure d funding for this project we're we're going to look for additional ways to save costs this just gets us to deliver the project and to move forward with the grant funding in a way that doesn't like many of many of you have said risk our grant our grant money and i guess that's my biggest concern with the recommendations before us if we're able to move forward and then incorporate you know some of these resolutions to reduce costs it sounds like that's the biggest concern right now is the reduction of cost and it sounds like we're moving forward the ultimate trail and so i'm just wondering if there's an opportunity for us to not delay because by leaving out some of these other pieces it's going to it's really uncertain how this is going to impact the funding correct and so there could be an opportunity for us to move forward and then also you know with resolutions to reduce costs working with rgc to reduce costs getting this written analysis i mean i'm just wondering if there's an opportunity for us to do to have a win-win here with these because that sounds like what is the concern is so with that seeing no further comments from board members i guess we'll just take this to a roll call Supervisor Koenig hi Hernandez hi McPherson hi incoming no so that motion passes with Supervisor McPherson Hernandez Koenig voting in favor and Supervisor Cummings voting in opposition and so with that that concludes this item i'm really hoping that we can continue moving forward with this project and that we're not going to jeopardize the funds for this project because i know that many voters and folks in our community have been really expecting this to move forward expeditiously but just want to thank everybody for their work on this and we will return to this item at a future date and so thank you staff for your presentation thank you members of the community for coming out and speaking on this item and with that we do have a 130 certain item i know we've been sitting here all day non-stop so maybe if we can take a five-minute break for folks to use the bathroom then we'll come back and we'll continue forward moving forward we have working much recording stopped i can do it again okay so the next item on our agenda is to conduct a study session on housing for a healthy Santa Cruz strategic framework to prove memorandum of understanding for a homeless housing assistance and prevention program round five grant funding ratify mou with county of Monterey for state encampment resolution project and take related actions and they turn this over to staff from our human services department for presentation on this item okay good afternoon supervisor of chaircomings and board members know it's been a long day for you today um and this is also a really critical item for our community i'm randy morris i'm the human services department director i'm going to make some introductory comments and then i'm going to turn it over to robert ratner the director of our housing for health division who will go through a formal powerpoint presentation i want to make sure you're bored in the community watching is aware that we are at an important juncture in our work in this county that we are completing the first three-year strategic plan that the county has ever put into place while we pivot today to requesting your board to approve a next three-year strategic plan which this round is required by the state in order to be eligible for certain state funding the division started uh just over three years ago when i was transferred from the CAO's office to human services um so robert and i have been here for three years giving your board six month um report ins on our progress obviously during a very complicated time with the worldwide pandemic and a lot of COVID related funding that came into place and also a number of disasters that sort of were a conflation with the unsheltered crisis in our community and i just want to take a few moments to comment on a number of accomplishments that have occurred in the last three years but very mindful and humbled about the many many challenges that still sit in front of us first i want to highlight because of COVID pandemic funding we sheltered over 1000 people for well over a year during the COVID room key um events it showed that when the federal and state government steps in to take seriously the unsheltered crisis to help support their health um we can stand up effective shelters we also housed over 900 people many of whom were moved out of those shelters and we showed through those efforts that on top of previous efforts and accomplishments before this division started i think there were nearly 500 people um housed thanks to the support of the housing authority we added another 900 this was done through housing authority vouchers landlord incentives and supports that your board approved in a large um wave of funding and also a number of social workers that we put in place to help support the people who are in those COVID um shelter systems i also want to take a minute to highlight and appreciate the county administrative office and your board and the board prior to you that when this division started we had a combination of some analysts from the CAO's office who joined a couple of analysts and human services which told of the mighty five people trying to address homelessness in sanikers county and thanks to your board and a lot of creative effort and funding and leveraging of state and federal money we've been able to grow the division to 20 people today i want to highlight that that has been over three million dollars of new general fund that your board has approved over a three-year period and with that investment you got a over four-time return in the number of federal and state grants we've been able to secure to help expand our system mindful it is still not enough i also want to take a minute to highlight my first year i got here before the office transferred over there were so many systemic problems and infrastructure issues with how our county responded to homelessness this is a little bit of boring insider government speak but just to recognize the work that's been done i just want to highlight a couple of major system reforms we've established first we now actually have a fully transparent public brown act government continuum of care called the housing for health partnership which has elected officials and community members supervisors comings and conics are members of that group which better integrates and collaborates the work of your board and that local co c we have a much more robust data system through the homeless management information system a lot of what robert is able to report on is because of better data infrastructure we also have a much more refined referral system into the system was a bit chaotic before it's much more organized we now recently have a lived experience board people who have in our experiencing homelessness who are giving us perspective through a process and much broader communications with the community through our website a lot of data dashboards and newsletters but many many challenges remain i want to start with the number one and that is this is in large part a response to a affordable housing crisis that is arguably 50 years in the making it is next to impossible to afford housing in most high cost communities when you are on ssi or low income and so the work we do is often nibbling around the edges of what has only been solved here locally with housing authority vouchers and we have been successful in penetrating the private rental market with that but without that finding a way to bridge the gap of what it costs to live in this community and many in california is truly an affordable housing crisis that social services have limitations in affecting second i have said this many times i think it's worth repeating i'm a professional in the field of human services for almost three decades now and when i look at human services safety net funding it is very stable and very predictable and therefore we have a stable safety net addressing poverty and abuse in homelessness the funding is almost entirely unpredictable almost entirely built on one-year grants we follow the money available to us but only about five percent of the budget that roberts division manages is affordable and stable and we will talk more about that today why we have an opportunity to invest some more stable funding into the system and my last comment about the challenges is i think it's unfortunate in our country in our state for sure the amount of politics and narratives that are getting created around this problem tends to generate and evolve into who's at fault who to shame who to blame local government says it's the feds in the state the feds say the state needs to do more and our governor unfortunately who has invested a lot of money in so solving this spends a lot of time saying he has solved everything in local governments the problem that is not our experience and we hope that these reports shed light on why and the last and this gets to one of the specific items for today in the chaos of unstable funding and the crisis that surrounds us opportunities to have thoughtful careful targeted trade-off discussions about the choices we have to make often don't happen so often decisions get made in response to a particular thing and the whole larger system we're trying to build up is compromised so hopefully today we'll get a little more focused on what i mean uh chaircomings listed the recommended actions and i want to end my introductory comments by just focusing on one because it's a little bit unique and that is recommended action number five and what it asks your board so it could be very clear what we're asking or not asking is really an approval in concept and the approval and concept has two items one is measure k passed by the voters in santa cruse county creates a new revenue stream of local money that we did not have until measure k passed and it has been made public that a million dollars if passed of the projected 10 million dollars of new revenue would be focused on expanding shelter services in our community of all the money that robert and his team have been able to gain from federal and state sources almost none of it helps support stable shelter systems that's one million dollars you will hear in robert's presentation that is not in near enough number two and this is the most tricky we as human services not only administer the housing for health division but we will be back in front of you in five weeks to talk about the core procurement process and your board in the city council what shares at city of santa cruse council shares and funding all agreed in concept to have one of the four priority areas for core funding be shelter so we are not asking you to make a decision today about that we are asking to share with you in concept that when we're in front of you on uh april 30th for the core rfe that will be released given we already have nearly a million dollars of current core funding focused on homeless and housing and shelter services it's an opportunity for board to consider between measure k and the next round of core funding an opportunity to braid those funding streams together we will have to coordinate collaborate with the city of santa cruse we meet with them regularly because they're co-founders of core it's an opportunity to make a choice to invest more deeply in the shelter system it is our experience as staff that without a more stable shelter system the entire ecosystem we're running is too unstable and we would be remiss if we didn't raise to your attention that we see this as an opportunity that might pass it's going to be a complicated discussion because it's a trade-off but we wanted to preview that today and then talk more about it at the core discussion when we release the rfe on the 30th and welcome any feedback today to help us think through how to bring that matter forward in a month so with that said i'm going to turn it over to robert to go through a formal presentation and we've certainly look forward to public comment and dialogue with your board thank you randy thank you members of the board i can't believe it's the sixth time i'm doing one of these updates the time has gone by fairly quickly um but we haven't made as much progress as i personally would like ensuring that everyone has a stable healthy place to live but we're going to keep working at it and appreciate the support from the board and being a part of the human services team and the county team to work on this issue cheap move forward thanks so overview of what i was going to cover today so this is um uh overview of the last six months under the prior three-year framework that we've been operating under and then i'm going to share what our plans are for the current six-month period through mid-june and then want to share with the board proposed changes to the prior three-year framework and requesting your approval of our plans for the next three years that build upon some of the pillars from the first three-year framework but have some minor adjustments that i'll highlight when i go through my presentation then want to talk about uh interim supportive housing or all these different terms they're used to describe where can people go when they don't have a place to go um and talk about the value of having identified places where people can have some stability and safety while they work on getting into more permanent housing randy alluded to the funding instability and wanted to share some differences between the federal approach to funding and addressing this issue and the state approach and what that means at the local level and then just quickly go through the recommended board action items i pulled out a quote to highlight one of the points of emphasis for today's presentation uh robert frost in one of his poems at home is the place that when you have to go there they have to take you in and so that that step where can you go where someone will accept you and take you as you are and then help you get on the next step in your life journey we don't have enough of those places for folks and people are having to move around as we uh ask people to leave certain areas because of damage to the environment or challenges so what can we do together to create more of those places where people can be accepted as they are and get on a path to more stability and that's ready now all right so accomplishments over the last six month period from june through december we included in our board materials what are the major goals we're working on as a division we had 40 of them identified in the last six month period and we partially or fully completed 40 of them one of the highlight a few that really stand out for me and some of our staff we secured over six million dollars of HUD consume of care funding as the highest it's ever been for the county and members of the board are involved with that process it's a four hundred forty thousand dollar increase from the prior allocation and it's going to help us create one new permit support of housing program that will serve around uh 13 people and money to help support our lived expertise action boards that are in the process of forming that randy alluded to we applied for home key around three funds and got an award of 3.6 million dollars for a new youth transitional housing project um in an uncorporated freedom area of the county really excited about that we secured some funding uh that historically was going to local agencies but they didn't want to continue with housing opportunities for people with hiv and aids so we've got a two hundred fifteen thousand dollar a year grant over the next five years to serve that population of people with housing instability and homelessness we started referrals to me this is really exciting it's been years to build new housing and we've got some new housing that actually is built and people are moving in i have on my desktop in my office a picture of people with the keys moving into the new apartment Vienna star plaza and to boss the gardens these are new projects scattered around the county and people are moving in um we just need a lot more of that um going on uh alluded to the lived expertise action board has taken us a while to build up uh an infrastructure i think that i hope can really support hearing from people who live through homelessness in the local community to be more engaged in advising us on what we can do better and contributing new ideas and efforts to the collective work that we're doing i was also really surprised we have 10 slots planned for people to have paid kind of internship learning opportunities to be on these lived expertise groups we had over 70 people who experienced homelessness in the county apply to be a part of that group so we're talking internally how do we keep them engaged and really learn from them so i'm looking forward to bringing their voices forward more and learning from them myself we did the point in time count in january unfortunately i don't have updates for you all by the end of the month in april we have to report to head some preliminary numbers from the pit count and the final report we're hoping to have by the end of june early july uh we had over a hundred volunteers we had people who've um experienced homelessness or were currently struggling with homelessness helping with that visual count and that was followed up with a survey of people experiencing homelessness so we'll see what comes out of that data analysis and then i'm really appreciative of partners in the community foundation we've been working with the community action board to set up a centralized housing assistance fund for people who are at risk of losing their housing or people who need a little bit of money to get back into housing and the community foundation set up a donor program where people can donate and a hundred percent of donations that go there are going to go right to the people that need the assistance we're using other grant funding to help support the infrastructure to manage those dollars so really appreciate that partnership with the foundation and that's the kind of thing that helps our whole movement succeed is when everybody's chipping in a little bit more every time um so i wanted to share in our last framework we had some goals one of the big overarching goals under the prior framework was a 50 percent reduction in what's called unsheltered homelessness people who don't have any shelter and then a 25 percent reduction in overall homelessness so between 2022 and 2023 we saw a 22 percent reduction in homelessness overall and we'll have to wait to see what the numbers are in 2024 i hope that it shows that we're continuing to make some progress albeit the pit count is an imperfect as you think you all know way to measure part of what we had in the original framework was goals in terms of capacity and i think many of you have heard me say before we had idealistic goals in the framework around capacity but it didn't include budget numbers so i'm going to share again with the board for actually to do what was in the framework how much that would actually cost in kind of broad strokes but i wanted to share with what we were able to secure with the local contributions of funding and also state and federal dollars how close did we get to these goals so our target for temporary housing which we'll come back to was 600 beds and we had a baseline before the plan started and before the pandemic of 440 beds we're actually lower than where we were when this plan would first started in in part because of the instability in shelter funding we're losing some capacity in south county but at the same time we've got new grants to start new programs that and then new grants have to be for new things so that's part of the challenge that we're dealing with the staff rapid rehousing which is services plus short-term rental assistance that number of slots stayed steady but we're below the original goal that was in the plan of 490 randy alluded to this we far exceeded the goal we had originally for permanent supportive housing we had a baseline of 500 and the framework target was for 600 and permits for housing is ongoing rental subsidies with services for folks we're close to 1400 slots between the new buildings and the great partnership we have with the housing authority have dedicated vouchers for people who are at risk over experiencing homelessness and we're coordinating the services and incentives for landlords and the housing authority is working with the federal government to draw down as many of those extra dollars as possible some of the biggest growth is with veterans we've gotten more vouchers for veterans experiencing homelessness and keep inching closer to what i hope is in my career no veteran is experiencing homelessness in the county or we can get them back into housing really quickly and then we've also because we did so well with the covid pandemic vouchers got some other vouchers added into the housing authorities budget which i'll share a little bit more about later and randy highlighted and i just want to emphasize the critical importance of getting more affordable housing for people with a range of incomes for our framework we really focus on the housing category and the rena goals the regional housing needs allocation goals for the lowest income group and how we did the last eight year cycle our goal was 734 new units and we got to 473 so there's no growth between the last six month report and this current six month report so we fell short of our overall eight-year goal and you'll see later our our goal and many of you know for housing production is significantly higher this next eight-year cycle so we're gonna have to step up our game if we're gonna get closer to those goals and then there's some other metrics in the old framework around performance how long are people staying in programs and what percentage of them are getting into housing to me what's most important is what percentage of folks it's on the bottom of this slide are getting into housing so with our temporary housing we had a goal of 40 percent of people who come into temporary housing programs would get into permanent housing when they exit and where you're at 25 percent it's been a decline from the last six months I think that's largely due to expanding shelter that doesn't have services attached to it and so when we count those shelter beds those outcomes are lower and it brings down the average transitional housing we really only have one significant transitional housing program in the county with Pajaro Valley Shelter Services and they've actually been doing a great job of increasing the number of families that get into housing that shows here and with rapid rehousing we are inching closer to the 85 percent but not quite there and the lengths of stay we're on target with transitional housing rapid rehousing and our shelter stays are longer than what was idealized in the framework so what are we planning to work on in the next six months this is outlined in Mordechill and your board materials one of the highlight a few things so taking advantage of some one-time funding to create some more low barrier service and rich shelter that are distributed throughout the county our goal is to get to 150 plus beds we have a lot more we have four million dollars of one-time funding that I hope will stay in the budget this year for us to invest in more supportive housing units we have a new street outreach project to cover the unincorporated areas of the county and we have a contract that's about to be executed by the end of this month to get that project started and working with the sheriff and other community partners we're working on a vendor pool solicitation for a new housing and service provider to help people with HIV and AIDS with housing stability issues a big thing we need to work on in terms of funding is partnering with MediCal managed care now it's Kaiser and the Central California Alliance for Health a lot of the money that used to come to counties for services has shifted over to MediCal and managed care so we've got to help ourselves as staff but also our providers learn how to bill and capture the data and make sure people stay on insurance because that's a critical part for being able to get paid for the work because it's now an insurance benefit but if you don't have insurance you can't get paid to do the service we have 41 new vouchers because we successfully used what were pandemic related emergency housing vouchers we got more and I'm excited we got applications in for probably around 50 people by the end of the month and hopefully we're going to get all those folks into housing by the end of this six-month period um we're continuing to work with our home key awardees and trying to look at opportunities for more uh temporary and long-term housing projects mentioned the delivered expert expertise groups we really need those going and then another big area somewhat related to CalAIM is that all these different systems that touch people experiencing homelessness we don't really do a good job of talking to each other and coordinating care so part of that is looking at data across these systems at the population level but how do we make that data available for the people on the ground just one little anecdote I had a conversation with the provider recently who was trying to serve someone experiencing homelessness and they said we were trying to get them enrolled in our CalAIM program but we found out they're already enrolled with somebody else could someone tell me where we could find out because they didn't know they were already enrolled somewhere else so it's an example of left hand and right hand really not knowing who's getting paid to support someone so we can do better and I hope in the next six months we're making progress in that area uh so this is related to what are the big changes in the proposed new three-year framework and the major change that I wanted to highlight for the board is shifting away from putting goals in the framework that are not backed by actual funding so the targets that I just shared with you that were ideal targets I'm recommending the board that we put in more realistic expectations for ourselves and the public and things that we can actually manage in a more time sensitive fashion so we're not committing to a 50 percent or 25 percent reduction I don't think the 2024 account is going to show that we achieve that goal but we are committed to in the new framework continuing to try to reduce the number of people in the point in time counts that are experiencing homelessness but because we were very centered on the point in time counts that's a once a year thing on one day what we're proposing for the new framework is can we use the data that we built an infrastructure around in the homeless management information system to see if we're making progress every month can we measure the same thing and look back 12 months to see if we're making progress and one of the things that we're recommending is that we attach our collective local goals to what HUD federal housing urban development department calls high performing community goals so I don't think anyone in the country has yet met these goals so it's ambitious still but some communities are closer the way you become a high performing community in the HUD continuum of care world is by hitting the top four goals on this slide so reducing the length of time that people experience homelessness in your community right now our data shows that on average two two and a half years folks are experiencing homelessness and there's a wide range between people have been homeless in this community for 15 years and people are homeless for 30 to 60 days the HUD I feel like it's a fantasy but there are some communities that are close to this they're stated national goals 20 days or less so they consider that functional zero if someone loses their housing they can get back into housing within less than a month as you can tell we're far away from that but we can still get credit for reducing the length of time by 10 percent from year to year so that's what we're proposing as a goal reducing the percentage of people that leave our programs and then return back into the same system within two years so right now 15 percent of people that exit our programs that collect data in HMIS come back within a two-year period and are homeless again so I think we can do better than that the HUD national goal is five percent or less and I think that we can work together locally to get our current percentage down lower we can meet this high performing standard if we reduce where we are by 20 percent every year for the next three years the third goal is making sure that the work that's being done around housing and homelessness is being captured in a shared data system which is the HMIS system HUD has a way of measuring what percentage of your programs are in the system and right now we're just under 80% and HUD says for four years in a row can you get 80% of your pro local programs in the data system I think we can do it that's the one we're closest to getting to the fourth one is probably the most challenging of the list it's really coordinating how do we connect people who are unsheltered in with housing programs and the metric says you should look at how many people in your point in time count are unsheltered and over the course of a year that number or more should get into a housing program so we had 1026 people in our last point in time count that were unsheltered that one night and during that same federal fiscal year we serve 986 people who are unsheltered in housing programs so to meet that goal we got to get two 1500 people being served which means we need more housing programs we need to serve more people effectively in those programs and then the number five goal is just reminding us the arena is really where it's at and getting more housing and particularly housing for the lowest incomes remember the slide a little bit earlier we were under a thousand as our goal for the eight year period for the whole county and this next eight year cycle the goal we have is a collective community is 3500 so we got a lot of work to do we haven't started reporting and tracking on that yet and I think that that's going to make the biggest difference if we can create those housing units for a broad range of affordability needs particularly the lowest income folks in the community without Robert Frost quote that I mentioned earlier where can people go I am often asked this question in my role and I think many of you have heard a lot of the terms from the middle of this slide is all the different terms that are out there and I get lots of requests can we open a sanctioned accountment what about more sober living what about low barrier nav center what about this shelter what about so these are all different ways to think about how do we create places where people can be safely when they don't have stable places to land and there's some real trade off decisions that we have to make given the shortage of available resources to meet the need my personal view is when we invest in these kinds of programs there's some key principles and things that we should include in them and things to keep in mind so if we don't have places where people can go we have more visible unsheltered people so the west coast of the united states compared to many of the east coast communities we have a much higher percentage of people who are unsheltered experiencing homelessness there are places like new york that guarantee in quotes a right to shelter they also still have large numbers of homeless individuals so that's not really success in my mind but at least people are sheltered so you got to balance how much you invest in the temporary and in the permanent and helping people transition if we don't have permanent options available for people they will just cycle in and out of our temporary programs they'll be there for six months or 24 months they'll go back to the street we saw the percentages earlier statewide in 2022 um i think 33 percent of people who entered a range of housing programs got into permanent housing and that's because we don't have enough permanent options for people even really high quality programs that are well resource struggle when we don't have good options so how do we balance those investments um and then investing in temporary housing often costs more per person than permanent the difference is how long is that investment um part of the reason for that is temporary programs often require additional staffing support and monitoring and cover food and people aren't contributing rent so this trade-off is policy makers there's no easy answer no one has a magic formula but you got to find the right balance and from my perspective the best way to do that is to look at your data and if if your data is showing that the programs are helping in a good percentage of people exit to permanent housing um then you got a good balance and as i said earlier we're trending downward on our temporary housing in terms of people exiting a permanent housing so that to me means we're kind of out of balance we're not investing in the kind of temporary housing that's getting good outcomes so what i have personally experienced is when we invest in temporary housing that is service enriched and follows uh six principle six p's it's on the slide people have some more privacy they can then have some autonomy around their possessions so a lot of historical temporary housing you can't bring that you can't bring this so you got to let go of all of your things that are part of your life to come into a temporary housing program you can't bring to partner you're staying with on the street or in your vehicle or your children if it used to be that if you had an adolescent boy a shelter wouldn't take you in thankfully we have some federal laws that prevent that from happening um but uh the other thing is being clear about what is the purpose of the program and in my view the purpose of temporary housing is to quickly get people back into something permanent it's not a place to land forever it's how do we get people quickly and then what are the principles we have to operate that so how do we make sure that um i think of it as radical hospitality that's my quick version of um one of the core principles for temporary housing like how do we welcome people in i remember it's i'm uh i stayed in a fancy hotel one night because someone gave me and i was like what is this like how much service and attention was provided can we do that locally to our staff that run these programs and the people and they come in that radical hospitality and welcoming and supportive communication goes a long way to transforming people's lives and then what we've got in the works is a plan for three regional uh and this is state jargon low barrier navigation center fancy term for shelter that has got services and that has these six p's as part of how they operate so we've got one plan in wantsonville one plan for um so cal and we're working with the city of santa cruz on enhancing the current shelter to be more in line with these kind of structural and other principles um we've got one time money for the project in central and south county we're doing fundraising for the project in the city of santa cruz and then we know we have a gap because the state's not committing ongoing funding to support these projects ongoing my estimate as of today um when we run out of the money that we have for the money that we do have to start these will need six million dollars to keep the roughly 160 175 new units we're going to create with this um so one of the items for board contemplation discussion is can we contribute more locally to help us as staff leverage other funds um and for us to to show when we're applying for dollars from the federal state government we can say look our county board and our cities are putting money into this we are demonstrating our commitment help us by giving us some of your resources so we can really continue these operations um this is really busy slide but i said earlier i would talk about how much did the fray the old framework really cost some of you have seen these numbers before it's gone up because costs have gone up over the past three years so i updated this to implement the framework from the prior three years would cost us about 83 and a half million dollars a year each year for three years to do everything that was in that framework at our peak when we had the most money that was connected to our efforts we were at 36 38 million dollars depending on how you count it so we never even got to half of what would be required to meet the goals and there's some breakdown here of our estimates of how much all those things would cost and there's this little arrow that shows where are we with the gray is the temporary housing shelter and transitional housing so you can see um for this year we've got grants and things are looking good and we're going to have a big step down next fiscal year which just a few months away and total dollars available and then you can see every year unless something changes with local investments state or federal to keep shelter going um we're going to have a hard time because i said earlier we're having to close the shelter because of the declines in state funding so how do we get all levels of government including locally to invest more in keeping those programs up and running um and then just to frame this in a slightly different way on the temporary housing beds we had a goal of 600 beds county wide the current investment from county dollars and some small city contributions is 1.5 million which covers around an estimated 41 beds what we have before the board today is considering in the budget process a million dollars of the new um thank you to the voters for supporting more resources that could help us with shelter of the sales tax revenue that we anticipate coming in and then considering what another 1.5 million dollars from general fund could be from the core conversation that allude randy alluded to earlier we're looking at other potential ways of closing that gap um when i looked at our total general fund budget for the county this is less than 0.5 percent i think it's like 0.3 percent of the total general fund budget we're talking about here um but i know it does mean shifting in a tight budgetary time so what are our priorities and those are really difficult decisions for us as staff and as board members so if if we can get to four million of stable funding which is our recommendation to the board um we could have 109 110 beds stably funded so that stability means a lot for us as staff it means a lot for the organizations that are trying to decide whether they want to get into this business of running shelter i can tell you as a staff who tries to convince people it's a good thing to want to help people with temporary housing people are running away because they see the instability in the funding and it's really hard to convince a nonprofit board to jump in when they only see a year or two of money and they're not really sure what's coming next so at the local level at least if we put some more resources in i think we're sending a message that this county really cares about these programs and we're invested in seeing them continue um now i just wanted to contrast kind of the federal approach to funding and policy around homelessness and the state approach so i alluded to the fact that every year our staff goes through an exercise of applying for federal continuum of care dollars to address homelessness and you can see since 2015 our trajectory of funding it's been steadily growing and there's several reasons for that one is at the federal level they don't cut funding they plan to and advocate for some stability because when you create a new program to help people are on house the thought is we got to keep the program going so people can stay in their housing or they can continue their success so built into the head process is an expectation of renewals and stability in funding with the programs that are funded and then when they're able to get more money appropriated through their budgetary process there's opportunities for high-performing communities to apply for and get more funds so since our division started we've been really strategic about meeting HUD's goals and being competitive so you can see we've been increasing the dollars not just renewing the dollars um but HUD created that platform for us of stability of renewal and opportunities for growth um based on our local performance and this is how the state policy looks with funding um it's I've been saying a lot lately it's a yo-yo so um this is a reflection of the grant dollars that we received um and these are block grant funds this doesn't include all the other kind of special pathways and programs the state has created over the past six years but this instability in state funding is is really hard to level out on the ground for us as staff and for providers um so we're doing our best but it's not good enough to avoid closing programs or people having to stretch themselves with Medi-Cal Billion in ways that feel sometimes impossible because we don't have the stability in funding so one of the things that I keep saying in state and various meetings is stay I'd rather have stable predictable funding from a fewer state agencies than this up and down from all these different agencies like the last update I'll give you all is the amount of time that people spend writing grants writing reports um it's not the best use of time we'd all rather be spending time with people who don't have housing to help them back into housing so can we can we learn from the feds try to hard time believing I'm saying this because the federal process before I started working in the last five years on this with the state is like I thought that was always so burdensome to me but the state process is incredibly burdensome relative to the federal and just not as predictable but I think it's important for you as local leaders to know that that's what we're dealing with the staff one example of this um from my perspective I own it personally uh prop one the bond and behavioral services changes to me is another example of the kind of knee jerk let's invest and um not fully think through how this investment's going to work so prop one has passed and we're still trying to figure out what that's going to mean for us at the local level and our colleagues in the health service agency know a lot more details than I do about the impacts on behavioral health funding which I think they will share or have shared with you all um but the bonds are going to create money for new facilities but that's coupled with declines in money to operate the facilities so we got more money to build but we have less money to run them so help me understand like how is that going to work where is the money going to come from to run the facilities our county um the rates we have under CalAIM for mental health billing are way below our neighbors so our county behavioral health department is struggling just to maintain so the thought of building new um I don't know that it works without the money to operate um and we're required to use MHSA funds for housing services so that means some programs are going to have to shift from being funded with the MHSA locally to other programs that fit under the state housing definition um so there's going to be some tough decisions about what programs are going to be scaled back and what's going to be invested in frankly I think the programs that are created with one-time dollars the MHSA money is going to have to backfill to continue those when those grants run out uh the housing priorities at the state level are not really aligned with where the needs are the most uh I alluded to the fact that I'm deeply committed to ensuring all veterans have a place to live but the state bonds this half of the money is for veterans so if you actually look the populations are at most at risk of homelessness and where the investments are so there's an imbalance in this measure between where the needs are greatest and where the dollars are going um and then the prop one is another example of one-time money without really figuring out how it gets sustained and it gets added to this maze which some of you have seen I should update this but this is kind of the maze that we and our nonprofits deal with of all these different grants and contracts to try to braid them together to create a program that makes sense to the staff that makes sense to the people we're trying to help and that's really hard um and I don't think prop one really helps us to to make that easier um and then the idea and the governor has been quoted in the news saying okay we've given you all this one-time money figured out locally I would prefer a a stronger partnership in conversation with the state officials around let's actually look at the math let's figure out how this works let's be practical together let's be real together instead of the finger pointing that Randy was alluding to earlier so I hope we can start to shift the dialogue with our state colleagues at the staff level I can have these conversations at the political and the policy level that tone is not being set so I think resetting the tone that we're all in this together and understanding the perspectives of the different levels of government is really critical okay finally um on to a review of what are the board actions um in terms of the funding yoyo we have the HAP5 funding application which includes a regionally coordinated homelessness action plan that we put together for the board and the public to review an MOU between our consumer of care and our county um and we need approval from the board to the support that MOU our proposed budget in the regional plan the applications are actually due tomorrow so they're ready to be uploaded with any changes that are requested from the board um one request to your approval of our uh next three-year framework and the core principles uh ask for your ratification of an MOU we have with Monterey County for the shared sheltering project in Watsonville and then request that you consider over the next month or two there'll be a update on the core funding but also you're gonna all be you have been engaged in the budget process think about two to three million dollars a year added to our roughly 1.5 that's going to shelter now as part of the next year's budget to show that we're really committed to high quality shelter in the community and then ask us to come back in six months to tell you where we are with our plans that's the presentation all right well thank you very much for that presentation and and thank you for all the great work that you've been doing on this very challenging topic and navigating the state and feds and trying to figure out how we can be most effective with the money that we have here locally and I'll open it up to the board to see if there's any questions or comments on the side and I'll start with Supervisor Koenig. A few brief comments uh I just want to say how much uh more structured our entire approach to homelessness has been thanks to having you as part of our part of our county family Dr. Ratner um and you've just been extremely methodical in terms of uh addressing the structure of the different organizations that um you know deal with homelessness in our community um educating folks about the funding addressing the HMIS uh system getting everyone using that um and we've seen some real fantastic progress I mean of course also thanks to your efforts in conjunction with a historically high amount of funding um and it's going to be more challenging going forward but I think we've at least got a strong base of success um and you know I think you've made a very clear case for why we just need to allocate more local dollars to this problem because we're not going to be able to count on the state going forward I mean it's looking like a downward part of the yo-yo uh coming up here um and uh you know if if not from a the sales tax which just passed thank you very much voters and we said we were going to spend money addressing homelessness so you know I assume there's no controversy there um but then the only other place that I can see uh availability in our county budget is from the core process and of course with core we say that we are going to address uh the highest needs in our community and clearly homelessness is one I mean we hear about it it's one of the top issues that I hear about from every constituent and I think um it's I was surprised to find how little of our core funding we're actually spending addressing this issue to begin with and I just haven't uh in going through three years of county budgets haven't seen another place where it can easily come from so I do think we need to earmark uh funds from core in the next cycle thanks thank you very much um supervisor Hernandez you have any questions or comments yeah I was you know of course my concern is a lot has a lot to do with south county and their last pit count and hopefully they got a better pit count this one coming up but is there any chance that um with the big levy project with IRFMA um that there can be collaboration because there's a lot of folks that are that right there on the creeks that they're doing in the first days and also on the river a lot of people on the river actually and so if there's any collaboration that can happen to get federal dollars through those that project because they're going to be displaced they're going to have you know they're going to cover the whole area and bring the bulldozers um but just you know I'd still like at some point to see what the plan is and in person for that addressing that big count that happened in uh collaborate more with the city I think yeah I'm Supervisor McPherson yeah thank you Dr. Morrison uh Dr. Ratner um I can tell you that uh when I was at a recent CSAC meeting addressing this issue Dr. Ratner was with the main speaker and people were listening and his main message was don't promise anything you can't support financially because uh a lot of a lot of it's made people can't understand and I don't know if I fully understand how much it takes so you've spelled that out pretty well here to have a continuous program that addresses this serious problem that we have um we've we have and we've had for many years a housing crisis in Santa Cruz County um and I do support with we're drawing the measure K funds of a million dollars and hopefully we can do more than that uh in the carve out of core funding but that's going to be a competitive situation for sure um I just want to try to speak with uh realistic uh uh expectations I guess and um and I think you've spelled that out and do we have maybe you've saw this in the the graphs that you had you do we have some sense of the overall cost to establish and operate the three shelter sites in Watsonville Santa Cruz so kill what what is that in general what does it take yeah I think right now we're proposing in between 150 and 175 beds and I estimate um today's dollars is around six million dollars a year to keep those running with the kinds of services that are going to get good outcomes okay and uh how can how extensively can we track the participants uh you mentioned that that's a difficult thing to carry out yeah I'm a supervisor Conan alluded to it we've made a lot of progress with hiring staff and and it used to be we charge people to use the HMIS data system so we're now actually funding people we're taking care of that so we can get more people using it so we can get better answers to those questions um and I alluded to in the slides that the data shows that 15 percent of people that exit programs show all kinds of housing programs come back homeless within two years um it's not exactly what you're asking about super resume Pearson but in general most of our service and rich shelters follow people for six months and then after six months we don't really necessarily know what happens to them but some of our shelters don't have when they're just providing the shelter and not that follow-up so with those kinds of programs we don't have that kind of data so the best we have is how many people come back and ask us for help again our last point in time was what 2200 1804 I don't know why I remember that but it was it then it was 2200 before the year it was 200 the year before yeah and uh when the way 1800 when was that taken was that 2023 yeah so when do you hope we have the 24 um preliminary numbers by the end of April we have to turn them in to hide but the formal report will get out probably July after the holiday all right well good work at bringing it down I I don't think that's a false hope or it's uh good work and having us to reduce the number that we we have I don't let people believe it but uh you know whether they'd be if we can sustain levy or wherever they may be but um we're we're moving in the right direction and I think that if we can uh need to in tough much a situation for this county that's coming up and we start talking about this in May and June that um we're gonna have to see where we can get more funding for it it's going to be a scramble and it's going to be more competitive than ever thank you for your work and tell us like it is and what we need to do to really uh stabilize if you will um the reduction effort that we're making in the homelessness of Santa Cruz County thank you thank you Supervisor McPherson yeah I'm going to save my comments and just want to open up to the public to see if there's any members of the public who'd like to speak to the board on this item if so please approach the podium you will have two minutes and we'll go ahead and open that up hello my name is Judy Hutchison I'm the board chair of the association of faith communities and we are one of the providers of the shelter system here in the county typically we are not a shelter in that sense because we do have case management and after we find housing another six months of help what is the most important thing for us is sustainable funding and that is what Robert was talking about what Randy was talking about and without that we will not be able to do what we need to do thank you thank you so much good afternoon supervisors uh Hosobara has from the food bank um we are very appreciative of everything that's being said but we also want to bring up to the front of as was talked about priorities and making sure that as you know was just mentioned those 15 percent of folks that do get into the services don't end up coming back so as you're making those budget decisions and as you are planning to figure out where that money is coming from we hope that you consider um just the previous um chaos that happened during the last core funding and how a lot of organizations that were left out because of some of the decisions that were being made and so you know the pitch here is to be able to consider all the factors and that understanding that food and shelter and all the basic needs are something that is needed and so understanding that although they are providing shelters there are some other basic needs that will be needed to be provided and so um with the support the food bank currently is actually creating a small coalition within south county we've brought together some organizations that actually do some of the um work with the unhoused community there and we're discovering some great things as supervisor had not this mentioned but a lot of those folks are still going hungry so we currently are creating an opportunity for those folks to be able to find spaces to not only have shelter but to find the food that they need so nonetheless again being able to consider that when you are figuring out these decisions um you are also considering these other organizations that depend on those fundings to be able to provide some basic services thank you thank you so much are there any of the members of the public online who'd like to comment on this item yes chair we have speakers emily your microphone is now available thank you uh hi my name is emily watson and i'm here representing community action board of santa cruz county and um i'd like to say that cab as a provider of homeless prevention and intervention services in the county with a bigger presence here in south county watsonville um we'd like to add our comments that we recognize funding is extremely important for agencies like us we understand that measure k funding and the way funding has been done is not always enough and that there has been an increase in homelessness here as we know about the 15 percent here in watsonville in south county we do support the expiration of using some of the core funding to support efforts with a concern as we don't want that to impact um or lose any of the current funding for the other prevention and other services that core supports um so we're here to say that we want to be able to continue our work with solid funding as dr ratner pointed out to and i want to thank you for this time thank you we have no further speakers okay um i'll bring it back to the board and um again just want to appreciate um all the work that you all robert and randy and your staff have done to help us build out these programs here in the county um i remember when robert you first came on board and you know since that time there's been a tremendous um amount of attention put to this topic and there's been a lot of resources that have come into our community to allow us to be effective at getting people off the streets and into housing and um i know when i was reading the report there was um one of the comments that was was made was about um the you know gap between income and rents and the cost of housing and the fact that you know addressing this it's going to require long-term sustained efforts to increase household incomes expand housing opportunities especially as it relates to affordable housing and i do think at the same time that we need to also be proactive in thinking about like how we regulate our housing markets so to ensure that people um are able to continue to afford to live here long term and so i know we've had a lot of conversations around you know more deed restricted affordable housing preventing housing from becoming vacation rentals some conversations around workforce housing the need for more beds which hopefully with prop one funding we can stand up but we also need those services more measure j units more housing for section eight voucher holders i mean there's a wide array of opportunities and i just look forward to working with staff and with the community to see how we can best try to really stabilize our housing market so that people aren't as as we get people into housing we're not seeing more people just getting put right out on the streets um i just i also want to thank the voters and thank everybody on the board who helped with getting measure k past and i want to thank the many community members and folks who endorsed and donated to get that measure passed because this is a start in terms of funding and i think one million is our base we can use core but you know as we continue to move forward there are opportunity there will be opportunities for us to explore do we want to use more that measure k funding for this and so i don't want to i don't want the community to think that we're just restricting ourselves to just this million dollars there's opportunities depending on you know the board sentiment but this is a great start um to have some funding dedicated towards this but i do just want to say as well regardless of the woes that we're seeing at the state and federal level we do need the state and the feds to step up and provide more funding we need a steady a steady revenue stream from the state we need a steady revenue stream from the feds especially as it relates to shelter and emergency shelters so we can really have that first step of getting people off the streets connecting them to services and then helping to figure out where's the best place for those individuals to go and so um really supportive of the recommendations that are before us i want to thank you all again and it looks like there's some action so i want to look to my fellow colleagues to see if there's a motion on the uh the move staff recommendation including uh approving ratifying vote that we'll use okay so we have a motion for the staff recommendations from supervisor hernandez seconded by supervisor kirsten um and i'd like to ask the clerk for a roll call vote on this item supervisor hernandez yes mcpherson yes and comings i that passes with supervisor mcpherson hernandez and comings voting in favor and supervisor's friend and conic absent with that that will close out our meeting for the day we don't have a closed session item and so i want to thank everybody for their patience we've gone pretty long um but do you want to do any turn over to you nope all right then looks like we're done have a good day