 And everybody we'd like to call to order the June 27, 2023 meeting of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. If we could begin with a roll call please. Supervisor Koenig. Here. Cummings. Here. Hernandez. Here. McPherson. Here. And Fred. Here. We're going to begin with a moment of silence, I believe, Supervisor McPherson. Right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to dedicate a moment of silence to Josh Wolf, the district engineer for the Santa Cruz Valley Water District who passed away in early June due to a medical emergency at the age of 52. He was a highly respected engineer in charge of helping the Santa Cruz Valley Water District rebuild its infrastructure after the CZU fire. He made many, many cooperative arrangements with other district or area agencies as well, including Big Basin. Our thoughts were with his family and friends. Josh Wolf was a special person who really did a tremendous job for what he did for the Santa Cruz Valley Water District. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Cummings. I would like to dedicate the moment of silence to Kit O'Leary. Yesterday we found out that he had, I'm now with a medical emergency about a week ago and then yesterday passed away and was pretty sudden for many people in the community. He was a West Side resident born and raised in Santa Cruz who was a familiar face throughout the community and was cared about deeply by many people. And so our condolences go out to his family and friends. All right. Thank you. If you'll join us in a moment of silence and then the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. I pledge allegiance to the Republic for which it stands. I want to say that we are indivisible with the end of this process. Are there any changes to today's agenda? Yes. We have a number of changes on the regular agenda. Item 13, there's additional materials. There's a revised memo. Package pages 145 and 146. Paragraph one should read the FY23-24 proposed rate for CSA-48 and CSA-4 reflects the allowed consumer price index increase of 5.6% and a 4% maximum increase for CSA-48-2020. Background on page three, sentence two should read the CSA-48-2020 special benefit assessment base rate. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome. Welcome. We'll increase from 15608 to 16233. According to the 4%, maximum increase is allowed in the engineers report as adopted by the board. On the consent agenda, item 51, revised memo package 625 is replaced. Recommended action number two should read approve amendment to agreement contract 24C4572 with ring con consultants. Increasing compensation by 60,829 for not to exceed amount of 259341 for consultant support and implementation of the 2022 climate action and adaptation plan and quantification of greenhouse gas reduction targets. On item 51, there's additional materials revised memo package page 632, which is replaced. The analysis page paragraph 22, sentence four should read this amendment will increase the current contract amount of 198 512 by 60,829 for total contract amount of 259341. There's also revised attachment A packet pages 634, 645 and 649 is replaced. On item number 84, there's additional materials revised memo packet page 1100 to 1101 is replaced. Analysis packet paragraph four as added revised attachment a packet pages 1102 and 1103 replaced packet pages 1104 through 1109 are deleted. That concludes the changes to today's agenda. Thank you, Mr. Blasios. Are there any items that board members would like to remove from the consent to the regular agenda? Seeing none, we'll open this up for public comment. This is an opportunity for members of the community to address aside items that are not on today's agenda or within the purview of the board of supervisors. Also an opportunity for you to make comments on the consent agenda or the regular agenda if you can't stay as well as the closed session agenda if you can't stay. Please feel free to step forward. If you'd like to speak during public comment morning. Yeah, good morning. My name is James you and then I would have not imagined that I'd be the first one to speak for public comments. Yeah, so some quotes. Clot shot creature outlives. Undertaker reports blood clots moving fingers and can't be killed, even in formaldehyde. Carrie Medea reports creature lifted itself off microscope. Numerous startling theories that suggest a new public health horror has only just begun. That information is more than 18 months old. Another quote woman coughing and throwing up synthetic biological creatures. She feels them under her skin and in her brain. She sees them in her stool to watch the creature wiggle in astounding footpaths June 8 2022. You know if I had 15 minutes I could go over outlines of the basic 17 remedies. The primary one is something that every human being creates through their own urine that produces stem cells. I don't know half of you as well as I would like. And I like less than half of you as well as you deserve that's Bilbo Baggins that is a hundred and 11th birthday. So you know it's really interesting you guys are just kind of following the opulent parasite class. Almost everything you guys do is 180 degree X of the truth. It's been explained to me that a circle is 360 degrees. More than 20 years ago I got a personalized plate 180 DEGX. So you know I'm here as a witness I'm really surprised I'm the first one to speak. Thank you. Good morning and welcome. Good morning. As you all know I am a domestic violence victim here in Santa Cruz County. And I've worn my pink shoes inspired by Santa Cruz County Bank Chief Banking Officer John Sisk who was seen in the Santa Cruz Sentinel victim mocking in support by monarch services who thought it would be really funny for men to walk around and try to identify what it's like to bring awareness to domestic violence. And this is absolutely shameful and disgraceful and many of us in the domestic violence community are really sad traumatized and heartbroken by the stunt. I see that consent agenda item 50 is asking for money for violence against women and nothing is working in this county. I've been here since January. The public comment to this shocking stunt is here's one from Belgium. The video of Maya and Sebastian's kidnapping was shocking to watch. The kidnapping of Brooke Murdoch was even more gruesome. A gang of police officers forcing a 13 year old girl onto the concrete and cupping her hands and feet is unthinkable in my country. These are outright acts of torture that all of this happening with the approval of a court is deeply disturbing. The excessive violence of a government against women and girls is a sign of a totally diseased society. The images of the violence of these children endured are burned in my brain. I have a very hard time with that. It has given me sleepless nights. Now I feel a sense of powerlessness. As far as I can tell there isn't much empathy for most of the US population. The fact that men hold a playful action by walking around in typical women's shoes confirms the conscious maintenance of inequality between men and women. Ridiculous and sad at the same time is sincerely hope that your struggle will bring about change. That a 13 year old girl is publicly tortured at the behest of and in the presence of her own father is the most scandalous thing that has come here from America. Stop this all support from Belgium. These men would have been better off spending time in Sheriff Hart's jail and during an unlawful strip search like I did where I had to get naked and bend over and show my genitals. When I had no, there was never a thought that I was hiding contraband. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Welcome. Good morning. Debbie Hinky from Bonnie Doon. And the board has changed since the last time I've been here. Welcome to you new ones. I don't think you get paid enough. Seriously, looking at this agenda was overwhelming. I have two comments to make. One is item 37 and I can't stay. So that's one here. The sale of property appears to be in stark contrast to the assembly bill 309 that's being supported by you. For the housing authority for enacting social housing for California housing authority. I don't understand why you're trying to sell property. It seems to me you would make more money leasing the property and having people bill low income housing. I currently am a caregiver for one of the patients through and home support services retired RN. And she is currently without housing and she is disabled item 46. This one is why I'm here. This is your seven and a half million dollar budget for Cal fire. I went through it last night with the fine tooth and comb. What I've discovered is that 33% of Cal fire is chiefs or captains. There's only 67% which are firefighters and different engineers. When I attended the last FDAC meeting, there's a 12 million dollar surplus in their budget. And yet you have increased illegally the assessments for CSA 48. Currently I am paying at least a quarter of my property taxes and all these assessments, which I find highly objectionable. There was a reason prop 13 was passed and that's for people like me who as you get older, don't have to pay all the assessments and keep adding and adding and adding on. Thank you. Thank you. If you could just finish up here. Yeah. So 4.6 or 5.6. Sorry is over the limit that was proposed to us for the CSA assessment. And I'm tempted to withdraw to put before the people. Thank you. And Ms. Henke that that error was noted. I was corrected in the right into the record by Mr. Plasius. The resolution had the correct number. The board report had the incorrect number. It is below 5%. So I appreciate the comment. Okay. But 7 million surplus in their bank account. Thank you. Good morning, council member. Welcome. Good morning. Hi, chair, friend, honorable supervisors. My name is Kristen Brown. And as mentioned, some of you might know me as the council member from the city of Capitola, but I am here before you today as a nine year board member and treasurer for the community action board of Santa Cruz County or cab cab's mission is to partner with the community to eliminate poverty and create social change through advocacy and essential services. We envision a thriving, equitable and diverse community that is free from poverty and injustice. The community action board recently completed our two year community action plan, which outlines how cab will use our resources to address poverty and engaging our community during the creation of this plan. We heard from over 500 voices through surveys of low income community members, focus groups and town hall public meetings within these interactions. We learned some important things about our community that I'd like to share with you today. 30% of our low income survey participants reported an annual income of less than $5,000 a year. 59% said their pay was too low to cover their cost of living and 52% said their income was not high enough to afford food. I think it's also important for you to know that when asked about our most valuable community assets and resources, community organizations and government programs were in the top four. With that in mind, we thank you for your support of the community action board and our clients. A report with additional information from our community action plan is forthcoming and will be sent to you in the very near future. In the meantime, again, we thank you for the support of our community. Please don't hesitate to reach out if I can provide any additional information about the community action board and its programs to fight poverty and create social change. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Welcome back. Good morning, supervisors, and thank you for your service. My name is Shalwa Cabanas. I love Santa Cruz and I have the pleasure of serving as the chair of the mental health advisory board for about a decade now. When you have a program that's understaffed and under supported, you have a lot of leaders of it just trying to see how to keep the program going. If you have a ship and it's under maintenance, you start having leaks, you have people spending more time, how do you bail the ship out and how do you keep it going versus stepping back and saying, hey, maybe this isn't the right way to do it. Is there enough of their way to do it? I really want to thank the behavior health services and the working closely with the mental health advisory board in looking at a new way to deal with crisis. One of the ways we're looking at is called crisis now. It will be on the agenda for later today. I really appreciate the close collaborative that we've had with behavior health services with the mental health advisory board. Thank you very much. I want to say that. And many of the picture with your child in front of the park, that's going to be renovated is, I love it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your work. Good morning. Welcome. Hi. Hello. My name is Kirsten Jewel. And my Indigenous brothers and sisters have taught me that when you come into the home of others, you bring a gift. And so I baked you all fresh sourdough bread as a symbol of solidarity because if we are going to be able to solve the mental health crisis that we have in our county, we're really going to have to work together. We're going to have to listen to each other. We're going to have to listen to the needs of our workers and the needs of our people. And if we are coming into this juncture with a attitude of us versus them, I just don't see us being able to be able to come to a conclusion that works for everyone. So like I said, I'm Kirsten Jewel. I've worked for the County of Santa Cruz for 10 years. I worked in child welfare. I also worked in the jail in the reentry team. And for the last four years, I've worked for HPHB and Emmeline in the Integrated Behavioral Health Program as a therapist. We are currently in a crisis at the county and today I'm coming to ask for a raise. I put together some data and we, the Santa Cruz County is making about 35% less than our neighboring counties. We have 41 open positions in the License Behavioral Health Group. We only have one licensed professional that is doing all of the 5150s for the MERT and MERTY team. We are not, people are waiting for a very long time in order to receive services. And my recommendation is that if we really want to solve this problem of having so many openings in our county, we need to offer a competitive wage. A 32-hour work week I think would be helpful and also we need to be offering more part-time jobs. People that are working as licensed professionals are no longer wanting to work 40 hours and we want to be with our family and we need to provide options so that people will come and work for us. We need to be a desire. No, if you could just, thank you. If you could make sure you finish that, thank you for sharing that. Good morning, welcome. Good morning, thank you. I'm here to speak with you, the Board of Supervisors about the conditions that county clinic staff are operating under, conditions which are also described in the recent grand jury report. I think if you knew our challenges, you would want to lead change and make sure we have the resources to do our jobs. My name is Cassie and I'm a public health nurse at the Homeless Persons Health Project, HPHP, where our county clinic is serving the homeless population. I've heard that homelessness is one of the biggest issues for voters, yet our clinic is just as under-resourced as our patients. In our broken healthcare system, we are often the only voice advocating for our patients. When the hospitals and mental health providers and community programs fail, we are the safety net to the safety net. Unfortunately, this has left us stressed out, burnt out and unable to provide our patients the healthcare they deserve. Here are three of the most pressing concerns we're dealing with at HPHP. One, we're operating out of a tiny rundown clinic. Yesterday, there was toilet water from the shelter upstairs leaking into our office again. We only have three exam rooms when other county clinics have around 20 each. This makes it challenging to provide dignified private and comfortable healthcare. Our administrative staff have identified several acceptable alternative locations for our clinic and county executive management has declined each proposal. There aren't enough, or number two, there aren't enough local substance use treatment beds and we were being hit with a fentanyl crisis. Our patients tragically die preventable deaths waiting for treatment. Our staff has performed 18 emergency overdose reversals in the past six months in a one block radius of the clinic on Coral Street. This often means providing full CPR with chest compressions and rescue breathing. And number three, in 2023, two of our six full-time RNs have reduced their hours in part time due to the stress of this crisis. We have positions open in the county, no one is applying, there's literally no one on the list. We're always hearing about the grant money flowing into the county to alleviate homelessness but we don't see it at clinic. Our working conditions are not acceptable. To resolve this lack of equity we are asking you to address the concerns of the voters and take care of the people, by facilitating the following. A larger updated clinic where we can see patients privately and safely, wages to recruit and retrain nurses who can afford to live in Santa Cruz County. Thank you for your time. Thanks Suzanne Samson, I work as a public health nurse at HPHP, I've been at the county for about ten years. As my co-worker Cassie said, we outgrew our clinic space several years ago. We cannot provide equitable services with only three exam rooms and multiple vacancies in both medical and behavioral health providers. And although we do outreach and see people in the field, there's only so much medical care we can provide in a camp. We need a fully functioning clinic with adequate space and staffing. As it is, we are often checking vital signs, providing wound care, foot care and other services in our waiting room on a daily basis. This would not be acceptable at any other medical clinic. Our patients have to wait hours on standby if they need to be seen immediately. Some of our therapists only have enough room in their schedules to see patients once a month. This is an issue of both equity and fiscal responsibility. When people cannot access timely care they get sicker and end up in the hospital or in crisis stabilization for entirely preventable issues which costs everyone. It is a full time job being homeless and doing the basic tasks that you and I take for granted every day such as accessing food, shelter, shower all while facing the stigma of living on the street. We need to make services accessible now. Cassie also mentioned that our staff is burned out. I'm one of the nurses that has reduced my hours in order to attend to my own physical and mental health and no one has been hired to cover these hours. We need solutions like the 32 hour work week and part time positions so that we can hire people and avoid burnout. I cannot see myself continuing to work at this job for another 10 years under these conditions. It took me a long time to build the relationships I have with our patients and other service providers and I do not want to leave my job. But frankly it's maddening to live and work in such an affluent community that cannot seem to find the political will to provide for the most basic needs for everyone. You are the ones that can change this. Thanks. Thank you. Good morning. Welcome back. Good morning. My name is Becky Steinbruner, my resident of rural Santa Cruz County. I want to again bring to your attention that your website calendar is still broken and but I do see that you've added a transcript of all the budget hearings on those website pages if you can find them. I ask that you make a tutorial for the public to navigate the budget this year. Supervisor Cummings was given some help to enable him to be able to look at that and I ask that you do the same for the public in a video. I'm here to speak about item number 13, I cannot stay. I am happy to see that the error in the 4% cap of CSA 48-2020 increase was caught. And please make sure that that happens. I also want to say that I think item 46, the Cal Fire budget Cal Fire contract should have been pulled. This is a very large amount and I attended the the FDAC, the Fire Department Advisory Commission meeting when it was presented to them. It was shocking. The smoke and mirrors tactics that were used to claim savings by reducing the Amador months from 7 to 5. That's all on paper and to increase it by $900,000 to increase 6 engineers, staff positions that were supposed to be paid for by CSA 48-2020. That's what we were told when that was approved. And now we're being increased by $900,000 to do that very thing. That's not acceptable. I would like to see a dedicated battalion chief to training the volunteers from the ranks of the volunteers and pay them. They understand and you have the ability to change the allocation percentage of Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Steinbrenner. Thank you for your comments. Good morning, Dr. Strudley. Welcome back. Good morning, chair, friend, members of the board. I'm here to respectfully request that item 96 on the Consent Agenda be pulled and heard in a regular open session. That item requests withdrawal of the Zone 7A funds from its cost-sharing agreement with the Paja Regional Flood Management Agency, of which I'm here on behalf as its executive director. I'm not here to contest the importance of the projects that Zone 7A is seeking to address. In fact, I'm very sympathetic to the widespread needs that have become apparent from the prolific rainfall that has occurred this year. But this is not a constructive way and would drastically underfund the Paja Regional Flood Management Agency's capabilities in advancing other important regionally significant flood risk reduction projects. So if it is heard after it's being pulled, I'm here to provide constructive recommendations and be helpful in that discussion. Dr. Strudley, the item was not pulled so if you could just go ahead and share your thoughts, that'd be ideal. Okay. My discussion items are very simple is that the contribution of Zone 7A withdrawing from its cost-sharing agreement is not conducive to solving the problems in the Paja Valley area in terms of their flood risk reduction. And that constitutes a large part of the Capital Reserve program of the Paja Regional Flood Management Agency. And our capabilities would be limited should that funding go away. And I'll just end there and thank you for your time. Thank you, Dr. Strudley. Good morning and welcome. Good morning. Hi, my name is Megan Carroll. I'm the volunteer coordinator at the Santa Cruz County Animal Shelter. I know a couple of you have recently visited the shelter. So it's nice to see you here. I wanted to bring to everyone's attention that we at the shelter are looking for more staffing and resources to support our staff. We are in taking a lot of animals. We have understaffing issues that are really impacting our community. We have a lot of people who are working in the Paja Regional Flood and as the county is one of our members on our JPA board, I want to bring it to your attention. I also wanted, because this is the volunteer appreciation, I wanted to say thank you to all the volunteers who come to the shelter because they support us, especially when we're understaffed. Like we are right now. They provide essential services for animals and our staff. And I also want to show that they are unhoused and who are in crisis and their animals come to us and they are essential to this community and I really support them as another person who works with people who have behavioral health issues. So thank you so much and have a wonderful day. Thank you. Good morning council member. Welcome. Thank you and it's good to see everyone. My name is Ari Parker. I'm a councilwoman from Watsonville District 7. I'm also here today as a member of the directors for PERSMA which is the Paro Valley flood management agency and I'd like to speak to item number 96 in regards to it being on the consent agenda and if I understood that it could not be, it wasn't pulled so there's no way to go back and actually do that. So I know I sent a letter. It was kind of late so I don't know if you saw it. So I'd like to enter some of that information in there that I feel as did at least the majority of our board feel that this was a crippling moment for an infant agency to have monies pulled right at this time. Withdrawing funds is, you know, not consistent with the notion of a partnership embodied by the formation of our PERFMA JPA. We should be working to establish alternative funding sources for the drainage projects that Zone 7A seeks to complete without gutting PERFMA's Capital Reserve fund. So the residents of Watsonville and especially in my district and the Paro Valley surrounding the Paro River voted to increase their yearly property taxes by hundreds of dollars in perpetuity to support PERFMA mission to complete the Paro River levy project and seeing the Army Corps of Engineers will be signing a reduction agreement based on the local match funding and that was committed to by Zone 7A and other local agencies. So please do not put this project and the decades of work by so many in our federal state and local governments in jeopardy. Don't abandon the promises that were made to the people of the Paro Valley and especially disaster ridden Paro. And I thank you for reconsidering item number 96. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Good morning Supervisors. My name is Andrea Tileo and I'm with Family Services Agency of the Central Coast. I'm the Director for Suicide Prevention Services and we are responsible for answering the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Last year we answered about 3,000 calls and just local calls coming in. This year we expect 3,500 calls coming into the lifeline. We've spent the last year and a half to two years building a very solid base in terms of infrastructure technology and workforce to answer those lines. Currently we have 22 responders on our lines. We have another 5 support staff and I'm here just to support the crisis now model that we're going to talk about. I think it's item number 10 in terms of the overall kind of model but also really to advocate for long term sustained funding for mobile crisis units. Not in a grant not under AB 988 but long term sustained funding that's part of your ongoing budget within the county. So anyway that's why I'm here. I'm supporting that crisis now model and I really appreciate your time and your attention. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for your work. Good morning and welcome. Good morning. Lee Brokaw, Board Member, ACLU Santa Cruz County, Chairman of the Police Accountability and Transparency Committee. Today crisis response has fallen to law enforcement who work from a command and control model. That doesn't work for people in crisis. They don't even understand the words that are being commanded to them and it ends up with either an arrest a 51-50 hold or somebody being killed. Kahoot's model meets people where they are 24-7 365. Mert and Merti have our restrictions and location restrictions. I called to your attention the recent grand jury report with the problems in the behavior or health department in lack of funding and lack of personnel and recommend that you not add to them another task of crisis response. I also recommend that you read the grand jury report that calls for a Kahoot's program. Kahoot's has been in this business since the 60's. Our county departments have no track record and it appears that you're setting what you want to do for Santa Cruz county's approach to crisis but it looks to me like you're reinventing the wheel. What's important is that crisis team beyond the streets not parked next to the hotel paradox 24-7 365. Thank you. Good morning director Gaffney. Good morning chair friend and fellow board members I wanted to remind you that July is our recreation month a very exciting month for us. It's summertime get out and enjoy it. A couple reminders about what your parks provide parks and recreation departments throughout the county actually this is not just our county parks but this is all of us. We provide we promote social equity we support physical and emotional growth we celebrate community character on a regular basis and we provide safe spaces that heal us both physically and emotionally and we also are protecting our natural resources and open space and promoting the ecological function of our park lands. So get out and enjoy those parks this month and also we left you a couple items board members sunglasses sunscreen do it responsibly a couple of reusable water bottles that are made out of metal so thank you so much parks and rec month July. Thank you July 29th family fun day at Simkin swim centers so come on out. Good morning mr. Britton welcome back. Good morning co-briton that's a britain architects I'm here primarily to talk about item number 29 private plan check deeply appreciative to supervise a code egg and supervise McPherson for proposing this I do want to mention though that under state law health and safety code that all residential projects are allowed and the county is required to provide for private plan check if it takes more than 45 days to have plan check done there's a letter submitted from Nausman associates attorneys also noting this this is a fact it's typical for our projects and most projects in the county of Santa Cruz residential including 80 years to take over six months of county plan check time that is so far above the 45 day excesses the delay it's absolutely important to this community to process building permits residential building permits in a timely manner this is not the blame county staff it's just provide the private plan check process necessary second thing I want to say in an email exchange with mr. Heath he suggested it was not the role of applicants to interpret county code that's exactly my role as an architect it's exactly the role of a geologist eric zen to interpret life safety code it's exactly the role of engineers to interpret life safety code whether or not mr. Heath agrees with that interpretation it certainly is right but it should be respected that it is our role and that he should actually provide substantive disagreement not just rule by fiat thank you thank you mr. britain good morning welcome back good morning i'm matt ferrell i'm here on behalf of friends of the rail and trail and we would like to speak in support of item 94 the green valley multi-use trail and thanks staff for bringing those plans and specifications and advertising for contract forward to the board thank you thank you is there anybody else in chambers before we open it up online okay i'll close public comment in chambers but open it up online please call in user one your microphone is now available safe vaccines every shot contains toxic chemicals a valuable source here you learn the risk dot org toxic chemicals like aluminum mercury formaldehyde msg GMOs polysorbate 80 are linked to death cancer seizures asthma there's a strange echo here are you hearing me can you hear me okay so a valuable reference here is an article on 5G and graphing this is from wise traditions spring 2023 issue and westonaprice dot org just a little bit of this here 5G wireless technology is the graphing is the linchpin of frequencies 5G range and you're putting 5G everywhere in this county operate at more potent power densities than those in the 4G range a recent paper and annals of case reports by him and researcher Dr. Lennard Hardale indicates that exposure to the high frequencies and power density of 5G results in a host of neurological symptoms such as anitis, fatigue insomnia emotional misdraft skin disorders and blood pressure variability moreover the high energy consumed in 5G cells is discharged into the air exposure is there anybody else on the line Max your microphone is now available my name is Max I'm here today to provide additional context to the grand jury report released earlier this month specifically to discuss why Santa Cruz County has fallen behind its neighbors when it comes to the recruitment and retention of the licensed clinicians we so desperately need Kirsten Joule who spoke previously has assembled a list of the starting and final salaries of Santa Cruz's competition it's eight nearest neighboring counties I've compiled a powerpoint that shares the relevant data for you to review which SEIU 521 has provided the results of this comparison are stark Santa Cruz County ranks in only the 35th percentile for salary on the bell curve well below the average to make matters worse we slip even further behind when the cost $150 a month short of the average the bottom line is this no perspective hires pay that accounts for cost of living let alone competitive pay salaries for senior mental health specialists in Santa Cruz would need to be increased by more than $9,200 a year minimum you've all read the grand jury report you've seen the deficits and the vacancies the fact is social workers are priced out of Santa Cruz County and unless the board takes action here the problem will only continue to grow our senior labor ship is able to aggressively compete for and secure funding for vital programs in the form of states and federal grants what they aren't able to do is staff those graces that we need you thank you for your time Lori your microphone is now available I couldn't make a supervisor if I don't have that also I am a County UCSD and I am here to provide public comment in support of AB 652 which I was told wouldn't be possible to address in this public comment period today this has been a bill that would establish the Environmental Justice Advisory Committee that would be part of the Department of Pesticides Regulation this is a really really important action for our county to protect especially those workers in South County and especially the children of those workers whose schools are very close to a lot of the fields that are being drenched still in pesticides and so I really wanted to urge you to support this bill I know there's some concern large figures that are associated with establishing an environmental justice advisory committee but those figures do not have to be so large it is basically a group of people getting together who are going to provide some supervisory capacity for the Department of Pesticides Regulation so I just wanted to register my support and urging you to support as well this committee to support this Erica, your microphone is now available Thank you I'm Erica Alfaro I'm a public health nurse here resident with Santa Cruz I'm also current president of the Bay Area National Association of Hispanic Nurses and a council member of the California Nurses for Environmental Health and Justice I'm also here speaking on behalf of support for item 38 6-5-2 to require the Department of Pesticides Regulation to convene an environmental justice advisory committee as stated by the prior resident it is super super important to have members and organizations and pertinent entities to have these important conversations about the environmental issues that are happening here in the county and in the south county as well thank you all so much, that is it Yonli, your microphone is now available Thank you Good morning, good morning Supervisors I'm here to speak on the same item that my fellow colleagues just spoke on. First of all I want to thank Supervisor Cummings for putting this on the agenda for today's meeting directing the chair to sending letter of support to Senator Lair since our bill AB 652 has passed the assembly and is currently moving to the senate and like the other colleagues just mentioned this bill would give an opportunity for that local control that a lot of cities and counties ask of the state you know there's a lot of things that the state decides for the different communities but who really knows the community us that live within cities, our counties that are affected by harmful pesticides and again this would be an advisory committee formed of community members from all over the state of California to provide that input and work alongside DPR in order to be able to protect human health and I think hearing a lot of the conversation that happened today we are all about bringing solutions forward on climate change on basically just human health so once again I hope that and I hope and I urge all of you to vote yes on this item today and once again thank you supervisor Cummings for your leadership enjoy the rest of your day, thank you Sirai your microphone is now available Hello can you all hear me now okay Hello my name is Sena Jimenez and I am the vice president for SEIU 521 and I'd like to add something in regards to the Santa Cruz County civil grand jury report for diagnosis of the crisis and behavioral health for underfunded understaffed and overworked report I'd also like to inform the jury of how understaffed we are here in the human resources department just EBSD which is in charge of food stamps, medical, cash aid which provide basic needs for members of the community we are understaffed so severely to the point where we have 37 vacant positions open just in our department we are so understaffed that we actually have to close the lobbies and limit the time Monday through Friday just from 10 to 12 to 1, 2, 3 because we have to close so many tasks as we are transferring systems, major systems so the understaffing and underfunded and overworked is not just in a crisis in the behavioral health department but also in the human services department thank you Anne your microphone is now available yes good morning everybody I'm Dr. Anne Lopez from center for farm worker families and I would like to also support AB 652 I'm so delighted that this bill is now has passed the assembly and is now in the senate and we certainly need community members on the DPR who are aware of what's going on in the community I've been working in south county now for over 25 years and I am really tired of meeting so many farm worker families that have at least one child impacted by exposure to pesticide everything from leukemia, cancer ADHD birth defects, learning disabilities I mean it is rampant and what parents want more than anything is for their children to become educated and have a career and be out of farm work and essentially exposure to pesticides is destroying that dream for these hard working farm workers so I would strongly support AB 652 in developing a group of community members to be a social justice group within the DPR thank you very much Diane your microphone is now available thank you and good morning board of supervisors my name is Diane Minyows I'm the director of the Childhood Advisory Council of Santa Cruz County and I'm here today to thank you for your approval of the consent agenda item number 42 which is our five year strategic plan for early care education and after school programs in addition to that we also have included the child care subsidy priorities report for your approval as well we look forward to visiting each and every one of you to share a summary of some of the salient points of this report the strategic plan is about 139 pages with packed full of data that was recently pulled giving information about the child care ecosystem in our county so I just wanted to say thank you for your support and look forward to visiting each and every one of you with council members to share a bit more about the reports thank you we have no further speakers chair thank you sir you would still like to speak please go ahead and step forward is there anybody else in chambers that we can get to the action please this will be our last speaker good morning board of supervisors my name is Kevin Cisneros I'm the only licensed mental health clinician mentioned I felt compelled to speak today I came for support to support I felt compelled to speak that I think that we really need to take a look at on supporting our licensed mental health clinicians at the county I know that we are under staffed I've sat in on interview meetings and we've had candidates who have not accepted positions and I think that if we try and build our crisis continuum that's going to be an issue is looking at being able to hire these people and keep them here yeah so that's what I'd like to say and currently right now I have to leave and go assess a kid that's on 5585 hold at Dominican since I am the only licensed mental health clinician with the MIRT team and I thank you for your time thank you thank you for your work alright we will close public comment on the board for action on the consent agenda I'll start with supervisor Cummings are there any comments on consent sure thank you chair and thank you to all the members of the public who showed up here today I know that there's some I'm going to hold back I have some comments related to what we've been hearing about mental health workers but I know we have an item on our regular agenda related to this topic so I'm going to hold my comments on that until then regarding the operational plan I just want to thank the staff for working on this and would like to follow up to see how we can operationalize some of the various items that are coming forward within that operational plan item number 36 is dissolving the homeless two by two commission with the city of Santa Cruz we now have the housing for health partnership policy board which is an expanded version of the two by two to actually include nonprofits who work with homeless folks and representatives from all the cities and the county and I really want to appreciate the formation of that group because I know that I'm expanding transparency around how funds for homelessness are spent was a priority and just want to thank the city and the county for their years of collaboration to help us around the topic of homelessness but dissolving this would eliminate some redundancy and so I just want to thank the city staff and the city of Santa Cruz staff for working on how we can move forward with a more transparent process in addition to that I did want to see if we could have a little bit of follow up discussion on item number 96 which was the zone 7a withdrawal I'm just wondering if the county CAO could just comment on what's gotten us to that point and maybe provide a little bit of history on that since some folks asked for it to get pulled but since it wasn't pulled just wanting to see if we can follow up on some of the comments that were made earlier yes we have director Machado here who can give the background on this item thank you chair supervisors and supervisor Cummings appreciate the question the opportunity Matt Machado director of CDI also district engineer for zone 7 I'm happy to describe whatever you like you want me just give a quick overview of the whole ok so zone 7a is an impact fee program that new development pays into to mitigate localized flooding problems and regional flooding problems and so when we executed the agreement last December the 7a agreement with Perfuma it was it's written and understood that Perfuma would take that responsibility to implement that program that 7a program so they would consider local flooding problems and the regional one which we all know about is the river project that was the understanding we believe it's written that way this past spring we got clear indication in writing that those local flooding projects would not be considered would not be a part of the CIP for Perfuma but it would be considered from a funding perspective and so we took exception to that we tried to negotiate more clarity and balance between zone 7a and Perfuma so that we had a better understanding going forward that compromise was rejected and so we've been left with no options so the recommended action was really to terminate that agreement I do think it allows us the opportunity to draft a new agreement that has that needed clarity the detail the balance that the community needs to where the local flooding problems and the regional problems are equally addressed and so that's the back story there happy to share more if you like if I could just comment the local flooding issues that Mr. Machado mentioned we're devastating floods in the intercorporated area we had in whole neighborhoods houses completely flooded three separate times in the intercorporated area some of those issues can be addressed by these funds and are meant to be addressed by these funds and so that's all we're asking but the flooding in the neighborhoods that were devastating let me say they weren't maybe they didn't receive the same press coverage there's other issues but they were devastating to those families involved and so we just want to make sure that we can address them at the same time as addressing the larger regional issues thank you for that and I just hope that and I don't know if we need to provide additional direction but my hope would be that by taking action on this today we can continue in your conversations to work towards another agreement so that we can continue working collaboratively with the other members of the JPA thank you, yes if you don't mind, since I think there's others I want to speak specifically on 96 I'll come back to you, Supervisor Coney get a question on 96 since we're on this topic I just had one question about it which is I certainly understand the fact that really we're trying to address the flood impacts for people who have been paying those impact fees I wonder if either Director Machado or CEO Palazzo could address just this concern that I mean in my understanding is the 7A fees do make up a substantial part of the reserves for PERFMA are we looking at so there's the option one of coming back with the more explicit agreement that PERFMA would address these other projects are there other options to make sure that the reserves for PERFMA remain at a healthy balance so that it can carry out its work as well so I'll comment on the PERFMA reserves you know the Parra River project is a $500 million project the construction dollars have been identified both the federal and the local match through state state legislation and so they're in good shape in that regard I think when you look at capital reserves there's always going to be not enough to do everything in the world but that's where the balance and the all issues covered equally and so speaking back to what we thought was a fair middle road for clarity and balance the item that went to the PERFMA Board a couple weeks back was to put half of those reserves into the larger PERFMA reserves and the other half to go towards these localized flooding projects so that we could leverage that money up and pursue grants and other funds so that we could implement literally millions of dollars of projects on that local match of a half a million dollars I think that when you look at this conversation about a half a million dollars or even a million dollars relative to a $500 million project it's a very small amount it's not going to break the bigger project it's just not and even if you look at the cash flow analysis it's not going to break it it just isn't but it's significant money so I don't want to downplay half a million dollars or a million dollars but the way we see it is that we could take that money and leverage it up to even greater things and more community service and so I hope in the future we can get back to that balance and clarity so that we could serve everybody as best we can even though resources are limited in the day we know that thank you for that additional clarity are there any questions on 96 before I go back to or comments on 96 before I go back to supervisor comments well I'll make some brief comments just because I serve in a dual capacity here I'm chair of the board here I'm chair of Perfema and we had a robust discussion at the Perfema meeting in regards to this and I viewed it just from a more perspective and people this winter suffered flooding from various sources you had the river main river flooding you had the tributary flooding you had local agricultural drainage and culvert ditches that also caused flooding to homes I don't think that the community necessarily is concerned with where their flooding comes from or who's funding it they just want to get the issues fixed and what was proposed was a compromise solution to try and get us moving forward on this I completely understand why the board majority on Perfema and it was a three to two vote just for those that weren't present were concerned with taking this action I do see what's on today's board though item as just the next step in a conversation of continued negotiation because it is the only mechanism to continue the conversation since a definitive action had already been taken by the Perfema board so to supervisor Cummings point I think we could actually add additional direction to make that clear to the Perfema board the Perfema staff and our staff that the intention with today is that this is just the next step in a process of continued discussion that unfortunately because the vote was what it was at the Perfema board didn't sort of ended that conversation this this is the county's ability to try and restart that conversation but as somebody who I mean I think I can confidently say has spent more time on this issue than any other county supervisor I would actually say any other local elected official in the region I'm comfortable with a the fact that we've secured nearly 500 million for the main stem project and be also uncomfortable with the fact that there are other elements of flooding that are impacting homes broader in the zone that still need to be addressed and but for the funding through this will not get done so so I think that this continues that conversation I'll hand it back to you Supervisor thank you I have no further comments well that was dramatic supervisor Hernandez please I have a few comments on a few items I'll start out I have a few comments on a few items I'll start out with 96 you know I think the CAO was mentioning we do have some very critical needs in District 4 and just recently I found out more about the project in Zaks district as well but we have the area of College Lake, Salsy Pointous Creek and Coralitos Creek that really flooded two separate communities with over 200 homes there and it flooded them three separate times so there's a real critical need there the area of housing and also I had a coffee with the sheriffs and I had a Zaks constituents that came in and spoke to me about some area by Buena Vista that was flooded as well so you know there's a real need and there's you know real flooding that is completely damaging people's homes and so those are the areas that we want to address and you know it's critical to our constituents here in Santa Cruz County and it's something that we have to resolve or you know resolve at some point and so that's what I'll say about that a few other things item 30 I want to thank Supervisor Koenig on his leadership on this project as well with the container based sanitation pilot program I think it's a great need for folks in North County and folks who want to do small homes item 41 I want to thank my newest fire district commissioner Kurt Vojava but also I want to commend him on his recent retirement from the Watsonville fire department he served a long time there and just retired yesterday and now today he's being appointed as a fire for the fire district for the county item 54 I want to welcome Lisa Hernandez for the county health officer here in the county and item 94 the Green Valley trails you know every time I drive through there on both sides you see commemoration candles bicyclists and pedestrians have passed away on that road you know and it's you think about it and you know some of them are traveling to the parks there that we have both Pino and the county Pino and so it's I think that this is a step in the right direction for reducing bicycle and pedestrian fatalities but also serious collisions so kudos to this project making sure we get trails and also once the project comes in for the resurfacing of Green Valley road so that's it for my comments thank you Supervisor Hernandez thank you chair I want to begin by thanking all of the health care workers who came out today to share their experiences with the board it's a statistic the vacancies you know 30 to 40 percent that certainly I've been aware of for a long time but hearing your own testimony about how this impacts your day-to-day jobs is really impactful and puts it into a much more human context so thank you I'm going to next look at a number of the items on our consent agenda that address housing because after all one of the things driving these vacancies and the cost of living in our community is housing we learned recently that we are the most expensive rental market in the country sort of ignominious distinction so first of all on item 22 the operational plan for 2023 through 2025 I want to thank the CAO's office particularly Sven Stafford and Nicole Coburn for their work on this I think you know like the budget that we've approved at our last meeting the processes have been set in place to help the county move forward including these incremental operational goals for each department is really important in particular I appreciate operational goals number 349 and number 350 which identify streamlining the processes for subdivision and final map approval in the planning department time is money and the delays that we see for projects including just things like trying to schedule final map approval or partial release of securities on our board agenda definitely add significant costs to projects and that ultimately leads to higher housing costs and we have actually an example of that with item 92 Maplethorpe partial release of I'm happy to see this project close to opening in my district will be some essential new housing units but again this I know speaking to the builder on this project that is taking a number of months to get onto our agenda and essentially they have to pay interest on their bonds which adds to the final cost of the housing I'm glad that we're in alignment that we need to help improve that on item 29 third party plan check program thank you to supervisor McPherson and to the planning division for working on this with me I think that ultimately this will help bring all resources to the table as we address the delays and and long time it's taking to approve new permits in the planning department you know and I also want to acknowledge that just like with behavioral health we're seeing staff shortfalls in the planning department too because it's just difficult to hire for these positions and of course we funded a lot of those positions actually in last year's budget and we've had challenges filling them over this year and so I don't think that is necessarily anyone's fault but we know we do need to look at ways to bring more resources to the table and so this third party plan check program something that we identified that Marin County and Sonoma County are doing which essentially lets applicants bring private resources to the table to help review the plans faster and hopefully also work collaboratively with staff to get plans approved faster I will point out that you know I think over the last 30 to 50 years we've taken the attitude and largely implemented through our plan check process that we have a moral obligation to make sure that everyone is kept as safe as possible and that we check just every single possible box to ensure that the environment is left as intact as possible whenever we build and I think we've certainly achieved those goals I think maybe we've gone a little bit too far at this point we have a moral obligation to build housing to support our health care workers to support more folks for the planning department to support all county workers and of course all the folks that are other businesses in the community need teachers etc and I think that particularly when it comes to projects within the urban services line we need to shift a focus a little bit now that our moral obligation is to make it as easy as possible to bring new housing units online because it's going to take a while working on this before we make real progress just as here we are in summer the lightest day of the year may be behind us but the hottest days are still ahead it's going to take some time to address the problem it could even get worse before it gets better but we need to work collaboratively together on it to move forward item 35 the resolution to sell surplus real property located at 7th and Bromer I'm excited that this very large property that's currently owned by the county and the redevelopment agency could see a project soon and of course there was some concern by a member of the community that we should be using it for affordable housing we're trying to do through the surplus lands act we're offering it up to affordable housing developers first so I hope that we can see some additional housing capacity built there on item 37 I want to thank supervisor Cummings for bringing forward this support for AB 309 the social housing act I definitely agree that we need to bring all resources to the table including as much state funding as possible to address the supply side of this problem to build as much housing as possible and we've absolutely seen in other communities around the world that this can work New York Times article called renters utopia which talked about how Vienna has invested heavily in social housing over decades and it's worked definitely jumps to mind makes me think that it can work here in California as well so happy to support AB 309 on item 30 the status report on give love on and container based sanitation project I also want to thank supervisor Hernandez for his partnership on this you know this I think it's incredibly important to advance our research into compo posting toilet options in general and this container based sanitation project does that I think that it will be able to provide some data on how we can compost safely in our community hopefully ultimately to allow it as an option for individual property owners but then also of course the intent of this program is to provide an emergency option as well we came surprisingly and dangerously close to losing the Watsonville wastewater treatment plant this winter during the floods and that could have knocked out sanitation services for 60 to 70,000 people we we need a plan B for people to go number two and that's exactly what we're trying to provide here and I want to thank the public works community development infrastructure department for working with give love to help make sure we have a backup and finally on item 65 the creation of a housing for health vendor pool I want to thank the housing for health division for bringing this forward it's definitely important that we're able to move quickly to take advantage of new state grants that are available it seems another one is popping up all the time and of course to respond to emergencies as needed so I think this is a great step forward so my comments thank you Supervisor McPherson thank you Mr. Chair and I'm going to add to the comments that have been made and number 22 the operations plan I want to thank the CEO and all the department staff who've worked on this which is a critical counterpart to our budget every year we want to align our expenditures with our strategic goals in a way that is measurable and transparent to the public it's also been a little more difficult that we've done had to follow the or not had to we had an original plan but we had to pivot because of the natural disasters and the pandemic and I think we've done a great job of doing that as best we could under the circumstance and with the financial resources that we have on item number 29 the third party plan check that was mentioned previously I want to thank Supervisor Koenig it's been a pleasure to work with him trying to address the backlog on the permits that we have a substantial step in the county is to align our policies so that home builders that can navigate the permit process with a much more predictable timeframe and cost that has been experienced historically and we want to build housing that respects the environmental and safety regulations that we have in the process and it's been difficult to do in some respects because of new regulations that have been passed down by the state and federal government regarding septic tanks or sandhills geographic geological issues this has not been an easy climb but I think we're there and this will really help us get to accommodating more people who want to rebuild on item number 51 when the board approved the climate action plan last December it was gratifying to see the county was at the forefront of developing a comprehensive plan in this regard I'm very happy that this update includes applying for grant funds set up by the community resilience center space assistant grant program these are things that you have to go through you have to apply you have to get the financial resources before you can implement these programs the fifth district my district has suffered six disasters in the past several years and we have found that providing a place for residents to go is disasters unfold or just even when the power goes off has become an essential service and to have a fund that can assist residents with the defensible space around their home will go a long way toward preventing and the devastating losses that we've experienced during the CZU fire my thanks to our three staff and their partners within the resource conservation district also the library system and the fire agencies for your work on these grants it's been a real cooperative effort and I appreciate it very much and the appointment and we're going to shortly about the outgoing health officer but congratulations to Dr. Lisa Hernandez for being selected this critical position in the county she brings an excellent mix of experience and a role that has some big shoes to fill with from Dr. Newell and lastly on item 96 I'm really glad to see that there can be some constructive conversations about how we can work this issue out and I just want to say thanks to health care workers we've heard many from today and we have via emails and texts of one type or another this is a crisis situation and we're going to try to fill it the best way we can with the resources that we have thank you Supervisor McPherson I'll speak to just a couple brief items on 36 in support of Supervisor Cummings on the commission item I would also like to continue to encourage the CAO's office to review our commission structure for just efficacy redundancy necessity it's time that we do a review in general to ensure that the ones we have are necessary and valid and on 54 welcoming Dr. Hernandez back to our county talking about impossible shoes to fill but I think that if somebody were to fill and we found the right person a little bit biased because of a Georgetown background that she has but she's got an amazing background I mean undergrad at Yale public masters of public health at Berkeley graduate or medical degree at Georgetown she could be doing a lot of things and she chose to be in public service this is a huge gift to our community I have Dr. Lisa Hernandez coming back on 94 a district item that I share with the Green Valley multi-use trail is Supervisor Hernandez great appreciation to public works in particular Mr. Wiesner on this this is a very complicated project it was very expensive it took a lot of advocacy and work at the state to get the funding that it received and then a lot of investment at the local level both of our districts contributed to measure D over the last couple years to help make this happen in fact there's been more investments in that corridor in the last couple years and there's been an over a generation from both investments in the parks at Pinto Lake to what's happening on Green Valley right now this is essential down there but it's also transformational it's very exciting to see just my last comment on 96 one thing that is good during this whole discussion is the fact that we're actually talking about investments and repairs the discussion is different finally I mean we're the debate now is over how we're going to make investments and for 70 years we're talking about we didn't have any money so you know one of the things that we sometimes need is the 30,000 foot view to remember the thing the trajectory shifted and I I think that although sometimes people get caught up in sort of the legal elements of this I mean at the end of the day we're talking about how to invest down there people's lives making better and that's good because funding's been made available so I'll bring it up and move the consent agenda and you know before that I just want to make sure that I thank all the health care workers that were here and behavioral health care workers for addressing some of the issues with behavioral health staffing and housing as well I just want to make sure we have the additional direction to include yes and the additional direction we have a motion from supervisor Hernandez we'll get to you with the additional direction thank you I was going to second and provide an add direction on item number 3696 sorry for staff to continue discussions around a mutually agreeable contract to address flooding issues in zone 7a and that's acceptable to the maker yes all right we have a motion and second any additional direction if we could have a roll call please supervisor conic I Cummings hi Hernandez hi McPherson hi and friend hi and that passes unanimously we'll move on to the first item of the regular agenda which is to consider authorizing the issuance of a proclamation honoring county health officer Dr. Gail Newell on her retirement from the county of Santa Cruz to be signed by all members of the board is recommended in the memo that chair if you don't mind I'm actually going to kick this off with some comments I'll open it up for Dr. Newell I mean Dr. Newell so Dr. Newell came in 2019 to this position if you would have had a magic eight ball or fortune telling you may have reconsidered the job offer that came your way because less than a year later we were faced with obviously a worldwide pandemic the Santa Cruz county led the way on and for those of us that were on the board at the time just to give you a little bit of a behind the scenes understanding Dr. Newell made herself unbelievably available not just to us but to the entire community to answer questions constant community outreach working with other cities and elected officials always in an understanding compassionate but science based way and this did not play out that well across the country there was a lot of conflict sometimes with elected officials and the county public health officer that did not happen here there was communities that didn't feel informed that didn't happen here and there were communities that had significantly worse outcomes as a result of decisions that were made which also didn't happen here because almost solely due to the work of Dr. Gail Newell didn't come without personal consternation and strife some inappropriate actions from some unfortunately members of the community and that is a number of health officers have stepped down across the state but Dr. Newell saw it all the way through the end and I know that people never thank you for things that they didn't realize could have happened to them but didn't you never get rewarded in politics for what you prevent you only get rewarded for responding to crisis and which is an unfortunate component of the system but there are people in our community that are alive because of Dr. Gail Newell that would not be alive otherwise your placement as our county health officer at that point in that time couldn't have been more fortuitous to our community and I'm deeply deeply regret to you deeply in debt to your leadership so thank you Dr. Newell I'm going to open it up for other board members Dr. Newell has to for the millionth time speak in front of everybody Supervisor Koenig I will say Dr. Newell the first thing that struck me taking this position in the middle of the pandemic was just how open available and responsive you were I think there was a number of times that issues were coming up last minute and you were always there extremely responsive with the text finding a solution and so it was became pretty apparent pretty quickly to me what an amazing work ethic you have and also just you're incredibly pleasant person to deal with amazingly throughout this you never lost your cool and I will say I mean if anyone has any doubts the data is right here to support what incredible job Dr. Newell has done I mean the highest vaccination rates in the state at 77% I mean 40% of the average number of deaths per capita of any compared to the rest of the state it's and you know now we're in the top 10 of all the healthiest counties in California it's clear that you've done an amazing job and can't thank you enough and I guess the last thing I'll say is also the health dashboards that you helped create throughout the pandemic were incredibly useful and in showing how the virus was impacting people throughout our community and was actually really insightful for me seeing just how many similarities there were for example between mid-county and south county and I think it was enlightening to have a better understanding of the demographic distribution in our community and how there are really inequitable impacts from the virus but of course you made sure that we did everything we could as far as getting those vaccine clinics open in south county first to address those so thank you thank you supervisor McPherson I could repeat every word that's been said you're a special person and I think I want to just summarize the situation with the pandemic that we addressed you took an issue that was scary and controversial and you made it sane and understandable and I thank you for that and we have a healthy county because of you and thank you very much thank you supervisor McPherson supervisor Cummings thank you chair and I just want to agree with everything that's been said so I'm not going to reiterate everything but I just also want to thank you for your bravery because as elected officials we all receive nasty grams and all sorts of emails of shut things down open things up this is fake this is not fake and I know that you had received a very some serious threats and throughout all of it you continued to persevere to represent our county and to help make sure that everyone remained safe and so just want to thank you for your persistence and diligence to ensure that we had a safe community and then I also want to just highlight and thank you for your willingness to collaborate with UCSC back when the pandemic first started for some folks who don't know the amount of testing per capita was a really big deal in terms of being able to reopen more quickly and there was lab on campus that I'd been in touch with who said we're going to create our own test and initially some people wrote them off and said no we're not going to do that we're just going to go with quest diagnostic but Dr. Newell was open to having conversations with them and as a result we actually doubled the testing capacity within our county which allowed us to reopen more quickly and so we compared to many of the other counties throughout the state of California and the country we were able to open in a way that was safe and it was largely because of the willingness to have the county collaborate with UCSC to expand our testing capacity and so just want to thank you for that willingness because it did allow us to be able to get out and continue our daily lives while we navigated the pandemic and so I'll stop there because I can continue to go on and on about how great you've been and how great it's been to work with you but being mayor during that time I was just so grateful to be able to have someone who brought the science forward and we were able to communicate that out in a way that was effective so thank you. Thank you Surveyor Hernandez. I really want to commend all the work you've done and thank you for your work and really especially during the pandemic you know I think that all the my introduction to the Zoom world your weekly briefing that you had and then especially when you started including the infographics to the meetings because it really shed a light to South County and it really made us make sure that we supported South County and kept it healthy and so thank you for that. Thank you Mr. Plosios. Yes Dr. Neal I just wanted to thank you on behalf of county staff especially you had a great partnership with the CAO's office with the sheriff with the county council with our parks and with all the county staff I just want to thank you for that very important partnership I also want to thank you from the very beginning you emphasized equity as a very important value that you had and that the county had and this board had and that you were from the very very first step thinking about those individuals who are most vulnerable in our community those farm workers and service workers who were out and could not shelter in place and those suffering from compromised health you were out there really advocating for them from the very beginning under great pressure let me tell you there was a lot of pressure in those days and we were there with you the county council and the sheriff and I and this board also and we this board was supportive of you in making those tough decisions to value equity as one of the most important values that was very difficult and now we look back and think oh it was easy to do that of course it makes sense it was very difficult because I remember those very difficult conversations we had in the community when we were prioritizing those individuals in the farm worker community and service worker community who could not shelter in place so thank you for that I really always appreciate you for that thank you Mr. Heath Dr. Newell just seeing your smile I was in the fox hole with you very early on when this got started and I want to underscore something that supervisor friend said which is that there are people who are alive today who would not be alive in this community without what you did and you are such an unbelievable credit to your profession and I'm going to miss you professionally I'm going to miss you personally and I just wish you all the best in your next chapter thank you now where you are going to open up Dr. Newell if you don't well actually we're going to open up for the community because we do have an action item so if there's members of the community who would like to address us and part of this may illustrate some of the challenges that we dealt with but we'll open it up for the community for members of the community for an opportunity to address us on this proclamation Hello my name is James Ewing Whitman you know I would love to take you up Gail Newell on sitting down to have coffee I really would because I ran into a mutual friend on Sunday who I hadn't seen in two months because after her second booster she developed some really serious health issues so you know I have a lot of friends that are retired and they seem to be they've never been so busy after they're retired so I you know there's a lot of things that I could actually say and you know a mistake does not become an error unless you refuse to correct it you know I could take the time to read something published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel by Jessica York on May 29th 2020 it's written right here but I don't know if it really serves much of a purpose except people can look at that I'm in kind of disagreement with all of this praise and I think do you all that know me know that I could come up for reasons why I could speak for quite some length upon that so what's happened in the past has happened it's done we can't change anything uh something came up this morning on my facebook that I thought was quite fascinating said if you could telepathically say something to all 7.9 billion people on earth right now what would it be I wrote return to the natural human state of being a magnetobiological crystal fifth element being with an uneniable unique creator energies provided and then share them I have 10 seconds so you know people don't realize that every human breath is 10 to the 7 atoms if you were to look in a huge stadium and the nucleus was the center the protons would be at the very outside so there's a lot to do and I really would like to talk to you is there any bells from the community that would like to address us on this I don't feel free to line up if you'd like to sharp heart welcome good morning chairman Board of Supervisors Jim Hart share of corner and I just want to let you know Dr. Newell that I really appreciated the relationship that we had during the whole pandemic event and a lot of people in the public weren't privy to a lot of the conversations that were going on particularly from epidemiology and what some of the predictions were and we were looking at a catastrophic event locally with some of the early numbers and so I felt like we worked in lock step together to try to keep our community as safe as possible and for you the amount of blowback that you were getting the amount of negative comments I felt like you really handled that with courage and empathy too you didn't lash out at those people you just kept your head down and did your job and so we're going to miss you and I wish you the best in your retirement thank you is there anybody else that would like to address us on this item in chambers Director Gaffney welcome back thank you Director Gaffney for county parks I just want to say Gail thank you so much I had employees that were scared they were needing to take care of other people's children so the other people could go to work and we didn't know what to do at times and you gave us strength guidance and had a vision for how we could do that as was said in an equitable manner and I don't think this community could ever thank you enough so thank you so much thank you anybody else in chambers morning welcome back good morning I just wanted to speak on behalf of the public who has maybe a different opinion than all of you I've been reading Karen Kingston substacks and I would send other community members who are watching this remotely to go ahead and check out Karen Kingston who worked for Pfizer I've read the patents myself I worked at Santa Cruz biotechnology I've made injections that go into the human body containing metals and toxins such as formaldehyde and the marisol and I had to work in a fume hood and when we put those chemicals in animals they all died you just mentioned that there were a couple people who died suddenly and unexpectedly and you know I'm wondering if there's a connection so I just want to say my part in that is there anybody else in chambers council member hi thank you I just wanted to take a quick moment my name is Kristen Brown I was mayor of Capitola in 2020 when the pandemic started and many may not be aware that at that time all of the mayors in the cities within the county of Santa Cruz met weekly with Dr. Newell and her guidance through that time was incredibly invaluable for those of us trying to determine how best to lead our cities through a very difficult time in the pandemic so I just wanted to take a quick moment to thank you from the bottom of my heart for the leadership that you've shown through the county and all of those of us who are also trying to best lead during that time thank you so much thank you anybody else in chambers can I open it up online okay is there anybody online yes chair call in user one your microphones now available there are many adverse reactions to these shots and you have a pharmaceutical perspective here and that's all I'm hearing but refer you to a paper here covid shots for adults and children what we know now this is from Weston A. Price Foundation westonaprice.org just a few figures here there have been more reported adverse reactions and deaths from covid shots than from all the other vaccines combined this is part of the various reporting system also Pfizer documents released by court order confirmed that in women whose pregnancy outcomes were known 87.5% of pregnancies ended in a miscarriage during clinical trials where is the report of the adverse effects and deaths that have occurred from the shots including myocarditis deaths in young athletes who received the covid shots and are falling over dead as they're playing sports um I honor people who work for genuine health and are to boost our immune system not to destroy it that's what the vaccines do I hope Dr. Newell and you read the real Anthony Fauci Bill Gates on line we have no further speakers here alright let's bring it to the board for a motion on the proclamation a second we have a motion from Supervisor McPherson a second from Supervisor Cummings if we could have a roll call on that please Supervisor Koenig Cummings Hernandez McPherson and Friend and that passes unanimously really feel seen and heard thank you all and thank you to everybody who spoke everyone one of the things I love so much about Santa Cruz County is the values of freedom of speech freedom to protest the values that make our democracy strong and great and that's really apparent here today so proud it's been a huge privilege to serve this county as a public servant the last four years so thank you for that opportunity I'm very excited for Dr. Lisa Hernandez to be filling my shoes she's going to do a fantastic job so glad she's returning to the county to do that she's a great choice I want to take this opportunity to thank just a few of the most supportive people in my life besides all of you and you and the sheriff and under sheriff and all of the county team so supportive my deputy health officers very very important who after the first few months of the pandemic gave me some relief from 24-7 call and the ongoing stresses so Dr. David Ducci and Dr. Cal Gordon deserve huge thanks my right-hand woman at the beginning of the pandemic Mimi Hall and now Monica Morales and my partner through it all Jen Herrera is in the chambers here and deserves a big thank you as well Emily Chung director of public health and so many of my county health team I'm sure I'm forgetting others who are very important special thanks of course to my family especially my wife Kelly Beingesser who put up with all of the threats and harassment at my side my daughter Madeleine Newell who lived with us at the time as well and had some very frightening experiences herself I'm proud to leave a legacy of one of the lowest COVID death rates in the nation we have half the mortality rate from COVID for the state average and less than a third of that from the nation so that's hundreds perhaps thousands of lives saved with the I'm giving credit to the entire community it wasn't just me it wasn't just public health or HSA or the county government big kudos to the South County community and group who helped achieve those equity goals their partnership has been invaluable they knew who they are and I want to challenge the county to continue to work on the public health crises that remain racism we must continue to work on racism equity diversity inclusion in our workforce and the county in general and the opioid crisis that continues to claim many many lives in our county and we need to work on that one actively and in closing though I'd like to say remind us that we're all so blessed to live in this generally healthy and prosperous and free county of Santa Cruz so thank you for making that possible and thank you to the entire community thank you doctor newell we do actually have a very brief 1045 scheduled item that we need to do right now because it was such so I'll take one minute for the clerk do you see anybody online that needs to be promoted for the zone 7 meeting not seeing anyone at this time okay so what we are going to do is we are going to call to order the flood control and water conservation district zone 7 special meeting if we could begin with a roll call for zone 7 please Director Koenig here McPherson Colbertson absent if you feel free to come on forward good to see you you can grab right there thank you for coming up here and director friend are there any changes to today's agenda just press it's on the bottom there you go there are no changes to the agenda alright we'll do oral communications it's an opportunity for members of the community to address us on items not on today's agenda but within the purview of zone 7 would anybody like to address us in chambers is there anybody online madam clerk yes we do have a speaker online calling user 1 your microphone is now available I would like to refer you to a website geoengineeringwatch.org with Dane Wiggington regarding patents that are held by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon regarding weather intervention and weather warfare operations that are a huge causative factor to the very adverse aberrant weather conditions that are happening all over the planet including flooding drought atmospheric rivers etc it's very insightful and something is going on that is much bigger than just carbon footprint much bigger geoengineeringwatch.org and Dane Wiggington also has a program on KZFC weekly at 8 a.m. and 6 on Saturday that's 10 a.m. something is not nature's way going on thank you Chris Carter I and friend and thanks for driving all the way up here for that very brief item that will conclude all the items on zone 7 and so we'll close the zone 7 meeting and move it back to the regular Board of Supervisors meeting and we're now here for item 8 which is a presentation recognizing members of the community who have participated in the volunteer initiative program the Sheriff's Volunteer Program as outlined in the memo of the chair and I'll hand it over to our CAO for the initial remarks and I'll also like to invite up Miss Delaney to speak with us okay thank you very much the volunteer initiative program is a partnership between the Volunteer Center of Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz County we match interested community members with volunteer opportunities throughout county government the county is extremely fortunate to have such a dedicated group of volunteers that support our efforts we're very pleased to welcome Director of the Volunteer Center Karen Delaney and Sheriff Jim Hart also with us today is Christina Thurston from the Volunteer Initiative Program turning it over to you folks I'm Christina Thurston with the Volunteer Center of Santa Cruz County I work with Karen Delaney unfortunately I'm sorry she couldn't make it today I do have some comments to read on her behalf but Jim would you like to start us off? Sure we have about 50 volunteers right now that are working for the Sheriff's Office really throughout the office all in our substations we have people working in investigations in our coroner's office in our records division and with the staffing shortages that I've spoke to all of you about individually and that you're hearing from other county departments these volunteers come in and give us a lot of hours thousands of hours in total to all the volunteers that help our office run and we're going to recognize three Sheriff's Office volunteers today have done a fantastic job but I also want to acknowledge the other 47 that come out every week and help us keep our community safe and then I also want to acknowledge Daisy Aguirre who's our volunteer program coordinator who's done a great job post-pandemic she's getting the program to get to 100 plus volunteers here in the next six months or so so thank you and Daisy thank you Okay good anyone else before I begin the presentation? Okay so good morning my name is Christina Thurston I'm the program director for the volunteer center and the volunteer initiative program the partnership between the volunteer center and the county to engage volunteers within local government for the last 30 years has been an invaluable asset it is an honor to be part of this amazing group of people that will be recognizing today I'm grateful to live in this community full of hardworking people I know all of you are as well the people here today have given their time and talent to the community and county volunteer programs that dropped off a lot during the COVID-19 pandemic this year almost every single department at the county has interns or volunteers back serving more than 1,000 individuals volunteered in the last 12 months with the county and they supported flood response recovery efforts, county parks cared for animals just all kinds of crucial services I think the most important thing about the volunteer program here at the county is that bringing community members into our offices, into our departments to work side by side with staff supporting the work that the staff do every day it's the best way to improve communication between the community and our local government to really make sure that the concerns of the community are being heard and addressed and also bringing resources, ideas support, innovation interns go on to become staff members once they get their licensing they also have more support from their universities to create innovative programs to try out new things that flexibility that staff really don't have and that's really essential to the health of our county government and volunteering brings together people from every one of your districts all walks of life the people who are really passionate about solving problems that they see stepping up, helping out trying to come up with solutions and they don't often come to make comments or they don't often have their voices heard so that's why we're really grateful for you guys today recognizing them what we're gonna do is I will read the names of the volunteers that are being recognized many of them are here today they'll come up get their award while the supervisors will be reading about them and also anyone else who wants to come up I know the supervisors from the different departments are here as well to honor their volunteers so the first honoree we have today is Lucy Wilkinson and Supervisor Koenig we'll read them remarks thank you Lucy are you here? come on up, alright Lucy Wilkinson has been volunteering at the Santa Cruz County Animal Shelter for over a year and has the distinction of being the shelter's most dedicated rabbit volunteer and mentor Lucy helps by cleaning kennels mentoring new rabbit volunteers and even takes photos of the rabbits to make sure that only their best angles are on the website Lucy is an amazing volunteer who puts time, dedication, and care in attending to some of the smallest and most overlooked furry friends at the animal shelter thank you Lucy for all that you have done for the staff and for the four-legged residents of the animal shelter thank you Lucy and I do want to say sorry for the typo it's been ten years that Lucy's been volunteering our next honoree represented by Megan Carroll thank you and you know first of all thank you to the Santa Cruz County Animal Shelter as well Linda Mathis is a volunteer at the Santa Cruz County Animal Shelter and has dedicated herself to making sure that the shelter dogs get the best treatment possible not only does she work regularly walk the dogs but she also coordinates with local groomers at positive styles to organize monthly grooming days when the shelter dogs get bathed Linda also loves taking the dogs to events showing them off to the public and potential adopters Linda you are a vital volunteer at the shelter and we thank you for all the care you have shown to our local canine friends and their humans our next honoree is Judy Appleby supervisor Cummings will read the remarks so Judy Appleby is a long time Santa Cruz County Animal Shelter who comes in weekly to work with cats at the shelter as well as mentor new volunteers Judy also fosters cats for the shelter which allows them to enjoy a peaceful home away from the shelter and de-stress Judy gives these cats the love they need to grow and thrive and she is the reason that so many of our cats end up in amazing homes along with being wonderful with the animals Judy's energy is infectious she brings joy to both clients and staff thank you Judy for the care that you show to the shelter cats and support you give to the animal shelter you can say if you want Lucy so hi I'm Megan again I'm volunteer coordinator at the shelter I'm going to make this very very brief we have over 200 volunteers that do hours every month the shelter we are one of the biggest volunteer programs they support our staff they walk our dogs they do pretty much almost everything for us and we are always so thankful for all of their time and energy we are a community that loves animals and we can tell because we have so many people who want to work with them so thank you to all of our volunteers especially Lucy and Judy and Linda because they're amazing and they go above and beyond so have a wonderful day and thank you our next honoree is Felton Library Friends and the Discovery Park volunteer group represented by Janice O'Driscoll's today supervisor McPherson will read the remarks thank you Felton Library Friends is an incredibly dedicated and active group with more than 25 participating volunteers that contribute more than 100 volunteer hours per month to support the needs and services of the Felton Library branch and Discovery Parks one of the only combinations of such of a library and a Discovery Park in the nation working closely with Santa Cruz County Parks leadership Felton Library Friends helped to bring the Discovery Park onto the property of the new Felton Library branch this unique county park promotes environmental literacy through its design and through programs offered by the Santa Cruz County Parks and the Santa Cruz Public Library Felton Library Friends also helped with the planting of native species as well as the plant identification signage throughout the park Discovery Park serves as a model and teaching site for students volunteers and residents interested in learning about protecting and preserving our natural world thank you to Felton Library Friends for all of your hard work and helping and for helping to make this wonderful addition to our community thank you I just want to quickly say I am Janice O'Driscoll I'm president of the Friends of the Santa Cruz Public Libraries and the Felton Chapter is the model chapter for our group they work very hard to build the wonderful new building they have continued to work and raised money and suggest programs and they have demonstrated a model program to show how a public library in a county park can work together for the community thank you for this recognition our next honoree is Merge Four represented by Cindy Boozenhart today and Supervisor Friend will read the remarks thank you when the heart of Soquel Park flooded during the January storms of this year Cindy Boozenhart the CEO and founder of Merge Four a local sock company reached out to the county parks department to see how Merge Four could help with the cleanup through a partnership with parks Cindy and Merge Four gathered their employees friends and families and together they rolled up their sleeves to help clean up the park working together they were able to remove tons of mud and debris from the park walkways and parking lot and cleared swales and drain pipes thanks to Merge Four for helping make the heart of Soquel Park accessible again to the community are you wearing the socks of course congratulations on your award thank you I actually want to thank Supervisor Manu Koenig for a quick little email we actually just wanted access to water he introduced us to Margaret Ingram who was awesome like Margaret was awesome she rallied not only Parks and Rec but she rallied AmeriCorps as well as the Santa Cruz Warriors who actually fed us all so thinking I just needed water access for all this massive mud that everybody you know moved I just want to say thank you for moving so fast it was appreciated thank you our next honoree is the Nature Lodge represented by Margaret Ingram the Nature Lodge began volunteering with the Volunteer Center in 2022 and has adopted the East Cliff Parkway to help maintain and improve they will be hosting regular volunteer days along East Cliff which will include repainting the Keep Right signs on the walkway, repainting the red curbs litter pickup and weed removal the Nature Lodge's commitment to the community and county parks is appreciated and we look forward to their beautification efforts along East Cliff Parkway our next honoree is the Peer Support Interns represented by Danny Contreras and Supervisor Hernandez will read the remarks I think Danny may have had to go back to the clinic to work but maybe he's here is there someone taking his place? Supervisor Hernandez I'll accept on his behalf thank you so the Peer Support Interns have helped improve the county's Medication Assistance Treatment or MAT program by creating flyers for MAT services they have also facilitated and co-facilitated educational and support groups as well as work shifts at the Syringe Services Program the Peer Support Interns have helped reduce stigma, improve communication and educate the community and patients on Medication Assistance Treatment and how to use Narcan literally help help us save lives thank you Peer Support Interns for your support of our MAT program and our community intern Colin Webb did come to represent his group thanks Colin our next honoree is Lauren Spiegel and Supervisor Cummings will read the remarks alright Laura Spiegel has been volunteering at the Sheriff's Office since 2018 and she has been a wonderful resource for South County Service Center she's made it a priority to connect with the community and follow up with issues facing residents in our area Laura's prior experience has helped her to problem solve and provide resource information for community members Laura has also volunteered for the Child Safety Program assisting deputies and presenting the Child Safety Program in elementary schools thank you Laura for the support you've given to the Sheriff's Department you're an outstanding volunteer and asset to the community just a word whatever your passion is volunteering for the community is not a choice it's a responsibility our next honoree is Christopher Smith and Supervisor McPherson will read the remarks Christopher Smith is being honored today as an outstanding volunteer for his remarkable service to the Santa Cruz Sheriff's Office Missing Persons Unit since he began volunteering with the Missing Persons Unit in 2008 Chris's fierce dedication tireless efforts and attention to detail have helped make a significant impact to missing person investigations and have helped lift a substantial burden from the patrol personnel Chris is a shining example of dedicated volunteer who goes above and beyond to make an impact and he is truly deserving of this recognition congratulations Christopher thank you I guess as I was sitting here this morning I had ample time to review why it means so much for me to be a volunteer at the Sheriff's Department when I started in 2008 my sheriff had been preceded by two previous sheriffs that I served Jim Hart was the investigation's lieutenant down at 701 Ocean Street in the corner office and my desk was a row of boxes outside the coroner's unit because we didn't have enough room and I guess what I want to comment on is the quality of the people that I have had the opportunity to serve and like for instance I'm not sure if he's a deputy or if he's a chief deputy but Chris is over there sitting down I was working for him when he became the coroner's sergeant with absolutely no preparation was an experience so as a volunteer I've been a volunteer there 18 years which is kind of remarkable for me and I think the only reason that I continue there is the quality of the people that I serve the community yes but the people, the deputies, the sergeants that I serve, thank you our final honoree today is Debbie Medina the advisor friend will read the remarks thank you for the last year Debbie has been assisting in the unidentified persons project a collaborative multidisciplinary group with representatives from the coroner investigations forensics CalDOJ, the FBI and others with the genealogy search and identification of persons whose remains have been recovered by the sheriff's office but those remain unidentified using traditional methods each case takes hundreds of hours combined with careful data mining and organization and she brings over 40 years of genealogy research experience and passion to the project additionally to assist the office Debbie has learned how to do genetic genealogy searches and her research has already led to two positive identifications and she is currently working on a third case Debbie's contribution and her specialized skills have provided closure for families and the professional staff that work on these cases quite remarkable and Debbie for the profoundly important work you do and for helping us never to forget the unidentified victims in our community thank you so much I just want to take the opportunity to thank Forensic Service Director Dr. Lauren Zeffero for giving me the chance and encouragement to serve my community in this capacity I've done genealogical research actually for over 50 years and exposure to the DNA part of that research was limited so I deeply appreciate the opportunity to participate in the project that I'm very passionate about I feel it's very important and significant to restore the true identity of these John and Jane Doe's cold cases so that their families may find peace and closure I also want to pay tribute and thank Deputy Cassandra Galati I may be Bob the builder but she provides the finished work she's been so accommodating and supportive with my calls and questions once I texted her last during the holidays and she called me back and we spoke for probably about an hour unbeknownst to me that she was on vacation with her family in Utah another time I had texted her and she called me back and we ended up speaking for a couple of hours until about 10 p.m she's also come over to my house so that we can brainstorm on certain areas so I really want to acknowledge her help for me and she's also very passionate about the work and I'm so grateful to be teamed up with her on these cases last I'd like to acknowledge and thank my husband Mike of 56 years who could not be here this morning for his unfaltering support he knows that when I say I'm going to Vegas he doesn't have to pack a bag and he doesn't have to worry about um a gambling debt what it means is that I'm just in the next room for the next couple of days and he won't see me very much but he's been very supportive and with luck it may be the day that I can discover someone's true identity so thank you again so much for this recognition thanks to the board for taking the time to recognize the volunteers today all the volunteers thank you so much for your commitment to the community it really means a lot the volunteer initiative program office is right next door to the chambers here so we do have coffee for any volunteers stop by and get a cup of coffee I'd like to say something hi everyone my name is Daisy Aguirre I'm the volunteer program coordinator at the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office I wanted to take this moment to express my sincere gratitude for all the support that our volunteers provide to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office their dedication and commitment to our mission have made a tremendous impact on our community whether they're volunteering their time skills or resources their contribution has helped us achieve our goals to make a positive difference in the lives of those we serve their selflessness and generosity inspires us all and we are grateful for their support thank you to our volunteers for their countless hours of hard work their commitment and their willingness to go above and beyond to make a difference their efforts do not go unnoticed and we cannot accomplish what we do without them thank you thank you one last final thank you to all the volunteers we could have one last round of applause for these remarkable people that will close that item although there was a clear recruitment pitch for all of you that are not volunteering right now for coffee and snacks next door thank you for all your work and we'll move on to item 9 item 9 is a public hearing to consider the petition for rescission of the March 2022 tax sale the assessor's parcel number APN 07813205 an undeveloped lot located in Benlum in California is outlined in the memo of the Auditor-Controller Treasurer Tax Collector we have the board item that grant D the exhibits the title information the auction publication and the public hearing information we'll turn it over to our Auditor-Controller Treasurer Tax Collector Ms. Driscoll morning and welcome thank you for waiting good morning chair friend and members of the board Edith Driscoll Auditor-Controller Treasurer Tax Collector your board set today June 27th 2023 as the day to hold the public hearing to consider a petition for rescission of one of the properties sold during the March 2022 default to tax sale the specific property is identified as parcel number 07813205 as stated an undeveloped lot located in Benlum in California the lot has no street address as outlined in your board packet the owners Sahid are requesting this sale to be set aside in accordance with California Revenue and Tax Code section 3731 as they contend that the sale was not the sale was improper because as the owners of the property they did not receive notification of the tax sale code section 3731 gives your board guidance on the process for the rescission and the recent purchaser of the property consents to the rescission and one if the purchaser does not in this situation the party who purchased the property Ms Lucy Yen has not given her consent therefore the clerk of the board has provided Ms Yen with the required notification of this meeting and Ms Yen has communicated with me via voicemail indicating she has received notice of this hearing as background for the parcel the parcel was purchased in 1988 by the Tasbegu family the change of ownership was recorded via a grant deed that lists two separate parcel numbers the first parcel is a developed home site and the second parcel is the one we are discussing today a vacant land represented by the Tasbegu family as the backyard for this parcel a copy of the grant deed is included as exhibit one in your agenda packet in 1988 the assessor's office assigned different values to each of the parcels and beginning in 1989 the two separate annual property tax bills were produced and mailed for these parcels the bills for both parcels were paid in full from 1989 until December 2014 when the vacant parcel first went unpaid it remained unpaid until it was sold at auction in March of 2022 your board packet includes correspondence from the council representing the Tasbegu family that states that in 2014 they updated the assessor's office with their new mailing address the address is located in the Netherlands for both parcels they believe for both parcels the Tasbegu owners received and paid one tax bill for every year starting in 2014 at this new address in the Netherlands but did not realize that there were separate parcels as a part of their grant deed and that each had its own tax bill to be paid as I have presented to your board in the packet the tax sale was properly conducted pursuant to the California law and all requirements of the auction were met the documents and narrative presented in your board packet details specifically the various sections of the California revenue and tax code provisions governing property tax collection and tax auctions as well as a fact based review of this matter as the petitioner is filing their request for rescission focusing on the notification requirements of the tax sale I will review those with you now code section 3701 of the California tax and revenue code outlines specifically the requirements that must be followed regarding notifications of tax sales first after receiving board approval the tax collector is required to provide notice of the sale section 3701 provides that the tax collector shall make a reasonable effort to obtain the names and addresses of all parties of interest for the delinquent properties and to notify those properties by registered or certified mail with return receipt requested at their last known mailing address if available my office did that and further we send these items out FedEx here the TTC office made reasonable efforts to obtain the last known mailing address of all parties of interest for the parcel the office searched the assessor recorders historical records for this specific parcel number and also hired a third party vendor known as tile runners incorporated to locate any other parties of interest based on this reasonable search notifications were mailed timely to all parties of interest second I want to note that the code section also specifically states that the validity of the tax sale shall not be affected if the tax collector's reasonable effort fails to disclose the name and last known mailing address of parties of interest or if a party of interest has not received the mailed notice finally in addition to mailing certified notices the tax collector must publish the notice of sale once each week for three consecutive weeks a paper of general circulation published in the county in which the property is situated which was done both in the Santa Cruz Sentinel and then equally we provide that notification in the Pajaronian once the auction has been concluded the revenue and tax code additionally specifies notice to be given to notify of excess proceeds generated from the sale the amount of excess proceeds generated from the sale of this property was over $30,000 excess proceeds are available for potential parties of interest to claim filing procedures set forth in the revenue and tax code notification letters were sent to each of the parties of interest previously identified in our process for the parcel to be required for this process as required by the provisions of code and the information was posted in the Santa Cruz Sentinel again for three consecutive weeks in the case of this parcel letters addressed to the petitioner will return to the county due to incorrect addresses in hopes of locating any additional addresses for the petitioners to provide the significant amount of money I requested the assistant of the county's debt collector and collection staff to research any other potential addresses two additional addresses were located one in North Carolina and one in the Netherlands it was the certified letter that was sent to this address that was ultimately received by the petitioners notwithstanding the treasure tax collector's position that the sale was conducted properly and lawfully the decision of whether to rescind the sale is a matter for the board to determine and the treasure tax collector will implement the direction it receives from your board on this matter this concludes my presentation and I'm available for questions thank you are there any questions before we open up this public hearing after you would like to give to the petitioner 10 minutes if that's doable I believe they're represented here by their council Mr. Trosses good morning Mr. Trosses thank you for waiting correct good morning chairperson friend and county board of supervisors thank you for the presentation my name is David Trosses I represent petitioners Saeed and Nelafar Tashigu regarding this petition for rescission of the tax sale of this portion of their property at 9671 Ben Lohman California it wasn't part of the record but I did want to provide the board with the petition as well as the declaration and cover letter updated that I sent previously so you'll have that for your decision so if I could hand that to the board clerk please as outlined in the agenda report the description of this parcel is a single property at 9671 old country road it includes two APN so if you look at the deed of the property it is a single description the parcel tax notices were sent to my client's brother-in-law in Las Gatos California when he passed on about December 2014 the address was changed and my client contacted the county and updated the address with their mailing address in the Netherlands beginning in December of 2014 January 2015 all tax notices for the property for this parcel were sent to their home in the Netherlands and then in April 2015 the my client confirmed the address change by taking a screenshot of the assessor's web page which shows the full description of the property 19.9 acres he used that as verification one that he was making payments for all taxes owed on this property and continued to do so for the next seven years again, prior to the death of his brother-in-law the taxes were paid from the Las Gatos address and that's what prompted the address change that's noted in the record in December 2014 January 2015 in any event this April 2015 notice is what I'm referring to provides that verification that the address has been changed I'd like to also point out that when my client received notice it wasn't from the county, they initially received notice from one of their family members in April of 2022 that there was a firm that was looking for unclaimed funds one of the brother-in-laws and you'll look in the declaration of Syed which I've attached to your record I've contacted him in the Netherlands and then Syed contacted the county staff to ask them what happened and at that point we believe that the county updated the address for the vacant parcel that we're speaking of today it is not reasonable that the county couldn't have checked the records they could have seen that there was an address affiliated with the parcel with the home on it so that one notices could have been sent out to Mr. Syed Mr. Tashaku in the Netherlands also it doesn't show that there was any indication that anyone visited the property I know that the description is that there was no physical address affiliated with this property but it is part of a larger parcel 19.9 acres that was included in the tax records that were on file with the county so other than mailing the notices to an outdated address there was no other indication that there was any further investigation that this property done and in fact after they hired a collector it showed that they did have record of the Netherlands address as was mentioned here so once my client learned about the sale he took diligent attempts to address the matter directly with staff and also working with the alleged buyer of the property one my client made attempts to not only communicate directly with the person who ultimately purchased the property at this tax sale but also took other actions to one protect his interest in the property moving forward which has resulted in this hearing so Syed and Niliford Tashaku respectfully request that the Board of Supervisors authorize the recision of the 2022 tax sale based on the aforementioned comments and based on their reasonable actions and due diligence that they took to update their contact information and for making timely payment of taxes as he's outlined in his declaration my client is prepared to pay for any past due tax assessments that are owed they amounted to about $7,000 over these seven years it's a modest amount and that was included in the board record within 15 days of notice and Mr. Syed Tashaku is available remotely for questions you have regarding this timeline or any questions you have unfortunately his daughter who is also referencing his declaration had to log off based on the length of the meeting but she is not available but if there are further questions I'd be happy to address them thank you Mr. Trouss thank you for being here today is there anybody from the purchasers represented today Madam Clerk is there anybody online that appears to be representing the purchasers during this public hearing I'm not seeing anyone pertaining to the purchaser okay is there anybody in the community that would like to address us during this public hearing in chambers is there anybody online that would like to address us yes we do have a speaker online call in user 2 your microphone is now available I read through the packet and I was actually surprised at this information it's important to know John reading from page 25 that the validity of a tax sale approach shall not be affected if the tax collectors reasonable effort who determines that that's my part fails to disclose the name and last known mailing address of parties of interest or if a party of interest does not receive the mailed notice section 3701 seems to me there needs to be mailed notices and it sounds like the county was negligent in not mailing it to the correct address the other part of this I haven't heard part of these pages is that it says the document provided to the assessor recorder in 2014 I'm reading page 29 has since been destroyed so it cannot be reviewed for verification as to what was or wasn't requested why are documents being destroyed and I notice that item 25 in today's agenda has $50,000 for offsite document destruction services these documents need to be preserved as is evidence here and also it seems like you're destroying evidence when you're destroying documents and I think related I have said it has submitted probably hundreds of documents over 20 years on the dangers of cell tower and coding science thank you Ms. Garrett is there anybody else online for this public hearing okay confirming there's nobody additional in chambers seen none I will close the public hearing and bring it back to the board just my thoughts on this I do believe that the auditor controller the treasurer tax collector in this instance did everything according to code I also believe that this is a unique circumstance I'm comfortable with the rescission request on this but I don't see any flaw in the work that was done by you or your team in regards to this this is just a very unique situation with where the homeowners live and various other things but I'd be open to hearing what my colleagues believe on this as well thank you Mr. Chair and I do agree having held the public hearing I would I want to move the recommended action grant the petition and related actions is outlined within and I do want to repeat what you said and even though I have made this motion I want to acknowledge that I think our auditor controller's office handled this issue properly however we can also acknowledge the difficulties that was involved in this situation but congratulations on a job well done under some different types of circumstances but I would move the recommended actions with a motion for rescission is there a second second we have a second from supervisor Cummings is there additional discussion scene yes please I'll just echo the comments of my colleagues and acknowledge the work that was done by the our tax controller's office I will also say it seems like this is a situation where there might have been over time some challenges and getting information to the different parties because it's obvious that before 2014 they've been paying their taxes and then after 2014 they're making enough to pay taxes on one property but for whatever reason they weren't able to make payments on both at the same time and so it seems like something that you know is a unique situation as has been brought up and hopefully we can resolve this so that moving forward they'll be able to get all the tax information they need so they can pay their taxes on time and I do want to appreciate that they've the willingness to pay the back taxes within 15 days I think it really does go to show that somewhere there was a hiccup along the way but they are willing to resolve this and I think it's I appreciate the board's support for moving in this direction as well we have a motion and a second if we've got a roll call please Supervisor Koenig friend Cummings that item passes unanimously thank you both to the treasurer tax collector as well as Mr. Trosses for taking the time we'll move on to item 10 which is to consider approval and authorization of submission to the proposed mental health services act mhsa innovation plan to fund the crisis now for a term of July 1st 2023 to June 30th 2026 with an option to extend through June 30 2028 pending mhsa legislative direction to the mental health services oversight and accountability commission and take related actions as outlined in the memo of the director of health services we have the board memo the crisis now draft and the innovation plan and with us today we have our director of hsa monica morales Ms. Kern the deputy director of behavioral health division and we also have Mr. Russell the director of access and crisis services with behavioral health division excuse me Ms. Morales welcome thank you board I know it's been a long meeting and I appreciate you guys you know just taking time to listen to us today we believe we have an opportunity in front of you that we want to you know showcase to you and obviously ideally get your support to move forward with it we know that we are in very difficult you know circumstances right now when it comes to behavioral health over and over we've been sharing reports with you or with the sales office and with other stakeholders about the need for you know crisis services in our community we've seen an increase in depression anxiety suicide overdose and specifically the dire need of supporting our youth with behavioral health needs there's also no question that we are struggling with our workforce it's nationally it's statewide and it's locally not to mention the level of reform that we're going through because of new policy at the state and federal level all obviously to lead us into better services for our community we have done a magnificent job here in Santa Cruz believe it or not in terms of the services that we do have in many ways we for example have two county mental health clinics we have mobile services available we have a crisis stabilization program a 16-bed psychiatric facility and that's a lot compared to what other counties have however we know that work really still is needed we know that we need to align these services better we know that we need to make sure that we're coordinating with our community partners and that's why we think it's a great opportunity for us to move forward with the crisis now model that we're about to showcase with you the crisis now model really is evidence based promising practice as well that's really helping counties piece all of these services together if you have them to actually build them and there's four key components I'm just going to summarize them really quick but it's really thinking about a 24-hour call center it's thinking about a crisis stabilization services our mobile unit and our residential and trying to create a seamless system for our residents when they're in care the benefits for us as you can imagine are just better alignment quicker services and availability of services scaling these hours and the number of services that we have in our community and most importantly for us is trying to build a system so we can also focus on mild and prevention and moderate care that we need we're focusing a lot in crisis because that's what we have right now at dire need but there's also going upstream at some point we'll have a conversation in September and August about those pieces but I'm very proud of our team we've gone out of the way as you can tell with little staff in place to really they're one of the five counties that's receiving this technical assistance to move forward with this pilot so kudos to them for just taking that extra effort despite all of the different challenges that we have going on for us I'll turn it out to Deputy Director Karen Kern and James to just really give you guys an update on the details of the model Thanks Director Morales Good morning Chair Friend and Supervisors thanks for having us here today I'm Karen Kern I'm the Deputy Director of Behavioral Health with me is my colleague James Russell who is our Director of Access and Crisis Services and we're going to talk to you today about our plan to improve and expand on our behavioral health services to people experiencing crisis with an MHSA Innovation Project we'll lay out our current state what we've learned about our community needs and process gaps but we think we can improve our process and response into the future Mental Health Services Act Innovation Component is designed to change some aspect of the public behavioral health system and to evaluate the effectiveness of a new or changed practice or strategy in the field of mental health with a primary focus on learning and process change rather than directly filling a program gap or need. Innovation plans are funded through MHSA 163 funding which comprises about 19% of our total behavioral health budget the current rules allow us to spend 5% of this county's distribution on an innovation project and that's an average of roughly $1.9 million per year over the next 3 years that we're looking at. This project is designed to improve the way we provide care by changing the current process and taking a different approach towards how we align continuum services to work better together and develop a recovery pathway for people in crisis just to give a brief overview of our current state as we strive to support community series behavioral health needs we've averaged a 28% vacancy rate you heard many people come today and talk about that over the past year it amounts to about 75 employees across the agency which includes administrative positions but mostly clinical and clinical leadership roles. It's presented a challenge in service capacity and timeliness. In the year before COVID we served over 7,000 people and we're down to about 5,500 now in our community clinics or I'm sorry our county clinics this mirrors the shortage of our community providers in Santa Cruz County and as director Morales mentioned across the state and the nation. Today the innovative plan that we're discussing will take into account mitigating risk with workforce gaps and seeking to support timely and seamless services. Our current crisis continuum is composed of two mobile response team one of which corresponds with law enforcement the behavioral health unit on SoCal operated by telecare which offers 12 chairs for crisis stabilization and 16 beds psychiatric health facility and patient unit and then our 988 call center which offers at the moment crisis de-escalation crisis de-escalation support to anyone who feels they're in a crisis or have a loved one in crisis. About 2% of those 3,000 calls coming into 988 last year resulted in the need for referral for immediate mobile crisis response. So somebody who is meeting the criteria for potential for 5150 or 5585 hold. And then usually those responses were by a mental health liaison responding with law enforcement. County behavioral health also offers 24-7 after-hours on-call support for people in our system of care or people who are interested in information about our services or how they might be able to get help so anybody could call. We have a call center that calls an on-call person and then we also have walking crisis services at both our Emeline and Freedom campuses Monday through Friday 8 to 4. We share care in treating our community with behavioral health needs with the Central Coast Alliance for Health or the Alliance who administers the county managed care plan and works with those folks who are experiencing mild to moderate mental illness. Our county mental health plan works with those experiencing serious mental illness. To better understand the barriers facing people in mental health crisis in our community we've been meeting with our community partners, our hospital EDs, our law enforcement partners and other agencies in the crisis continuum every other weeks since October really reviewing data, trying to hear people's experience, what needs improvement, where the pain points and then assessing gaps and our primary problems that we've discovered through that can be seen on the next slide. So we've identified gaps in available services especially for youth. Restrictive admission criteria at our crisis stabilization program including COVID testing and medical clearance criteria, limited mobile crisis capacity and really trying to get out there more hours, later hours 24-7. The presence of law enforcement which isn't always needed in a crisis response, uncoordinated system with silos and then the workforce challenges that have been referenced. We're going to talk a little bit now about the data in the next several slides. We're going to review the data that's been driving our decision making over the past year. First we'll share some data that reflects the mobile crisis teams and their response and then we'll share data that shows challenges with our receiving center which is the telecare crisis stabilization unit. In this slide here you're looking at the services provided by our mobile crisis teams. The mobile emergency response team and mobile emergency response team for youth which we call MIRD and the mental health liaisons over the past three years. MIRD calls are represented in the blue and then the mental health liaisons are in the orange. Just as a reminder the liaisons correspond with law enforcement for most of the time. We saw dropping calls in 2021 with COVID. Many people were isolating, sheltering in place and so we didn't see the same responses we had before or the same need and it's increased over the past couple of years. The final volume for this call year we estimated the actual which is actually through the end of May estimated through the end of June. And then it's worth noting that the mental health liaison data represents a subset of the calls they do get that we have mental health liaisons in three jurisdictions with Watsonville PD with Santa Cruz PD and with our sheriff's office and they receive combined over 2,000 calls many of those they're able to resolve without actually going out. The data here represents our 5150s the number of people who have 5150, 5150 is the hold code for adults who are experiencing mental health crisis where they're danger to self, danger to others are gravely disabled. This data represents the number of people over the past three calendar years who have self presented or been diverted to Dominican hospitals emergency department on a 5150 hold. As more people have presented or diverted to the emergency departments over two years, county behavioral health has made MIRT staff available to go into the emergency department and reassess people on that hold within that first 24 hours to determine whether the hold can be lifted and referrals can be made, service can be provided without actually hitting that crisis level at the CSP or the inpatient unit. And you can see that we had over the past three years significant increase in the number of people at Dominican. That's partly due to the diversion from our CSP due to staffing challenges there and I'll get to that in a minute. But you can see also in the blue bar the number of people that MIRT was able to reassess lift the hold and then support referrals into community services and safety plans avoiding hospitalization. So this next slide talks about or shows the average number of monthly admissions to our crisis stabilization at telecare from when it opened in 2016 until the current year. The CSP is generally a less than 24 hour stay and one of the 12 chairs provided for people as they're being assessed and stabilized. So that's your first step into a crisis stabilization unit. We saw the most significant drop in admissions last year which also reflected in the number of people diverted to our emergency rooms that we saw on the last slide. Telecares had significant staffing challenges especially with nursing and licensed mental health clinicians. They regulations require a minimum ratio of one licensed clinician to every four people that are being served in that capacity or in that crisis capacity and so if one staff is when shift is unfilled then that effectively reduces our 12 chairs to 8 thereby diverting people to the emergency departments. It's a significant problem. This has adversely impacted our ability to serve people at this level of care. For context we just looked at average monthly admissions to the CSP over the last three quarters in 2002 when telecare had that lowest capacity to see where the majority of the referrals were coming from. You can see Dominican hospital had the majority followed by the sheriff office and then Santa Cruz PD. And then the other two made agencies with the Watsonville community hospital and Watsonville PD made those referrals. And then the data for law enforcement that you see do include those that are combined with the mental health liaisons. That's my note, sorry. This slide is representing the diversion rate and so the reason that this is important is that when we started getting together in October and meeting with our community partners mostly law enforcement and our emergency department staff what we were hearing is there's been a huge influx of people presenting to the emergency departments in crisis and why aren't they being served at the CSP? And so we started measuring actually those diversion rates in November and you can see here the orange bars represent youth the blue bars represent adults what this is saying is in November, 88% of youth who were in crisis and presented to the crisis stabilization program were actually diverted due to the lack of capacity available for them and then 48% for adults. So we worked really closely with telecare to try to improve those numbers we we call this code red when people are diverting so we started measuring the code red rate. As I mentioned before staffing is really critical so that one to four ratio with the way that the current structure of the CSP the actual facility is designed they've got one room with four chairs that can be flexed for youth or adults however if there's one youth in one of those chairs then it takes effectively three chairs offline for adults because we're unable to put youth and adults together. So it's just the design of the facility coupled with the staffing challenges is just perfect storm right. We were able to work with telecare to increase their funding to make the positions a little bit more attractive and also to restructure the way they were staffed with the nursing and the licensed social workers and they were able to fill some of those staffing positions and then also they brought on some stable leadership which truly helped and I really appreciate that the two people Dr. AC folks who is our administrator currently at telecare both over the crisis stabilization unit and over the psychiatric health facility and then Laura Yellen thank you who is the CSP director both of them are working very closely with us to try to close these gaps and improve this the other thing I just really want to mention is during the atmospheric rivers when we have a lot of people in our county services as well as in our community partners live out of county and during atmospheric river there is a period between December and February or so when staff were unable to get into Santa Cruz to work telecare put up staff in hotels locally on their own dime to make sure that they were staffed so I just want to mention that here keep things going ok so diving into a little bit more about the crisis now project we've been working with representative from recovery innovations international who helped us assess our current system of provisions excuse me using the crisis now lens for what we have and what we need basically we have some limited capacity around mobile crisis response already in place we have a 988 call center with some capability for referral and we have some receiving center capacity with our existing CSP we also utilize suicide prevention best practices and obviously not on here is that we have a really good staff base to start off with dedicated staff and dedicated partners in our system what we need though is a consistent 24 7 3 6 5 mobile crisis response call center with dispatch solutions directly to mobile crisis teams dedicated receiving crisis support for youth and pure support specialists integrated into the model adopting the crisis now as our innovation project we're able to build on national standards which our consultant r.i. international played a part in formulating we'll be able to meet state mandates and leverage various funding opportunities during the initial three year period of this project while identifying sustainable funding for successful and vital continuum of services this model also dovetails with the roadmap to the ideal crisis system endorsed by our mental health advisory board and it provides the flexibility in adapting to local needs and integration with existing programs and services put simply crisis now is someone to call someone to respond and somewhere safe to go to coupled with evidence based practices informing our policies and procedures for a seamless network of services this thing wow we're just going to have a blip here so in implementing crisis now county behavioral health will be utilizing national as a consultant which will provide project management ongoing assessment of our services and provide guidance on next steps for improving our crisis continuum as well as training and technical assistance for behavioral health leadership team and crisis responders we already have identified several gaps in services and have taken steps to address these as Karen mentioned previously such as a dedicated youth CSU and crisis residential program which is currently being developed at 5300 Soquel Avenue will be integral to our overall continuum of services our crisis now model will help us evaluate the best standards and integration of these services within our continuum in order to provide the best interventions for individuals and families utilizing these services with the goal of long term recovery the crisis now project will also assist us in identifying and planning for other projects and services that are needed to better serve those experiencing behavioral health crisis such as additional adult crisis step alternative 5150 placements in hospitalization which are the most intrusive and costly of interventions so we'll be looking at in terms of enhancing our crisis continuum probably the single most identified and talked about aspect of the continuum is the need for 24 7365 mobile crisis response not only do we hear this from the community but current state mandates for 24 7 non law enforcement behavioral health mobile crisis response as well as new grants and enhanced medical billing opportunities are only given when the mobile crisis response are operational 24 7365 with this in mind the crisis now project will enable us to take steps towards expanding our mobile crisis response services this will include a system ties non law enforcement except when circumstances warrant behavioral health response that will respond when and where the crisis is occurring this will take the guesswork out of how to call how to call and when to call that we feel that our communities currently facing am I on the right side so we want to spend again focusing on the mobile crisis response aspect of this within this crisis now innovations project will have flexibility to build on our existing Merdy and mental health liaison teams while partnering with a community based organization to provide additional response services and staffing county behavioral health will provide clinical action and safety planning and the city of Ontario will provide non license behavioral health intervention certified peer support specialist and EMTs once fully implemented we are proposing a three level response level one response would be a combination of either behavioral health intervention certified peer and or EMT these responders will provide basic assessment crisis intervention and safety planning without the 5150 or 5585 application authority license clinician or license eligible clinician with a non license partner who can provide clinical support to the level one team and 5150 5585 assessment and hold placement the level three response takes into account safety factors and would be a co-response with local law enforcement along with either level one or level two team we're also looking at a three phase implementation so we're not looking at boom we're just going to have this overnight as you've already heard about staffing and other things we're looking at how can we ramp these services up we're looking to a phase implementation be dependent on our ability to hire and retain staff and phase one we're proposing to partner up our existing clinicians and two person teams enabling a team response to calls without law enforcement or a co-response when with law enforcement with safety considerations indicate we'll continue to meet our agreements with our current MHL mental health liaison agreements with law enforcement as well as continue to provide specialized response to schools and families with our Murdy North and Murdy South teams moving on phase two we'll implement phase two once our CBO partner comes on board and can field staff this will enable us to partner these staff with our county behavioral health clinicians for training and quality improvement around crisis response services once CBO staff and CBO county behavioral health staffing are solidified we can then move to phase three in a 24-hour a day operation within the context of this innovation project this phased implementation will include the ongoing support of our consultant R.I. International with whom we will we will identify the appropriate staffing and logistics to provide services countywide with an eye on sustainability for the program R.I. International will also assist in formulating appropriate policy and procedures for field services with an eye on safety and incorporating peer support into our teams the crisis now model considers the entire crisis continuum of services as well as other existing services part of the project will include weaving these crisis continuum services as seamlessly as possible including potential for cross referral with the focused intervention team downtown outreach workers hopes healing the streets and homeless persons health project among others to provide improved engagement with service providers for better recovery outcomes for the people in crisis will maintain dedicated merdy response to both more north and south county during school days and build on partnerships with all school districts to enhance the behavioral health care of our county's youth this innovation project will also seek to continue building on and improving the working relationships with all the partners within our crisis continuum including choosing municipalities emergency departments law enforcement and behavioral service providers so our current our current budget for this project comes in just under the five percent allotment of our mhs a distribution we allowed by the state we're just allowing some wiggle room it's you know we get forecast twice a year on our mhs a distribution it fluctuates depending on economic conditions and so we just want to make sure that we've got some wiggle room in there our international will be assisting us with this project as well as the crisis now continuum assessment and then mhs a also requires independent evaluation of each project so we will be evaluating both process and outcomes with this project we're looking at reducing repeated cycles through the crisis system reducing reliance on hospital systems and law enforcement improving clinical outcomes of the people we serve reducing justice involvement for people experiencing mental health issues and just reducing the overall reliance on the high cost crisis services where these service improvements will be a great start towards solid outcomes parallel work on our behavioral health system we care will need to take place including additional residential treatment beds higher levels of outpatient care shelter or housing with behavioral health supports all of those are also key components for this as previously stated the innovation funds are meant to improve the processes in our behavioral health system to care with new strategies and not meant to actually fund services so we need to figure out how to sustain services long term there is significant investment by the state currently in crisis services with the CalAIM initiatives and the crisis care mobile unit initiatives so we'll be looking at leveraging those we did receive a crisis care mobile unit grant and are currently in the process of reorganizing ourselves to manage the medical reform fee for service changes to the payment system we're also looking to reduce siloed care and improve efficiency by maximizing those billable services and then again reducing reliance on those high cost crisis services which is director Morales said in her opening remarks we'll need to go upstream and really look at preventative measures and other interventions to keep people out of crisis and so really the key takeaways here is that we're looking to develop this dynamic crisis continuum we want to address the local needs and the collaboration with existing partnerships is key the current system is somewhat siloed so we want to make sure that we're integrating the services and providing those seamless pathways pulling everybody into it we want to make sure that we get the stage approach to the 24 7365 crisis response so that regardless of what time of day somebody is in crisis we're able to provide somebody that can go to them and help resolve that crisis and then ensure that we're utilizing those evidence-based practices and national standards and then any questions thank you for the presentation turn it over to my colleagues I know that you had made a comment earlier that you had some questions so please supervisor Cummings thank you chair and I just want to thank you all for your hard work on this I know for years I've been hearing folks in the community about how we need more crisis response we need 24 7 crisis response and it's great to see that we're moving in that direction as a county and hopefully we can make this something that's sustainable and ongoing that can help serve many people in our community who are struggling with mental illness and are under distress I had a couple questions I guess my first one I know that and which can use the city of Santa Cruz as an example but I know that the city of Santa Cruz was one jurisdiction that was also interested in exploring this and so I'm just kind of wondering about what potentials there are for collaboration and how we can use those types of collaborations to leverage more funding to expand these services to other parts of the county I know Karen can go into detail but our intent has always been to have a county wide system we believe that's better for our constituents they won't get confused you have one system in place and when you'll have competition in terms of investments I know our team has been talking to the city about trying to align and so I'll kick it to Karen to kind of give you some of those details Karen's going to kick it to me I think what this allows is because we've been meeting with the city my team has and it allows for us to weave together different options as we're building this up it definitely does not put us into this oh this is how you have to do it the crisis now model gives us hey what are the systemic needs that we have throughout our county as director Morales is referring to we want a county wide response though that is equally available to everyone throughout the jurisdictions but it definitely can have some tailored approaches to different municipalities the other thing I will add is there's a different set of needs and so you want to make sure that the system is flexible enough to respond to whatever the need happens to be thanks and then I know that earlier in the year we've been contacted by some of the schools the county office of education and also Santa Cruz city schools and just seeing that some of what they had brought up in those meetings around trying to have more availability of crisis response for youth at schools you can speak to how that fits into this yeah absolutely we've had various meetings with our schools specifically as you mentioned working with the department of education in Santa Cruz city but also bringing them all together including our providers like Encompass and PVPSA to have discussions on how we can get to these areas of mild moderate and for me the prevention pieces I will be sharing with you guys we're working on a roadmap right now we're identifying what are the key gaps that we have in the continuum we're working towards that MOU that we all wanted to put in place with the county office of education in the county all of those efforts I'm very excited to let you know we've had probably about six to seven meetings I think by now so we'll be coming to you later in the fall to present on where are we going where are we and very similar to this mild to moderate angles thanks appreciate that and then my last question it's kind of a funding related this just came to mind when you all were wrapping up and talking about the Cal AIM but I guess you know with the movement in this direction in terms of being able to have ongoing funding is there an opportunity for the county potentially to for example if you if we sent out Merdy and they engage with the youth whose family has health insurance and bill through them and for those who down being able to bill through Medi-Cal as a way of kind of having ongoing funding I'm just wondering if that may be an option potentially the state is currently looking at in conjunction with AB 988 and some other things that they're maneuvering parity with private health insurance where we there is a potential for the crisis response that we would be able to build to those private insurers so yes great thank you thank you thank you chair thank you guys for finally bringing this forward I think I've been asking for a 24-7 crisis response since day one of taking office and I'm glad that you finally identified a way to fund the program and begin implementation if you talk to any one of our first responders or in a lot of community members it's very clear that we need this in our community and I'm really excited that it's finally happening I also want to thank the mental health advisory board I know they've been consistently beating the drum for the need for this and moving us towards it and I know they play no small part in identifying the roadmap to ideal crisis system and I think also helping find the right consultant to work with on this my first question is we heard earlier today about the challenge with vacancies looking at the budget for this it seems like three quarters of it is for system improvement and the consultants to help us do that and I think the consultants I'm sure they're great clearly they work on a project in Phoenix Arizona made great progress they have a lot of experience doing this but are we going to have enough people enough mental health workers to actually bring it to fruition is there anything in the budget that gives us confidence that we will be able to hire these five positions whereas we've struggled in the past on others so I was just going to say that what I love about the design of this model is that it's not completely reliant on licensed clinicians to run so there are some services that a non-licensed individual with training could provide to de-escalate for example having a peer go out with an EMT a lot of calls that our staff go on are actually there's sometimes a medical concern or it starts as a medical concern and then mental health is so having somebody that is also trained in those medical supports would be really helpful in those and then the other pieces having peer support on board peers we're in the process right now of bringing peer certification to Santa Cruz County also is a process and we'll take a little bit of time but we're hoping to build that peer workforce and once those peers are certified they're an invaluable resource because there are people with lived experience who are often more easily trusted by the individual in crisis than one of us might be and so in building that workforce I think it'll help mitigate the risk of not finding licensed people who seems to be our biggest challenge I think that's a clarification and I'm glad there was kind of a subtext of that in here that we were going to expand the scope of people that were going to be responding is there some target number of those kinds of peers or others that will assist in the response that we're looking to recruit I mean like whatever it is 20 peer responders or say initially we're looking to recruit approximately 12 people and up to 24 and again it depends on a some improvement piece of really looking at the data and seeing how many people do we need to staff after hours you know we know that between 8 and 8 is when most crisis tend to occur how many teams do we have to feel to safely get them to different areas of the county you know again we know that during daytime hours when that highway 1 corridor is plugged up we need at least 3 teams in this county to respond adequately in a timely manner to someone in crisis after hours nighttime hours when the traffic burden is not there we can probably get almost anywhere in the county within 20 to 30 minutes so again it's looking at the total data piece of what we're looking to staff and it's going to be conditional upon how many staff we can actually bring on board to how fast we can ramp up but this gives us many more avenues I also would put out there that you know at one time Santa Cruz was leading the way in mobile crisis response Merdy were pretty innovative programs mental health liaison program was innovative this gives us the chance to once again kind of get on that cutting edge and we can look at how can we develop a culture of crisis responders all the way from our 988 call center to the CBO responder to the county response where we're integrating into the different MSW programs and bringing internships and again cutting edge and really leading the way in this crisis response got it and as far as the salaries outlined for folks that we the additional clinicians we hope to hire is that I mean I assume that's the same as sort of all the other open positions we have today so if we get a year into this and we're I mean we're still having struggling to hire I mean we'll have to address that sort of across the entire department right we're not going to shake a coat the situation the data speaks for itself we have trouble recruiting I mean we have anywhere between 25 to 30 percent in behavior depending on the classification what this model presents though is a vision of what we want to go and where we need to go we cannot have a vision and you know think that everything else is going to follow we know we're going to have challenges we know we have to also put the same effort in terms of the recruitment and so there's I presented to you I think at the last meeting we're trying different things when it's hard to fill positions we're trying to assess for salary increases we're trying to also leverage state and federal opportunities to do loan forgiveness right but again it's not general fund but it's us our team in the department going out of our way to try to find ways to basically entice people to work for us we have a long way but you know that's going to take us five years probably to kind of levels it and we cannot afford to hold this model until we're fully staffed we have to chase both at the same time definitely I mean I agree this model should be our north star and I also want to acknowledge that there were a number of items on today's agenda that addressed recruiting for healthcare workers so I appreciate your efforts there just a couple more quick questions first is will 9-1-1 be able to refer to the mobile crisis unit I mean I know 9-8 it's not like that much harder but everyone knows 9-1-1 and I don't know where we're at in the community on 9-8-8 maybe like 20% right now what we have is you call the 800 number from at the county you got 9-8-8 and then you can get pushed over to 9-1-1 or you call 9-1-1 for a law enforcement response with a mental health liaison what we're looking at is at least at the initial stages it doesn't matter if you call the 800 number the 9-8-8 or the 9-1-1 you're going to get a crisis responder just systematizing that to some form of consistency and then as we move on we can advertise and publicize again it's going to be dependent on you know is the 9-8-8 where the dispatch is going to come from that's going to require some system upgrades and other training and stuff or could it be through the Santa Cruz 9-1-1 dispatch we have some meetings coming up with them to see what those capabilities are and again everyone has their staffing models and stuff that they have to attend to as well so if you like the dispatch model through Santa Cruz 9-1-1 is a safety precaution for folks and again if the power goes out we're not using a mobile app to dispatch folks we have the 9-1-1 center that can keep this up and again mobile crisis response has to be thought of now as part of in a way part of the EMS system emergency response system definitely it's what's replacing that's great to hear there'll be no wrong door right 9-1-1-9-8 last question is is this something that as a community member if I'm walking down the street and I see someone who's clearly suffering from a mental health crisis can I call the number and request a team get out there and how do we screen those kind of calls to make sure that there is a real need there is a screening process that'll take place and it might be something that is there a hopes team member healing the streets a team member that's available to go what level is this crisis at and again that's where the call taker has to screen the call maker to find out what those criteria are so again we're looking at how do we weave these things together so we get the right response and again the more acuity or the greater the crisis that's going to appeal that team off in that direction and potentially hold them up for a while for 60 90 minutes or so attending to the crisis so that lower level crisis concern again we might be looking at some other teams and how we integrate those into this continuum of services so there's a lot of different options that I think the county implementation approach I think really addresses all these concerns great I mean I know today one of the most frustrating things is coming across people like that they so clearly need help and not knowing what to do as a community member and so just the fact that we'll be able to have an answer to have a response people will be able to participate and help to make our community healthier actively as good citizens is it's really exciting and promising thank you thank you Mr. Morales Mr. Kern and Mr. Russell on an in-depth presentation it's a complicated but necessary situation we're never pressing to treat our untreated mental health challenges in Santa Cruz County and it's everywhere for many years the co-occurring health issues and substance abuse have led to homelessness do you there's seriously different percentages of people who are homeless that are in need of mental health assistance do you have any number here for Santa Cruz County of that say it's providing data so we have data from point in time count we have data from community service providers and I would say somewhere around 40% right now if you kind of averaged all those I remember when we was just first discussing this homelessness issue it was 25% it was 35 and then it was 40 to 50 so that seems about right but this I really appreciate this plan I think it's realistic you're going to move with what we have and what we can afford as much as possible and I think that what you do in the follow up the pandemic addressing this issue strategically is very valuable it's not going to happen overnight and for the Prop 63 or 62 it's 19% of the funding and that's state funding is that liable to go up or is it pretty steady so Prop 63 is the 1% in the winter tax and so it fluctuates with the economy and people's tax base so again we get two forecast a year where they do whatever they do to crunch the numbers and try to figure out what that's going to look like for us and then we adjust our budget accordingly and try to like I said before have some wiggle room just in case we have an economic downturn and that changes I think during COVID we expected that it turned out to kind of go the other direction a little bit and that was helpful that MHSA funds a lot of our services here that the innovation is only 5% of our distribution the rest of the money goes to prevention and early intervention and community support services so a lot of our programming our county full service partnership teams our encompassed programs those are funded also through MHSA and it's worth noting that the governor has a new plan for money on the table that we're watching really closely that might carve 30% of the funds that we would be in our distribution off into focusing on housing which would reduce the amount of funds that we would be able to spend directly on mental health treatment so we are looking at some of our services now like you mentioned homelessness many of our in county clinic clients are experiencing homelessness we have many more across the county that we work closely with housing for health division under HSD and Dr. Ratner to try to figure out how to make sure we're not missing anybody or any opportunities but the way that those funds will be distributed across the community needs will change at some point so I just appreciate your inclusive having the county work with the cities and the educational community and so forth it's going to be much more successful when we do it all together so I appreciate that approach thank you alright we like to open up for the community is there any member of the community here that would like to address us on this side thank you all for waiting yes good afternoon members of the board my name is Ken Thomas I'm a leader with communities organized for relational power and action otherwise known as COPA it's a civic organization COPA is with member institutions in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties these institutions consist of labor associations, schools healthcare providers other nonprofits and faith communities we organize and act around issues and pressures that affect families such as the lack of affordable housing healthcare and safe communities how we we've heard and we've shared stories about the lack of mental health and behavioral health services in the county mostly having to do with minors and persons with that are unhoused we at COPA have been advocating for many of the recommendations that are before you for the following recommendations that include the expansion of the program to 24-7 the staffing include licensed clinicians and EMTs when possible and use of the 988 number we therefore really support the staff recommendation to you as well as the grand jury recommendations especially revolving the recruitment of staff we urge you to adopt the item before you and thank you for your patience but thank you Mr. Thomas does anybody else like to feel for you to step forward good afternoon I'm Mike BVM the board president for NAMI and Santa Cruz and I'd like to first thank the county behavioral health for all the work they've done in the past I think they've made huge progress the last two or three years and support the plan in front of the board the leadership of the county has been really good in this I think this is a great step forward some of the things in the report around the need for additional residential step down so I think it's going to be a critical element in the future I don't believe that's currently funded in the plan but that will be a next step that's been referred to because we need options for the individuals to go from crisis to step down to and that's a great step forward so thank you thank you thanks for waiting also and for your work good morning good afternoon welcome good afternoon supervisors thank you for your service thank you for your support also Carlos and Jason thank you I'm here a bit to personalize this so bear with me my wife Smith and I came here this morning to show our support for the item number 10 the proposal for the mental health services act innovation plan funding the crisis now program for Santa Cruz County Sunday June 25th would have been Sean's 39th birthday his 10 year old son Kellan has been visiting with us so we thank Karen we thank Daniel we thank James and their staff for the work they've done on this project crisis now project it's just a starting point this is not the end point we have from what we've seen in the country we've got 10 to 20 years ahead of us of dedicated focused work on behavioral health services to get to that ideal crisis system at this point this crisis now project is based on standards best practices it requires our community to be involved and it focuses on the needs of the individual in crisis it is a fully funded project at this time this program will save lives and reduce suffering may I ask to have a bit more time thank you as the roadmap to the ideal crisis system reminds us it is the responsibility of our community to design and implement a crisis response system that meets our needs and this project does that its objective is and the vision is that every individual and family with a behavioral health system including mental health substance use intellectual and developmental disorders receives they don't have to get they receive the services they need where they are when they need them every time they need them for the duration and intensity needed to achieve the best possible outcome for a stable and meaningful life we will know when we achieve this ideal system because behavioral health crisis will be rare brief and non-recurring we ask that you approve and authorize the submission of this mental health services act innovation plan to fund this crisis now project again thank you all for your service thank you for your support thank you is there anybody else here good afternoon Ms. Murphy thank you for waiting I almost said good morning good afternoon chairman friend and members of the board I'm Lisa Murphy I'm the deputy city manager for the city of Santa Cruz I'm here to support your team in their effort to expand the mobile crisis response program as you know there's a desperate need in our community for the expansion of this service the city has recently commissioned a study to implement a program of our own and we found through our study that approximately 11% of our law enforcement calls for service could have been diverted that means no law enforcement needed to engage that amounts to 9500 calls for service that's an average of 26 calls per day and we know that's just the first point of entry on the continuum of care we wholeheartedly support the county's effort for the city we will continue to also look at the integrating with the county as we look at the lower level response as supervisor Connick brought up what do you do when you call for the individual on the street and what type of lower level non-licensed clinician possibly EMT peer support but we really look forward to integrating and working with our partners to provide and bring the service expanded as a community a county-wide program at which we're just part of the piece of the system so I think you're going to encourage your support for this program not just in the five year but in the the long term thank you thank you is there anybody else here to address us morning or afternoon thanks for waiting good afternoon chairman friend board thank you for the opportunity I'm here also to advocate and support the county's efforts in this crisis now this is a project as you can imagine as a public safety professional I work with a bunch of other jurisdictions that would benefit from this program and as you've heard from direct deputy deputy manager Murphy this is a project that we're working on currently as well because I think it not only would reduce calls for service in regards to the fire service for us the consultant found that it would drop at about 13 percent that's a thousand calls for service that we could provide other significant emergencies but more importantly it would provide the services needed to these these members of our community that actually need it because let's be honest public safety is not necessarily the service that these individuals need so again I just wanted to throw my support behind this and and say thank you for the support thus far and in the future thank you thank you chief I appreciate it is there anybody else here in chambers I'd like to address us I'd like to see a presentation of equal time of the problems with this proposal and the problems with telecare I witnessed a friend being picked up during a so-called wellness check and it was very violent against her looked like a military and it was very violent and it was very violent and it was very violent against her looked like a military operation she was forcefully injected and it was not helpful to her at all I often look at why are we having problems what are the systemic problems that are causing crisis fewer people would be in crisis were they not living in poverty unhoused isolated hungry undernourished and being in toxic environments like pesticides and wireless microwave if causes were removed and people had decent living conditions we would have much fewer people and what are called in crisis and sharing something here from Barry Trower an expert in microwave radiation adverse health effects this relates to what you're talking about there's a plethora of extensive well-researched documents from around the world highlighting impairments and illnesses caused by microwave radiation including mental problems involving depression irritability memory loss difficulty and concentrating had a dizziness suicidal tendencies etc we are inundated with microwave radiation toxicity causing many adverse health is there anybody else online yes chair we do have another speaker thank you Matthew your microphone is now available thank you I've been on San Francisco street crisis response team for about two years and one of the biggest frustrations we have is not enough services available and that's in San Francisco and they have lots and lots of services so this concept of putting the cart before the horse I just I hope this program I hope it gets funded and started and everything else just something to consider coming in on coming back to triage and calls for service during this meeting as I was watching online police showed up to a house across the street for individuals sleeping in the bushes and she had a can of beer and she was calm and the situation escalated with all due respect to the police officer the officer didn't have the training to keep the situation calm the woman was arrested and again costs for that compared to having a crisis team come out and how 9-1-1 operators can triage those calls I think is very important and something for something to consider thank you for your comment thank you for your comments that was our final speaker chair we'll bring you back to the board for action supervisor Cummings I'll move approval and authorization of submission of the proposed mental health services act innovation plan to fund crisis now for term of July 1st 2023 to June 30th, 2026 with an option to extend through June 30th, 2028 pending mental health services act legislative direction to the mental health services oversight and accountability commission that services agency director were designated to execute related documents required for submission we have a motion for the recommended actions from supervisor Cummings, a second from supervisor Koenig and I just had a couple comments one was that as we continue to develop this but just moving forward in general based on what we heard from some of our SCIU workers really trying to make sure that we can figure out how to incentivize people to want to work and stay in Santa Cruz that's going to be one of our top priorities I mean we have a lot of people who come to us with great ideas, there's a lot of great programs that we want to implement but if we don't have the workers here to actually provide those services then you know we're not going to be able to meet our goals and so anything that we can do as board members please let us know if there's bills that we need to support let us know so that we can get the funding necessary so that we can keep people in our community who are going to help us provide these very necessary services second if we get a roll call please supervisor Koenig comings McPherson that passes unanimously thank you all for your work we're going to take item 13 out of order I understand that we can I do think we can get through these items pretty quickly item 13 is a public hearing to consider county service area 48 and county service area 4 for fire protection special benefit assessment charge reports for fiscal year 23-24 and adopt the resolutions confirming said reports for CSA 48-2020 CSA 48 and CSA 4 is outlining the memo the director of general services we have the board memo CSA 4 and 48 information the resolutions for approval the assessment roll the cover sheet and the cover sheet Mr. Director Beaton thank you for waiting today thank you board chair friend Michael Beaton director of general services with me today is your county fire and the San Mateo Santa Cruz cabinet chief Nate Armstrong and we are available for any questions are there any questions in regards to this item before we open up the public hearing I see none so we'll open up the public hearing is there any member of the community that would like to address us on CSA 48 and CSA 4 I see none in chambers Madam clerk is there anybody online for this public hearing yes chair we do have speakers online Charlie your microphone is now available thank you supervisors chairman friend I'm speaking on behalf of the homeowner associations at Parro dunes both of which have been working closely with the county and Cal Fire over the years on budget details and I just wanted to say once again that we appreciate the work that chief Armstrong and Michael Beaton have done in working with us on the budget and that the joint committee of the Parro dunes homeowners association does support the fee as it's proposed and are looking forward to further examining whether there might be opportunities for improving fire service for Parro dunes thank you also online call in user one your microphones now available so many supervisors meeting have benefit assessment benefit assessment which means more and more increased taxes and it just seems like way too much for me and questionable what real benefits we get that's just my observations thank you also online we have no further speakers share okay see none I will close the public hearing and bring it back to the board for action I'll move the recommended action second we have a motion from Supervisor McPherson and a second from Supervisor Koenig thank you chief for waiting this morning and into the afternoon if we could have a roll call please certainly Supervisor Koenig Cummings hi Hernandez hi McPherson and friend hi and that passes unanimously we'll move on or back to item 11 which is to approve the selection of Bruce Harman as the public artist for the Green Valley multi-use pathway public art project to prove the attached independent contractor agreement with Bruce Harman for not to exceed a amount of 72,000 and authorize the director of parks open space and cultural services to sign the agreement to take roaded actions as outlined in the memo of said director with the agenda board memo the resume the exhibit that shows the design of the contract effectuated director Gaffney thank you for waiting again and welcome back thank you chair friend we'd like to quickly and efficiently get to this item and so to do that I'm going to have the chair of our Arts Commission Margaret Niven introduce our artist in the subject thank you good afternoon welcome good afternoon the Arts Commission is pleased to recommend for your approval today a public art proposal for the Green Valley multi-use pathway the art selection panel comprised community members professional artists county arts commissioners and a representative the involved department met in late March of this year to review the artist proposals two artists were invited to interview with the selection panel on April 24 the artists were asked to bring detailed drawings or a maquette to further define their project proposals after much deliberation the panel chose Bruce Harman to continue in the process at the May 1st meeting of the Arts Commission the commission reviewed the panel's decision and we voted to recommend that you approve the selection of Mr. Harman as the public artist for the Green Valley multi-use pathway the artwork selected by the panel and recommended by the Arts Commission is original and has artistic merit the imagery celebrates local agriculture and wildlife and will beautify and enliven the pathway I'd like now to introduce the artist Bruce Harman who will give you a brief presentation and answer any questions you may have thank you and thank you for your work on the commission Mr. Harman thank you for waiting welcome good afternoon board thank you for this opportunity what you see here is a model of the proposed art installation there will be five of these colorful monoliths placed at intervals along the Green Valley walkway each one is about four and a half feet tall and about a foot thick the images were derived in part from ancient Mexican motifs pottery and stamping tools the apple and strawberry designs refer to the local farming community while the heron celebrates local wildlife the flowers take inspiration from Diego Rivera and the bunnies are just goofy no wait they celebrate the power of a loving family that's what I meant the black lines will be in relief about an inch above the background so the image will endure as long as the concrete does both sides will have the artwork so pedestrians and cyclists as well as motorists will see them the foot wide edges will be decorated with tiles painted by local school kids in consultation with the Paro Valley unified school district I envision the kids taking some ownership of the art and valuing its place in their lives the budget includes the 130 tiles and costs of materials and firing I will be working with Tom Rolston concrete for this project to ensure success with the details and the pouring of the concrete the molds will be built to match the artwork and the monuments will be poured in place on top of prepared foundation slabs after the concrete is cured I'll paint the colors with long lasting mural paint and finally coat it with a strong anti-graffiti clear coat these will be local monuments that endure for many years and can be refreshed with new paint when needed thank you for this opportunity thank you this is exciting it's absolutely stunning are there any questions or comments from board members please supervisor I'll just say I really appreciate this item coming forward to some of the conceptual design that you've brought to our attention it looks really great and I can't wait to see when it's unveiled so thank you supervisor Hernandez see if my mic's on yes it is so I really, you know I was going to have some comments but I looked at some of the images and I really like the really imagery that's connected to the community as well from the strawberries, the apples you showed us the herons, some of the fish there that's really relevant to just that Green Valley corridor as well it's Watsonville and the greater Pajaro Valley so thank you for the beautiful images great thank you just the contrasting colors for that area is going to really brighten up that pathway I think it's going to really be a stunning addition and in particular I'm a softy for the partnership with the kids I just think it's going to be so great that that's been done in other parts of all of our districts and it really I've seen kids that they've grown up in fact we even have some in our office we have some photos that were done by Aptos High School students that they've come back years later to look at and I think that it just becomes part of that relationship so I appreciate your vision on that I think it's going to go a long way thank you yeah I just wanted to mention one thing they were suggested that the five bus stops along the two-mile route would be good locations for where these would be placed maybe to just one side so that's what my proposal includes are there any additional comments before we open up to the community is there anybody from the community that would like to address this on the side of and chambers is there anybody online we have no speakers online chair okay we'll bring it back supervisor Hernandez is there a motion I'll make the motion to approve this is there a second for the recommended actions second we have a second from supervisor Koenig if we get a roll call please supervisor Koenig aye Cummings aye Hernandez aye McPherson aye and friend aye and that passes unanimously congratulations on that and thank you for waiting and the final item of the regular agenda is item 12 to consider approval of the measure D5 year plan for 23-24 fiscal year and take related actions is outlined in the memo the deputy CEO director community development of infrastructure with agenda on the measure D5 year plan and we have Casey Carlson and we have Steve Wiesner here Mr. Wiesner yes good morning good morning or good afternoon I should say the morning went fast quite a day yeah good afternoon chair Fran and board members and CEO Palacios and members of the public those who are still with us my name is Steve Wiesner assistant director of community development and infrastructure and here with me today is Casey Carlson who is our senior civil engineer in public works he's in charge of the county's pavement management system so Mr. Carlson I are here today to present your board with a brief hopefully very brief measure D5 year plan update we do this every year about this time and today our presentation will cover a brief history of measure D our past year's projects this year's projects is happening right now and the measure D5 year plan update that you have before you today thank you so just as a reminder measure D is a countywide house and sales tax measure that was passed by voters of our county in November of 2016 it's a 30 year funding source for transportation projects countywide county roads revenue from this specifically for county maintained roads is estimated approximately $4 million a year in this next year that's exactly what we estimate annual requirements for this plan is codified by the RTC includes producing a 5 year plan approved in a public hearing by the board of soups so that's why we're here today we do this every year as an update to the 5 year plan when measure D passed within that following year we did surveys of our communities and the three top priorities for our communities were us to continue to try to maintain and repair county roadways by doing neighborhood resurfacing projects and neighborhood safety projects okay so just very quickly I'm going to go over so we've had 5 years of this program it's been wildly successful we've put out a project every single year since measure D was passed starting with 2018 and then last year's project in 2022 and we're actively working on the project this year as well so just as a quick reminder for District 1 we started up in the Summit area and we did Miller Hill, Miller Cut-Off area the following year in 2019 we moved down to Live Oak we did many roads in the Live Oak area in 2020 found us up in the Thurber area Santa Cruz Gardens area and in 2021 we focused some of our efforts down in Soquel and in 2022 we went back to the Thurber area and completed Thurber Road and then we also did quite a substantial project on Portola Drive too as well District 2 in 2018 saw us beginning with Measure D program in La Selva moving on to Rio del Mar in 2019 and then on to the C-Cliff area in 2020 we were able to complete a few roads in Coralitas area in 21 and last year we moved to the Rio del Mar area and also in some areas Office Okale Drive in the Carrillo College area District 3 doesn't take in quite as much money so it takes a little bit longer to build up funds to do meaningful projects but in 2018 and 2019 we did half of Martin Road in 2018 the other half in 2019 and we are currently banking District 3's money towards a large rehabilitation project District 4 we began by replacing a pretty critical bridge out on Casserly Road which was sinking into the mud we didn't have any of their funding resources for that bridge at the time so we did that as the first project and then 2019 and 2020 we were able to complete Lakeview Drive we did again half the road in 2019 and the other half in 2020 and we are this year the next year saw us banking towards Paulson Road which is what we are doing right now and District 5 again we started up in 2018 up in Boulder Creek 2019 moved down to Ben Lohman and you can see just by looking at the pictures these projects make quite a difference for our neighborhoods we just think about curbside appeal and quality of life to have your road looking the way it does on the bottom compared to what they look like on the top these neighborhoods really appreciate these projects and so we did we marched from Boulder Creek down to Ben Lohman and then we're back up in Boulder Creek and we're kind of spreading out further from the quick town core there and last year saw us again in Ben Lohman so there is a theme here we're trying to hit our neighborhoods as much as we possibly can this is an area that the county wasn't able to address in a couple decades before that we've been doing pretty well on our arterials and major collectors but the neighborhood roads were really taking a beating okay so this year you'll see our project is active we're out there in the neighborhoods over county wide and in District 1 we're actually being opportunist here with a sanitary line that's getting replaced by the Sanitation District we're going to follow up by completely repaving and restriping East Cliff Drive from around 13th up to 26th District 2 we're back in the C. Cliff neighborhood and you can see we're starting to do areas west of State Park and a couple areas east of State Park as well completing roads that we hadn't done in the previous year District 3 we are banking funds for a very substantial future rehabilitation of Swanton Road and District 4 we're actually actively out there we're doing work on Paulson Road that we've been banking for for a couple years we're able to hit parts of Green Valley Road as well which will be a nice supplement to the path project that we're embarking on this summer and in District 5 we're back down in the Felton area and you can see we're doing roads that again roads that we weren't able to hit our first time around in Felton and so we're starting to work our way out from the town core which is really great to see all these areas are really starting to get facelifts and you can really see it if you visit them so what you have before you today is the update to our 5-year plan again we bring this every year we don't always add roads every year and I will say just I will note that the last time we added roads I think was 2020 we added a significant amount of roads in 2020 we don't want to bite off more than we can chew in a 5-year plan and it's really hard to say for 5 years now what the cost of these projects are going to be and so we try to bring modest recommendations to your board such that we create expectations with our community that we can see these projects actually come to fruition so that's why you'll see us banking money in these districts right and so next year so what you'll have what you'll see in the plan that you have before you if you'll look we telegraph that in green I think that you'll see that it's highlighted in green on your plan what we intend to do next year in each district and so we just have a county-wide map here which shows what we're going to do in each supervisor district and so in district one this was a commitment made many years ago when we started applying for grants for the rail trail we're keeping that commitment district one's lot meant for next year's funding is going to go towards segment nine of the rail trail that's matched a very large grant like a 30 million plus dollar grant there so we're leveraging that money up district two we did add a few roads to district two this year and working with the supervisors office but it looks like the best opportunity for us next year is going to be to go after trout gold road which is fantastic because we're doing tons of storm damage repairs up there this summer so we're hoping that all of that will be done out there next year we'll be able to resurface all of child culture in its entirety that I think road has been on the plan for at least a couple three to five years right so that one's been a long time coming I'm more excited about that district three we're still banking towards a future swanton project which I think we plan to do and Casey could you remind me is it 25 or 26 it's 25 I think 25 is when we think we'll have enough money to continue to work with the district office to let them know when that project is going to come forward but I think that's a 25 project and then in district four we're beginning to bank money towards Murphy's crossing so we're spending all of the bank account that we have this year on Paulson and Green Valley and we'll start to bank towards Murphy's crossing and I think right now 26 is our outlook on that project and then up in district five we're recommending to do some more neighborhood work on the plan for many years now continuing on in the Felton area and then just the unincorporated areas of just the outskirts of Scotts Valley which the county is responsible for okay so with that the recommended actions here are to adopt the attached measure D five year plan for fiscal year 2324 and to authorized public works to submit a copy of the approved board package to the Santa Cruz regional transportation commission so hopefully that was brief enough for you all it was outstanding are there other questions from board members the supervisor Hernandez do you have any comments or questions well I'm just really excited that we're banking that money on Murphy road you know I get a lot of requests for that road and of course Green Valley Paulson as well you know one of the things that we've been looking at in our offices looking at different counties and the way roads are funded besides just road miles right and so putting equity into the criteria and so I mean looking at things like also things factors like how many young people live in the area socioequity economic factors into the area so more of those type of demographics they have to do more with equity and so there's different counties that are looking at this and transitioning over to a different formula that takes equity into the formula as well for a lot of the communities that are have been not necessarily invested in or I've been neglected in a sense so interesting to look at that see what other communities are doing in terms of funding roads the criteria for funding roads in the future but for the next five years I think I'm happy with the projects that are lined up and the ones that are happening right now as well but I think we have to have a more of a systemic approach to equity as well I mean the projects that we have lined up is good but we have to have a systemic approach as well within the county that's institutionalized so thank you can I make the motion as well supervisor comments please thank you for that presentation and you actually answered a bunch of the questions I had around timing and that's going to be really helpful as we're trying to share out what we're taking action on today and letting people know where things are at as it relates to roads being repaired my one question because a lot of these are larger projects obviously repairing all of Swanton Road repairs that come up along the way how does that fit within the funding as a new supervisor I know that during the storms we were able to reach out to your office and thank you so much for being so responsive but as issues come up along the way I'm just curious how that kind of fits into this overall plan of road repair throughout the county that's a great question so what we've been trying to do with Measure D is really improve these roads and do capital improvements for the basic maintenance stuff that we have out there requests like it could be a pothole here or it could be like hey there's a major area of this road that needs a repair we use our regular maintenance funding program for that and that's largely paid for through gas taxes so I would say to the extent that those requests come to you please forward those on to us and we can see whether they're on the horizon in our maintenance program currently which we're pretty active with our basic maintenance between April and October we have a regular program and if it's not then we can look to schedule it in a future future year thank you those are all my questions Supervisor Koenig thank you Chair I just wanted to add my appreciation to the roads team that when we're doing these resurfacing we're also looking at every opportunity to improve safety for bikes and pedestrians so on Thurber Lane we extended the bike lane quite significantly there added some great green paint that I know is much appreciated by the community and of course the same on Portola Drive as well so I just really appreciate that collaboration thank you and I appreciate you noting that we do try to make any other improvements that can be done in association with all the resurfacing projects Supervisor McPherson thank you Mr. Chair I just want to go back to 2016 and thank the voters of Santa Cruz County by two thirds plus approving Measure D and especially in light of the catastrophes years I don't know what we do without this for matching grants for what we want to do and so I just want to reiterate that was a huge lift and the voters responded and we're really thankful for that and I'm really appreciative of you Mr. Wiesner you've known we've all give you a call here and there and boom you get on it like you said these are major road projects and I'm really glad to see that there's a focus on the Fifth District Felton in unincorporated Scots Valley this year but you get at it and if it needs to be addressed and it's a serious pothole should we say it seems like it's patched within a week and I think I get as many calls on road repair needs and so forth from our constituents as anything if they want to see what our plan of attack is that you've presented where would they, where would you say we could say this is where you should go to see what's going to be done this year or next well thank you for mentioning that shameless plug for our website which actually was stood up in the last couple years is, tell me if I'm wrong it's scceroads.org can I get that right so we have on our DPW website there's a page SB1 and Measure D and the five year plan is posted there the scceroads.org is one we unrolled this year and that's for current projects so anything that we're doing this the summer would be posted there but the five year plan would be on our website for the Measure D and SB1 and I think the general thought is you try to spread it throughout the county but for those most heavily traveled to get the most attention as much as possible that you can do and just seeing from what we have accomplished in the county is truly remarkable under the circumstances we've had to face in the last few years so thank you again thank you I'll make brief comments that it shows that when the funding is provided you can do remarkable work and the Measure D road work that's been done is of sort of all of the projects that come to the county the ones that are generally done actually in some cases even under budget on time which is one of the reasons why we can expand projects and I think a lot of that deals Casey on your side of the house of the fact that you really are doing a good job in advance of analyzing the roads the costs and really trying to find that component and to the equity component we're one of the rare counties where most of the counties in the unincorporated area and people need these roads fixed it's been over 60 years and so one definition of equity is ensuring that roads that haven't been touched for 60 years actually get touched we have a couple colleagues here I mean obviously that serve mainly cities but in the unincorporated area where most of the people live in our county I think that they want to ensure that that money is going to as many roads as possible as quickly as possible and we've done a good job I think both as a board and as public works as ensuring that that's the case Mr. Chair could I just make one other point when the passage of Measure D we became a so-called self-help county and I don't know how you can can you put it in dollars and cents how much that has meant to this county I mean we raise so much per year I think you said four million dollars but it buys into it if you're a self-help county how much does that help it does we get an additional amount of SB1 funds just because of that and I think it's in the neighborhood of around a half a million but also I think it really helps us compete for statewide grants also for federal grants because it shows a partnership within our region and it's really hard to put a dollar sign on that but we've won hundreds of millions of dollars worth of grant money for our county for transportation systems within our county just in the last couple years and I think SB1 excuse me I think Measure D has a lot to do with that so we are also too grateful for the voters passing this in 2016 and of course for your board support as well I would like to open it up for the community is there any member of the community that would like to address us on the Measure D program thank you for waiting my pleasure Chair, Friend and members of the board my name is Matt Ferrell thank you all probably know by now I'm Chair of Friends of the Rail and Trail and we also are deeply grateful to the voters who supported Measure D in 2016 because that has helped move forward the Rail and Trail project and I'm here today to speak in favor of the allocation for segment 9 that's in the budget that's proposed in this report and also want to congratulate the public works department for its wisdom in hiring Casey Carlson thanks very much thank you Mr. Ferrell good afternoon welcome back good afternoon I wasn't going to speak but I have a meeting at one of your presentations my name is Olivia Martinez I'm the Region 2 Director for SEIU I think the only thing that I would emphasize is the importance of workers right without the workers you cannot do this work the last report that I saw I think public works had a vacancy about 20 positions not sure if that's updated I think it's important that public works does everything possible to recruit because during the storms we had a lot of problems with workers working over 13 hours right of overtime that's a health and safety issues for workers some of our workers got injured and I think it's important that the same way that you're doing outreach to promote measure D that you promote what you're doing and recruit new people because you're short staff and it means that workers are over worked so thank you thank you is there anybody else in chambers is there anybody online yes chair we do have a speaker online call-in user to your microphones now available like some important road work is getting accomplished here and I would like to help promote safe roads by having the dangerous microwave radar signs telling your speed removed those are a health hazard and I have a question you said this is funding for transportation Highway 1 is really hazardous with what is being done to make narrow lanes I witness a horrible aftermath of the collision that won't go into details but what is being done to direct the traffic narrow the access of cars there's no place to pull over to the side on certain segments if you need to do that it's pretty terrifying what I think what's going on or to assure that it's safe I don't know if there have been deaths in these collisions but the way it has been altered I think there's going to be more collisions and you know regretfully it seems like deaths from what they're doing also the massive clear cutting of trees by the freeway there is just horrific that's no improvement that I see taking place on the horizon on Highway 1 is this in your jurisdiction could you comment on that thank you are there any other speakers online we'll bring it back to the board for action supervisor Hernandez you want to make a motion I'll make the motion to move the item second supervisor Hernandez second from supervisor Cummings for the recommended actions supervisor Koenig Cummings McPherson that passes unanimously thank you for all of your work we do have a closed session item council is there anything anticipated to be reportable no that will end the open session portion thank you