 Good morning everybody. Good morning. We'd like to call to order the August 7th meeting of the Board of Supervisors. We can begin with a roll call, please. Supervisor Leopold, Coonerty, Caput, McPherson, Chair Friend. Here, and if you could all join us in a moment, a brief moment of silence on Pledge of Allegiance, and Supervisor Coonerty, you wanted to address something briefly? Yes, during our moment of silence, I hope you'll keep in the thoughts, keeping your thoughts, the Zocaly family, Bob Zocaly, a tremendous local businessman and just wonderful person passed away in July, and we just want to send our thoughts and prayers to the family. Thank you. If you'll join us. The United States of America. And to do the public for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice. Good morning, and welcome back, Mr. Palacios. Do we have any revisions or corrections to today's agenda? Yes, we do. On the regular agenda, item number four, there's additional materials. There's a revised memo, which is packet page 14. And then item 10, this was moved to item 3.1. And item 11 was moved to item 3.2. Regarding the closed session, item 13, staff requests the deletion of sub-item B, conference with legal counsel, significant exposure to litigation. And then on the consent agenda, item 35, there's a revision, deleted attachment, A packet pages 616 through 623. That's all, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Palacios. We're gonna begin with the action on the consent agenda or do we begin with a public comment? Just so I can make sure I'm clear on the public comment. Okay. Which includes both, though. All right, so this is, we're doing things differently. The board has adopted a new policy for public comment. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to address us on any item that is not on today's agenda, but also any item on consent. If you are unable to stay for any of the items of the regular agenda, you can also make a comment during this time. But either way, you'll be allowed three minutes for any item that's not on today's agenda or any item that's on consent. I know the majority of you are here for the affordable housing issue. There will be an opportunity to speak to that during that time, but if there's an item that is not on today's agenda, an item that's on consent, now is your opportunity to address us. Good morning. Good morning. My name is Robin Brune. I'm a member of the Valley Women's Club Environmental Committee, and I'd like to address the board on a matter that is not on the agenda. We are concerned about fire safety in our community, and we would like to speak about PG&E's, a new community wild fire safety program. They're passing out brochures. I have a little packet to give the board a conclusion on my remarks, but according to their brochure of their wildfire safety program, PG&E intends to cut a swath of trees and other vegetation in the zone of 15 feet on either side of any power line in high fire threat zones. Most of Santa Cruz County is in a high fire threat zone according to the CPUC fire threat map, and that is for utility associated wildfires. That's what the high threat zone, tier three zone is. We're in zone for utility associated wildfires. So we do not believe the answer is to cut 15 feet of trees on either side of all of our power lines. That will have a decimating impact on our viewshed, Graham Hill Road, Highway 9, and in many of our beautiful rural neighborhoods. In addition to beauty, trees prevent erosion and landslides. They mitigate open wind quarters. They mitigate temperature, energy use and climate change. Trees are efficient sound barriers. There's lots and lots of reasons we want to keep our trees. We do understand the importance of mitigating fire risk, but we think that PG&E's program is very short-sighted and not really effective. And we would like to make the following requests of the Board of Supervisors. One, we'd like some pushback on the PG&E program. We would ask that you direct legal counsel to research the PG&E program, how it's gonna impact our local ordinances on riparian corridors, scenic byways, other aspects of our general plan. It's all potentially gonna clash with those. We would also like that the Board of Supervisors work with PG&E and assure that they have meetings regionally throughout the county before there's any implementation of this program to address a lot of questions. For example, why are they choosing this 15 feet? By their own brochure, only four feet is required, that they're extending up to 15. We have some research that we've done in the letter that we're submitting, but also where is it gonna, how's it gonna impact each individual homeowner? What recourse do they have to kind of share information and communicate? We think that's very necessary. Thank you. Thank you for coming. That was three minutes. Yes. Good morning, welcome back. Good morning, Mr. Friend. Some of you know me. I'm Catherine Rockwood from Watsonville Hospital. Mr. Capehood has met me personally in the nursery. I'm here to just celebrate worldwide breastfeeding week as, and it goes on through the whole month. I wanted to share it with you that Watsonville Hospital became designated as a baby-friendly hospital. It took us seven years with the help of WIC. We would not have been able to do it, women and infant care. And all that means people are probably saying, what's baby-friendly? Aren't you people baby-friendly to take care of babies? It's 10 steps to ensure that parents get the information they need to be successful in feeding their babies. It goes from the CEO all the way down to the cleaning people. We all speak the same language. And I invite you to come out Friday and walk with us three to six in the Watsonville Plaza. Bring your wife's, bring your kids, bring your babies, bring your dogs. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your work. I just want to thank you on behalf of my wife when we were at Watsonville Hospital in Dominican. Thank you very much. Well, and here's the plan. All right. Good morning and welcome. Good morning. My name is Nora Urena. I reside in Watsonville. This is my baby. This is baby number four, all born here in this county. She's very cute. I want it to come. I came just to speak on the importance of the baby friendly initiative where, before when we have staff in the hospital who were not educated well enough in the importance of breastfeeding and giving babies their right to breastfeed, it became difficult for friends of mine who were experiencing a NICU stay or a longer hospital stay after giving birth because there was a discrepancy in training. So we would have some nurses who were like Catherine and were like, okay, this is what you do to ensure successful breastfeeding. Stop that, baby. And then other nurses who hadn't been trained well enough. And so mothers were getting really frustrated with this baby friendly initiative. All the years that it took means that more babies like this one have better chances at having a strong, successful breastfeeding relationship with their mamas. I'm a local doula, so I help support mothers during childbirth, but I'm also the new co-coordinator of the Nursing Mothers Council, which has been around for more than 60 years here in the Bay Area and in Santa Cruz County. And so we are a volunteer organization going through helping mothers succeed at their breastfeeding goals. So I wanna thank Catherine and Dana and their incredible hard work and thank you for giving our babies the opportunity to thrive. Thank you. If you could, we could keep her for a while. She's like really into people, so she could probably go around dancing. She's gorgeous. Thank you for bringing her in. Good morning. Welcome. Thank you for waiting. Good morning. Oh, my pleasure. Good morning. Dana Wagner, Community Bridges WIC program in Santa Cruz County Breastfeeding Coalition. And I have a little poem. Our breastfeeding coalition is here to be heard, to thank this board and to spread the word that Santa Cruz County ranked first in the state for our hospital's exclusive breastfeeding rates. All of our hospitals have been put to the test and have shown that their breastfeeding help is the best. Each hospital did extensive preparation to earn the prestigious baby-friendly designation. And all of our members from Watsonville to the North worked tirelessly to provide mothers and babies support. WIC, birth network, PAMF, Salute and Alliance help moms to breastfeed with ease and confidence. So we thank you today for your recognition of our work and for signing our breastfeeding proclamation. So join us in celebrating all that we share at WIC's August 10th Breastfeeding Health Fair. All right. Thank you. Thank you. I just wanted to add, we just heard the word this week. Community Bridges WIC program was awarded a USDA National Award of Excellence for its breastfeeding support. So thank you for your support and please join us on the 10th. Thank you. Good morning and welcome back. Good morning, Kevin Collins. I live at a Felton address. I'm also here to speak about the PG&E wildfire, community wildfire plan. And the way I approached it was to prepare a formal complaint to the Public Utilities Commission. I had to do this without legal assistance so I have no idea whether the commission is gonna put this on their docket or not, but it is, I discovered a great deal of information during the weeks of research I did on this topic. Those of you who don't live in the mountains, in other words, live in ordinary subdivisions and heavily developed areas, you don't see this down to wire issue like I do. Many times I've lived in place for three decades and I frequently see down to arcing wires, flash arcing to earth at 12,000 volts. This is a major safety issue, but the problem is not the forest itself. The problem is that the utility equipment itself is what is igniting these fires, is what set off the fires north of San Francisco in the October 2017 Firestorm of the Event. It's generally speaking the main problem. In my research I discovered that finally electrical engineers have resolved this issue. Equipment is now available which can detect a parted conductor, in other words, a broken wire, and shut off current to that wire before it even touches the earth. This equipment is for sale by several international companies. Switzerland, Canada, in the United States, and it's being installed by San Diego Gas and Electric. So this is not deep science, this is something that's already underway. What the problem is that PG&E doesn't like spending money on its infrastructure. And to make that really obvious, a public utilities commission investigation discovered that nearly a billion dollars in funds that were set aside for undergrounding, which is another way of mitigating the problem, erasing the problem of utility caused wildfires, a billion dollars was unspent in this program that could have been used in the most far prone locations to solve this. So I'm gonna pass out this. By the time it has all its attachments to it, it'll probably be 200 pages long because there are so many engineering reports and so forth that I need to include to supporting documentation. But the real point is that PG&E has an obligation to upgrade its circuits to standards that where they are not igniting the fires. These fires are not ignited just because there is a forest up there. They're ignited because their equipment is fragile, uninsulated, made up of old wires, failing splices, et cetera. Thank you. And to what extent the county can help us with this, we would much appreciate it. Kevin? Welcome back. Hello, board members, Mary Jo Walker. I'm staying along with the theme of PG&E. Along the theme of PG&E, Kevin mentioned that he sees down wires frequently in front of our house, my house. Two times a wire has gone down. One time it was about five years ago and it was down on the ground sparking for two days, more than 48 hours. It was during a big storm. PG&E was very busy. The fire chief had to come out in the pouring rain to set up barriers. And the second time was just about a year ago and it came down and the whole street was lit. Sparking wires for a long way. And there was a young woman coming up, driving her car, just about ready to go over that wire. She probably would have been electrocuted. If it weren't for my husband shouting at her, stop, stop, stop. And she thought that they were flares that somebody had set up and she was about ready to drive over it. Very scary. Okay, but the real purpose I'd like to talk about is Senate Bill 1088. 1088, you may have heard about it. It was authored by Senator Dodd from Napa, which burned, of course, is known as the Utility Infrastructure Safety Reliability and Accountability Act. It has been amended significantly since it was introduced earlier this year. It passed the Senate already and is currently making its way through the assembly. It has many wareases in it, about 30 wareases, including statements like the investment in reducing the risk of wildfires has proven cost, has a proven cost savings ratio of three to one, but the PUC has failed to establish adequate standards to reduce the risk caused by utility company equipment. Another statement. The PUC should require gas and electric companies to harden their systems. The PUC should require gas and electric companies to evaluate and incorporate technological solutions. The new law would require the Office of Emergency Services, OES, to establish standards for investor-owned utilities like PG&E to increase their safety, reliability, resilience. Utilities would then be required to pass a plan that would include things like protocols for disabling disclosures, actions that would harden their system, vegetation management, and so on and so forth. I can't, I don't have time to list them all. There has been some opposition to the bill because there is language near the end of the bill that leads some people to believe that it would allow gas and electric companies who have prepared these plans to pass the cost onto the rate payers. I don't know if it's a good bill, but I would like to ask your board to direct staff to look at the adequacy, look at the bill, and determine whether it's adequate to require PG&E to update their equipment to be more accountability, and it will not allow PG&E to pass the cost along to us. Thank you. Thank you for coming in. Good morning, welcome back. Thanks for waiting. Good morning, thanks. I'm Kimla McDaniel Keith, and I'm here to say thank you for passing the August 2018 World Breastfeeding Month Proclamation. Isn't it nice to have something that's not controversial? I'm guessing it took you two minutes to agree to this. It's such good public health. Breastfeeding is so important for mothers, for children, and for communities, and Santa Cruz is the rock star in breastfeeding. You already know we were rated number one in the state for exclusive breastfeeding in the hospital. That's the first time we've been number one, we've been number two and number three, but now we're number one. Watsonville Hospital is our third of three hospitals to become baby-friendly, and if you don't know what that means, I can tell you we all have PTSD from going through that process. It's a very grueling process, but in the end it's the best thing for mothers and babies, and Watsonville Hospital, we are so glad, has now achieved that status also in addition to Dominican and Sutter. And then this latest news, Community Bridges Wick getting a national award. That's so amazing, and they have been pathbreakers in breastfeeding support in the country for Wick programs. So, there's a lot to celebrate in our community. I thank you for your proclamation. I wanna make a personal invitation to you to have another feel-good moment. Come Friday, three to six, Watsonville Plaza for the Wick breastfeeding walk. You'll be so glad you did to see our community come together on something that really lifts us all up. Thank you again. Thank you. Morning, welcome. Good morning, I'm Sally Williams, and I'm appearing on behalf of Margaret Ann, and Paul Corota on item number 12. And I just wanna let you know that we've reached a settlement with the county, and the item may be removed. The appeal is being rescinded. Thank you. So, this is on the public hearing to consider the petition for rescission of the March 2017 tax sale, the Assessor's Parcel Number 0409109. Correct? Correct. Competed with an Aptos. You're asking that the item be withdrawn because you've reached a settlement? That's correct, John. Thank you. So, we will withdraw item 12 when the time comes. We appreciate you coming in to let us know about the settlement. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good morning, welcome. Good morning, Chairman Jack Babel. Let me start again. Good morning, Chairman Friend and the entire Board of Supervisors. My name is Steven Matzi. And I am the 60 plus senior program coordinator for the Diversity Center of Santa Cruz County. I am honored to speak before you this morning about a group of people that I'm very passionate about, and that is our LGBTQ older adults. And to identify to you how your support through core funding has enabled us to provide opportunities for them to enrich their lives, bring them empowerment, and celebrate who they are. But first, a few key statistics that I'd like to share with you. Imagine growing up during a time where it was illegal to be who you are. You fear losing your job or being committed to a mental health facility simply because you're LGBTQ. It wasn't until 1973 when homosexuality was removed from the DSM of psychiatric disorders. This is the lived experience for many of our county's LGBTQ older adults. This lifetime of stigma and discrimination has led to apprehension in accessing mainstream services. They are more likely to age alone. They are often estranged from their biological families. They are twice as likely to be single in comparison to their heterosexual elders. They are three times more likely to have no children. This diminished support can lead to increased social isolation which has been well-documented to have adverse effects on their physical and emotional well-being. But now the great news. Through your support through core funding, you have helped the Diversity Center hire me as a part-time program coordinator. During this past fiscal year, we have served 743 duplicated LGBTQ seniors through a variety of activities, including the five bimonthly all senior luncheons and 12 senior women and men's social event gatherings. We have also provided two sessions so far of the wellness-based, a wellness initiative for senior education, evidence-based curriculum. But there is more work to be done. More outreach is necessary to identify and connect more LGBTQ elders to the 60-plus senior program, especially those who identify as Latinx and in our South County. Our elders have expressed a desire for LGBTQ-specific support groups. And we need to continue to bring more visibility to these resilient and diverse members of Santa Cruz County and awareness to our mainstream community partners about their unique needs. So in closing, I stand here in gratitude and thank you for the support you have shown myself, the Diversity Center, and our amazing LGBTQ seniors through core funding and look forward to our ongoing partnership. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you, thank you for your work. Thank you. Good morning, welcome. Good morning, my name is Karen Ashera and I've been in the county for 40 years. I'm a member of the Diversity Center and one of the first people that attended the Pride program, which was really great because during my career, I retired maybe a couple years ago, I had to work out of the county to support myself here and my property to pay the taxes and such. And I kind of lost touch with my community and old friends and everything. And anyway, through the program, I really have gained a lot in terms of reconnecting with people and reconnecting and going to the social events and the luncheons and it's been really great. And I really just wanna say thank you. I really appreciate your support. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, welcome. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Appreciate this opportunity to come and speak to you. My name is Enrique Ortiz Villegas. 75 years old, people say I don't look like it, but I don't act like it either. I'm here to speak about how Stephen Matz's program in 60 plus has affected my life. As an artist now for 51 years, much of my time has been spent in, well, I said I'd say, much of my time has spent in doing my artwork. So I'm alone a lot. Sometimes I've even thought who even knows I'm here in my workspace. I've been involved with the gay community here, mostly on the fringes, until Stephen Matz came along. I was a member of the first gay men support group that he brought to us. And from that, I met a fellow participant who had the same voice teachers I did. Michelle Rivard, the best voice teacher at Cabrillo College, now retired. Together, we put together a song presentation of hits from May West, K-Star, Rosemary Clooney and Connie Francis as an entertainment for the 60 plus luncheons that Stephen has brought us all together for. His work with us has really brought me out of my reclusiveness to help and forwarding our goals as a gay community and also helping me to develop further in my community involvement. I wish that there were more time to say how much I enjoy his support. I appreciate his passion and concern and high regard for seniors, the gay seniors here in Santa Cruz County. Without that, I would still be in my workspace doing my artwork. I think I said really what I wanted to say and my support for Stephen. I applaud his work and even this morning I got an email from him asking for Spanish speakers to come and help at Pride in Watsonville. I volunteered this morning. All right, so again, I'm really grateful to Stephen. I'm really grateful for the development of the Diversity Center here in Santa Cruz County. I moved away twice, came back twice. Second time, I declared myself a permanent resident of Santa Cruz. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that story. Good morning, welcome, thank you for waiting. Hi, I'm David Crane. I'm recovering from a hip replacement so I'm a little unsteady on my feet. I'm a member of the 60 Plus Diversity Center group and we've all been in this together. I had to learn to live around the edges as a young man. I fought for my rights, I became successful in life and because we're aging, I don't wanna see us go back into living around the edges again because of isolation, because of lack of services and that's why I'm here to support the Diversity Center. I thank them so much. Through Stephen's work, I recovered from my hip surgery and I've now become president of the Residence Association at Garfield Park Village and I thank you all for all your help that you've done. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Morning, welcome. Morning, my name is Bob Pittman. I'm a member of the Diversity Center also and I wanted to share with you a little bit about the impact that the Diversity Center has made on my life and that of my husband, David. We lived up in Vancouver, Washington for a number of years and we were losing our housing and we finally got onto the list that got us into Garfield Park Village but it was Stephen Matsey's leadership at the Diversity Center that not just helped us get down here but helped make the move, something that made sense to us when we got down here and we were welcomed, we found homes, we found friends, we were taught how to get around and we were invited to gatherings and for the first time in 23 years that we've been together, we have got lots of friends, we're accepted, we're welcomed and that's not just of course the Diversity Center but it's the welcoming spirit of Santa Cruz as a whole and this community, the broader community has been a wonderful place for us to land and thrive and it's the help through the Diversity Center that has given us a chance to be centered and to put down roots and for that we've really appreciated our association with it and we'll look forward to additional support from all of you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Stephen and the Diversity Center for this great programming. It's great to hear the testimony but I know how successful the program is. I'm glad Santa Cruz County is part of funding it. Thank you. Good morning and welcome back. Good morning and welcome back to you. I hope you had a nice vacation. My name is Becky Steinbruner. I live in the mountains of Aptos and first of all I wanna register protests that you have now combined public comment on items not on the agenda with consent agenda comment that effectively reduces the total amount of public input time and I don't think it's fair. I also wanna register protests that now members of the public are no longer able to pull items from the consent agenda for better public discussion. We are at your mercy to do so. I register that protest now and do not think it's in keeping with a strategic Santa Cruz plan for better government transparency. As a mountain resident, I also wanna second the comments that you've heard this morning about the PG&E swaths of tree removal. I live in a mountain area. I live on a privately maintained road. This kind of action will cause severe erosion in all of the watershed areas and for roadways in the county. So I urge you to follow the advice that the speakers before me have suggested. I also wanna say that I would like your board to establish a youth commission that includes members of all local high schools, alternative high schools included. And I want to see more involvement from the youth in our community with your decisions and discussions on public policy changes, policymaking, impacts of things that will affect their lives here in the county into the future. That will need to be evening meetings. And so then I would ask now that you hold one evening meeting a month that could then include a commission of youth from our area schools. We need to involve the youth in our community and in our government policymaking and I urge you to do so. On the consent agenda, I want to just say hooray for the Pinto Lake bike pump track. That's really good news that that's going in something for the youth to do that's free and healthy. And I really applaud the county's efforts doing those kinds of things. I want to comment on item 39, an additional $825,000 being spent on the Valencia Road emergency culvert repair. That big project now totals over $6.2 million. And I want to ask that county public works do regular inspections of culverts throughout the county. That one failed and that very expensive expenditure may have been averted had there been some preemptive work or earlier inspections to alert the needed to be repairs there. And finally, because I've got one second, I just want to say that the CAO said the effectiveness of the reduction of consent will be, there will be fewer consent pull. Thank you. Good morning and welcome. Thank you for waiting. Good morning Chairman Friend and Board. I'm Bob Langstatt, the executive director of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Santa Cruz County. And I'm here today to thank you for your support through core programming. We now have three sites in the county. We are serving in well in excess of 400 kids every day this summer. But more importantly, I'm here to thank Jeff Gaffney and County Parks for their partnership and helping us put on the very first Live Oak Fund run for the community. On September 22nd, we will be co-hosting a run of 3K and you're welcome, 3K, 5K and 10K distances. So we invite you to join us out at Simkins where the start and finish line and after party will all happen. It's a great event and it's really exciting to partner with the county parks to put on something like this for the Live Oak community. Thank you. Thank you, Bob, for your work. Thank you. Sufaz Aliopold has been training very heavily for that race and so we're anticipating him to take the gold. If you want to see me in shorts, that's the day to come. Good morning, welcome. Good morning, Board of Supervisors. I'm Robby Gonzalez-Stow with Community Bridges WIC program. And I thank you so much for proclaiming August is Breastfeeding Awareness Month. And you heard from my colleagues and friends, all the good news in Santa Cruz is number one in the state for exclusive breastfeeding rates in the hospital. Fortunately, at three months, that drops to about 44%. And one of the main reasons is because parents return to work and they're not getting the support in the workplace to continue to breastfeed without a private space, free from inclusion, federal and state laws require that employers provide a private space in time for parents to pump at work. And so we're asking you for your support to help encourage employers to follow those laws. With, I'm able to help employers free of cost. That's part of my job at Community Bridges to offer technical assistance with workplace policy, training to help employers to implement lactation support in the workplace. We have some standout employers in our county. One is Rider Berry Farms. I've helped assisted them and they support women who work in the fields to pump while they're at work. And I also asked the county to be one of those standout workplaces with a workplace policy in ensuring that all employees in the county know about the policy and have support in the workplace to continue to breastfeed. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, welcome. Good morning. Welcome back from your break. My name's Paul DeSoma. I'm a live Oak resident. The issue I am concerned with is the Verizon 5G rollout of the infrastructure for the small cell antennas that is aggressively being pushed on communities, not just in Santa Cruz, but in the entire Bay Area. You may or may not be aware that the city of Santa Rosa in July has placed a pause on any new approval of applications for these installations. For a number of reasons, one being that they felt Verizon was not being a fair partner in communication with the municipality and aggressively pushing their agenda. It's obvious that the board is interested in public health evidenced by so many approving speakers today. So the one issue is definitely health. There's lots of evidence available to make your own decision about whether this technology is dangerous or not. There's, and you can make your own decision about that. That's not really my biggest issue. My biggest issue is that it's being forced on neighborhoods and in the potential that it's harmful, it should be well considered the distances from residences and homes and such. There's, I know that I've been told that there's little that the municipality can do to oppose this. I have, I would really like to hear three minutes from somebody or any of you on this board as to why you may think it's a good idea to follow through with the plan as proposed by Verizon. This, I want to submit this to public record, is a letter from a law firm hired by the EMF safety network in Sebastopol. It's from a law firm that outlines what municipalities can do in opposition or at least to not oppose but just to work with the telecom industry on what they can do. So I'll give that to you. John, we're gonna see you at the constituent meetings and hopefully talk a little bit more about this. And I thank you very much. Thank you. Good morning and welcome back. Thank you. Marilyn Kara, part of wireless radiation network. The damage of microwave radiation, it's well substantiated. And since I've been coming here since I retired from teaching in 2000, you have all been supplied with the substantiated health impacts. This is a very sad time for me because in 1945, August 6th and August 9th, the US dropped nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and killing over 100,000 each time. And the US continues to develop nuclear weapons and we are nuclear disastrous on the horizon and it's not the stop. Now, I've read about nuclear, by the way, let me say this before I forget. Part of PG&E's clear-cut plans seem to be to clear the trees out of the way for this 5G wireless microwave technology from satellites as well as on the ground. I've read about nuclear bombs on poles. There's an article by Amy Worthington called the Radiation Poisoning of America. In it, there's a letter from, she opens up talking about these fire lookouts at likely mountain overlooking Shasta and these two women who became quite ill with radiation burns, turns out there was a cell tower right there, their jewelry burnt on their skin and they had blood abnormalities. One of them lost a third of her body weight, radiation, anorexia. Now, part of that article, I'm just gonna read a little bit to run out of time, painful conditions endured by the families of Garcia and Jasson, I'm gonna give you one of their statements, are identical to those suffered by Japanese victims of gamma wave radiation after nuclear explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Five decades of studies confirm that non-ionizing communications radiation in the radio frequency microwave spectrum has the same effect on human health as ionizing gamma wave radiation. I think my tremors are totally related to this exposure. And they're quoting an expert, Dr. Heo Eko, whose German Medical Association stated, the symptoms that result from radioactive radiation are identical to the effects of electromagnetic radiation. The damages are so similar that they are hard to be differentiated. Thank you, Ms. Garrett. We need you to protect the public from this onslaught. Thank you, Ms. Garrett. Good morning, welcome, thank you for waiting. Good morning, my name is Eileen Clark, Nagaoka and I'm a resident of Watsonville and I'm a member of Regeneration, which is a local to Watsonville climate action group. We seek to work on the problem of climate change through local initiatives. And we, I'm just here to tell you about a survey we did our community survey. We surveyed 350 people and we were really happy that we were able to get a cross-section of Watsonville proportionate to the demographics there. So, which was our goal and I just wanted to let you know about it and what our major findings were. It was conducted by community volunteers in January and February. And so, our major findings were that a large majority of agricultural workers find that their work of both themselves and their family members has been highly impacted by extreme weather, both heat and extreme rain. Long periods of rain because of the loss of work and also health impacts they have during high heat times. And other was that pesticides were a huge concern. That was a second, a major finding. And the third was that people really want better access to local organic agriculture. So, just here to let you know about that and we're very proud that we were able to complete the survey was, we got advice and training from Dr. Shashir Mathur, who's a dean of research at San Jose State University Social Science Department. And then also I wanted to invite you to come to the local, to the Global Climate Action Summit. You may have heard about this already. It'll be taking place in San Francisco, September 12th through the 14th. And lots of local officials from all over the state will be there and I'll leave the flyer here for you about it. So, it should be a very positive and powerful gathering. And I hope you'll all make it. Can I leave this with someone? Thank you. Thank you, thanks for coming in. Good morning, welcome back, Ms. Roberts. Good morning, Chair and Board. Thank you for listening to all of us. I'll be brief. I just wanted to thank you, Supervisor McPherson and Coonerty regarding item number 23 on the consent agenda about the resolution to oppose Proposition 6, which is the repeal of the gas tax. We think that SB1 and the funds that it provides as, I'm sorry, Kate Roberts, president of the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership, that transportation is such an important issue that we have taken on just recently as an organization and this funding would be very important to carry forward many, many projects here specific to Santa Cruz County, as well as the other two counties that MBEP is covering in Monterey County and San Bonito County, but specific to Santa Cruz County, it's over $115 million in funding that would not come to this county to do road repairs, expanding and widening of roads, bike lanes, bridge repairs, all sorts of projects that are actually identified that would not happen if this money were to be repealed. So I just wanted to thank you for your leadership in putting that resolution forth and we're very supportive of that and hope to see that Prop 6 get defeated come November. Secondly, on the housing bond, I won't say anything now. I know there's gonna be a separate discussion for that, but MBEP has been on the sidelines supporting that effort for a long time and I have some staff here that'll speak later to that, but we're looking forward to seeing that get on the ballot. So thank you. Thank you. Good morning. You're welcome. Good morning, Chair Friend, members of the board. I'm Ellen Timberlake, the Director of the Human Service Department and I am very pleased this morning to introduce you to our new Director of our Employment and Benefit Services Division, Kimberly Peterson. As you all know, the division serves one in three residents in our county and we couldn't be any more thrilled to have this division under Kimberly's leadership. She's been with the county for 13 years, started as an eligibility worker, spent a program coordinator, analyst, and most recently our program manager in our Watsonville Service Center. So it is really my pleasure to introduce her to you and the public and I just wanted to take this opportunity, so thank you. Thank you. Congratulations. Congratulations, Ms. Peterson. Thank you for your work, Ms. General. Is there anybody else that'd like to address this during public comment? Okay, seeing none, we'll bring it to the board to go through the consent agenda. There's items 14 through a number higher than 14 somewhere that I don't see immediately on my agenda. But either way, this is the consent agenda. We'll start with Supervisor Caput. Are there any comments you'd like to make or any items you'd like to pull from the consent agenda, items 14 to 47? No, but I would like a clarification on maybe it's just an error or something on number 19. Of the public defender's offices in Watsonville, it does say on page 156 that janitorial services are included in the price for the leasing. And then on page 158 it says that the lessor can then submit to the county to pay for services. Janitorial services, so what is it? Who is paying for the janitorial services? It's not a big deal, but it is money. Please, Mr. Palacios. Yeah, I don't know the answer to that. We can get to that answer to see if somebody, well, here's our analysts can answer the question, Sven. Yeah, my name's Sven Stafford. I'm an analyst in the county administrative office. The costs of the janitorial service are included as part of the lease, but as they're charged every month, they're remitted to the county for payment through the lease. Okay, is it included in the amounts that we're voting on in the consent agenda or is it an unknown amount each month that if they submit? It should be a standard amount every month and it'll be included in the lease, but in the event that there are extra services provided, we would also cover those. Okay, thank you. And then item number 20, that's the response from the Santa Cruz, from the Board of Supervisors Health Services concerning mental health crisis, integrated response to the grand jury. I agree with some of the responses to the grand jury, but I don't agree with a number of them and I don't wanna get into too big a detail here, but so I'm gonna vote no on that. Item number 20. Item 25 is related to 19, I think that was answered well. And then item 34, looking forward to the pump track at Pinell Lake coming in, looks like around October and it's a good program. I'm wondering, do we know the exact total cost on that? There was some money coming in, some money coming out. I know we got a grant for $10,000 going towards it and so do you have an answer on that? I don't wanna make it a big deal. Is the question what the contract amount is for or what the net county cost is? Because the contract amount is for $108,500 is the total contract amount. Right, I think there were added expenses, is that correct? Director Gaffney, if you wanna provide clarification. Thank you for being here this morning, Director Gaffney. Thank you, Chair Friend. We are still working on the numbers and when we're finalizing the contract, we'll have a set amount, but we did have to add an additional $20,000. The bids came in about actually $30,000 over what we anticipated, so that's kind of the going process lately. It would be about $128,000, $130,000. Well, we added another 10 from the grant and then we also have another grant coming in so the numbers won't be finalized until the actual construction's done. It's kind of a process as they go through, as change orders come in, that sort of thing, so yeah. So the current contract, that was $108,500 that the board's actually adopting, but at the end, we will ratify any changes that needed to come in. Exactly. That'll be fine. Thank you for that. Thanks, looking forward to the grant opening. Yes, we all are, it's exciting. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. Good morning, Supervisor McPherson. Yeah, I'd like to address item number 23, resolution that I co-signed with Supervisor Coonerty opposing Proposition 6 on the November ballot. This would, if it does pass, you would eliminate about $115 million coming to Santa Cruz County, about $15 million of that in the unincorporated area, plus about $65 million over the next 10 years to our four cities. Already you've, in my district, we've seen some improvements that are being made. I think the general public has two with the so-called Senate SB1, Senate Bill 1 funding in remote areas like Bear Creek Road, Lompico Road, and Jameson Creek Road. We just can't take care of our county and the needs, especially from the storm damages of the recent years that we've had. I do it alone, it's gonna take a long time. It's absolutely necessary that we keep this, and I think it's important to know that state voters over Romali in June passed a state proposition that guarantees that funds identified for transportation purposes will stay for that purpose. State has had a bad record of kind of stealing from transportation funds to put it in other areas of the state budget, but that will no longer happen. So it's reassuring to see that that money would stay for road and bridge, bikeways, all kinds of transportation purposes. Critically needed in our county. If we wanna get our roads fixed, this is going to be a huge step for us to accomplish that. Reduce number of years for sure. And then on number item 38, Glenwood Drive Storm Damage Repair. Pleased Caltrans is helping make repairs on Glenwood Drive, which was damaged in the storm of 2011, and that's how long it takes sometimes to repair these roads without state or federal help that we're getting from this Senate Bill 1 that I just mentioned, and I know residents up there appreciated the work that's getting done and I wanna thank Public Works for getting this item for us today. It's very much appreciated and very much needed, so thank you very much. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Good morning, Supervisor Coonerty. Good morning, Mr. Chair, members of our community. Just a couple items to comment on. As Supervisor McPherson mentioned, and Kate Roberts from the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership mentioned, we are encouraging voters to make sure they stay educated and vote no on Proposition 6. This gas tax repeal would have tremendous impacts on our infrastructure, and I think the most important thing is that by eliminating this funding source, it eliminates preventative efforts to protect our infrastructure against the ravages of climate change, which means we all end up spending more money in the long term and having our roads impacted in the short term while we try to get across the county. On item number 35, and I know many people in the audience are here to support affordable housing, and I appreciate you all taking time to be here this morning. On item number 35, I'm proud that the county has partnered with Habitat for Humanity to develop a vacant parcel on Harper Street and to get 11 affordable units for families in our community and that that project's moving forward. And then finally on item number 37, the Swanton Bridge replacement. This has been a long time in the making of getting that bridge repaired. It's important for people to maintain access and also for public safety access, and I wanna commend Public Works for moving this repair forward. Thank you. Good morning, Supervisor Leopold. Good morning, Chair. Just a couple of things. On the minutes from our meeting on June 26th, which is item G15G, it was about the changes in our policy procedures. There are five different things on here. I think number two should be struck. Number three says we adopted the Rosenberg rules. Number four is approved the consent items, requirement about board members and the oral and consent communications being together. And the last five is directing to come back in six months. That's what we actually voted on. And there was some confusion as evidence in today's, having to move around the agenda about number two, so I'm just asking that it be struck. On item number 28, I wanna appreciate our Interim Director of Health Services and her work in trying to work with Janice to help them identify additional sources of fund. They're an important program. We've heard from those who work there about the need for additional pay and county working with our nonprofit partners to find out how to leverage more money is really helpful to them and helpful to us. And I really appreciate the work that you did to make that happen. On item number 33, I just wanna express my appreciation to the Human Services Department for the renewal of this Prop 39 pre-apprenticeship training implementation grant. In reading about the grant, get people into these pre-apprenticeship training program and move them into jobs. Has proven to be very successful and I appreciate the work of Human Services to make sure that we continue this program. On item 42, I wanna also thank our Parks Department for their continued work on getting the Heart of Soquel linear parkway project completed. There's a lot of different parts to it, but I appreciate your doggedness in terms of making this happen. So thank you. And lastly, I will invite all my colleagues and members of the public on September 22nd to the Live Oak Family Fund Run. It's gonna be a good time and we're really glad to see that in Live Oak and thanks to the Parks Department for making that happen with the Boys and Girls Club. That's it. Thank you, Supervisor Leopold. So note that there's a proposed for an amendment on item 15G. I have no additional comments beyond my colleagues' comments on Prop 6 Habitat for Humanity and Pinto Lake, so I'll just ask that one of my colleagues now make a motion in regards to the consent agenda. I move the consent agenda as amended. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Leopold and a second from Supervisor Coonerty. We have Supervisor Caput registering a no vote on item 20. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? It passes unanimously without one no vote on item 20. We'll now move into the regular agenda. The first item on the regular agenda is item four, is to consider report and resolution to provide for the submission of a proposition incurring bonded debt of a maximum of 140 million for the purpose of financing affordable housing projects and programs to the qualified voters. The county of Santa Cruz of the general election to be held on November 6th, 2018 to take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of Supervisor's Friend and Coonerty. We have a resolution and order calling election for the bond measure. Good morning, Mr. Reino. Thank you for kicking this item off. Good morning, Chair Friend and members of the board. At your direction, in June and July, the county administrative office convened the inter-jurisdictional housing task force to develop affordable housing options that can be created using funding opportunities in the form of bonds recommended by the affordable housing Santa Cruz group, which was led by Fred Keeley and Don Lane. The committee met five times to refine the original program proposed and to develop the affordable housing recommendations presented today in your board memo. So this is just a quick snapshot of those in our community that are impacted by high housing costs and may face housing insecurity. It affects all levels of income, including moderate income families in our community. Most housing guidelines recommend that housing costs be a standard of 30% of income to be spent on housing. The more households spend on housing, the less they have for other necessities such as food, clothing, transportation, healthcare. In addition, there are fewer discretionary dollars that can be spent at local businesses. However, in Santa Cruz County, we see a major housing affordability gap, and that's the change between the market rates housing cost and affordable housing. These charts show that the gap at various income levels based on our median income of $77,613. So we have a median home price here now over $900,000, and the average rent here for a two-bedroom apartment is about $3,200. So you can see at the various levels of area median income what the gap is, and that's that little red band there in the chart for meeting housing needs. You can see that for those in the lower income households, meeting any kind of housing needs here is almost an impossibility. A monthly rental cost of $3,200 is almost 55% of the monthly medium income for the area, and for a loan income household, that same rent would constitute nearly 62% of their income. A solution that has been proposed by the local housing advocacy group is to generate funding through a local bond measure. This funding could be used to create more affordable housing and homeless facilities and could also be leveraged to help local jurisdictions become more competitive for state and federal funding dollars. This solution has been used successfully in other jurisdictions throughout the United States. The recommendations before you today are for a housing bond measure of $140 million with $119 million to be dedicated to creating more affordable housing units allocated amongst the jurisdictions, and $21 million to be dedicated to funding needed facilities for homelessness, and that is to be allocated as one regional sum. The Inter-Jurisdictional Housing Task Force determined that the funding should be allocated to and controlled by each individual jurisdiction in order to meet the specific needs of that community. Funding allocations for jurisdictions were calculated using the combined equally weighted statistics of population, regional housing needs, poverty levels, and total assessed value. These numbers would be updated prior to the issuance of each bond series for the most up-to-date calculation, and this slide shows you about what the total allocation would be for each jurisdiction. The affordable housing bonds would be financed through a property tax assessment, not to exceed $16.77 per $100,000 of assessed value over a period not to exceed 40 years. The bonds would be issued in two separate series with a 30-year payback for each series. The first series would be for $100 million and issued somewhere in 2019 or 2020, and the second series would be for $40 million, and we estimated that it would be issued in 2027 that we could push that out. The chart indicates the payback schedule for the bonds. For the first series, the annual payback would be about $7.8 million, or approximately $16.32 per $100,000 assessed value. And once the second series was issued, the annual payback would increase to $8.6 million or a maximum of $16.77 per $100,000 of assessed value. And then, of course, the payback amount drops as the bond series are paid off. This chart shows the estimated payments for $100,000 of assessed value over the life of the two series of bonds with a peak amount of $16.77, and then declining over time. The regional housing needs assessment projects a need of about 1,214 units for the low and very low area median income and about 1,768 units, if you also include the moderate area median income group through the year 2023. It is estimated based on potential projects in each jurisdiction that an estimated 1,041 units could be provost using these bond funds. That's the conclusion of the presentation, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you have. Thank you for that wonderful, concise presentation. It was very helpful. Are there any questions from board members before we open this up for public comment on this item? Sure. Supervisor Caput. Yeah, a question you said not to exceed 40 years. That's correct. It would depend on when the second series of bonds is issued. So if we issue the bonds in seven years, then it would be 37 total years of bond payments. If we issued it 10 years from the time of the first issuance, then that would be 40 years. Right. And then the other would be we're going by assessed value of the property rather than the market rate at the time of the taxing. It's assessed value, correct. Okay, an assessed value. I guess the only concern I have is that we have senior citizens that are on a fixed income. Maybe they paid for their house and are their home. And then their property tax would be based on their purchase price maybe 20 or some years earlier. That's correct. Well, assessed value is always typically much lower than the market rate value. Yeah, because that would be under Prop 13, right? Okay. And then it's $16.77 per $100,000 on assessed value of property. Just trying to clarify it. That's correct. We're voting to put, whether or not to put this on the ballot and letting the people vote in the county. And the last question, just to make it clear too, is it would require 60, it's a specific tax. It's not for something else that the general fund could take and use for something else. No, there would be a special fund set up for allocating these dollars and they could, the bonds restrict the way you can use the funding so it couldn't be used for anything other than capital investments for housing. Then requires six, well, about 67% to pass. It's a two thirds at the polls. It's a two thirds vote, yes. Thank you very much. Thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. Sure. I just want to take a moment before we begin to thank Don Lane and Fred Keely and all the people involved in creating this, bringing this forward and then the county staff to be able to take what is essentially a concept and figure out how to divide it across five jurisdictions and the variety of housing needs we have in the community. I think this is an exciting opportunity to address a real crisis in our community that's impacting virtually every aspect of our county and the fact that we've built in and understand that there's no one solution to our housing problems. It requires a multi-pronged approach. It requires supporting seniors. It requires supporting our homeless community, creating ADUs, creating affordable developments. It takes a multi-pronged approach and that with this we'll have funds that we can leverage hopefully against state funds, against federal funds, against other affordable housing funds that we collect in order to get some projects going and help provide some relief to especially working families who are struggling to make it in this community. And so I don't want to, it's, you know, when it comes neatly packaged in a PowerPoint, everyone feels good about it but I want to acknowledge all the people who put in the effort to get us to this point that we can put something hopefully before the voters that can help address a crisis in our community. Thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. I know that board members will probably have additional comments but I think the most important thing is having an opportunity for the community now to address us. I would now like to open it up to the community now just so I have a sense. How many people plan to speak to us today just so I can see how many minutes I should allocate here? Okay, so we'll have it at a two minute per speaker. Good morning, welcome back. Emeritus Council Member for Life, Don Lane. Good morning, Supervisors. My name is Don Lane and I'm here representing Affordable Housing, Santa Cruz County. I'm joined today by our group's other co-chair, Fred Keely and this is the place in my comments where I'm supposed to make a joke at Fred's expense about why he's not standing here next to me but I'll share that with you offline another time. However, I will repeat something Fred said to me and I agreed with him when he said it. This could be the broadest county wide coalition created around a community issue in recent Santa Cruz County memory. Perhaps it's not really a surprise though that we've been able to build such a broad coalition. Everyone is touched by the housing crisis in Santa Cruz. Teachers, first responders, health care workers, farm workers, service workers and so many other members of our community are struggling with the housing crisis. Employers in retail, agriculture, hospitality, tech, healthcare see the housing crisis as they seek to find and retain employees. People in the human services sector and the healthcare sector deal with individual people experiencing that housing crisis every single day. Renters line up for hours and search for months to find any place to live. Young families have set aside their dreams of home ownership. Seniors struggle every day with rising rents and people without shelters struggle for survival every day. And at the same time, those that build truly affordable housing are poised to move ahead but are held back by a lack of funding. So we have been able to build a broad coalition and we have a few representatives of that coalition who are here to speak with you. Before I step aside for them, I want to just say a couple of things. First, I'd like to invite everyone here today who came to support the housing bond to either stand or raise your hand. We are very proud of all the folks from every sector and every district who've stepped up to help create this solution. And second, we'd like to thank the county staff members who stepped up over the last few months and to the staff from the local cities that collaborated with them to put together some of the key pieces that you saw today. Thank you so much for that help. And finally, we want to thank the members of the board who've played key roles in helping us get to this moment. We are here today to respectfully ask that you adopt the proposal before you. Please give the voters of our county an opportunity to turn what started as a broad community conversation about the housing crisis into a specific and concrete solution to address that crisis. Thank you very much. And we have a couple of members of our coalition who'd also like to say. Perfect. Thank you, Mr. Lyon. We'll call that a Santa Cruz two minutes for you. Good morning. Welcome, Ms. Palmer. Thank you for being here. Hi, I'm Barbara Palmer. I'm a realtor, but I am not here representing the California Association of Realtors. I am chairing their legislative committee and I am not representing the local association because we haven't voted yet. But first of all, I want to thank this board for doing what everything you can to fix our housing problem and still protecting private property rights. You can be commended for that. Number two, is there any way you can build into this some means testing, which means can you take a look? We do have people that have been living in these homes for 40 years. They're on social security. Adding layers of property tax, even though this one is affordable to most of us, but adding those taxes and layering them on is a concern for me and a concern for the people that maybe it would be a burden. Not this one tax, but as you layer them on. In my area, we have Cabrillo College taxes. So just please keep that in mind. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning and welcome. Thank you for waiting. Good morning, members of the board. My name is Jeffrey Smedberg. I was a county worker for a quarter of a century and active member of SEIU. My strong union afforded me a generous living wage and helped me purchase a small home in Santa Cruz and guaranteed me some retirement security so I didn't have to move to Los Baños when I leaving my county job. I still have time to be active in union affairs and I am vice president of the Monterey Bay Central Labor Council on whose behalf I'm speaking to you this morning. The Monterey Bay Central Labor Council is a regional union of 80 labor unions which represents 38,000 working women and men in the Central Coast region. The functioning of our communities depends on local workers including teachers, healthcare workers, service workers, farm workers and many others. Most of our seniors, people with disabilities and those without permanent shelter also at one time were part of our active workforce. Many of these workers are union members even though union workers on average earn 20% more than non-union workers. Their circumstances are not all as favorable as mine. You're all aware of the huge disparity in our community between housing costs and earnings. All working people and their families as well as former workers need affordable housing here, not in Los Baños. You know there are county workers who live in Los Baños now and waste a lot of their time adding on the road, adding to the congestion. Construction of affordable rental units and first time home buyer assistance leveraged by the housing solutions bond will be a good start in tackling our housing crises. The Monterey Bay Central Labor Council council urges you to support the housing services bond and place it on the November ballot. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Welcome. Hi. Thank you for waiting. Hi. My name is Carmen Bernal. In May, one of you were asked whether or not this bond was something that you would consider passing. And that particular board of supervisors said, I don't know because it may impact seniors that are on and or anyone that's on a fixed income. So I really want you to consider this because it will impact seniors. One of my neighbors pays $10,000 in property taxes. And of that property tax, she's paying over 1,700 towards bonds, measures and for our area library facility. Depending upon where you live, like in Capitola, there are nine bonds and measures and library facilities that you pay for. In Santa Cruz, there are 10. We just keep on adding more and more at one point. At what point is it enough? Sorry, I can't read this. I printed it too low or too small. Why was the housing bond established as a bond instead of a measure, which could have exempted seniors at the age of 65? How long is this bond for? Well, you did explain it here, but I was shocked at the duration. I'm not against housing. Mr. Friend, you received an email from me and you got my background. So you know that I'm not against housing. I myself purchased a home through Measure J years ago. Thank God for that program. But I just learned that in the last two years, the county has allowed a developer's choice to pay fees rather than requiring affordable housing units being as part of the county's new housing project. So much for affordable housing. Thank you, please finish up. Sorry, that's pretty much it. I just wanted to let you know my opposition to it. I mean, when is enough enough? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for sharing it. Good morning, Councilor García, welcome. Good morning, Chair and Board. My name is Rebecca Garcia and I'm a native of Watsonville and I happen to sit on the Watsonville City Council and on the Latino Affairs Commission. Watsonville first began addressing the serious need of affordable housing in 1991 when the city adopted its inclusionary ordinance. Today, August 7th, 2018, the community of Watsonville that includes service workers, teachers, farm workers, seniors, homeless, and people with disabilities are saying it's enough. We want affordable housing for all our residents. In Watsonville, we have two to three families living in single households because they cannot afford the rent. Some families have to live in substandard housing and in garages. So we are proposing to you, our county supervisors, that you place on the November ballot an initiative to provide affordable housing. Watsonville has three programs that provide support for affordable housing to middle income and low income residents. However, it's not enough to meet all the housing needs. The proposed plan will provide more funding for more people needing affordable housing in Watsonville. The first program is the inclusionary ordinance which provides 15 to 20% affordable units. Our second is the down payment assistance program. And the third program is the first time home buyers program. These latter two programs are available to low and very low income residents. I support the passage of the bond because it will help the city of Watsonville support those individuals and families who struggle to meet their housing payments. And I hope you as supervisors also want to support them. Thank you. Don't sit down there. Thank you. Good morning and welcome, council member Harlan. Good morning, supervisors. It's a pleasure to be here. I don't come here very often, but it's very interesting. Affordable housing. I've been part of the coalition since the beginning and it's been a very interesting group, very broad based. What I really like about it is that every city can do whatever they want with the money, whatever meets their needs. As you know, capital is pretty much built out. So we're not gonna be building very much unless we can do something with them all and they're not really interested in doing that right now. Because we have so many second homes in town, we have a huge decrease in the amount of homes that can be available for rentals. We have almost 50% of our R1 areas that are second homes, Depot Hill and the Jewelbox. It's very shocking. We have many opportunities to help though. We can buy, there's a couple of apartment complexes that I know of that I would love to buy to keep in affordable housing and to turn into affordable housing. We have one that used to be mostly section eight and a new owner bought it. But I would like to buy that back from them and help them. We gave Loma Vista Mobile Home Park almost a million dollars to buy themselves to keep it low and moderate income housing. We gave Warf Road Manor about four or $500,000 to keep that in low and moderate income housing. We can continue to do that. As a tourist destination in a very small town, 1.6 square miles and 10,000 people, we need housing for the people that work and are able to live in our town. I'm very concerned about over developing Santa Cruz County. It looks like we've already done that when you look at the traffic that we have. But I think we're working on that. And I encourage all of us to be very mindful about development in the future that we don't continue to create problems for ourselves and the future of Capitola, Santa Cruz, Watsonville, Scots Valley and the unincorporated part of the county. Thank you very much. Thank you, Council Member Harlan. Good morning, welcome. Good morning, thank you. I'm Cathy Sartoe. I'm a member of Peace United Church of Christ up by the university, which is one of 29 institutional members of COPA, a non-profit, non-partisan organization of dues-paying members like congregations, schools, non-profits and unions. 18 of the COPA member institutions that are located in Santa Cruz County are located in Santa Cruz County and about 20 of us are here today. They have wrangled me to be the sole speaker so I'm speaking for all of us. Many of our institutions have been at the forefront of seeking to make our communities better places for decades. COPA has been vocal about the need to create workforce housing. We helped move the county to pass its first housing element in 20 years. We've helped build senior housing at St. Stephens and we've been conducting and continue to conduct civic academies on housing to inform constituents about these complex issues and also to address resistance. The housing crisis affects each of us in a number of ways. It affects me personally in that I have five children who will never be able to buy a home in this county. My oldest is a nurse who works for Haas-Pacific Santa Cruz. One of my sons works at our mental health facility across from Harbor High. My other son has an MBA. I have two daughters still in college. These are Santa Cruz's own kids. Kids who did everything we asked. We asked them to get an education and contribute and give back to society. Our congregations are losing members and clergy. Our schools can't recruit teachers. Our health institutions can't recruit doctors and nurses, et cetera. At our COPA convention on September 30th, we hope to see you all there. Housing will be a large part of our agenda and about 1,000 people will be present to hear about this opportunity. So we would like to ask you to accept the staff recommendation to put this on the ballot. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that story. Good morning, welcome back. Chair, supervisors, good morning. I'm the chair of the Santa Cruz Coalition on Homelessness. I direct the warming center program in Santa Cruz. I've toured the West Coast and I've seen 40 cities and seen what's happening out there at homelessness. Money is coming and finally it's really good. And I would like to talk about design concepts. It doesn't matter how much money comes into this community if the design is poor. We've already been spending all of the money on virtually no positive effect when you look at the homelessness on the street. It's mushrooming in every city. We could, with no money, with better design, do much more with less. That's what I wanna have you thinking about through November, doing more with less. In fact, no matter how much money we spend, are we still gonna see elderly women and walkers and wheelchairs sleeping in our doorways? Are we gonna have people in the crevices and under the Felton Bridge and everywhere else? So what I encourage, and with the warming center program, we spend very little money and we are scalable to infinity. Not one person has to sleep outside on the very coldest nights. We get zero funding for the city of Santa Cruz, a little bit of County Fuddy for Watsonville for that. We also now have a program we're in our third month called the Day and Night Storage Program. It's scalable to infinity. We make sure that nobody has to carry around their belongings. We get zero funding from government for that. But I wanna say you can already see the impact on the street. Let's build programs. Let's actually make a commitment, county-wide, that every single person who sleeps outside can get the shelter that they need by any means necessary. And it's not about money, it's about perfect design. We don't wanna spend more money and years later, realize that we haven't amounted to anything. The new shelter concept is the navigation center, but go to San Francisco and really see what the bang for the buck is. What was the bang for the buck for smart solutions to homelessness? Smart solution to homelessness. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, welcome. Good morning. My name is Kate Arietta. I'm 70 years old. I have a modest home in Capitola, it's 800 square feet. My property taxes are $4,242 a year. 28% of that amount goes to bonds. My social security monthly payment is $730. I pay 48.3% of my social security money into property taxes. Let me say that again. I pay 48.3% of my monthly social security payments in property taxes. At 28% of those property taxes go to bonds. I would hope that affordable housing would not further my burden on my property taxes. Thank you. Right. Thank you. Good morning, welcome back. Hi, everyone. I'm Tom Brose. I'm an organic farmer in Watsonville and currently also president of Santa Cruz County Farm Bureau and sat on the broad coalition of this bond measure. And I think it's really important to point out that agriculture is facing a farm worker housing crisis and amidst a labor shortage as well. And I think it's really important to recognize through the farm worker housing study that was just released in Monterey and Santa Cruz that we have an overcrowded situation among farm workers and that 70% of the farm workers today are living amongst us in our community. And it is really important that we have permanent affordable housing for our farm workers in the sense that we can have an agricultural industry that can thrive, that can support our community here. And so I'm really hopeful that we can, with the county, also already prioritizing farm worker housing to continue working with everyone and see this bond be put on the ballot. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. My name is Joel DeValcourt. I was born and raised in Santa Cruz and I personally cannot afford to live in Santa Cruz with my wife and my son, even though I actually work in the field of developing affordable housing. I have been working for about seven years to support and create affordable homes in the Greater Bay Area region. And right now is a really, really exciting time for affordable housing, despite what is happening at the national level. We have a lot of local governments, counties, in particular, who are stepping up and really investing in their people, in their economy, in their environment. And San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Alameda counties all did it successfully in 2016. They raised a considerable amount of money for affordable housing and now it has done so much to invest and infuse capital into what is a really challenging federal disinvestment in housing. And we can do it as locals. We can do it as a community. I believe very firmly that this will have an exceptional positive impact on Santa Cruz county for residents, for people who are vulnerable, as well as families who are struggling to afford. So thank you very much. I look forward to your support for the bond. Thank you. Morning. Thank you for waiting. Morning, members of the board, members of the community. My name is Matt Nathanson. I am the regional vice president for SEIU Local 521 and I'm a county employee here on my own time. And I'm here to speak in favor of the motion before you to put this bond measure on the ballot before the voters. Affordable housing from the perspective of the members we represent who are county workers, city workers, nonprofit workers, school district workers is critical, is we struggle with you at the bargaining table to fight for an affordable wage and then it all gets wiped out and more in the cost of housing. More and more our members are living further and further away from their jobs. Many of them are county workers who actually need to be available during crisis situations. If you think about the floods last year when you needed road workers coming in and the remarkable work people did, they need to be close enough to be able to do that. Child protective services workers, et cetera. This will not, we know that this will not solve the whole problem. Affordable housing is going to take many different solutions but this is an option available to you and we need to start working on the solutions. It's paired well with there's a state bond measure before us proposition one this year. I think this will help us leverage money from that assuming that that passes. And then it's really my last comment is after November and these votes have happened, we wanna continue to work with the county on other solutions including things like looking at issues like workforce housing. I think that's a way that the county can make us a unique contribution to developing more affordable housing in our community. So we look forward to this being on the ballot so that we can discuss it and formally take a position to support it. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, welcome. Good morning. Good morning. My name is Erica Padilla Chavez, a native of Watsonville and the director of Bahadur Valley Prevention and Student Assistance. And I'm here this morning to share with you the connection between housing and the behavioral health of our children in the Pajaro Valley. In our agency we provide behavioral health or mental health services and substance abuse services to over 7,000 children and their families in the Pajaro Valley. As was previously mentioned, the housing conditions that many of our families are living in in South County are requiring families to share two to three bedroom house between a family of four to five families. Every individual should have the opportunity to live in a housing environment that provides some sense of security and peace. It's a sanctuary, a home is a sanctuary. And for those of us in the mental health community, we have a mantra, a motto, that housing is first, that we can't address the mental health conditions of our children and our families without first ensuring that their housing needs are met. We don't have that access right now. By putting this on the ballot, you're providing an equitable opportunity for these children to live a very prosperous life. So I thank you for considering the many children and families that do need this opportunity so that they can live a prosperous life. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for the outstanding work your organization does for the community. Good morning and welcome back. Yes. Okay, real quick. I do not believe that you can make housing more affordable by making it more expensive. Currently, we already pay 500% more in property taxes than they do in the state of Hawaii. If you add on top of that, all the various bonds that we have, the average person moves every four or five years. So the average price is $900,000. That's $9,000 a year in property taxes with bonds. You're looking at $1,000 a month just to pay for taxes and bonds. The average house is 3,600. That's 1,000 of it right there just to pay for more taxes. But so I urge you guys, there are things that we can do that won't cost $140 million that can improve housing. The state has passed numerous laws considering the zoning. We right here can take responsibility for our own zoning. The state has passed laws. We can have multiple houses per parcel. We can have multiple ADUs. We can have junior ADUs. We can have kitchenettes all in a house. Look at the map up there. We live in one of the least dense counties in the entire state. I personally own three acres. I have seven neighbors that touch my property. Five of them are one acre or less. I go downstairs and I say, hey, I'd like to rezone my property or divide it up to the same sides of my neighbors. Guess what they say? No. I say, hey, I'd like to have a couple ADUs. The state passed a law that says we can have multiple ADUs. They say, oh, that's interesting. No, that's too politically difficult to do. We don't wanna do that. And they said, oh, or it can pass a general plan. I spoke to the Sacramento, the California Department of Housing and the people, Senator Wieckowski, who passed the bill on the ADUs. They said it doesn't constitute a change in the general plan. Heck, our even own representative, Senator Stone, voted for a law that got it out of committee that's going in front of the assembly now that would allow multiple ADUs per parcel. If our own Stone, who has a wonderful approval rate around here can support that, why can't we? So let's get that discussion going as far as moving forward. And that'll make that 140 million go a lot farther if we change the zoning. Thank you. Good morning. Welcome back. Good morning. We'll see. I'm Nora Hawkman. I'm with the Movement for Housing Justice, specifically the campaign for rent control in the city of Santa Cruz. We have not taken a position on this bond measure. Many of us have very different thoughts about it, but I wanna say this on behalf of 20,000 renters in the city of Santa Cruz. None of this helps them a bit. They are dying on the vine. They cannot afford to live here. They are the people who provide a wide variety of services that you've heard about. If your board took a position to support the campaign for rent control in the city of Santa Cruz, 20,000 tenants would be cheering your action on behalf of stabilizing their housing. This is very long-term stuff. All of those people, they will be gone by the time any of this is realized. So thinking long-term, that's great. But my daughter and her family, who already live in Merced, are not gonna benefit from any of this. I'll probably be 85 or 90 years old by the time any of it comes to pass. So I'm begging you, on behalf of those tenants, you should all be endorsing the campaign for rent control. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Hockman. Good morning, welcome. Thank you for waiting. Good morning, thank you. My name is Dori Rosinda. I'm here on behalf of Salud para la Gente. Salud para la Gente supports the bond measure and serves about 30,000 community members, mostly in the Pajaro Valley. And we do that with a commitment to ensuring access to healthcare and improving and working towards a healthy community and a very high contributor to poor health is housing. At the Santa Cruz Community Ventures, who will speak behind me following me, has a survey that they did in Watsonville and found that our community spends, two thirds of it spends over a third of their income on housing, which sounds like a lot, but I think when you consider in our community what that really means is they're spending more than a third on their housing in overcrowded and substandard conditions. It becomes something very significant and affects people's health. In addition, about 65% are about a month away from homelessness, one paycheck. Oh no, really? Just have another minute. But I have more to say. You have another minute to go. Okay, great. I just wanna put a picture to what it means to have health conditions that are a result of housing. We have families or children that come in with rat bites, with asthma from mold and mildew, pest infestations, and this is really the kind of substandard housing that many families are living in within Watsonville. And we support the bond measure both to create more affordable housing, new housing, and especially rehabilitated housing, which is an essential part. We also encourage that as it's implemented that there be local jurisdiction-based committees made up of community members to make sure that the implementation of it, assuming that it passes, is really focused on the equity of the community in which it's being built out. Thank you so much. Thank you, and thank you for Solute's work. It's remarkable. Good morning, welcome back. Thanks for being here. Good morning, Chair and Board. My name's Maria Cadenas. I'm the Executive Director of Santa Cruz Community Ventures. We work to create compassionate and equitable local economies here in the County of Santa Cruz. Two years ago, we did a study about the affordability and access for housing, which Dori from Solute just mentioned. The truth is that the affordability housing gap is real in the County. People are spending over 50% of their income into housing, eating away from their opportunity to save, and actually create assets and move out of poverty of their or create economic mobility. Our interest in asking you, the Board, to support placing this bond measure on the ballot for November and to consider other housing possibilities that have more short-term impact to our communities, as well as taking an account, including the community's voices and decision-making's on planning and design and dancing conversations, dense conversations around how development happens. Thank you again for your time. Thank you. Good morning, welcome back. Good morning, Laura Segura, Executive Director of Monarch Services. We've been in the community for 41 years, working with victims of domestic violence, human trafficking, and sexual assault. I am a Watsonville resident, I'm a taxpayer, and I'm also a homeowner, and I am happy to support this bond. Housing is a human right, and this bond will provide more housing, including funding for those who are facing homelessness. As funding gets rolled out, I really encourage that we're really intentional about the policies we develop to ensure that policies are based on equity. And a couple things that developments don't displace, families that, and we're continuing to see that in the Watsonville community, that's also called racialized displacement. That also we implement and take a really close look at local preference policies that are put in place so that people who are living in our communities have access, first access and priority access to the affordable units. So I'm really looking forward to working with the committee and supporting this measure. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, welcome. Good morning. My name is Alina Harway, and I come to you today wearing two hats. The first is as a Santa Cruz County resident. I live just north of Scotts Valley in District Five. When my husband and I purchased our home, we declared it our forever home. We simply love our community. And loving this community means taking seriously a shared commitment to helping our community thrive. Right now I'm concerned. I'm worried about my friends and peers. I'm worried about families and hardworking people who are pushed to the brink of homelessness because of the cost of housing. I worry into the future about the fate of my young son and his generation and if they'll be able to stay here. I know my concerns are not exclusively mine. The other hat I wear today is that of communications director for NPH, the Nonprofit Housing Association of Northern California. Reason NPH polling found that nine out of 10 Santa Cruz County residents have those same fears that I do. They're concerned about local workers, low income residents and disadvantaged families being able to find an affordable place to live. These concerns aren't someone else's problems. When we're concerned about the community, it's the responsibility of the community to find a solution, to come together to find that. The proposal in front of you today is that opportunity to address our problem by creating more affordable housing options and opportunities for Santa Cruz County families and hardworking individuals. NPH has been proud to work with the exploratory committee steered by Don Lane and Fred Kealy. We've attended stakeholder meetings, conducted research and shared the technical expertise we've accrued by helping other local communities in Northern California pursue and pass similar policies. As an affordable housing professional, I can tell you that this measure is well modeled for success, feasibility and that we work with non-profit home builders who are more than ready to create affordable homes but need local and state funds to bring those opportunities to our Santa Cruz County community. As a local resident, I can tell you that I live in a county filled with friends, family and neighbors who are concerned about our housing crisis and wanna take action to address it but need your vote today to put this opportunity in front of them. I hope you will pass this resolution today and allow these opportunities to come before our community. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. Good morning and welcome, thank you. Hi, good morning. Good morning, members of the board. My name is Carmen Herrera-Mansir. I'm a resident and homeowner in Watsonville, California. I'm also the executive director for El Pajaro Community Development Corporation. In our organization, we promote equal access to economic opportunity and by assisting entrepreneurs who create jobs and wealth in our community. However, dis-entrepreneurs often cannot afford to stay and live in our area here in Santa Cruz County or Watsonville. In fact, last year, one of our entrepreneurs went homeless while when she lost the lease to the home where she lived with her children, she had to go and put children in different houses of people that she knew until it took her months to find housing. So for this reason, I'm here to support the bond and I just also wanna request that in issuing and doing the guidelines for that bond, we think about doing that, assuring that there's equitable community development lens in doing that and make sure that we are also inclusive, fair and that we give local preference for housing access. So thanks very much for the opportunity and I also wanna ask, I'm gonna use this opportunity to ask you to support our work that we do in terms of economic development and creating jobs and businesses in this community. So I'm gonna leave this in here for you to attend an event that we have soon. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning and welcome back. Morning chair, members of the board, Matt Huerta here, program manager, housing program manager with Monterey Bay Economic Partnership. I'm also a board member with Nonprofit Housing Association Northern California. You heard from Alina Hardway earlier and that's the kind of representation that I think you're gonna hear a lot more of that you've already heard today and it's just really absolutely critical that this move forward to the voters under your leadership. This is about trying to do the fair share for this community, not only to honor the needs of local community here, but to share in the really critical issue that we have an affordable housing and housing overall across the entire region and candidly we're just, we're not gonna see very much at all any affordable housing if this doesn't move forward because without subsidized grants and long-term interest loans that this will make possible, affordable housing doesn't get done. That's absolutely critical to underwrite the rents and to also provide the assistance for down payment for moderate income home buyers in our community. So this is a critical resource and again the other piece to remember is the $4 billion Housing Bond Act. It's pulling really well. Looks like it's gonna move forward at the state level. We will not see our fair share here in our region if leaders such as yourself don't move courageously to make sure that we have local matching sources. Thank you very much for your leadership. Thank you Mr. Wartow. Good morning Mayor Reed. Thank you for being here this morning. Thank you Chair and Board. You've heard a lot of really eloquent testimony this morning on the need and the scope of the problem but I wanna go back for a second to something that former Mayor Lane indicated. Talking about the breadth of the coalition that we're looking at here that's getting behind this concept. It's one thing to have affordable housing and homeless advocates who are before you championing a solution but when you've got business leaders from all across the county, when you've got small businesses like we have in my city who realize that we have to do something about this. When you've got working professionals, when you've got parents, soccer moms, soccer dads who understand that it would be nice if there was a way that they were gonna be able to spend time with their kids and their grandkids once they got older. And instead of moving with them to Oregon or to Texas or to New Mexico or Arizona or Nevada if they can find a place for them to be here. So I think you've got a unique moment in time where we can mobilize the people necessary to ensure there's a majority, a two thirds majority that'll pass this. Secondly, I think we all know this is public policy that's been done the right way. The outreach that's gone into crafting this measure led by Fred Keely and Don Lane, it's been done over years, not weeks. It's involved not handfuls of people but hundreds of people. You've got a really well thought out solution, a rational response to a very critical problem. Third issue, even if some of you might have questions about the cost or some of the issues in this bond, I think we can all agree just on a basic philosophical level. This is the most pressing issue that people in Santa Cruz County face today. And when a well-crafted solution comes forward, it just almost seems there's an obligation to put this directly before the voters and let the voters have their say. And the last thing I would say, we are living in a time, when depending on what metric you use, there is greater prosperity in this country right now than there has ever been in the lifetimes of anybody in this room. At the same time, we are living in a time where there's unprecedented fear and uncertainty about our political climate and about whether government can work. Virtually the only thing that people on both sides of the political spectrum can agree on is that government is working for them, whoever them is. It's not looking out for themselves. Here's a solution that addresses the most pressing problem that people have in a very thoughtful way. Thank you for your time. Thank you for those comments. Good morning, welcome. Thank you for waiting. Good morning, Morton. Thank you for your time and attention. My name is Caitlyn Brune and I serve as CEO of the Pajaro Valley Community Health Trust. And I'm here to speak in favor of the bond. I think that each of you is aware that there's data that strongly indicates that improved housing and neighborhood environments could lead to significant reductions in the health disparities that we experience north to south county. I want to echo Mayor Reed in saying that this is a model approach to crafting a solution that spans the issue of homelessness and housing affordability for our community. I want to speak to my colleague, Rebecca Garcia, city council member in Watsonville, saying that we have local solutions that have been demonstrated to address the problem effectively that are simply lacking for the resources needed to implement them. And I want to echo Tom Bro's organic farmer to indicate that there's a desperate housing and affordability crisis facing our farm worker population, which is the key constituent served by my organization. And here we have a wonderful opportunity to put this before the voters and do the right thing in terms of creating better access to housing for low income, low wage workers, including farm workers and our healthcare workforce. So thank you for your attention. Thank you. I thank you for your work. Morning, welcome back. Good morning, Chairman and Supervisors, the board. Thank you for being here and you're listening. If we can get the screen you had up on the board, that would be really great. One with the info you had and I'll continue. So, sorry I get nervous. I'm sure everyone else does. But it seems like what you're doing is you are adding a tax onto people's homes and then they are paying for other people to have homes. And then what that is is kind of like a reverse Robinhood. You're taking from homeowners to make more homes and then their rent prices are gonna go up because they'll have to charge more to get the parcel taxes. And the caveat is if people cannot pay for their parcel taxes and you've heard the other people speak, if they cannot pay for all these taxes on their homes, they run the threat of losing their homes. And affordable housing is a great conceptual idea. And I acknowledge you guys for tackling this concept of how do we provide more housing for Santa Cruz and how do we provide more housing for people? But by using taxing of homeowners to buy property and create rents for other homeowners, or renters shall I say, the questions I have is where does the money go? Because then it would be like, is this going to the state? Is all the money going to more government funding? Is it going to whose pockets are this going? And really what I'd like to put in place is how can we really empower the local citizens of Santa Cruz, California? Like maybe make it easier for them to build on their own property. Because if they can build on their own property, they can provide more housing. They can provide more housing, they can have more money in their pockets. If they have more money in their pockets, then it'd be a greater contribution to this community here that we have a so dear. And the more it gets outsourced to people that aren't locals, the more we lose its authenticity. And lastly, I wanted to say on the summer, you have 21 for regional homeless needs. And I think you mean 21 million. And that's a big difference. Thank you. Good morning, welcome back. Hi, good morning. Paulina Moreno with Community Action Board. Our work at CAB focuses on working with serving the most vulnerable and marginalized in our community. That is low income families, immigrants, youth, the re-entry community and the homeless, among others. Every two years, CAB leads community poverty conversations to identify the greatest impacts of poverty in our county. Last year in 2017, the second top need identified by people living in Santa Cruz County was rent, burden and housing insecurity with jobs in higher wages as the number one need. The community is hungry for solutions. And this affordable housing bond is one of those solutions. So we thank you for your work and we strongly urge you to support it and place it before borders in November. Thank you. Thank you for your work. Good morning, welcome back. Good morning, commissioners. Derek Tim, I'm a small business owner here in the county. And I have to say, usually you won't have me up here asking you to support more taxes. But in this case, this is a really well thought through proposal and one of the most pressing concerns as a small business owner is retaining our employees. And I've seen it time and time again, small businesses, myself and other owners losing employees to the cost of housing in our county. We need solutions. And this is one part of a larger solution. Hats off to Don Lane and Fred Keeley who have brought together a broad coalition to support this. I think they've scaled back from what was a more ambitious proposal. They've reduced it by over $100 million to something that's more digestible I think to the voters in this county. I think it behooves you as a commission to put this on the ballot so the voters can vote on it. And I think there's a lot of small business owners out there like myself. I'll tell you a story of an employee of mine who was able to successfully get into an affordable housing unit. She's been able to stay in this county unlike a lot of workers here. And if we can provide that kind of solution to our employees, my business can keep on surviving as can other businesses in our county. So please let the voters decide on this and thank you for your time. Appreciate it. Thank you. Morning Mr. Cansino, welcome back. Morning. Ray Cansino, CEO of Community Bridges on behalf of the board, the coworkers that I work with, the families we serve and the 20,000 people we provide service to. We're in support of this measure. We've been in support of this measure for many reasons. UCSC found the study 70% of our community had threatened. We know we have the second largest percentage of poverty in our community. HCA did a research study also and found two thirds of our employees are using some sort of services in our community in order to maintain their living standards here. The reality is it's impacting everybody through this process. We've been a part of helping craft this and we scaled it back. We talked to community members and the original envisioned number was a lot higher. I look forward to spending the $120 a year in addition to help support other community members, me and my wife, I shouldn't say just me, to help support to make sure that we have affordable housing for everybody, including nonprofit workers and those that we serve in our community. Thank you, hopefully, for your support. Thank you, Mr. Cansino. Welcome back, Mr. Wilby. Good morning. Tim Wilby speaking for affordable housing now. Affordable housing requires three things, land, money, and political will. And today you can tackle two of those. You can move this onto the voters to provide a significant amount of money to solve this problem and you can put the political will behind it. A unanimous vote today would be a good note for the community to take notice of that you support us. So we hope that you will unanimously pass this on to the voters. Thank you. Thank you and thank you for your work. Good morning, welcome. Good morning, members of the board. My name is Lynn Warren. I'm a resident of Aptus and I'm a former director of the State Department of Housing Community Development and I also served as program director for the state's housing finance agency. I'd like to emphasize the critical nature of these housing systems would play in accessing these state funds. The funds are, these applications come from a critical need that is supplied for affordable housing for this county. Applications for these funds from around the state are highly competitive and state administrators and Sacramento look to the funds that are supplied by local housing. I have seen a great number of housing programs around the state fail to reach their housing goals because of the absence of local money. In the fall there will be two affordable housing related bonds and I can speak from experience that once those bonds, if they pass, the administrators in Sacramento will move very quickly to access those funds and look to local governments and their financing commitments to go forward. I really do encourage you to support this bond. It will make a big difference, I think, for the residents of this county. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for your service. Good morning, welcome. Thank you for waiting. My name is Rosalinda Moreno. I've been a resident of Santa Cruz County or city for the last 50 years. I am, this bond is not gonna help me but it will help other generations. I am a renter and I just received in the mail last week a $600 month raise in my apartment. And I am 80 years old and I definitely want everyone to vote for the rent control in the city of Santa Cruz so that it doesn't happen to them that I might become homeless as a disabled 80 year old in Santa Cruz County. So I'm just urging everyone to vote for this which is in the future. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I have called around there is no this open for senior affordable housing right now in Santa Cruz. So I have to take it one day at a time and hopefully something will come up. Thank you. Thank you, thanks for sharing your story. Morning Mr. Kramer, welcome back. Morning, morning chair, friend and members of the board. My name is Phil Kramer, executive director of the homeless services center in Santa Cruz. We have 200 people living in emergency shelter and transitional housing on our campus in Santa Cruz and we support another 260 people throughout the county of Santa Cruz. HSC is an enthusiastic supporter of the housing bond and hopefully you are too and we'll see it on the ballot in November. One of the biggest impediments and challenges we have, roadblocks we have to housing more individuals, veterans and families that are experiencing homelessness is a sufficient inventory and supply of affordable housing. So that's one piece of the bond that I think will be a big help and help us house more people that find themselves in the crisis of homelessness. Another piece, the 15% part of the bond that will go towards homeless services such as more shelter and transitional housing. We're also really excited about that. We know that shelter as a pathway to housing works. Last year we helped house over 249 people. So we know that shelter as a pathway to housing works. So we're really excited about that and hopefully we'll be able to apply that funding to new infrastructure developments, shelter and transitional housing programs in the coming years. So thanks so much for everything that you do and look forward to your support. Thank you. Good morning, welcome. Good morning. My name is Candice Elliott and I wear a lot of different hats in this community. I'm the Human Resources Manager for the Glass Jar Restaurant Group and we have 150 staff that work in Santa Cruz and Capitola and they live in every district in the county. And I'm also a member of the Alliance of Women Entrepreneurs and a board member for the Santa Cruz Downtown Association where we're all focused on creating a thriving downtown space and housing is a major part of that. Until recently I was the president of the board of directors at Pajaro Valley Loaves and Fishes which serves Watsonville with nutritious food. I'm a fifth generation Californian and my mom and my sister live here in Santa Cruz and my great-grandmother Ruth Noren used to come here on vacation from Fresno like years and years and years ago. And I'm a ceramic artist and I work with locally sourced materials. I've been a part of this coalition for the past nine months and I'm very excited that we've come to this point and I'd like to encourage you to put this measure before the voters so that they can decide what's best for this community. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning and welcome back. Hello, my name is Evan Soroki and I'm with Santa Cruz Umbi and we're here to support the affordable housing bond and just further tax reform and bonds of this resort because while we support housing creation of market rate, we realize that the market rate housing alone may not impact the lowest income of our population. But furthermore, we do also echo some concerns here and advocate that you make these affordable housing funds go further by advancing some other things like upzoning and allowing for more density motion and more opportunities to be more efficient with the land and also streamlining the permitting and also the fee structure so that you aren't charging affordable housing, especially, perhaps as much fees and making it just easy to get through a process and not taking a very long time. And so, thank you. Thank you. Good morning and welcome back. Good morning. I'm Bruce Holloway from Boulder Creek. Fred and Don and I have had parallel careers. I went to Sister High School from where Fred went. I went to Homestead High School. I think Fred and I overlapped for a little bit at De Anza College in 1972. Then I went to UC Santa Barbara. I know Don went to UC Santa Cruz. If I recall correctly, they studied politics and I studied economics. You can't make housing more affordable by putting a tax on housing. That's the fundamental problem with this proposal. It's not gonna work. And when I say it's not gonna work, I mean that the negative consequences will outweigh the benefits over time. The chart over there says 1,000 units could be built over like 30 or 40 years. And if like 2.75 people live in each one of these units, that's about 2,800 people. That's about 1% of the current population of Santa Cruz County. So I get the proposal is to tax everyone in the county for 30 or 40 years to help 1% to somewhat help them. You're not gonna fully help them. I think this is a drop in the bucket. And I think that the lack of affordable housing around here is largely a self-inflicted wound. It's because local jurisdictions have been pursuing no growth or low growth policies for more than 40 years here. The barriers to development have been erected so high. Now, maybe it's improving now for the county at least. But the backlog of that 40 years worth of negative development policies is what has caused this problem largely. State matching funds, the proposal on the ballot in November I think is 3.1 billion. There's another billion for veterans or something, 3.1 billion. Our share of that would only be $21 million. Thank you. This is far outside of what we need for state matching funds. Thank you. Good morning and welcome back. Good morning, Chair, rest of the supervisors. My name is Robert Singleton. I'm the executive director of the Santa Cruz County Business Council. We represent around the 80 or so largest employers in the county. Every year we poll our members about the issues that are most important to them and the issues that are affecting their business. And every year that I've been at the business council, which is six years now, housing has been by far and away the number one issue. Just cutting right down to it. Because of the high cost of housing, it's really hard to attract and retain talented employees. It's really hard to maintain service workers here in Santa Cruz County to support our industries that are agriculture and hospitality are two biggest industries. So we need to do something to address the housing affordability crisis. And while this is a tax on housing, it's a progressive tax that would go towards those, the larger houses to help fund those who are most in need. And the business community recognizes that that's important. And that's why we're supporting these kinds of issues. And that's why we've been involved in the planning of this about initiatives since the beginning with Fred and Don. And so just want to say we urge you to put this on the ballot. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Singleton. Good morning, welcome. I appreciate you waiting. Good morning. My name is Alex Woeske. I'm a program manager with Hope Services in Santa Cruz. We support individuals with developmental disabilities. There are approximately 1,000 adults with developmental disabilities in this county, approximately 600 of which still live in their family homes. This is often not my choice. Affordable housing is a major barrier to these people leading happy and fulfilling lives. It's also a barrier to us finding and maintaining a team of direct service professionals that can afford to live in this county. So I just want to say that we are in support of this bond. Thank you. Thank you for your work. And we did receive a letter from your executive director in support as well. Thank you. Morning, Mr. Foster, welcome back. Good morning, Chair Friend and members of the board. I'm David Foster, executive director with Habitat for Humanity Monterey Bay. I'd like to be on record in support of the, on behalf of my board in support of the bond measure. Habitat does its part in, it's a small part in building affordable homes here in the county using local volunteers. We're currently building home ownership homes in Live Oak with support from the county. And our next two homes will be reserved for a family with a mobility disability and a veterans family. Since the loss of the redevelopment agency in 2011, the availability of local housing funds has plummeted affordable housing programs simply cannot survive without the local funding sources needed to be competitive for state, federal, and tax credit housing funds. Please let's make this a unanimous vote. Thank you very much. Thank you for your work, Mr. Foster. Good morning. Thank you for waiting. Good morning, Mike Paizano, Live Oak. I've been very lucky to be part of Measure O unit up on the campus. And now Measure J even Live Oak. And I urge and I vote to help retain workers local and also keep our families local. Thank you. Thank you. Morning. Welcome back, Ms. Garrett. Marilyn Garrett. I want you to visualize this cartoon. I'm gonna get you a copy of it. There's a man in like Dr. Scarbe and he has his clipboard. He says, are you feeling sad and depressed? You may be suffering from capitalism. Symptoms include homelessness, unemployment, hunger, anxiety, fear. We're talking about a system problem of capitalism that's based upon greed. And I appreciate Bruce Holloway's comments on economics. Here's some other economics of this. Over half of our tax scholars go to the military budget and the Congress just approved $717 billion for more military money. I heard someone else say we suffer from a lack of local funds. These funds are being siphoned out of this community and other communities to go to dangerous, inappropriate priorities for profit for the military and big business and big developers. This does not solve the problem. It's a system problem. And I have reported to this board before and I'll say this again. I saw real affordable housing when I visited the former Soviet Union, relatives of mine. In 1966 after the war, they had my mother's cousin paid about 5% of her income for rent. Thank you, Ms. Garrett. Thank you. Good morning. Welcome back, Mr. Darling. Thanks for waiting. Nero Darling, retired pastor. Currently participating in a congregation, Methodist congregation, that's seriously considering building affordable housing on a plot here in live Oak area. One of several congregations who are also looking at means by which we can build on church property. I strongly encourage your support of this measure. I also, the bond measure, I also appreciate your putting it before the community for a citizen's vote. And I encourage other congregations to consider whatever means by which we can encourage, enhance the living conditions of people in our community, including possibility of tiny houses. Thank you very much. Thank you. Is there anybody else like to address us? Ms. Barr, welcome back. Thank you very much. Good morning. Jane Barr, Eden Housing. I urge your unanimous support for this housing bond. Eden has approximately 1,300 families on our wait list of the seven rental apartment complexes we own in Santa Cruz County, despite the fact that these wait lists have been closed on all but one of the properties since 2014 and 2015. Nevertheless, we receive inquiries daily. The staff estimate of 987 affordable rental units, including ADUs will not be hard to meet in a fairly short period of time. During the exploratory phase of the bond, pipeline projection was put together, which estimated that 1,400 units of only new affordable rental housing could be developed over 10 years. Our wait list alone could fill the proposed units funded by this bond one and a half times. Hopefully the dollars we stretch to build much more housing than this estimate. Each drop in the bucket helps and more supply should help slow down rent increases. Finally, the importance of this local bond cannot be underestimated. Anticipating approval of the state housing bond, Santa Cruz County will be best positioned to compete for the state funds if jurisdictions have local funds to commit as a local match. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome back, Mr. Keely. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members. Thank you very much. My name is Fred Keely, a resident of Santa Cruz County and the city. I wanted to clarify one issue. The issue of seniors and the affordability of the property tax system. You probably know that this bond does not need to have a specific provision exempting low-income seniors and so on. There is a state statute which allows seniors at a certain low-income level to defer their property taxes and it automatically applies to any tax that is adopted by the voters, property tax-based. So I wanted to say people have said, gee, this doesn't have it in it. It doesn't need to be in it because the state law covers any tax related to property. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Keely. Does anybody else like to address us? Okay, seeing none, we'll bring it back to the board for consideration and action. Supervisor McPherson. Yeah, I'd like to thank especially Fred Keely, Don Lane, affordable housing now, I know that she put a lot of work into this in this last month to make it all fit for those putting this measure together. I know it's taken many months and there's been many representatives here and I haven't seen, this reminds me of what we did with Measure D in the transportation sector when we got a rural conglomerate of folks together to see how we can address the housing needs of this county. And the affordable housing need here in this region in this county is not unlike every other county in California and much of the United States as well. And I think we should let the voters decide if they want to invest more in affordable housing. I do appreciate that the Manor Forest is $140 million which strikes a balance for being an overburdened some challenge to the property owners today. I mean, it was first thought to be $250 million. That would have been a real hurdle for some people to get over, but I think if this passes in November I would like to see something in implementing ordinance from the CEO that addresses how we can, in our planning department which has been overburdened with various challenges and that it has to put forth before us, but I would like to see that in terms of the permitting process that this give special attention. I mean, it's one thing to approve this, but historically our planning department, I don't think it's been in recent years, but it hasn't been on put it in the high gear to get something done as far as housing goes. If we're gonna do this and we're going to address building affordable housing, I would like to see somehow we develop in the planning department a format for what is needed to quantify, qualify for this affordable housing measure. And so when somebody comes in to the planning department they can get some quick attention, predictable attention to get something done. In essence I don't wanna see these estimated 1,041 units take 20 years to build. I'd like to see if we're gonna do this, let's get a program and a procedure in the planning department so we can move forward as quickly as possible. I don't know what that is and it could be very complicated, but I think if we're really serious about this, we don't have a history of building a lot of units per year in the unincorporated area of Santa Cruz County. I wanna make sure that we focus on getting the job done that what the people, should they approve this, say they wanna do, that we're gonna build more affordable housing in the shortest amount of time possible. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Supervisor Caput. Well we're voting on putting it on the ballot, letting people vote on whether or not they want this tax. I will move for approval. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. There is not a motion yet, but Supervisor Coonerty. Yeah, I'm obviously supportive and I appreciate everyone taking the time to come out today. In order to get discussion started, I'll move approval of the recommended action. Motion from Coonerty. So we're waiting. And a second from McPherson, we'll just continue conversations. Supervisor Coonerty, do you have additional information to add? Okay, Supervisor Leopold. It's hard to keep track of where the emotions are being made. First of all, I wanna thank everyone for coming down here today to talk with us. I appreciate all the work that has been done in the community to put something together that has broad support. It's very clear that affordable housing is at a crisis level here in Santa Cruz. And we have to look at all sorts of creative ways. This board has worked to make things easier for building things like ADUs. We have thought about our development future differently and not all be single-family homes. And we need resources to be able to do that. The state law sets a very high bar to pass measures, tax measures. And it's important to be able to go out to the public and ask what they wanna invest in. And through that process, we can be fairly sure that we're doing what the public wants. And so I hear people complain sometimes about taxes, but those were all passed by the people, most of them at a two-thirds level. This has a high bar to pass. And it will require lots of work by everybody here in this room and lots of other people in the community in order to be successful. But I believe that this coalition is strong and effective and reaches out into the community that it can be successful. I believe it's important to ask people if they've identified affordable housing as a number one issue that we provide an opportunity for people to weigh in and provide resources to help address the issue. So I support the motion. Thank you, Supervisor Leopold. I'd just like to also add my thanks, not just to Mr. Lane and Mr. Keely, but the work internally of staff that happened behind the scenes. Ms. Sereno, Ms. Coburn, Ms. McCray, Mr. Plosios. There are a lot of county staff that worked with all the cities on trying to put something together that could come before us today that would be legal and also actionable. So I appreciate the work on that. And to me, I think that the question that's really before the board and before the community at large is when will we fundamentally turn the page on the impacts of affordability so that the next generation does not face what this current generation faces? And when will we also turn the page on the immediate impacts of affordability on homelessness, on working families, on seniors, on veterans, on teachers, on public safety so that they too can have relief from impacts that are forcing people to make very difficult decisions within our community? And to the argument that this may take a while to provide some relief, I would say that it's incumbent upon policy makers to make decisions so that future generations don't face the challenges that we face today. It'd be like saying that I'm not gonna eat vegetables today because it only can impact heart disease in 20 years. I think that you eat vegetables today for a lot of reasons. And you make long-term investments in not just a community, but in yourself. And our board and those that have been involved in this brought together by the way, a coalition of people who have not just historically not been together but haven't been together on this issue. That's very telling. The people that have come before this board over the last two years to advocate for improved housing access, especially affordable housing access, have historically not been at the table and in fact, been against housing expansion. If that isn't a clue to the greater community in the state at large that we're at beyond a tipping point on this, I don't know what is. And one element that helps address it is financing. And I do believe that what's before us today can help turn that page for those future generations so I'm supportive of it and I appreciate the work of the community on this. We have a motion, we have a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? It passes unanimously. We're gonna take a, the board will take a very brief 10 minute break. We'll come back at 11.35 for our next item. Give an opportunity to clear the room and also take a brief break. So 10 minutes. That would be for park capital improvements. It's important to note that the critical and met needs that were identified by the department heads align perfectly with the strategic plan which the board adopted on June 26. They fit in perfectly with the goals that were set at that time. So let's talk about the ongoing operational needs. They're divided into three main categories. The first two are regarding mainly our homeless population. The focus deterrence initiative offers programming that would pair public safety personnel, deputy sheriffs with behavioral health personnel to form small teams that would go out and offer services to that small subset of the population that is resistant to receiving treatment and services. Some of these individuals are resistant to services and engaging in criminal conduct. This program would be something, is something that the sheriff and our health services agency have both talked about during budget hearings and they are here in the audience to talk further about that during public comments. In addition, we want to fund the operational costs of a year round 24 hour homeless navigation center, one in Santa Cruz and one in the city of Watsonville. Right now we offer emergency shelter during the winter but we don't offer very much in terms of day services and we close down the winter shelter during the summer. This navigation center would offer year round 365 days, 24 hour services in both Watsonville and Santa Cruz would house, provide services to about 40 adults in Watsonville and about 150 in the city of Santa Cruz. And then we have needs to maintain our parks and provide more recreational activities both for youth and seniors. And so this proposal would also provide new staffing to our parks department both to maintain our parks and to offer new recreation services. The other main category of needs that we are presenting to you today involve parks and critical capital improvement projects. This is a list of the parks in which we have plans but we do not have funding. Let me just highlight a few. Chanaklear Park which would include Leo's Haven which would be the county's first all inclusive playground for children of all abilities. And this will include numerous accessible structures and features. There's been over $2 million raised privately for this project and now the county needs to do its part and meet match those funds to help make this park a reality. Simkins Swim Center is another need. This is a deferred maintenance issue where the aging pool infrastructure including pumps, heaters and the deck need to be replaced. There's also the opportunity to provide lighting at the pool which would allow nighttime use of the pool. That would be a very important project for us. And then you can see that the Felton Nature Park is also something that's planned in conjunction with the Felton Library. It would provide an outdoor learning space for environmental literacy programming, interactive nature discovery zones and an interpretive nature loop trail. There has been grant funding secured for this project but we need to find the county match. And then there's also funding for an Aptus Village, improvements at the Aptus Village Park and for a possible new park in South County as well. So the challenge before the board is how do we find the funds that are needed to fund these critical unmet needs that also align with the goals set by the board in our strategic plan? So we looked at two main options. One is a sales tax or transactions and use tax and the other is the hotel tax or also called the transient occupancy tax. The sales tax currently in Capitola and Scotts Valley is at 9%. In Watsonville and Santa Cruz it's 9.25% and the unincorporated area of the county is 8.5%. So we now have the lowest sales tax in the county. A quarter cent sales tax would bring in $2.8 million, a half cent would bring in $5.7 million and this would be in the unincorporated area. The hotel tax or the transient occupancy tax is currently at 11% in Capitola, Santa Cruz, Watsonville and the county, Scotts Valley is at 10%. It was last raised in 2012. I know that there are proposals to increase the hotel tax in Scotts Valley and Capitola and I believe there will be one in Watsonville as well. This would bring in a 1% increase and the hotel tax would bring in about $762,000. So staff is recommending, after reviewing these options and the critical and met needs that we have before you, to place a half cent transactions and use tax or sales tax on the November 6th ballot. This would be a tax in the unincorporated area only, even though the entire voters in the entire county would vote on it because they would also benefit from the tax. It would be for a 12 year period and it would be subject to annual audits and independent citizens oversight. The process would be that if the board chooses to date to place it on the ballot, it would go in the ballot in November. If it's approved, it would be in effect, probably in the last quarter of this fiscal year, so March through June. So we would get about a quarter of the proceeds if we put in a half cent. So that would be about $1.4 million in this fiscal year, 2018-19. So we would have, next year in 1920, you would have the full 5.7 million. This year you'd have only $1.4 million. Here's how we would propose that the budget, the board budgeted if it is approved by the voters. We would recommend that about a little more than $400,000 be used for the ongoing operating costs of the focused deterrence initiative. This is where the sheriff deputies and the behavior health would offer services for those individuals who are resistant to enter into treatment. And then we'd also fund the homeless navigation centers, both in Watsonville and in Santa Cruz. And then we'd also fund the parks maintenance workers and recreation staff. So that would be for then partial year funding for these programs. And then we would recommend trying to find the funds to fund all of these projects, which total $4.3 million. We think there's a way to do it. We've come up with it. Here's the recommendation we will be making to the board if the sales tax is approved. We would recommend using a million dollars of the sales tax on this year. Prop 68 funds, which are state funds of half a million dollars. We believe there's going to be about a million dollars in budget savings from this last fiscal year. And we also were notified that we are going to be reimbursed for SB 90 mandate money. And we'd propose using about $1.9 million of that. So the combination of those four sources of funding would allow us to fund all of these projects, every one of them, which would be a great benefit to the community. So in conclusion, that's our recommendation. And that concludes my staff report. Thank you very much. Thank you. Supervisor Caput. You're welcome. Just to, for the sake of transparency, the tax we're talking about is a 12-year tax. That is correct. Okay, it's not a 30-year tax, it's a 12-year tax. 50% plus one vote to pass it. That is correct. Okay, to assure that it's going to what we're voting for putting it on the ballot. I mean, that's separate, but people voting for it, how can they be assured that it's going to go to what we intended to go to? Well, we put on a resolution on today's agenda to accompany placing the measure on the ballot, which would set out these budget priorities for the board. And so you would be on record approving these budget priorities. Okay, and then I'm going to just read South County Parks to provide matching funds to unlock other resources. And I'll skip over a little bit to increase park safety, deferred maintenance, and establish new or expanded park facilities. That means we could actually purchase land and add acreage to South County Parks. That is correct. I like the wording on that. And just, I'll make a quick commentary, but I'm ready to vote on this. You know, it's a sad commentary on society today when you drive around and you look at what we used to use schools for parks and rec, our kids just going down there to the school to shoot baskets or to play catch or to kick the soccer ball around. If you look around, there are fences that have gone up. I've noticed a lot of schools are starting to look like prisons. And it's a sad commentary, something bad happens somewhere else. And I really hate to see that. And I've been arguing that at least on weekends, gates should be unlocked. People should be able to use those schools for recreation and the schools are not doing that. A lot of them, they're locked up 24-7 or whatever on weekends. And so what I'm getting at is I don't want us to, if we're gonna expand facilities and we're gonna actually do maintenance, I don't wanna see walls go up all around the facility and locking them out. I wanna see access, people able to go down there. So I mean, walls do not solve problems. They just defer problems and they put them off somewhere else. So anyway, I just wanna make sure that our parks are accessible. And I would like to see schools making their land accessible for people to use also their playgrounds for the kids that we see here that they're able to go down there and use them. Taxpayers are paying for all this and to have them locked out during reasonable hours is not fair to the taxpayer. They're paying for it. They should have access to it. Their kids and family should have access to it also. And let's see, just refer. That's basically it. So thank you. Thank you. A brief question from Supervisor Leopold. I know we wanna get to the community as well. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to ask, although this will be a tax that's only charged in the unincorporated area, the services that are gonna be provided here are really county-wide. The focus deterrent initiative is really to work with all of our incorporated cities as well. The Simkin Swim Center is obviously a regional park facility. The Leo's Haven is gonna be the only all-accessible park for handicap children throughout all Santa Cruz County. So everybody's gonna get a chance to vote on this, but everybody will also get a chance to benefit from this. Is that right? That is correct. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Appreciate everybody's patience. Now's an opportunity for members of the community to address us on this item. Please feel free to step forward. Can I get a sense of how many people are interested in addressing us on this item? Just to know how long testimony will be. Okay, we'll offer three minutes for each person. Thank you. Ms. Roberts, yes. Three minutes, I know. You don't have to take it all. This is true. Watch out. You wanna come? Okay. I actually wrote something down today because it's a very wonderful celebratory day for our team. My name is Mariah Roberts, Director of Chanticleer Park Neighbors and Vacinos. Mariah. See? And I'm here to say thank you to showing your commitment to the private public partnership that is Leo's Haven at Chanticleer Park. Thank you for prioritizing parks in your funding decisions and working with us to care for these spaces that we all hold dear. Through these years of work, you have shown us that a partnership with the County of Santa Cruz is not only possible, it can lead to something greater than its parts. Prioritizing healthy public spaces opens a free and accessible path for all of us to take charge of our own health, to find community, to connect with nature and to strengthen our families. Yeah, yeah. Hang on. We have a comment. Hi. What's your name? My name is Sergio. And I am five years old. Anything else about the park? And I want the park here. All right. All right. Back to the boring comment. Leo's Haven at Chanticleer Park has supporters from every district in this county. From service clubs, chambers of commerce, community groups, businesses, medical providers, educators, I cannot thank each of them enough. Today, I really wanna give a shout out, however, to the El Patio de Micasa bilingual family support group from Live Oak Community Resources. For years since we first organized, these families have met every week out at the undeveloped park site, no bathroom. Led by their teacher, Yolanda Provost de Fuentes, who I wanna grow up and become. She is here. They have raised their children, planting and harvesting in the interim community gardens. They have found health, community and support from each other under that giant, beautiful Live Oak. Whenever I'm weary of this fundraising and all of the hoops we all jump through, I go join the families in the park. I'm filled back up with nature. I'm nourished by the food from their harvest. I'm soothed by conversation, Yolanda's guitar and the sound of kids playing. I hope you'll join me in thanking them today for exemplifying what a public space can offer. So I wanna say thank you to the El Patio families. Thank you. Okay. And thank you for seeing that value and for following through on our shared commitment to build Leo's Haven at Chanticleer Park. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. What's your name, what's the name of your project? Hola. Can I plead it? Oh. Mi nombre es Inés Cartagena. Este, estamos ya por varios años esperando el parque y sé que nos falta un poquito y esperamos su apoyo y estamos aquí porque este parque es especial. Todos tenemos un conocido con necesidad, con discapacidad hoy en nuestros vecindarios y gracias. Y por eso estamos aquí. Okay. Do you need interpretation or do you understood? We may have had staff here that was here earlier but they had them. Okay, well mainly, what did you say? No. I know what she said. That is, it's very important to have a park in the community where the community, these children are going to be for many years there. And park is fun, it's family, it's communities, it's diversity, it's everything and the children is our future. You know, I'm 76 years old. I'm committed to do the work for them because they're going to be here for a long time and I hope that all of you do the same. Thank you very much and thank you, Mariah and thank you and all the mothers here you can raise and we use the park every week and we have a beautiful garden. If you need care, go there. Thank you. Thank you for your work, Yolanda. My pleasure. Hola, yo quiero un parque para mí. Soy madre del patio de mi casa y considero que este parque es muy importante para nuestros hijos pues queremos que crezcan libres, sanos apasionados emocionalmente, sanos emocionalmente y empoderados para enfrentar los retos de la vida moderna. Y qué más con este parque, no gracias por el apoyo, gracias por lo que están haciendo para nosotros. Buen día. I'm going to do a better job now because before, I didn't enter, but I don't. She said that she wants empowering the children and she goes to the garden because it's a place to grow the children in a safe place. Okay, so thank you. Thank you. Okay. Okay, good job, you guys. Thank you for your patience for being here so long. Good morning, members of the board. My name is Will Forrest. I am a resident of the city of Santa Cruz and employee of the county of Santa Cruz and the president of the Santa Cruz County Employees Chapter of SEIU and nowhere near as charming or entertaining or organized as the families who just spoke. But one thing I want to say is anytime you're thinking about proposing attacks, there's naturally, there's some resistance and there's some concern potentially on your part that it might fail, that it might look bad and so on. And so I cannot, because there is no ballot proposition as yet, the SEIU has not taken a position on it. And so I can't speak as to that. But what I can tell you is that I have spoken with some of our members and our leaders and that we're enthusiastic about the prospect of this proposition being approved by your board so that it can go to the people of the county to make an informed decision. And I think anytime that you are proposing something where you're putting it out to the voters to say, hey, do you want to spend money on this thing? Then the voters are getting to make the final choice and so we fully support that. And I know that there are not very many ways in which the county has the ready ability to raise money and the analysis by the CAO's or by staff shows that this is one of the few ways that you can go ahead and do that. And the purposes for which it is targeted, in particular the combination of health services, cooperation with law enforcement to reduce both kinds of issues we think is an extraordinarily good choice. So I want to urge you all to vote yes on this. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you for waiting, Sheriff Hart. Good afternoon, I think, yeah, afternoon now. Chair Friend, Board of Supervisors, Jim Hart, Sheriff Corner, and I'm here just to express my support of the board to adopt this resolution to place the half-send sales tax on the November ballot. I talked to you a little bit at our budget hearing about the focused initiative, focused deterrence initiative and that something I didn't say is that in my 30 years in law enforcement, I have never seen the level of mental health calls and substance use disorder calls that our patrol staff receives every single day. We're responding over 10 times a day to people who are in serious mental health crisis and that's just in the unincorporated area of the county. I'm sure the city of Santa Cruz and the city of Watsonville are experiencing similar numbers. And that's placing a tremendous burden on our patrol staff and all they're able to do is really place a band-aid on that call in that moment. And what this program would do would allow us to partner sheriff's deputies with mental health professionals to work with the district attorney, the public defender, the courts, the probation department to focus on people who are causing harm in our community who won't accept and don't want help. And so using resources that we have access to, particularly the county jail, along with other resources, I feel like we can convince these people that getting help, getting off the street and stop causing harm in our community, in our open spaces, our parks, our beaches and our business districts, it will do nothing but help our community. In the fifth district, I think the most picturesque park in this county is the covered bridge park in the fifth district. And that park is tremendously underutilized because of the number of people who are drinking and doing drugs and acting out. And you just don't see that many families in that park, the way they should be using it. And unless I place a deputy there during the day hours, it just doesn't get used. And so I think having a team like this that could really focus on those people for some long-term solutions will have tremendous benefit to the county. So thank you for your time. And I encourage you to vote yes on this resolution. Thank you. Thank you for your leadership, Sheriff Hart on that issue. Good afternoon. Thank you for waiting. Good afternoon. Thanks for having me. My name's Karen Gosling. And as a citizen of Santa Cruz County, I'm extremely enthused by this measure. It's very exciting to see the energy going to something that is so critically important. I'm also here as part of Santa Cruz Sunrise Rotary Club. And along with many other Rotary Clubs have been very big supporters of Leo's Haven. And I'm here with the crew that was with us behind us to really support this measure to make sure we get this park built as a healthcare professional and a rehabilitation therapist. I know the essential part of play has for children's development and the consequences of not having that. And this park is really gonna go a long way to ensuring the continued development for all of our children. And we have to have it soon. As part of Santa Cruz Sunrise Rotary, we've been involved in many public fundraisers or private fundraisers to help put money towards this. And we have our final one coming up at the end of September. It's John and Ken's most excellent adventure. And we have over 75 people who are training and raising money for this. Because they really believe in this park and we're hoping that this could be the final push to get that groundbreaking done on October 13th. So as a Rotary member, as a healthcare professional and as a citizen of this community, I want to thank all of you so much for your continued support of the parks and especially Leo's Haven. And thank you for your creativity and finding ways to make this happen. Thank you. And thank you Karen for the leadership, your leadership and the leadership of Sunrise Rotary for the project. I know that you've already raised a lot of funds and to hear another one scheduled, hopefully will be the last one is great. So thank you for your leadership. You're welcome. Thank you. Good afternoon Ms. Corwin. Good afternoon, I'm Terry Corwin. Some of you might remember me from my previous career as CEO and president of Land Trust of Santa Cruz County. I'm enjoying retirement now over a year, but I haven't lost my passion for this community. It's parks and its environment. My kids live here, I have grandkids here, and I'm currently serving as treasure of Santa Cruz, friends of Santa Cruz County Parks. I'm new. Despite my best efforts and those of some others over the last 10 years and much to my chagrin, Santa Cruz County still does not have sufficient dedicated funding to steward its parks and open spaces. Our current county parks department, ably led by director Gaffney, remains at risk of drastic cuts in the next inevitable recession. We all remember when the last recession hit in the parks department was radically cut and rolled under public works. Because of this lack of sufficient dedicated funding, Santa Cruz County does not have a strong public agency such as an open space district or a stably funded parks department that can leverage and partner with non-profits such as the Land Trust and or friends of Santa Cruz County Parks or others. Non-profits working in conservation and recreation in Santa Cruz County are at a disadvantage to their Bay Area brethren when it comes to competing for federal and state funds that require local matching funds. Thank goodness for our local philanthropic community that partially fills that void. I was honored to serve on the County Parks Strategic Planning Working Group. I helped to facilitate at all five of the community meetings that were convened to receive input on priorities. The community has spoken through the strategic planning process and they love their parks and they wanna see it stick around. The ballot measure before you presents an opportunity to provide some funding. It does not solve the problem of dedicated funding but it sure is a good start and I applaud you for considering it. I plan on if it passes, if you pass it and working hard to make it pass for the voters. So thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Corwin. Morning, Ms. Hall, welcome back. Good morning, Chair Friend, honorable Board of Supervisors, Mimi Hall, Interim Director of the Health Services Agency. I'm here just to speak about the importance of reminding the Board of the gaps that we have in the behavioral health system. We enjoy great partnerships with Human Services Department, with our Sheriff's Office and with our local police departments. But as I told the Board during my budget presentation, there are so many complexities to the work that we do and we have some serious gaps that are difficult to address under the funding systems and mechanisms that we have. And I really appreciate the work of not only the CAO's office but also Sheriff Hart and Chief Wilson in working with us back from, seems like the week that I got here in April on this focused deterrence initiative and just wanted to express my gratitude. Thank you, thank you for your work. Welcome back, Commissioner Minot. Good morning, Supervisor Friend. My name is Kate Minot. I live in Aptos. I'm the second district representative on the County Parks Commission. The Parks Commission met last night in Watsonville where Supervisor Caput was. We weren't able to review today's measure. But we took an informal poll and we know we're gonna have a formal presentation, make a formal recommendation to you as a single person. I urge you to approve this motion today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your work on the Parks Commission. To reduce the point. Yeah, thank you. Charlie. I'm Bruce Holloway from Boulder Creek. I'm a lot less worried about this tax measure than the last one. This is more in the classic sense of put a tax and provide services. It's not trying to, you know, the other one I don't think's gonna work. Parks and libraries, I think that's the fun part of local government. Those are the good services we get. I was in the first class of docents at Quail Hollow Park almost 30 years ago. I did that for a couple of summers. So I do support parks. But what I wanna point out is that the elephant in the room as far as the county is concerned is the unfunded liabilities for CalPERS. The city of Santa Cruz just passed a half cent sales tax and about a week after that passed, Marcus Pimintel, the finance director of the city made an eight million dollar prepayment towards the unfunded liability of the city of Santa Cruz. And he described it, I think he described it as, this isn't really eight million dollars, this is 15 million dollars because we would have been paying interest on this money for so many years in the future if we did not make this prepayment. So every jurisdiction that has an unfunded liability with CalPERS is paying seven percent, you're paying about seven percent interest on that unfunded liability. And the unfunded liability for this county is about 500 million dollars. So that's really the elephant in the room here. That's, and I wanna point out that for the city of Santa Cruz that's their first priority. As soon as they get more sales tax revenue, that's what they're gonna do, that's what they did with it. Same thing for the city of Scotts Valley. City manager at the city of Scotts Valley has looked at their finances. And by the way, every local jurisdiction, if you look at their CalPERS reports for all of their pension plans and you look at the projections for the next six or seven years, everybody's payment's gonna double. Everybody's payment's gonna double to CalPERS. The city, all of our water districts, we're all in the same boat. But it impresses me that the city of Santa Cruz finance director and the city of Scotts Valley city manager recognize this problem and they put that as their first priority. And their city of Scotts Valley is also planning to extend their sales tax. So I just wanna remind you about this elephant in the room. And another observation I wanna make about this. Gosh, I think it was more than 15 years ago I was here. And Bob Sur of Scotts Valley was in the back of the room. He was about 90 years old, I think. And he was, at the time the county was paying about 9% towards CalPERS. And I think it's over 20% today. And he was like a voice in the wilderness. Warning, warning the Board of Supervisors then that this CalPERS problem is gonna eat us up. And so the county's paying 20% towards CalPERS every year. That means that 20% of the money that ought to be fixing our roads. Thank you. Is getting spent on, it just isn't going where it needs to. Thank you. Is there anybody else who'd like to address this on this item? Okay, seeing none, we'll close public testimony and bring it back to the Board. Supervisor Leopold. Thank you, Chair. Thanks for everyone who waited to speak to this item. Our county administrative officer pointed out during budget hearings that the county of Santa Cruz isn't like every other county. There's lots of ways in which we could define that. But one of the things that the county of Santa Cruz is required to do is act like a municipality. Because so many people live in the unincorporated area, we provide so many services of a city, even though we don't have the same funding structure as a city. I was grateful several years ago when Assemblymember Mark Stone worked a path legislation to allow counties to have some of the same tools that cities have to raise funds to help pay for those municipal services. We also heard during budget hearings a great presentation from Sheriff Hart about work that could be done to address a pressing community problem around those suffering with a mental health disorder and substance use disorder, and a new way in which we might be able to attack the problem and really improve not only the lives of the people in that program, but the quality of life in Santa Cruz County. Likewise, we have seen an incredible amount of community support for our parks when we had a small funding measure on the ballot that received over 76% of the vote. Mariah Roberts, who was here today, has helped lead a fundraising campaign in which nearly $2 million has been raised to support a value that we all care, which is inclusivity and ensuring that we have the first all-inclusive park in Santa Cruz County. They have done that by building a broad array of supporters from little kids selling cookies on the street corner to service clubs to foundation. This park, however, will be available to all children in Santa Cruz County and will be a well-loved park. And so it seems appropriate to ask the entire county to help be part of that fundraising effort in order to help make that a reality. We wanna start construction by next summer. We also have other critical parks in our system. Lastly, we know that as we heard in our last measure, having resources to be able to address the issues facing people experiencing homelessness in Santa Cruz County is critical. It's important for our community and we have to do everything we can given that there are close to 3,000 people who are without shelter this evening. So I'm an enthusiastic supporter and we'll work hard to pass this measure. And I would approve, I would make the motion for all the recommended actions to put this sales tax measure on the ballot. I'll second that. We have a motion from Supervisor Leopold, a second from Supervisor Caput. Are there additional comments? Yeah, much of the same. I just think this, I see this measure as a sign of strong fiscal management in the county over the last decade or so. We hit a big recession. We had to cut back on sheriff's deputies. We had to put the parks department within the public works department has been mentioned. But now we're on good standing. And there's no question, as was mentioned, the pension issue obligation is over, is blooming over us like every other governing agency in the state of California. But I think we're really doing the right thing and focusing on this public health sheriff's cooperation issue as well as parks under the circumstances. As Sheriff Hart said, having deputies respond to 10 calls with people that are in a personal crisis of one type of another is not something that we realized 10 years ago. There's new challenges and it's gonna take a cooperative effort and I think we're, this is the right way to address that. And as well with our parks, we have a tremendous director, Jeff Gaffney, who's done more with what he has than most people could imagine and this whole parks department. But now providing this asset, and I really see parks as a tremendous county asset. So people can enjoy their leisure time and Leo's Haven is just a star in the sky. It's a tremendous asset for the county of Santa Cruz. So I think we're filling a void when we had to make cutbacks during the Great Recession and there's a tremendous need and a different need in that Sheriff or Public Safety Health Services Agency and there's always been a need for more parks in our growing county population. So I think we are focusing on the right things to do with the proposed sales tax and I'll support this measure. Thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. Yeah, I just wanna echo some of the comments which is that I really appreciate the leadership of this board and board's previous and county staff from top to bottom that have really made sure our fiscal house is in order that we have high bond ratings who are able to refinance and save taxpayers millions of dollars so that we're doing more with fewer employees than we had almost a decade ago. And by getting our house in order, I think we've been able to provide solid services to our residents in addition to starting to do some preventative programs, starting to do some innovative programs. What I see this measure doing in almost every aspect is spending more on deterrence by having a focused deterrence initiative and I appreciate the Sheriff's leadership on this. That's gonna save not only citizens time and discomfort and insurance charges but then the revolving doors of the jails and the revolving doors of the emergency rooms by focusing on a few people who cause a disproportionate impact to our community by having a navigation center that gets people stabilized sooner and gets them attached to resources sooner it also reduces impacts on the community and costs. And finally by having parks that are accessible across this county to all children is a really the most preventative because you're talking about a generational investment where you're giving people and families and kids somewhere positive to go and to build relationships and health and quality of life. And so I'm excited about this possibility and I'm excited about bringing forward an initiative that really benefits not only the community now but could benefit the community for generations to come. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. To clarify something to make it clear to the public too, when we're talking about voting on this tax for the parks, the sales tax in the four cities will not go up. That is correct. Okay. Then one legal question, it would be about half or more of the voters on this, they won't be taxed but it is a legal question. They can vote on a tax for somebody else to pay. The entire county will vote on the tax because they will be benefiting from it but it won't be, the tax will not be in place within the city limits of the four jurisdictions in the county. Okay, would that be the legal opinion also? City residents will pay the tax when they're shopping in the unincorporated area. The tax will not be imposed within city limits. Okay, so Watsonville's sales tax will stay at 9.25. That is correct. Thank you. Okay, well we have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? It passes unanimously. I'd like to thank all of you who came out for this item. I'd like to ask the board, we have a couple more regular agenda items I believe will be pretty quick and are we comfortable with just going through them? All right, so move on to item six, which is a public hearing to consider resolution appointing the county road commissioner as outlined in the memo the deputy CAO and the director of public works have a resolution and the road commissioner appointment. We know that this is just a standard process but we have to have a public hearing on it. I don't believe there needs to be any presentation unless whether any questions from board members on this. Seeing none, I'll now open up the public hearing. Are there any questions or comments from the community on item six? Seeing none, I'll close the public hearing and bring back for action. I will move approval of the recommended action. We have a motion from Leopold a second from Coonerty. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. And I move on to item seven, also a public hearing to consider the proposed issuance of bonds by the California statewide community's development authority for the benefit of Montevista Christian School and the amount not to exceed $6 million and take related actions as recommended by the CAO. We do have a brief presentation on this. Very brief, very brief. Good morning members of the board. Christina Mallory, the county budget manager. So briefly on June 26th, your board set a TEFRA hearing which is a Tax Equity and Financial Responsibility Act hearing for today to authorize the proposed issuance of the bonds and an amount not to exceed $6 million by the California statewide community's development authority, CSCDA, for the benefit of the Montevista Christian School. Proceeds of the bonds will be used for the construction of a new 16,600 square foot multi-purpose building. Pursuant to the IRS code and elected body within the territorial limits of the project must hold the hearing to allow for public comment on a proposed issuance of bonds. The county has no liability for the repayment of the bonds. The proper 14-day notice for the hearing has been provided as required. Their representatives here from the financing team are available to answer any questions you may have. Jen Pencour from CSCDA and Mitchell Larano, I hope I didn't butcher that, the headmaster from Montevista Christian School. So it's recommended your board open the public hearing, hear any public comment, close the hearing and adopt the resolution. Thank you, are there any questions from board members? And I appreciate that you were here today. I know that it's been quite a long wait. Seeing none, we'll now open up the public hearing. Are there any comments or questions from the community on this item, item seven regarding this public hearing for the Montevista Christian School bonds? Seeing none, we'll bring it back to the board for a quick reaction. Second, we have a motion from Supervisor McPherson and a second from Supervisor Coonerty. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? It passes unanimously. Again, thank you all for waiting back there. Number eight is to consider a final reappointment of various at-large representatives to the Workforce Development Board for terms that expired June 30th of 2022. We had nominations accepted at our late June meeting and we have previous agenda materials. Are there any questions or comments from board members before we open it up to the community on this? We'll open up to the community. Any questions or comments on the at-large representatives of the Workforce Development Board? I move approval of the recommended actions. A motion from Leopold and a second from Coonerty. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? It passes unanimously. Now on item nine is to consider an ordinance of Mending Santa Cruz County Code Section 2.14050 relating to the authority to approve contract change orders and direct the clerk of the board to place the ordinance on the next available agenda for final adoption. This is outlined in the memo of the Deputy CAO and Director of Public Works. We have the ordinance that strike out an underline and the clean copy. Mr. Machado, welcome. Thank you for waiting. Yeah, thank you Chairman Friend, members of the board. The item before you is an amendment to ordinance 2.14.050 contract change orders. Section, this section of the county code provides authority to the Director of Public Works to approve and execute contract change orders. This update to the county code is to make it consistent with the California Public Contract Code. The public contract code sections also provide specific limits for which a public works director may approve contract change orders. Change orders above the limits require approval by the Board of Supervisors. Those limits are listed in the board letter. I'm here to answer any questions you may have. The recommended action is to approve and concept this ordinance amendment of the county code, authority to approve contract change orders and to direct the clerk of the board to place ordinance amendment on the next available agenda for final adoption. Thank you, I have no questions. Any questions from board members? Anybody in the community like to address us on item nine regarding this? Okay, we'll bring it back to the board for action. I'm glad to see this. Moving forward, I move approval of the recommended actions. I have a motion from Leopold, a second from Supervisor Coonerty. It's always good to see Mr. Wiesner in a suit and tie to know what it took. And now we know it brings item nine forward. So all those in favor? All right, opposed. It passes unanimously as a reminder. Item 12 was withdrawn by the appellants. That was the item on the public hearing for petition for rescission, so we don't have item 12. Regarding closed session, is there anything reportable planned? There is. Is there anybody from the community that'd like to address us on the items in closed session before we convene into closed session? Okay, seeing none, the board will recess into closed session or adjourn into closed session. And if there's something reportable, as we believe there will be, we'll report it at the end of closed session. Thank you all for being here and thank you for Community TV for being here today and reporting on it.