 Okay, it turns out, okay. Susan, are we ready? Not quite. Okay. The wait till it turns to nine o'clock. Okay. Okay. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Welcome to the October 22nd, 2019 Board of Supervisors meeting. I'm gonna call the meeting order and ask the clerk to call the roll. Supervisor Leopold. Here. Friend. Here. Caput. Here. McPherson. Here. Chair Coonerty. Now we're gonna have a moment of silence in the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join me if you're able. And to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, a regular God. Mr. Plosius, do we have any late additions, additions or deletions to the agenda? Yes, on the regular agenda, item 11, there's additional materials, revised memo, packet page 194. On item 12 of the regular agenda, there's additional materials, appendix C to attachment A, insert packet page 274, revised attachment D, replacement package pages 254 through 261, revised attachment E, replacement packet pages 262 and 263. There's also an addenda to the consent agenda, item 42, approve reallocation of appropriations in the amount of $170,000 of fixed assets, purchases for the replacement of the internet security appliances, as recommended by the Director of Information Services. There's a board memo dated October 18th, 2019. And then there's an attachment, ISD fixed asset re-alignment. Thank you. Great, thank you. Are there any items on the consent agenda that the board members would like to remove? On the consent on number 19, I'll be voting no. Only because of a lack of information and it seems like we're heading down. I'd like to know more about it. Sure. Number 22, wanna welcome Grant Buckley. Hold on, this is just the opportunity to pull something off the consent. We'll have comments in a few minutes. That'll be fine. Okay. We're now gonna move on to public comment. This is an opportunity for members of public to speak to us about anything that is on our consent agenda, which is items 14 to 41, our closed session agenda, or our regular agenda if you're unable to stay because you have to get to work or have another obligation. Before we begin, we have a brief presentation. Would you like to make a comment? Sure. Joining us today is Paul Horvath from Santa Cruz Fire and other members of Santa Cruz Fire Department to recognize two individuals who have been leaders in their community in Prospect Heights to establish Firewise Community. And I'll have Paul say a few words and then we have the two leaders, Abby Young and Lorely Martin. Yes, great, thank you, Board. Once again, Paul Horvath, Santa Cruz Fire. Today is a special day. We're recognizing the first Firewise Community in Santa Cruz County. A Firewise Community is where neighbors gather to share knowledge about reducing fire hazards in and around their homes, particularly in the wildland urban interface where the forest meets the homes. And without further ado, I'd like to first introduce Division Chief Rob Odie who's been instrumental in coordinating this group and working very closely with them. Yeah, I wanna take the opportunity to thank Lorely and Abby Young for being a part of this group. This group has a tremendous impact on the safety of not only the neighborhood, but the city and the county as a whole allows us to do our job better to serve them and serve others. And it's been a true honor and a pleasure to work with both of you and allowing us to create this group and hopefully create many more in Santa Cruz and throughout the county. So, Abby. Good morning, everyone. And thank you so much for this recognition of a very important social and safety issue. We hope that we are the prototype. That was our goal for Santa Cruz County. And now we have four more fire-wise groups in the pipeline and are looking to engage more with county groups like FireSafe. So, it's a big work and we're glad to be part of the leadership that's starting it out. There is a meeting tonight at 7 p.m. Police Department on hardening your homes that FireSafe is putting on. So, please consider there are other options coming up. Thank you for the honor. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you, Leopold. Supervisor Leopold and Angela. Thank you for this honor. Our neighbors here in addition to Abby are Laura Caldwell and my son Sergei Dubot who wasn't sure he wanted to come this morning. I'm from Paradise. And if you haven't been there, I'd like to actually take you up there with me since the fire. The 30-year anniversary of the Loma Prieta tells us how devastating that was. It was really nothing compared to what you will see in Paradise. It's hard to get your brain around it. The recognition is totally awesome. And now what we want to work with you on is being prepared and some action items. Citizen awareness, evacuation protocols really helped make us aware of that. In Paradise, we always knew there was fire danger. We thought about it all the time. I don't think we do that here. In Marin, they're having drills. In Paradise, we had zones and we had drills. And people knew how to get out. Here, I can't get off my street at eight o'clock when the school traffic's in place. So as we look at this, I urge county-wide evacuation in citizen education and drills. Think about neighborhoods safe zones where you bring the first responders to us and keep us off the roads. This was a strategy used in Paradise, not because it was planned but because that was the only options they had and they saved hundreds. So thank you again for the honor. We look forward to continuing to work with you. This is just the beginning. Thanks. Thank you. I have two proclamations recognizing both Abby and Lorely and their leadership in establishing this fire-wise community. What's so important is educating your neighbors, having people take responsibility for their own properties and learning how they can help others in times of crisis and preventing fires. So I just want to share these with you and I hope you'll join me in a round of applause recognizing these two great leaders. Thank you very much. Hi, my name is Leticia Miller and I'm just here. I listened to, and you're not voting on this today, but I just want to remind the Board of Supervisors and Supervisor Leopold that I listened to the message he gave on the May 18th meeting and a lot of discussion was made on the light that's going in at Robertson and Soquel Drive. I want the Board to know we have not had any public input on this. So I'm here to say before this is even included in any conversation, I would like to see the Board and John Leopold have some public input on this. Thank you. Mr. Arnold, please come forward. I see the timer is set for two minutes. That's correct. Okay, that's not according to your agenda and your CAO should be punished for that. I ask the other four people to put it back to the three minutes as listed. Will the other four supervisors stand up for free speech? Okay, I'm glad you speak for it. Anyway, Mr. Two-Minute Coonerty, in fact, your Fabian Socialist School you went to, the political party has prevented England from separating from the European Union. We know you're working with your parallel government, AMBAG, and the North American Union and your continued cooperation with the communists most locally and domestically and internationally continues. We find here a report, Leon Panetta. It says CIA assets in China were killed soon after Leon Panetta took over the CIA, tied to communist Hugh Delacey. It was General Douglas MacArthur's. Mr. Willoughby that said Hugh Delacey was responsible for supporting the Nazis. You've got two plaques out there supporting Hugh Delacey. And after he supported the Nazis and the Soviet Union dividing up Poland, he continued to support every communist organization from the Soviet Union to Red China to Nicaragua to Grenada. And you hate the veterans, you hate the people, you hate the American people, you hate self-government, you don't even go by your own damn rules. And why does he have emoluments? What's he doing working for an energy corporation? Aren't you paying him hundreds of thousands of dollars? He doesn't have enough to do. And what about your emoluments and your business actions, Mr. Coonerty? And where's the Santa Cruz Sentinel? I've got pictures of Bill Gates and Epstein in here and if Bill Gates advisor received Epstein's, Epstein's, the child's pornography and child raping and sex rings are involved with you and with, pardon me, and with Zach Friend. Thank you, next speaker. That's hard to follow. My name's Tony Crane, a resident of Aptos representing the Estates Barragas neighborhood in opposition to the second story program. I don't know if you all read the article in the Aptos Times. In that article, the CEO of Encompass, Monica Martinez, said that there had been no reportable events in the last three months. That is a bald-faced lie. I don't know how you continue to allow this continued, you know, just misleading of the public. The email that I sent you with the mugshot and the arrest report of the person arrested on September 4th, that person is absolutely a guest of that program, arrested for drunken disorderly fighting in public. But because they're protected by HIPAA laws, apparently, the sheriffs can't tell you what's going on. When asked, they said it was completely unrelated. That person had been there many times before and was a guest. That happened September 4th. Monica knows that. You guys should know this, and if you don't, and if she doesn't, then clearly there's something wrong. So just because they're protected by HIPAA, doesn't give her the right to make false statements about the program, which affect the safety of our neighborhood. And Zach, your legal claims that you have no jurisdiction to do anything about it. You know, I've read a lot of the stuff there. There's holes in it big enough to drive a truck through. Your job is to protect the community and not to fold to like these legal arguments that don't apply to an unregulated, unlicensed, uncertified mental health program in a residential neighborhood. Thank you. Gentlemen, my name is Nancy Killy. I'm an almost 30 year resident of Bonny Dune, and I would like to comment on your consideration of a proposed tax increase in order to help fund a third driver for Cal Fire, especially during the winter. For those of you who may think we're more likely to retain our fire insurance with an extra firefighter on in winter, we won't. During fire season, the units are fully staffed and paid for by the state of California. What potentially would help us guarantee our insurance remains in place is forcing PG&E to be a little more proactive. And also, working with the Department of Public Works, they're mandated to maintain a 10 foot corridor on each side of the road, but they're not doing that. And it would really, really help us. We've had CDF talk to us about how it would be in a fire trying to come out of residential areas in the woods. We really need those roads maintained. Having three responders during the winter for medical and other assistance calls is of no value. During the time my husband was gravely ill, I called 911 several times. It was volunteers on the scene first for every time, and two people from Cal Fire were more than enough to attend to him until paramedics arrived. Should there have been a house fire, I know the volunteers would still have been first on the scene. And a third person wouldn't have helped because what would be needed in that instance are water tenders and other equipment. A third firefighter on a vehicle couldn't drive because they're required to stay on their assigned vehicle already coming to a fire, which brings up my final point. If new equipment is purchased, who will drive it? We need more volunteers who can, not more paid Cal Fire people who can't. We are already assessed $159.56 each year as part of County Fire CSA number 48. Unless we have guarantees that increased taxes are used in a way which will actually benefit on Incorporated Area County residents, I don't see the need for them, thank you. Supervisors, thank you for the opportunity to speak. I represent Santa Cruz Climate Action Network with 1,400 people. Zero carbon by 2030. Thank you for passing the county operations for this last time. We need to get this to everybody. And I know you must feel sometimes those people again, they're always asking for more. Well, it's not because we like to be a thorn in the side. It's because the climate is accelerating. Climate change is accelerating. Way beyond what scientists thought. What they predicted in 1990 might happen by 2050 or beyond is happening now, and it's very serious. And collectively we have not done enough so we need to step things up. And this is one way to do it. We have other ideas too. We have another 200 signatures here from... Good morning, supervisors. My name is Melissa Freebaran. I'm a local registered nurse. I'm here to speak to you about Assembly Bill number 538. This is regarding sexual assault, medical, evidentiary examinations and reporting. I'm here to ask questions of you of why our SART nursing team has not been back locally in the county, why rape victims have to travel over to Santa Clara to be seen and have a rape kit done. I wanna draw your attention to the penal code section five, section B. Each county with a population of more than 100,000 shall arrange that professional personnel trained in the examination of victims of sexual assault, including child sexual abuse, shall be present or on call either in the county hospital, which provides emergency medical services or in any general acute care hospital which has contracted with the county to provide emergency medical services. So I'm here to ask questions. When is Dominican in Watsonville going to bring back SART so that local women who are rape victims and local children and local men possibly are able to be serviced locally in-house, not over the hill? It's a very added burden to victims to have to drive over to Santa Clara to be seen. Thank you. Good morning, supervisors, Chairman Coonerty. Catherine O'Day would save our shores. First, I wanna take a moment to celebrate your leadership on banning the distribution of single-use plastic toilet trees in the hospitality industry last November, which led the state to act during this last legislative session and past similar ordinance. That is a big win, and I thank you for that. However, this state legislative session proved to be a mixed bag for plastic pollution legislation, demonstrating that there is still much work to be done at the local and regional level, and that is the primary reason I've come out here today. We know that you are poised to take action to ban water and single-use plastic bottles in county facilities and consider an EPR-like program, take-back program for disposable contact lenses. If the research, the county DPW has been conducting, indicates that there is not already a widespread volunteer program offered by a majority of opticians, and we look forward to those actions. We will be grateful for those actions, but they are low-hanging fruit. Bolder action is still needed, and we believe you all recognize it. So the issue I really wanna talk about today is microfibers. Microfibers in our environment are by orders of magnitude the most ubiquitous and negatively impactful plastic pollution issue we know of today. Hundreds of billions of these tiny pollutants are already in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the soil that we grow our food in. Hundreds of millions more enter our environment every day, with the majority entering our waterways as a result of laundering our polymer-based, i.e. plastic, clothing. The good news is there is a simple solution that will prevent significant volumes of these microfibers from continuing to enter our beloved Monterey Bay. For less than $100, external microfiber filters can be installed on residential and non-industrial-type commercial washing machines. Please take action on this. We know you're looking for additional real-world study. I think the study proves that we can reduce these significantly. May I ask you to take that up next? Thank you. Good morning, supervisors. Thank you for this opportunity. Rod Caborn also will save our shores. I would, I'm a great optimist, and I want to make reference to the fact that the single-use plastic discussion was taken from the agenda today. And so my optimism leads me to believe that you guys are hard at work doing something really, really big and bold. And my assumption is that it's moving around and getting all the local cities on board for a county-wide ban on bottles, on plastic bottles. I would just like to give some context to that. I'm sure you all realize that in Massachusetts, Concord has done this as a city for six years now and having great success with it. Great Barrington is doing it in Massachusetts as is Sudbury now. Is that it? No, okay. And it's succeeding. They're doing it. So there is precedent for this. And Santa Cruz is a leader. California is a leader, and Santa Cruz is a leader within that. And it can be done, just as it was at San Francisco Airport as well. And as it's done across in many universities and colleges. So there's no reason why it cannot be done. Sure, there'll be adversary, and that will come from the business community, of course. But having said that, little adversity breeds greatness and creativity, and that is the business environment that we have in this area. It just takes the courage and the boldness, which I believe all of you have. You have a community that's behind it. Why don't we lead the way? Why don't we do this? I encourage you so wholeheartedly to trust your instincts. Thank you. Chair Coonerty and supervisors, my name is Gillian Greensight. I hadn't planned to speak until I heard the registered nurse speak about the sexual assault nurse examiner program. I only recently became aware that those who've been raped no longer had the dedicated room, the dedicated and trained nurse examiners after sexual assault. So they didn't have to go into the emergency room, but could be seen here with facilities that in the mid-80s, I brought the idea back from another community and worked with then and late district attorney, Art Dana, to bring this program and set it up in Santa Cruz, both the SART program, Sexual Assault Response Team and the component of that sexual assault nurse examiners. Santa Cruz became a beacon of hope for the whole country with that program. We were cited as the originators of the program and it became a model for the country. And for all those years with an average of 30 reported rapes in the city, and I don't know the number for the county, those who've been raped could be guaranteed of quality care and trained personnel. So I was shocked to hear that Hester hasn't been true for a few years, that those who've been raped had to go over the hill. Whether they're driven by police or not, it is added to the trauma. So I hope you would make this a priority and that we don't go too much longer without returning Santa Cruz to the forefront of services for those who've been raped. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, I'm Monica McGuire again, coming from South County with the additional half hour wait because on the freeway, because you have not supported the greenway creation of bike lanes in this county, the way that we need. And that among the other things, I would prefer to be able to stand here and speak to you about, but since I have only two minutes and that is not a good sentence of democracy whatsoever, I'm gonna focus on the piece that I was horrified at as agenda item 24. You know that PG&A has made their plans clear to give us more shutoffs of power for the next 10 years in addition to raising our rates. You write that you're going to send them a letter saying that's not very nice is insane. I feel so angry. I stayed up late writing the letter that I can't believe our supervisor didn't write since I'm in district two and we have had the largest number as far as I can tell talking to people of the problems from the shutoff. We lost millions of dollars in this county. You need to be letting not just the CPUC a taken agency which doesn't care obviously since the smart meter debacle and let them know plus the governor plus the states that it is entirely unacceptable that tens of thousands of us dealt with this and they're planning on giving us more that it's unacceptable that this would happen with low winds and still not have a much bigger voice from you about it. That it's unacceptable to have to catch up after this and to plan that now we have to do this from now on. We know that we should be saying PG and E should be responsible for our losses and that is what we think we turn to supervisors to do for us. There are a number of more items that I don't have time to read here that all have to do with exactly what you could say and how you could go to the public media and much more to garner the support needed to say what you need to say in defense of us and you can go to the mayor of Nevada city who has done an amazing job. As she has said, no, we actually have to take legal action Ms. McCray in order to say that they should not have any future shutoffs of us without remuneration for what we're going through. A few times up. And they are getting $52 billion back from us already with their bankruptcy. Please use teeth as you write letters and make your statements for us. And here are the 10 copies you I'm forced to bring because our democracy demands that I do that. I already emailed it, but that wasn't enough. This is not okay. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Becky Steinbruner. I'm a resident of rural Aptos. And I want to thank the two women who have stood up here before you and ask that again, those who are who would suffer from rape to be able to be treated and examined here. I've heard your board talk about doing this a number of times. And I really have to feel like if we had a woman up on your board, this would probably happen. It would be before us. So I want to now talk to you about item number 37, that is to accept and file the updated 2019 road maintenance and rehabilitation account project list. I've taken a moment here just now to look at the status of Lompico Road. I have been here before and asked you to give that priority because a nationwide study that was published in the Mercury News listed Lompico Road as the most problematic and hazardous route for fire evacuations. So I am grateful that there will be a repair done this December, a 100 foot long section. But until December of 2020 and of December of 2021, the rest of the road will not be repaired. So I ask that you work with Mr. Machado in public works and reshuffle the priority to Lompico Road residents. I also want to bring your attention to this Wednesday's Tomorrow's Plan Commission growth goal for 2020. And I note in that report that the limiting factor in this county for growth has been the water infrastructure and the transportation. To that end, I want to let you know that I am still pursuing legal action against the Pure Water Soquel Project. The Soquel Creek Water District wants to do to inject 1.3 million gallons of treated sewage water into the drinking water supply for the Mid County. This is a veiled attempt to address the problems with growth in the area that are unnecessary. There's plenty of water on the North Coast and the river if the water district will only pursue it. Thank you very much. Thank you, Becky and Monica especially and everybody else who comes to speak. Well, I remember when you got on the city council and Santa Cruz, Mr. Coonerty and you said, oh, let's have two minutes instead of three minutes. So I think of you as two minute Coonerty as is also cutting out public comment essentially on the consent agenda items. The job of supervisors or elected representatives is to listen to the public and represent the public, not the corporate interest. So your contempt of the public I feel is quite clear. I want to quote Dr. Mercola. He wrote an article, the 5G war, technology versus humanity in brief. We should focus on preventing the deployment altogether. We should focus on preventing the deployment of 5G altogether. As explained in my 2017 interview with Martin Paul Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry and Basic Medical Sciences at Washington State University. The primary danger of electromagnetic fields in general is that it causes excess oxidative stress that results in mitochondrial dysfunction. You can check out his website, mercola.com. You heard the name, you heard the reference to the mayor of Nevada City, California, Renette Senna. She's called for the dismantling of PG&E. And I think that's what we need. We need public ownership of utilities, not corporate ruination and dictatorship that we have with the system. Thank you, renew deal. And in terms of plastics, gotta prevent in the first place. So hardly any time to say anything, aren't you delighted, Mr. Coonerty and the board? And what an insult to all the people who are here. So your time's up. Yes, the kings of the counting, time's up. I'll point out, Ms. Garrett, that the public comment time before we get to the items that we're gonna vote and debate on today is per the rules, not to exceed 30 minutes. If I'd given everyone three minutes, you wouldn't have your opportunity to speak to us today. So I thought it was a good opportunity to let everyone have an opportunity to participate when they come for public comment. And that's why I choose two minutes. We'll now move on to item number six, which is action on the consent agenda. These are items 14 to 41. And I'll ask my colleagues if they have any comments before we entertain a motion. There's a couple of items I'd like to address. First of all, item 19, I'd like to thank the CEO for moving forward on the idea of establishing a climate action manager. This position will be a great investment in managing our climate response schools. I'd look forward to more detail in January. It's desperately needed. Item number 23, and I'd like to compliment this county for what it's done in that area of climate action, and particularly on plastics, which has been mentioned here. We've been the leader. It's beginning with Mark Stone and the plastic bags and Zach Friend with the toiletry bottles and so forth. We start those things here in Santa Cruz County and they become statewide. So we are taking some action and we're gonna take more in the future. I'm very pleased to nominate Jen Mickelson for the Fish and Wildlife Commission. She served in the Santa Rosa Valley Water District. As a staff member, we're lucky to have her insight on the commission. That's item number 23. On item number 24, regarding the PG&E public safety power shut off, I wrote the letter. I can guarantee you that every member of this board has equal interest in this and concerned. We know from the complaints received in my office, stemming from our own county staff that PG&E's power safety shut off event did not go very smoothly, to say the least, to be as kind as I can about it. Our county had ongoing communications, has had ongoing communications with PG&E for a year, including our Office of Emergency Services as well. We need to let the PUC, who oversees the PG&E leadership, know that we expect a remedy for that and as quickly as possible. The PUC needs to know and to provide more insight in the future and create a better guideline, create better guidelines for what PG&E is required to do before, during, and after an outage to reduce harm to residents and businesses. My additional direction will be for the county staff to provide an accounting of the county resources and costs involved in responding to the outage and any details we have about the impact on residents and businesses. We should share that information in our letter to the PUC and the, and PG&E as well. There's a lot of things to put together, but we need to do that in a package and let them know what a, well, a disaster it was here for the people of Santa Cruz County and I'm sure throughout the state of California, Northern California, as far as PG&E is concerned. On item number 37, the Roan Maintenance and Rehabilitation. Now I wanna really thank the Public Works Department for presenting this list. We are asked every day, every week, by constituents about the status and the timeline for their road repairs and believe me, there are plenty. Don't forget that in that storm of 2016-17, we had $100 million worth of road damage in this county, half of the road damage in the state of California right here. This is something that we really need to, we are addressing. Thanks to the voters of Measure D, we get a leg up on that. We're closer to it with the $5 million in income that comes from that every year. We have 600 miles of roadway in this county. There's a lot of damage in some critical areas and I'm glad to say that there's, we're going on a Lompico right now as I speak. So I really do feel that we have addressed the issues of the main roads as quickly as we can and the feeder roads into those main roads so we can have access, people can have better transportation options while the winter to come. I do hope that PG&E will post this and I think it is on their webpage so members of the public will have access to that list. It's really important. You can call our office but look at the public works list. It's a long list of roads that need to be done. It's gonna take some time and we're gonna get to them as quickly as possible but I think public works is doing an excellent job with the monetary resources it has. And then number 39, I keep talking about the Felton Library but I wanna thank the donors who are listed of, who made some naming, contributed for some naming opportunities. This is a fantastic park and library combination. It's going to be opening formally at the end of January. The celebration is beginning to be January 25th and work on the Discovery Park that is right adjacent to the library is going very well so it's gonna be great times in the Santa Rosa Valley and the Felton Library Park facility come January. I wanna thank everybody who contributed to that effort to make it a reality. Thank you, Chair. Professor Caput. I'm sorry, no on number 19. And then number 22, I'd like to welcome Grant Buckwald on the Fish and Wildlife Advisory Commission. I think he'll be a great asset and looking forward to having him on there. On item 32, if anybody's here to answer this, where the $15,000 came from, who and what, why we have some extra on the core? If we don't, I'll find that answer out later. Okay, I'll wait till later on that. I'll ask somebody from the core and find out where the money came from. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Brown. Thank you, Chair. I'll just briefly comment on one item, which is item 34 to thank Public Works Director in particular, excuse me, the Parks Director, although the Public Works Director definitely deserves credit as well for the upgrades that we're doing to Seacliffe Park. This has been a multiple year process to get these restrooms installed and to get this over the finish line as a significant component. We have hundreds of people that use that park and currently they don't have a place other than a portable to use a restroom. And so to have this come in is a big deal for the community in that area. People have been pushing for it for a long time but it's become a priority year after year of the Parks Director and I appreciate your work, Mr. Gaffney, to ensure that it came through. Supervisor Leopold. Good morning, Chair. Just a couple of items to comment on. On item number 19 about the Climate Action Manager, this is the first steps to actually getting this position on board. I look forward to the recruitment plan in 2020. It's clear from the discussions we've been having here at our board that we need to start preparing for the adaptation strategy that's going to necessary to deal with the impact of climate change. And I look forward to us having this position filled. On item number 24, I support the efforts of my colleague, Supervisor McPherson, about this letter and detailing the impacts. And I think I understood you correctly, Supervisor, that we're going to do some kind of economic analysis. And I think our Office of Economic Development should be able to detail what the impact was on our local businesses. I heard from a lot of businesses that were impacted by what was going on. And I think we need to share that information not only with the public here, but with the CPUC so they understand that what they've allowed instead of pushing for the investment in the PG&E infrastructure to protect us from wildfires. On item number 31, I want to thank our Human Services Department on these investment that we're making in childcare facilities. This Board took action to change the way we do our childcare developer fees. That has resulted in more money. This is $170,000 going to upgrade our childcare facilities in Santa Cruz County. And I appreciate the hard work it takes to figure out how many folks we could help out with this. It will definitely help families, young families. And with that. Great, I just have a couple of comments as well. Again, my thanks to the Human Services Department for the expansion of the childcare development fee program that's now creating childcare development loans. As families struggle to stay in our community with the high cost of living, one of the things that we can do is provide more affordable quality childcare. And this is an important element to helping childcare centers provide that. Second, on item number 35, which is a deferral on the accessory dwelling units or grantee unit program. I'd ask additional direction that staff include an analysis of recent state legislation that has changed some of the rules around accessory dwelling units and how that may impact our county as well and the creation of accessory dwelling units. And finally, on item 41, which is about the Davenport Crossing, we've been trying to create a safe crossing from the parking lot to the businesses as people try to cross Highway 1. And Davenport is extremely dangerous situation and we don't wanna have any more injuries or fatalities. I wanna appreciate the Public Works Department and the Regional Transportation Commission for doing their best to try to work with Caltrans to make this happen and we will continue to put effort into ensuring that there's a safe crossing there for residents and visitors alike. So I'd entertain a motion. I'd move the consent agenda as amended. Okay, so we've got a motion by Leopold and a second by Friend with the additional direction with Supervisor Caput registering a no vote on item number 19. 19. 19. 19. Okay, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? That passes unanimously with the exception of Supervisor Caput's no vote on item number 19. We're now moving on to item number seven, which is a presentation of the 2019 California State Association of Counties Challenge Awards as outlined in a memorandum of the County Administrative Officer. And. Okay. Our pleasure. This side. Thank you, Chair Coonerty. This next item has to do with recognition for county programs and services. Over the last two years, we have worked very hard to improve both internally and in the work that we're doing on behalf of our residents in line with our strategic plan. We see days like this as a validation of those efforts. I am pleased to introduce Darby Kernan from the California State Association of Counties. And she will be addressing you and our employees who have worked so hard to make improvements in our community and areas of the environment and solid waste, housing, and mental health and homelessness, all of which are community priorities under our strategic and our operation plans. This is Darby Kernan. Thank you. Hi, everybody. I'm Darby Kernan. I'm the Deputy Executive Director of the California State Association of Counties. I wanna thank you for the opportunity to talk today. Santa Cruz, hearing the public comment today, it is amazing how so much of what starts in Santa Cruz does end up to become state legislation. And a lot of the programs that we're recognizing today are things that, as we are looking at homelessness and the environment that these are programs, the more we talk about the other counties take on and then the state eventually passes legislation on. I do wanna just, before I kind of jump into the presentation, one of the things, as CSAC represents all 58 counties in Sacramento and the talk about the PSPS and PG&E, I wanted to let you some new development, let you know about some new developments that have just recently happened. And Senator Supervisor, I still can't forget that he was a state senator, but Supervisor McPherson, who's on CSAC's executive committee really did help direct us in a lot of our work. But we've been working with Cal OES in trying to make sure counties are notified long before PG&E does their PSPS. And so we are working actually because there are gonna be more shutoffs this week all throughout Northern California in setting up daily calls with Cal OES and county supervisors, CAOs, public works and emergency managers so that we can at least have daily question and answer with Cal OES about what's happening. There was money in the state budget, there was $75 million that Cal OES took to kind of prepare for PSPS. Our frustration at CSAC was that those dollars went straight to the state and did not come to counties. We've sent several letters, which I know sometimes do not feel like enough, but in reality they catch people's attention. And in our letters, we kept asking for those dollars to come to counties so that we could prepare and make sure that counties are prepared when these PSPS events happen. Cal OES called us this week and are gonna be making changes to those dollars so that $30 million come to counties from Cal OES to prepare for PSPS. Those will be on a population base and then some other formula in there. And so that is something it's not been publicly announced yet, but I think that that can also help for counties in preparing for these PSPS events which are unfortunately are new normal in California. So with that, I just wanna say that we appreciate everything that Santa Cruz does in leading on issues and homelessness is one of the big issues that is a priority for CSAC. We were able to get $650 million this year for additional focus on homelessness with $190 million directly to counties with direct funding. I was very impressed with the programs that you are doing here in Santa Cruz because they are leaders for the rest of the nation. So I do wanna start with our Merit Awards and our accessory, the accessory dwelling unit toolkit that was created. So I'd like to ask Julie Conway to come up. A little bit about our Merit and Challenge Awards. We have over 300 entries in our 28 years of doing this program, recognizing local programs that have incredible opportunity to become statewide. And so out of 300 entries, Santa Cruz was the county that is receiving the most awards with three awards, two Merit Awards and one Challenge Award. So I'm gonna have Julie kinda talk briefly about the accessory dwelling unit toolkit. It's an amazing opportunity for expanding these ADUs which are necessary in addressing the homeless crisis. So Julie, can you talk for a few seconds? Yeah, sure, good morning. Julie Conway, housing manager and we are very proud of our accessory dwelling unit toolkit. As you all know, accessory dwelling units placed in residential neighborhoods are a very important tool to start to address our housing shortage and we're able to do it on single family property. The problem is that most homeowners are not experienced developers and it's a challenging process to go through. We worked with, I wanna acknowledge our planning staff, Sarah Noisy, Pyle Levine and Diet and Batia, some outside consultants to come up with some tools that both online and with paper tools that will help people understand the process, build a budget, know where to go for resources, understand the fundamental choices that they make in order to, if they wanna build an ADU. And I appreciate the recognition. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Okay, so the second Merit Award is actually for your HOPE team, Coordinated Care and I'm not sure who's here. Come on up. So again, homelessness was a number one priority of CSAC and we all know statewide it's a huge issue. As we see people kind of moving in to a less compassionate way of dealing with homelessness, I have to say Santa Cruz has still stood strong and trying to make sure that we're helping people out of these crisis instead of penalizing them directly. And so I think the work that you're doing with the HOPE teams, Coordinated Care is a model for this state and I'm hoping you could talk for a few seconds about it. Nope. Hi, I'm Brianne, he manages from the HOPE's team. HOPE's team is the acronym is homeless outreach and proactive engagement and services. And it's a interagency collaborative team working to outreach our most vulnerable people on the streets and it's a, it takes a commitment, a lot of dedication and yeah. Thank you. That's all. Thank you. Always like to talk, but honestly, it doesn't matter that I'm talking about the program, hearing from the people that work you so hard in your county is what's important to us at CSAC. So for the challenge award, I believe Tim is here. Come on up, Tim. So challenge award is to me one of our biggest awards because I would say out of in 26 years of doing our challenge awards, at least two challenge awards a year, those do become programs that are recognized nationally and it throughout the state. So it's very impressive. So the challenge award is for the zero ways for more sustainable world. Supervisor McPherson through CSAC is working with us constantly on addressing these issues and recycling has become a huge focus and I believe this year in the legislature will definitely be a major focus, but this program is amazing. So I was hoping Tim could talk a little bit about it. Sure. Thank you, Darby. I have to begin by giving credit to our team and recycling in solid ways. They're wonderful and the support we've received from the public works department, the rest of the county, of course, the board and the people of Santa Cruz County who as we've heard today only celebrate our accomplishments for a short while before they wanna know what are you gonna do next? And it's because of that ongoing concern and support for environmental protection that we're able to do the things that we've done. Not only have the initiatives that the board has approved been emulated across California, but beyond as far as Seattle, New York City, other communities across the country, we've persuaded giant global corporations to change their practices across the country and even around the world and that's all because of the support of this county and the people of this county. So I want everybody to know that we know the work is not done, that we've heard that the people expect more and that we will deliver. Thank you. Thank you. Well, thank you so much for the opportunity to present these today. Before you go, I know that these are team efforts and every one of these cases and can all the county employees who are involved in these efforts please stand so we can recognize you as well. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Fears. I really wanna thank CSAC for making the effort to be here. They're doing this. This is a big deal. I mean, we were the only county in the state to get three awards. It is really encouraging to see how we're moving forward and we're gonna keep at it. I'm very proud of the work that each and every county employee involved with these three factors was engaged in this. And for the County Board of Supervisors too, I wanna thank my colleagues for, it's one of us up here that brings the idea forward or a couple of us and we move forward with it. I think we're recognized as the county that steps forward in these kinds of issues as much as anybody as Ms. Kern just announced. Last year, Monterey Bay Community Power was recognized and this year we have the three programs unlike any other county in the state that address our environmental housing and public health issues. So I just wanna thank again, the staff of Zero Waste, Hopes and the ATU toolkit projects. Thank you for a job well done, an excellent job well done. We're putting our efforts forward and ahead of everybody else in this state and it's great to be a leader in these areas. So thank you very much to everyone involved. Yeah, and I'll just, let me just add, you know, Santa Cruz County is a small county and we actually don't have as much of a tax base as many other counties. And so for us to move things locally and then to have them be taken on by the state is because we have a staff that's really talented and dedicated and committed to public service. And I'm grateful to all the people who work at Santa Cruz County for being willing to be creative, to do more with less and to figure out how we can not only improve things in Santa Cruz County but also statewide and then also be a national model. So thank you, thank you to everyone who showed up and doing their work today. So moving on to item number eight, this is, we're gonna now consider a presentation on proposed revisions. The affordable housing guidelines is outlined in a memorandum of the planning director. Good morning, Board members. Julie Conway, Housing Program Manager. The affordable housing guidelines provide operational guidance for the county's affordable housing programs. The guidelines are adopted each year by the Board of Supervisors and fulfill the requirements of Santa Cruz County Code Chapter 1710. The guidelines have recently been expanded to provide administrative guidance on additional affordable housing units also administered by the planning department. The changes proposed in the 2019 update are a part of the planning department's continuous effort to clarify and strengthen affordable housing programs. The guidelines were on the October 8th Board of Supervisors consent agenda and Board members requested that the item return to today's agenda with a presentation and an opportunity for further discussion. The objectives of the update include reorganization of the content by user type, meaning housing applicants, homeowners, landowners, developers. This is intended to make the guidelines easier to use. Clarification of procedures for refinances and sales, update marketing and outreach to improve public awareness and access to affordable units. Underscore and clarify rental policies for home ownership units. Rental of these units is discouraged by the way and short-term rental is absolutely prohibited. They also update administrative fees to improve cost recovery and preserve affordable housing impact fees for non-administrative housing purposes. The administrative direction provided in the affordable housing guidelines was expanded in 2017 to include non-measured J programs and today's update proposes to include the nearly 300 units provided with redevelopment subsidy. Operating under the same administrative guidelines adds consistency and strength to the programs and reduces confusion for the community. As discussed in more detail in today's staff report, most of the new language clarifies procedure without major change. The exception is chapter two, which is called the Affordable Home Ownership Program. This is the chapter that is used by the most people and the requirements for eligibility, refinance and purchase will cover now all county affordable home ownership units. The revised guidelines are intended to take the guesswork out of qualifying for owning, refinancing and selling an affordable unit. They're also intended to help protect deed restricted affordable units, the families that purchase them and the communities in which they're located. The goal of the proposed changes in fees is to improve cost recovery and limit the need to draw on affordable housing impact fees for administration. The fees recognize the amount of staff effort required and are consistent with those charged by other jurisdictions. In addition, the penalty fee for unauthorized refinance is intended to act as a disincentive to refinance without the county's review and approval as is required by all programs. The county has an active affordable housing preservation program and works hard to ensure that affordable units remain available to the community. The biggest source of foreclosure and default is unauthorized refinance. If today's proposed fees are adopted by the board, they will go into effect through the unified fee schedule update. It's recommended that the board consider the proposed revisions to the affordable housing guidelines and adopt the proposed updated affordable housing guidelines attached in the staff report. And I'm available for questions. Mr. McPherson. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was the one who asked. I wanted further explanation and I'm really glad we have this so we can explain to the public. When I appreciate the planning department making these guidelines more user friendly to the stakeholders, whether they be lenders or landlords, developers or residents themselves. When I looked at that chart, it was a savings of $1,400 right off the bat total. So it's significant and it's something but more important than the cost factor, I think, is that it's user friendly and it's better understood. And if it's not for those who apply, let us know how we can improve it further. But I think we've made some really strides forward to make this more understandable for everybody. And thanks for keeping the application fees reasonable for eligible residents. We really want to encourage participation in this program. We know housing is probably the number in combination with the homelessness issue is probably the most important issue overall that we're facing in Santa Cruz County and this state of California. So thank you for that presentation. I just wanted to get more detailed information. It's much appreciated and I hope it's gonna result in more of affordable housing in Santa Cruz County. Supervisor Leopold. Thank you, Chair. Just a couple of questions on the neighborhood safety criteria, there has this prohibition of seven years for people with controlled substance related felonies. And I just wanted to get clarification on how we think about things like cannabis has changed over the years. And we look at it differently than we've had in the past and with someone who might have been convicted under different rules seven years ago or six years ago be denied access to our affordable housing programs. I think that's a really good point. And of course we are in a time of change and a lot of these changes we think are really productive. The intention in adding some review for past offenses is really to protect neighborhoods. We have so had some very egregious situations. It is not intended to screen out something that wouldn't represent that. So there's not gonna be a firm. It's not like you walk into through this door, you're in that room, you're out. What we intend is to have a considered approach and to how we would apply the neighborhood safety criteria. Yeah, I mean, I think I understand the reason why we have it and they're very good. But since we've evolved and how we look at this one control substance that I would hate that to be the reason why they wouldn't access affordable housing. Thank you. The other question I had had to do with the limitations on cash out refinancing and the amount and the uses. And one of the things that I don't know whether you know or whether we should need to include is we've seen here at the county that when we install things like solar that we can actually save money. And that might be a reason why someone does a refinance to be able to install energy efficiency on there. But it's, I'm not sure it falls into the home repairs or rehabilitation and I want to get a sense from you because it seemed like that would be a good opportunity. I think that's another really good question. And we actually, we regularly, we carefully review refinance applications. And with this, these policies were intended to make it clear what we will actually allow. Cash out refinances are allowed most definitely for maintenance of the home. We want people to replace their roofs, to do the things that they need to do to maintain the home and have it available in the long run. Energy, energy efficiency investments would definitely be in that category. Okay, great. And the last thing about the fees and I understand the reason why you wanna review refinancing I get that the thousand dollar fee for someone who does it unauthorized is seems like a steep penalty. And you know, the tough on crime doesn't always work. And I'm wondering whether we're adding a penalty that could have terrible consequences. So it is most definitely intended to be a disincentive. We have people who don't come to the county at all as they're required when they refinance. And those are often the, the situations that we call on County Council to help with, with enforcement we've had some very colorful ones recently. We also have situations in which homeowners of a deed restricted home serially refinance their homes every year, every other year. They are told that these are no cost refinances, which is simply not true. No cost refinances always penalize the homeowner. And there's no stop. And this is intended to provide a serious reason to consider a refinance and most definitely to tell the county about it. We do occasionally turn down a refinance for with deep scrutiny and for solid reasons. We're certainly not, that's not what we're seeking to do. But we will do it if we see that either it puts the home in danger or the homeowner in danger. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And I know that our office has been talking with you about something in our district. I'm just wondering, you know, these, sometimes these refinancing companies are slick. Yep. And could take advantage of someone. And they may, you know, we all signed documents when we take a house, but we may not be able to recite chapter and verse. And if someone comes who's fairly suave and can do this, are we gonna, I'm just, I'm worried about the penalty may not fit the crime. Well, and I understand your concern. And remember, we do have the ability to, the planning director would have the ability to review a fee if there was a good reason for doing that. And we have had situations that look fishy. And we have the ability to react to that. This is intended to prevent this very problem. Okay, thank you. Supervisor Caput. My, my only questions are, I wanna thank you first for everything. And I think we're on the right path. I do have a problem a little bit with the fees, the increase. And one of them was the $1,000 penalty also. So you did answer that as best you could. I'm not sure I'm convinced though that we went, why the $1,000, why not $500 or why not, you know, whatever? So it is intended to be a fee that is a disincentive. It does not get charged to anyone who follows the rules. And if someone is taken advantage of, say by a less than scrupulous lender, that would be something that we would catch, probably at a later refinance. But it really is intended to protect the homeowners. It is not intended to punish anyone who's followed the rules. Okay, so the $1,000 would be pretty much against the unscrupulous lender, not the homeowner. Well, it's the homeowner that's charged. The homeowner would have to pay it. Oh, I don't know. But I think that the question is Supervisor Caput and Ms. Conway could correct that there is an appeal process. So if a homeowner has been taken advantage of and then we find out that it's refinanced, that that homeowner could say, I got hoodwinked and the staff all the way up to the planning director would be able to review it and decide whether this was a case in which they would charge the fee. Am I understanding that correctly? That's right. This is really- There isn't a process. You're okay with it. I'm comfortable with that appeal process, yes. Okay. So now I wanna open it up and have members of the public come forward. Is there anyone who'd like to speak to us about this item? Thank you, Becky Steinbruner. I'm glad this, as you said, Supervisor McPherson. I'm glad this came more to public scrutiny rather than being on the consent agenda. I think we need to be asking the question, why aren't people coming to the county before they refinance and do these things? Maybe it isn't clear enough to them or maybe they forget. And so perhaps we need to be doing a bit of research as to why they are not coming rather than penalizing them for when they don't come. And what opportunities does the county have to have more of a direct line of communication with those agencies that are involved in these refinancing other than the slick ones? But isn't the banking industry also in this? So putting something to the forefront with those agencies who are on the financial end of these transactions and making sure that they know that there are restrictions I think is important. And not to just simply go to penalizing the people who have broken the rules. Maybe unknowingly. I would be interested in hearing more about the appeal process. How much does that cost? I've appealed things with the county and it's expensive. So that could be another further penalty. I want to know why there are still no requirements for the 15% rental units and new development for affordability as there are in sales for sale units. I think we need to change that because the information and the demographics of this county show that the demand for rental property is by far greater than those wanting to buy. And I think we need to look at why this is a complicated process. The five measure J units in the Aptos Village project are still not occupied. And it's been almost two years. Why is this taking so long? Thank you. Thank you. Very briefly, I assume the appeal, do you want to answer that question? Cost of the appeal? There is no cost of the appeal. There's no cost of the appeal. Okay, next. Good morning, Chair Coonerty and Board of Supervisors. I'm Reed Geisrater. I'm the current chair of your Housing Advisory Commission. Our commission did hear of the affordable housing guidelines that you're seeing today on our public notice meetings on July 10th, as well as September 4th. And we fully unanimously supported the guidelines that are in front of you and we're asking for your yay vote today. I do want to say that our commission is very interested and understands that we're in the middle of a housing crisis and that the affordable housing units that the county is fortunate enough to have jurisdiction over today. We're very happy that those are in place, but currently we know that there's not enough in their precious resource. These guidelines give staff the tools to help save those units if there's an issue going forward. You've heard Julie talk about those issues that could come up and these guidelines give staff more tools to do that. So we encourage your support today. Thank you. Thank you. It sounds good, affordable housing, but is it really affordable? And how does it meet the needs of the many homeless and hungry people in this county and beyond? I think we have a structural problem. I keep thinking of, you know, this is a government of, for and by the people, not when you have people hungry and homeless and unemployed, but it does seem to be a government of and for and by the military and the big developers who are breaking in huge profits on all their developments. And I've told you before, I had this experience in 1966 of traveling to the former Soviet Union, seeing a relative of mine. And they paid under that structure of that system, about 5% of their income for rent. And it was a nice place. It's woefully inadequate. The words sound good, but the reality check is people are still starving and homeless and unemployed in this kind of structure. And I heard a figure, somebody wrote a book, I think it was called Home Wreckers, about the banks and the Bay Loud was a 2007 and 2008. And I think the figure was 8 million people lost their homes in that kind of bank structure. So we have to look at the whole economic structure. And Food Not Bombs does a good job feeding hungry people. And thank you, Ms. Garrett. That concludes public comment. I'll bring it back to the board for action. Recommend the recommended action. Motion by McPherson. Second. Second by Leopold. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? That passes unanimously. We have a 1045 scheduled item of zone five. So I'm gonna take item number 10 right now. Then we'll do zone five. And then we will do item number nine. Can I briefly? Just because there was something that came up earlier about the sexual assault nurse training program. The sheriff estimates that by February of 2020, we're gonna start with Dominican providing space but Valley Medical providing the staff. They need nine nurses. They have six. That's probably gonna go into place in February. Great. Thank you. So now we're gonna have item number 10. This is to consider an ordinance adding chapter 2.125 of the Santa Cruz County Code to create a send syringe services program advisory commission and schedule the ordinance for a second reading and final adoption on November 5th as outlined in a memorandum of the director of health services. Ms. Hall. Good morning. Chair Coonerty, honorable board of supervisors. As supervisor Coonerty stated, the board directed us in June of this past year to come to the board with a sample ordinance regarding the formation of a syringe services program advisory commission. And this commission will be subject to the Brown Act. This was the direction was provided when we gave as a department our biannual syringe services report. I wanna say that we do greatly appreciate the board's actions. The formation of a voting Brown acted commission will provide many steps for our goal as a county organization to move towards transparent accountable data informed and science informed organization. So the draft ordinance that you see before you today was developed in partnership with county council in accordance with county code chapter 2.38. And I wanted to remind the board as well as the public that we're forming this commission because syringe services is a very important piece of the work that public health does. And syringe services programs in California are under the guidance and the advisement of the California Department of Health Office of AIDS. It's important to remember that Office of AIDS oversees our work because one of the biggest and most important roles that these programs play in local communities is to reduce the risk of transmission of HIV and other communicable diseases. In Santa Cruz County, a significant number of our new HIV cases that are newly diagnosed are already in full blown AIDS. So what that means is that these people have gone diagnosed for a length of time, perhaps a number of years. So for me as a health director and a public health practitioner, it underscores the importance to bring us back home to the reason we have syringe services programs. So since 2013, we have had an advisory body and an advisory council. And as the board may recall, the services that the county now oversees were transitioned when there was a community organization that ceased providing these services. And this advisory body in the past, the informal one, was made up of representatives across addiction medicine, law enforcement, criminal justice, the State Department of Public Health, UCSC, and many community members who served during that time of transition. And I wanted to thank them wholeheartedly for their participation in bringing us as a county to the place that we are today. I also wanted to thank our staff who have worked to balance the clinical and public health data and information and best practice with the community concerns that we have because we know that we serve the entire community. So this ordinance that you have before you for consideration today will establish a voting seven member commission. And the commission appointments will have five members nominated by each board member to represent their district. And then two members nominated at large by the health services agency or their designee. And I would like to remind the board that these are only nominations and it is up to the board to have the final appointment for this seven member commission. I do have some ideas as a health services agency director for the at large nominations. And I think it would be prudent to look towards the leadership of existing organizations such as the health improvement council, their safe RX coalition, our behavioral health advisory committee. So we have a number of committees, commissions and expert organizations that we can pull from for those nominees. So before you today for consideration is the first reading of this ordinance. And we recommend that the board approve in concept the attach ordinance. And then also schedule a second reading and final adoption on November 5th of this year. Thank you. I'm gonna now open it up for public comment. Is there anyone who'd like to speak to us on this item? Please come forward. Good morning, supervisors. Damon Bruder, concerned citizen. Let me start off by saying that harm reduction is an extremely important part of our community. It does a lot of good when it's done properly. I support harm reduction. I support the SSP when done properly. I support accountability and transparency to the community by the SSP and the HSA. I would, I agree with supporting or with instituting this committee going forward with the motion in front of you because it's necessary. We need representation. We need transparency. We don't need things being done in backdoor deals or hidden. We don't need secondary syringe numbers increasing from 100 a day to 1000 a day without public input. I was invited after a meeting with Mr. McPherson. I was invited by Ms. Hall and Ms. Herrera to sit in on the one meeting that happened since then for the SSP. And I was a little dismayed to find that out of the 30-ish people that were there, there were only four people that weren't being paid by the county. They were on their county clock and they were sitting there just waiting for whoever to talk. There were four people. There was myself, someone, two people that represented, I believe the Harm Reduction Coalition and someone from the state level that helped with things. That's not a very, that wasn't a very inclusive meeting. The body that's being put forth in front of you, the motion that's being put forth in front of you would set it up so that we have transparency so that meetings could be attended and things could be voted on. And I think that's really important. We need the transparency. We need the accountability. We need to rein in the fact that harm reduction is only working towards helping the addict at the moment. Our community is being harmed by the quote-unquote best practices. We need to look at that transparency. Thank you. Okay, good morning. There's a disconnect with the SSP and taking advice. This past spring, every law enforcement agency in the county voiced their objections to an activist coalition seeking state certification to distribute needles via a program referred to as secondary exchange. Every mayor of every city in the county spoke out against this as well, so did more than 5,000 people in the community. Did nurse Herrera listen? Did director Hall? No, they didn't. Instead, they updated their SSP's policies and procedures to continue the practice of secondary exchange and are allowing even more needles to flow through the hands of these non-healthcare professionals in even greater numbers. What is it gonna take before the board drops the hammer on the secondary nonsense and ends it? What is it gonna take before you respond to this addiction epidemic with healthcare professionals and addiction specialists? What good is an advisory committee if the powers that be don't take their advice? We really need to consider if we need an advisory body committee that's not gonna be listened to. Thank you. Monica McGuire from Corralitos, Santa Cruz for 22 years. It is disgraceful to talk to people throughout the county who have the same stories as these two gentlemen and say that they feel frustrated out of any hope that they could come here and say anything that would make a difference to you to go from too many bloated looking plans and analyses and ways to look at it as opposed to actually doing something to clean up the thousands of needles, to spread out in the entire county the need to care for the homeless that are here and to take a wise democracy view of what we can do to utilize the good people of this county who have come to you over and over all the years I've been here saying I volunteer my time to make sure that we would possibly do something the way Washington and Oregon have YouTube videos explaining a very simple approach, a correction of the cost of what you spend with dozens of times more efficacy. It is not rocket science to utilize the people who come to you and say we want to help and take our help in a way that will actually get things done but we over and overcome and hear that no matter how many ways we say this to you nothing changes, not enough changes at the very least. We need real government that cares for the bulk of everyone here and does it in an exchangeable way that we feel heard, not this two minutes, speak until you're done and that's it and you can't respond to us, misuse of the Brown Act. These are not systems that are working for us. We want lunchtime and evening meetings so we can come to you. We want you to hold dynamic facilitation ways for us to come to meetings that our voices are heard, our suggestions are heated and our help is taken. Thank you. I want you to know that I became a registered nurse because I almost lost my brother in Santa Cruz to injection drug use and it was really disheartening to go to Dominican and see the way that medical professionals treated him as a drug addict. So the reason I fight for best practices for harm reduction is because I have a personal stake in this matter and it's really upsetting to know that the County is using taxpayer-funded money to partner with a coalition whose belief system is very, very narrow on how to actually treat a drug addict and then the information they provide to that addict is to distrust medical professionals, the actual people that can bring them inside and treat them like human beings because we work on a system of ethics, nurses, doctors, we are the ones who at the end of the day when they need that life-saving treatment, we are the ones providing it. So the County needs to expand their hours. They need to fully fund this program. There are oral tests for hepatitis C now. There are swabs that you can take for HIV. There's a blood test from a finger stick. Yeah, it costs more money, but the National Institute of Health actually shows that it's just as valuable as a blood test. So when that addict comes in, if you wanna address disease, you address it right then in that five-minute window that you might capture them. I wanna read something from the Harm Reduction Coalition, their philosophy from their website. Being a young injection drug user and asking for information generally from adults means that you have to put yourself lower than them and admit that you're a FDUP ignorant kid. That's an ego-busting experience. It's terrible and we won't do it. Instead of asking adults for help, we make up our own information and our own ethics. That's what makes being a kid the awesome experience that it is, but sometimes our actions are really misguided and lead us to something dangerous. This is why you need medical professionals. Please look. Thank you, Becky Steinbruner, resident of rural Aptos. Thank you, ma'am, for that information. I heard a very interesting interview on the local radio station KSEO where they were interviewing a couple of people and maybe one of them was the speaker, I'm not sure, but they were discussing this issue and they are themselves recovering addicts. They said that they do support the syringe exchange, but it has to be a one-for-one. There needs to be some accountability in terms of handing out syringes, whereas with this partner, there's none. Up to 999 syringes a day, they can pass out and there's no accountability. They are not healthcare professionals, so there is no real service to those that they are in fact enabling. Does it become a matter, as these people on the radio said, where these people themselves feel a sense of being God and handing out these syringes to enable the people to stay addicted? We have to look at that. I think that this is a real problem in our community. I think we need to really go to the people who are affected by it the most. I think if you're going to get this commission going, you certainly need to include leaders from the city of Santa Cruz and we need to go at it a different way. Camp Ross had over, well, they stopped, according to this radio interview, they stopped counting at about 800 needles that they found in the dirt. They stopped counting. And that was because this secondary group had been there every day, handing out 300 to 600 needles a day with no exchange required. Thank you. This is your final speaker. I'm Nora Hochman in Soquel. I just want to remind everybody that this item establishes a program advisory commission. I would urge you to vote yes to establish that commission. Then we can have all these fights in the future about who gets to sit on that commission. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes comment. I'm going to bring it back to the board for deliberation action. Mr. Westman Pearson. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to thank the health services administration for bringing this item forward. We need to broaden our community discussion about our syringe exchange program. And this is, I think, a very good way to do it. We know that needle exchange is an important harm reduction technique in our community that's been in place for several years. It's a service that many community members support. However, there's also a very deep concern which we've heard from the community today about discarded needles. That's an equally important public health threat, in my opinion, that we need to deal with and address. We are scheduled to get an update from the Health Services Agency in December about how we're going to work on this problem. But in the interim, I think forming this commission is a good step forward. And I would move the recommended action, but would like to change the language in 2.125.020 Part B of the ordinance to simply read, the remaining two members shall be appointed at large. So I'd like to make that motion, but I'd like to keep that, the language isn't keeping with the original motion, my original motion in June, but I just, I think we need additional direction. Yeah, so I'll second that. And I'll just say, I think this is a really important process where we can open it up. By having it be a Brown Act committee, it will be open to the public. I certainly look forward to hearing recommendations for potential committee members from the community, as well as from HSA on who could be appointed. As a side note, I do support Supervisor McPherson's change. That was the original direction. And I think going forward, it's really important that when the board gives direction, the staff returns with that direction that we gave and doesn't amend it in the meantime. But I think this is a good change to wait to start having some of these discussions that we need to have. Supervisor Leopold. Thank you, Chair. There's no doubt about it that the issue of syringe services and needle waste are critical issues here in Santa Cruz. And I have supported the establishment of this commission. And I don't, I don't, I didn't have a problem with the health services making the nominations. I also don't have a problem with them being at large. I do think, however, it's important that the members of the commission believe in needle exchange as a acceptable public health process. We may disagree on the details of what we should do in the syringe services program, but we have to basically believe that that is a viable and effective public health practice that's been proved by the decades of studies now. So I'm hoping the maker of the motion would accept as a friendly amendment that we add section C, which would just say that all members of the commission should accept needle exchange as a acceptable public health practice. Well, I don't know. I don't really know that that's necessary. We, it's acceptable right now, isn't it? I just want to make sure that if you have someone on there who is just going to be against needle exchange, then they're not providing advice. They're trying to destroy the program. And I think our intention here, if I understand, is that we provide sound advice. We hear from community members to provide advice and to provide direction to our health services agency. But I just want to make sure that we're working on the same page, that we don't have people who are against. Well, I just, I don't think that's the right way to go. Personally, I think that'd be up to each supervisor to determine that on who they're gonna have represent their area. Well, I guess I know what you're saying. I think perhaps, I mean, I understand your concern and I think it's a valid concern every supervisor should keep that in mind and the board as a whole. I don't know that we can have sort of philosophical litmus tests before we appoint somebody. So I think that's, I think that should be, we should be held accountable, but I'm not sure it belongs as a criteria in the ordinance. Well, I understand the concerns and maybe there's a way in the item before at 0.010 that said the Syringe Services Program Advisory Commission is established under the authority of government coach so on and recognizes the valuable tool that Syringe Services or Needle Exchange plays in public health. I just think we need to say that in some way because people are gonna appoint who they want, but we should be clear that this isn't about denying the decades of research at every level about the efficacy of this public health practice. I just feel confident that the board is very sensitive to the need for this program and that it's important in the harm reduction technique overall, but I just don't wanna make it any kind of a requirement. I don't think that would be wise for us to do. Well, now I'm not making it a requirement. I'm just saying acknowledging it as a part of the reason this commission exists. Well, I just, I appreciate your concern, but I think we're well aware of that on the board. I don't wanna accept the amendment. So we have a motion and we have a second. I think that. So the suggested change by Supervisor McPherson to 020B is to put a period after the word appointments, but who would appoint? The Board of Supervisors. So I think we should add that language and then this has to come back. Okay. Can I ask a clarifying question on that because it says on 020 in the first paragraph, shall consist of seven voting members appointed by the Board of Supervisors in the following manner? Why would we need to enumerate that in letter B again to say by the Board of Supervisors when it says in the sentence above? No, you're correct. And it still has to come back to make this change. Okay. So we have a motion and we have a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? That passes unanimously. Can we start our 1045? No. Okay. Let's do that. How about we will take a 10 minute recess and we'll come back at 1055 for the Zone 5 Board of Directors here. Susan, there we go. We're ready. Yes. All right, everybody. We're going to be now convening the Santa Cruz County Board of Directors Flood Control Water Conservation District Zone 5 Special Meeting and I'm going to call them in order and ask the clerk to call the roll. Director Leopold, friend. Here. Caput. Here. McPherson. Here. Bertrand. Here. Christensen. Here. Chair Coonerty. Here. We will now have consideration of late additions. Are there any late additions? No late additions. Okay. Are there any additions or deletions or corrections? No. All right. Now is oral communications. This is an opportunity for members of the public to speak to us about any item that is in within the jurisdiction of Zone 5 but not on today's agenda. Is there anyone who'd like to speak to us today? Thank you, Becky Steinbruner. I just want to bring to you and public's attention that there's an event tomorrow night at NOAA at seven o'clock where Dr. Andy Fisher of the Recharge Initiative will be speaking along with Ms. Goble. Dr. Goble from Stanford who has done a lot of work analyzing the saltwater, freshwater interface in the Mid County and also Monterey area. And Mr. Duncan from Soquel Creek Water District will be on that panel. So well, it's maybe not directly related to the flood control. I believe, and I have spoken with you before, that part of flood control could also be groundwater recharge. And I hope that you will go and maybe you are already familiar with Dr. Andy Fisher's work, but he has mapped effectively mapped the county in terms of prime areas of recharge. And I think that California needs to be looking at the value of stormwater in terms of recharge possibilities rather than treating it as a problem that has to be dealt with. It's a real resource, getting water free from the sky that doesn't have a lot of contamination in it like the Pure Water Soquel Project would. And I really think we need to take a different approach at flood control and incorporate groundwater recharge wherever we can. So that's tomorrow night, seven o'clock at NOAA up on the west side. Thank you very much. Eight o'clock at where? Pardon? Where is it? It's at up on the west side, NOAA, that Ms. Christensen, you know, the Seymour Center up on the west side. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker. Monica McGuire from Coralitas again. I would like to speak again to the wonderful point Becky brought up that the misinformation and the many causes of action in the Soquel Creek Water District, EIR, which was did not in any way look at the CEQA. This is a flood control district. So it doesn't have anything to do with. The rainfall. I'll just bring back, it's the rainfall because the rainfall is that incredibly free resource and it's far cheaper and easier to deal with the rain that comes down for cleaning it than tertiary, cleaned water, toilet water. And it's so important that you- Yeah, this doesn't have anything to do with water sources. I get it. And yet it just really seems like with the two minute limit, with the two minute limit, we really have to take whatever chance we can to say anything. No, you need to speak to items that are within the jurisdiction of what this board is. I know, I know. You have every right. Thank you. Next speaker. Are you speaking? No. Two minutes, huh? And you interrupt them because you've determined it's not in their purview. Amazing. Unbecoming a chair. It occurred to me with flood discussion that we know that trees help hold the soil in place and prevent flooding with massive clear cutting of trees, especially lately by PG&E. It seems to me this is definitely going to increase the flooding problems. I was here when you had the PG&E representatives say they plan to cut the trees supposedly for safety and preventing fires, which we know they caused the fires. And they said we plan to cut from ground to sky. So I think what you need to do and we all need to do, I think PG&E needs to be dismantled and we need public ownership, but we need to stop this massive clear cutting all over of the trees by a PG&E. Kevin Collins spoke here and also talked about when they clear under the lines, what is it, 12 feet? It creates, as I understood it, a wind tunnel of fire to increase the fire. So please take action to prevent flooding by stopping PG&E's clear cutting of trees all over under the guise of fire safety prevention. Thank you. That concludes eating a microphone. Sorry, I just wanted to clarify the meeting that tomorrow night is about saltwater intrusion. It is not specifically a groundwater thing. It has people who have done research on groundwater replenishment, but it is primarily a saltwater, it's dealing with the issue of saltwater intrusion and it's at the Seymour Center, it's the Ken Norris Memorial Lecture. And saltwater intrusion along the Monterey Bay is our groundwater to salty, a moderate discussion with the experts. So I think that it would be interested, anybody who's interested in saltwater intrusion along the coast, but it's not specifically groundwater. Thank you. We'll now move on to item number two, which is approval of zone five minutes. Is there any questions? Motion? Second. Motion by Leopold, second by Caput. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, that passes unanimously. Item number three is as the board of directors of the Santa Cruz County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, accept and file the fourth quarter report for fiscal year 2018 and 19, zone five expansion construction revenue as outlined in a memorandum of the district engineer. Good morning, Kent Edler, assistant district engineer with zone five and with me is Rachel Fatui, who's the senior civil engineer for zone five. Make sure your microphone is on. It is on. You might want to get closer then. Okay. So the zone five rules and regulations require staff to submit quarterly reports of zone five fees. For the most recent quarter, we're reporting that we collected through June 30th, 2019, $133,340. And so we're asking your board to accept and file the support on the fourth quarterly report of fiscal year 2018, 2019. Great, are there any questions? Is there any public comment? Seeing none, I'll bring it back to the board. Hold the record and action. Second. Motion by Leopold, second by Patron. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? That passes unanimously. Finally, item number four, which is as the board of directors of the Santa Cruz County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, zone five, approve the request for proposals for zone five drainage facilities master plan update, authorize the release of an RFP to the consultants and take related actions as outlined in a memorandum of the district engineer. Good morning. This item is for approval of the request for proposals for an update to our drainage facilities master plan. There are seven primary tasks within the RFP that we're asking consultants to propose on. These tasks include a condition assessment, capacity analysis, a maintenance program, including a cost of maintenance, capital improvement program, a finance and funding plan and impact fee analysis as well as an engineer's report. We have four recommended actions, which are to approve the request for proposals for the zone five drainage facilities master plan update to authorize the district engineer to begin distribution of the request for proposals, direct the clerk of the board to advertise the notice of request for proposals for one week beginning on October 25th, 2019 and direct zone five staff to return honor before March 24th, 2020 with a recommendation for a ward of contract. Thank you. Any questions? Any public comment? I have a question. Sure. Go ahead. Do you want to go ahead? All right. Thank you. Thank you, Becky Steinbruner. I am particularly interested in the impacts, future impacts regarding climate change and how that would be incorporated into this master plan. That concern became very apparent in a recent public hearing at the Capitola City Council Planning, City Council and the Capitola Planning Commission regarding a proposed hotel in Capitola Village that would have subterranean parking and would use pumps in the event of flooding to pump that effluent for a better, lack of a better word into the local creeks. So I think that with the impending idea of a hotel in Capitola Village that this area really needs to get special consideration and attention in terms of climate change and drainage and flooding. Thank you very much. Thank you. Monica McGuire again. The question I have is about disaster preparedness because obviously flooding can increase. All kinds of problems can happen. And again, what we have found is that the general public is not welcome enough in disaster preparedness in coming together as constituents to be asked and discussed. Our discussed shown actually is a better way to use the word right there for the lack of interest in our input, suggestions, creative choice making, et cetera, in order to have disaster preparedness be something that the entire county is involved in. And so obviously any discussion about flood zones should include your huge introduction and continuous asking of the county residents to come to you and give us all our ideas and give us the ways that we would prefer to have plans in place that we come together in the course of any disaster, including the 5G disaster coming. There are so many ways that you are not utilizing our help. And I hope that you will write that into this at least knowing that flood control would obviously affect all the individuals who think clearly, carefully and want to contribute to the protection of our homes and our lives. This is again, just the overall last decade of seeing the erosion of interest in our input is not helping you to do your jobs and certainly not helping us to stay in this county. Most people are faced with the idea that we're gonna have to leave no matter what and to be flooded out. Some people think maybe that'll just be the easiest thing if climate change wipes us all out but that won't be the case when it begins. So take into account bringing us into the discussion more again. Thank you. That concludes public comment, Ms. Christensen. Oh, I just had a question about the RFQ about whether there's gonna be a visual field assessment of the drainage system in the mount. Yes, it will incorporate that. Yes, that's in the task number one, the condition assessment. Great. Professor Friend. So first I'll move the recommended actions. Second. And let me just actually compliment you on this because this is something that has been asked for for an extended period of time. Ms. Harland had asked for it previously. It's to understand what our facilities are in that location to better prepare for the things that people in the community have actually been asking for it today ironically, which is that we do not have a good solid understanding and so there have been historic challenges in zone five. It's clearly an underfunded system. This will provide us with that information analysis so we can go back to the community and ask what people would like to do in regards to the zone as well. So I think this is a very important step and actually an important step that Stephanie Harland had pushed for for an extended period of time. I'm glad to see that it's coming through. Mr. Bertrand. Yeah, in fact, some people have drainages in the back of their yard and they did not know that it was part of the drainage system. Stephanie was one of them. So that's what motivated her. Mr. President Leopold. We have a lot of open drainage systems through Live Oak and so taking a look at the entire drainage system and thinking about what we need to do in order to protect residents from flooding and other problems related to that, I'm looking forward to seeing this plan. So we had a motion and a second by a friend in Leopold. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, that passes unanimously. Thank you for your work. Thank you. There are zone five commissioners for coming down today. We appreciate it. So that we'll now adjourn the zone five board and move back into the board of supervisors, regular agenda. We're going to move on to item number nine. This is a public hearing. Ready, ready everybody? All right, this is a public hearing to consider an application 171179, a proposal to amend the general plan, land use designation and zoning from the community commercial C2 to a service commercial C4 and to construct an automotive dealership with a service facility, including consideration of adoption of a mitigation monitoring and reporting program and statement of overriding considerations and certification of a final environmental impact report as outlined in a memorandum of the planning director. Good morning. Good morning, Chair and members of the board. I'm Kathy Molloy, the planning director and I'd like to introduce Nathan Macbess, a planner and he is the project planner and he'll be making the presentation. Thank you, good morning. The subject property is located on the corner of Soquel Drive and 41st Avenue, Southwest corner. It's comprised of approximately eight parcels, totaling approximately 2.5 acres in size. This parcel here and the unhighlighted parcel is not part of the project. This is a view from the end of 41st Avenue, looking back at the project site in the Southwest direction, Kings paint and paper on the corner there and the two-story structure is a car wash that both structures are slated for demolition as part of this project. This is the site and surrounding area. This represents the proposed project configuration. The larger building kind of at the top of the frame there in the highlighted area is the main showroom and the service facility is that L shaped building. The majority of the inventory will be parked in that open lot there. Surrounding pattern development. We have the San Lorenzo Lumberyard to the west, a Honda dealership to across Soquel Drive and Redwood shopping center across 41st Avenue. It's a Safeway shopping center, Safeway gas station, Home Depot and Best Buy is actually over there as well. The project proposes a general plan amendment and these are the eight parcels there in the middle that are proposed to be amended from community commercial to service commercial, represents what's to the north that is the Honda dealership to the north there to the upper portion of the frame. This is a look across Soquel Drive. The proposed zoning amendment, rezoning will implement the general plan and again that's service commercial. Proposed site improvements would be demolition of all the existing structures, totaling approximately 14,000 square feet, construction of a 12,550 square foot dealership, the 10,000 square foot service facility, remove eight trees and plant approximately 50 trees. That's both within the interior of the site in the parking area and along the periphery of the site. Parking will be approximately 130 cars. That's inventory, employees, customers and service facility. So look at what the building will look like, the elevations. This is the main showroom and the elevations for the service facility. Both these buildings comply with all the site standards for the proposed zone district as well as the existing zone district. So there's no relief with the rezoning of the property from site standards. Sign exception is required for any site that contains more than 50 square feet of signage and more than two signs and it's very typical for a large property, properties that have, that are corner sites as well as shopping centers. This is a layout of all the signs for the dealership. Offside improvements include sidewalks, landscaping along the frontage of the property, sidewalks extending west 300 feet from the project site, 200 feet to the south. They'll provide a dedicated right turn lane on Sokela Drive at 41st Avenue. For this improvement is a deviation from the plan line, which requires a much shorter turn left turn pocket. So this would enhance the requirement for the, under the plan line. The right turn lane, this will be a peak PM right turn lane at Soquel and Porter Street, intended to, as a mitigation of the project and funding will be provided for the signalization of Sokela and Robertson intersection. That's also a mitigation. An environmental impact report was required and this is a brief chronology. We released a draft EIR back in December, 2017, the final EIR and that was circulated for 45 days and later extended for some additional time. The final EIR, which comprised the comments from the draft was released on April, 2018. Your board certified the final EIR approved the project in May of 2018, March of 2019, the Superior Court of Santa Cruz County determined the EIR was inadequate for, with respect to the alternatives analysis in April, your board set aside all approvals associated with the project. And July, a partial, a recirculated partial draft EIR, which addressed the court's, court identified deficiencies was released for public comment for again, the 45 days required under CEQA and in October, October 10th, the final EIR volume two was released. Revisions to the EIR included recharacterization of the no project alternatives, consideration of eight additional offsite alternatives and further analyzed offsite alternatives. We took a look at one alternative that would reduce project impacts that was feasible and we included a reduced project alternative that basically looks at the site and pairs down the proposed development. Also, we took a look at the mitigation. We updated the characterization of the signalization of Robertson and SoCal and wanted to be sure that we have, some time has passed now, so we've gone a lot further in terms of determining the funding and the implementation of that. The applicant has not proposed any changes to the project and based on that additional analysis contained in the revised EIR, staff's not prepared to change our recommendation. We still agree with the planning commission's recommendation so we would recommend that your board hold a public hearing and adopt a mitigation monitoring or reporting program statement of overriding consideration, certify the final environmental impact report, adopt a resolution amending the general plan for the subject parcels from community commercial to service commercial, adopt a rezoning of the subject parcels from again, community commercial to service commercial and approve commercial development application 171.179 and associated sign exception, roadway, roadside exception based on the attached findings and conditions approval. Happy to answer any questions. Okay, let's talk first, any questions? If not, go. Just a question on the landscaping and the, it says they'll plant 50 trees and what type of tree do we know or whatever? You know, there's a mix of trees throughout the site along the periphery, it's all based on the urban forestry handbook that we have. So those will be all reviewed and consistent with the other trees in the vicinity. Right, but they don't say what type exactly or it could be, you know, any type of tree then, right? No, they've specified the tree on the landscape plan. I don't have that. I can look for that if you'd like. So the number 50, we could increase that to 100 trees instead of 50? Yeah, the parking lot itself is parked, basically there's a planner, every five parking spaces, additional trees would take up more space to eliminating parking. And of course, along the periphery of the site, the type of tree that we have in the park of tree would depend on how large of it, what the spacing between those trees would be. Yeah, can we, so, yeah. Can we go open it up to public comment? The only thing I'd say, we'll listen to everybody first and then I'll make a call. Right, so now's an opportunity for members of public to speak to us about this item. Please come up, line up if you can. Okay, I was here earlier, LaTisha Miller and I was under the impression that we could have a public hearing about what you're gonna do to Soquel Village. You're gonna put that light at Robinson and Soquel Drive, which we know how dangerous that is. The other thing is you're gonna put a right hand turn lane where you're gonna stop, that's our parking. Okay, that's a parking for ugly mug. I don't think this should be approved with those two conditions there. I think that should go up to the public, have the people of Soquel know, and let the businesses know. I have not been notified. I talked to John about that light. He knows how we feel about it. He said that we couldn't afford that light. And now I see you've got money and you're talking about it. If you approve this project and I'm not for against it, I wanna make sure that that's not approved until we have a public hearing on it. You're talking about going through Soquel Village. And I know the dangers of putting lights. When you see these three lights, I've been there for over 30 years on that corner and I know what it can do. I've seen accidents, I've seen students in danger. I've seen myself yesterday. I went through at 45 miles an hour. I saw the both lights. I saw them at Dobbombliss, I saw them at Porter, and I saw them at Main Street. I went through at 45 miles an hour. That's why I was here earlier very concerned about not having any public input. I think those two things should be dropped until you have public input. Thank you. Hi, thank you. I'm Jill Trotterman from Soquel and I am vehemently opposed to this rezoning. I've lived in this community for more than 25 years. And one of the debates that I know is on the stage is to reduce car traffic. I think it's ironic that we are proposing to put a car dealership in order to reduce automobile traffic. Our community is known across the country, if not the world, for our sustainability and our leadership. That is one of the special things about what we all live here for. On one end, you have Pleasure Point, one of the most spectacular places I've ever been on the planet. On the other hand, you have the Soquel Hills, which is where I live. And I think that we can tie in both of those areas to make it a really beautiful place for our area, if not all of the tourists that come to visit here. There's a place up in San Francisco at the ferry building and they converted that into this beautiful place with markets, open air, there's farmers markets, and it's a space for community. More than 54% of children today have depression and all kinds of serious illnesses. Our people need community. We don't need more cars to separate us. We need an environment and a space to bring people together. With open air, there could be a music venue, there could be cafes, and this could be a really special place for our community. So I am opposed to this rezoning for one dealership, for one man. One person will benefit, whereas thousands, if not millions, people could benefit from a really fabulous, visionary community space. And that's what I'm advocating for, and I can see it. Thank you. Hi, I'm Bonnie Keith from Soquel and I echo all of Fabulous Jill's comments. I'm against the rezoning, against the plan for a car dealership there. I'd like to see us add something that would value the community versus detracting it. Add to the climate efforts that we're engaging in throughout Santa Cruz City and County instead of taking away from them and draw in some nice, healthy foot traffic instead of repelling the community and the neighbors. Thanks. Good morning, supervisors. My name is Rick Longinati. I'm from the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation. And I think you all have children and I think something you can be proud to tell your children is about the Sustainable Santa Cruz County plan. You can tell them that in a time when we become aware of the climate change consequences, that you have a plan that focuses development in these concentrated areas and then has good transit and good pedestrian and bike connectivity between them. And so what's really important also that I think that you tell your children is that you enforce that plan, that you didn't make exceptions to that plan. Because it makes a difference. If you approve this project, it's gonna be there for generations. You don't have the chance to go back and do it again. And the hardship is in direct opposition to the idea that there'd be an employment center at that site. So you don't have to change the general plan today. You can keep the general plan as a good general plan. And you can enact a sustainable Santa Cruz County plan. Please do that, thank you. Chair and supervisors, my name is Gillian Greensight. I'm chair of the Sierra Club Santa Cruz Group. And I'm here representing the Sierra Club. I'll just read the main points from the letter we submitted to you. While we have no shortage of car dealerships, we do have a shortage of land available for the sort of development determined to be the best for this area as outlined in the 2014 Sustainable Santa Cruz County plan. As you know, the purpose of the plan is to pay for mixed use development in focused areas such as this one to increase walkability, bicycling, transit use, and reduced vehicle trips. The primary goal of the plan is to reduce production of greenhouse gas emissions. For this site, tossing out the plan in favor of a car dealership does not inspire confidence that the supervisors are serious about the need to change our development patterns towards the stated goals of the board. The approval of a car dealership would also require rezoning and general plan amendment. This is surely a step backwards in terms of vision and legal requirements that are embodied in the general plan. As we chart our uncertain future with respect to rapid climate change, there will be difficult decisions to make. We know it cannot be business as usual. This project is an early test case of how willing we are to change our consumption and development patterns in the direction we know we need to take. The Sierra Club urges you to reject the Nissan dealership project. Thank you. Good morning, supervisors. My name is Bob Morgan. We are in a time of climate crisis. It is a new time. It is the beginning of this time. In 2014, you voted unanimously to approve the sustainable plan, a plan mandated by SB 375 to reduce greenhouse gases. On January tonight, 29th of this year, you voted unanimously to approve the county climate emergency resolution. On September 27th, 2000 students and parents marched downtown from schools all over the county to strike because of the climate crisis. Previous to that, just a few days before the 27th, a 16 year old girl shamed world leaders about inaction due to the climate crisis. Transportation sector in our county accounts for over 40% of our emissions. Some would put that figure as high as 50%. The dealership has in place few mitigations or offsets for its carbon footprint. It has no solar energy requirement, no passive solar design elements, no carbon offsets of any kind to mitigate the emissions. That building and the sales of those cars will produce. What do those sales generate as far as greenhouse gas emissions? Each year of sales based on the lifetime of those vehicles will emit 41,000 metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year of those sales. To put that a dollar figure on that, the social cost of carbon at $25 a metric ton to a low figure is a million dollars. Some say double that figure is not enough and that's $2 million a year. Please hold this dealership accountable for its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. Deny this zoning change until these mitigations are analyzed and put in place. Those figures I just gave to you don't include the Nissan building emissions. We know that we are in a climate emergency. We ask that your actions and decisions reflect our concerns about our environment and our home. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you for your time in service. Vivian Finner-Evans, so Cal. We elect supervisors to represent local constituents. How can you instead represent a car dealer millionaire from Pebble Beach? Land is precious and Santa Cruz. Please do not approve this zoning change. I urge you please vote no to the Nissan dealership. Thank you very much. Good morning. My name is Lisa Sheridan. I wanna thank you all for your long hours of dedication towards this issue and especially John Leopold who I know has been meeting actively with many groups on this issue and I really appreciate that. We all wanna live in a place that feeds our soul. We wanna live where there is clean air, clean water and safety. It's not too late for us to plan wisely, beautifully and practically. This corner is the ideal place to envision such a future. I urge you to vote no to this zoning change and yes to supporting the goals of SB 375, the goals of the Santa Cruz Sustainable Plan and the goals of the Santa Cruz Climate Emergency Plan. Resolution actually. All designed to help us chart our course in lowering greenhouse gas emissions and harmonious living. Borrowing a quote used so famously from Rabbi Hillel seems apropos, if not now, when? Good morning supervisors, Monu Koenig, First District. The Sustainable Santa Cruz Plan makes clear that the majority of our carbon emissions come from transportation. Some are between 50 and 60%. So cars are the problem. And today we're talking about approving a new car dealership. That's crazy. Let's revisit the Sustainable Santa Cruz Plan and just how much work went into that. Six advisory group meetings, seven stakeholder interviews, four focus group roundtables, 16 community workshops, four planning commission study sessions and four board of supervisors hearings. You've been here before. And the consensus was clear. We need to create walkable communities. I can think of no more important intersection in our entire county than 41st Avenue and SoCal. Are we gonna create another temple to the automobile? Or are we gonna use this opportunity to create a temple to community and sustainability? I urge you to vote no on this project. Just earlier in this meeting, you looked at the necessity of creating a climate action manager position. In the absence of that position, you are climate action managers. So please be true to the Sustainable Santa Cruz Plan, implement the general plan updates that that plan suggested and don't go backwards with the plan that'll take us further towards auto dependency and accelerating climate crisis. Thank you. Nora Hockman, Glenhaven Road in the first district. I've lived up there for about 150 years, I think. Look, this is a general plan. And as Rick Longinotti said, we can't just rearrange it if it doesn't meet our needs that quickly. I have heard it said that this is a commercial corner. I think it's a corporate corner, really. What we live with in that stretch of roadway as a union rep for the nurses union working at Dominican, it would take me, starting at 3.30 in the afternoon, about 45 minutes, just for me to reach the bottom of my hill at Main and Soquel Drive. 45 minutes from Dominican Hospital. I mean, that's kind of insane, really. There are car haulers for Honda. There are delivery 18-wheelers for Petco. To put another car dealership in front of us at this busy intersection, I mean, maybe that's what you're looking for is that I will never get home again. It will never happen. So I ask you to reject this for all the reasons you've heard before. Don't chase the money. We don't need the money as much as we need that corner for another use. Thank you. Thank you, Becky Steinbruner, resident of Aptos. I wanna thank all the people in sustainable Soquel who have, who scraped together a bunch of money to bring this issue to the lawsuit that has brought it to you again. Thank you to those people. And I wanna thank Supervisor Leopold for promising the people in Soquel Village at a community meeting that there would be no light ever put at Robertson and Soquel. I was at that meeting. Tish Miller was at that meeting and you promised them. When you and John Presley put forward the idea of putting a light there, you said, all right, we've heard you loud and clear. There will be no light. So I wanna thank you for holding to your promise to the people and how you vote today. I notice in the mitigations, there is nothing regarding noise. There is only construction noise. There is nothing for hours of operation. At some of the public hearings I attended on this, people were talking about the backup sounds of deliveries in the early morning and at night. That is not addressed in this at all in terms of mitigation and conditions of approval. The traffic mitigations are a light at Robertson and extra turn lanes at Porter and Soquel. The costs will be passed on to the taxpayers. It is not clear. It only says applicant will pay fees well how much? In the information it said a traffic light at Robertson that we hope will not happen would cost $1 million. The people will pay for this if it happens. The drainage. You just had a flood control meeting. There's no talk at all about drainage. Nothing at all. And there it sits right on Soquel Creek. I saw the letter from Mr. Gropetti said he cannot reduce the size of the project. If it is not feasible for him to do so, you need to find somebody who can develop this in a way that is sustainable. Thank you. Monica McGuire, I gave up my business days. I might as well stay and talk to you a little bit more. I am again just horrified to see all these good people taking the time out of our days to come and tell you the reasons that your job tells you you should vote five to nothing against this. And that most of the time I invite people all over the county who have no idea who their county supervisor is, over 90% of the people in this county have no idea who their county supervisor is and have somewhere between two and 5% have ever come to any kind of a meeting. I constantly invite them to watch a few of the videos because most of the time when we come and show you why you should not do something, you vote four to one or five to nothing to go forward with doing something against the will of the people who come to speak to you. And that is not democracy. And that is not holding to the sustainable future that you all just referred to and you're happy to give yourselves pats on the back for doing. Today should be a five to nothing against this with every reason given. And it should be nothing but that. Most of the time that we take our time to come and tell you what we can see in our spare time that apparently with the hundreds of thousands of dollars that you all receive, you don't have enough time to look into the way that we come and do your jobs for you. This county by some people's estimation at half the size of Marin County costs over twice as much to run. I still have a hard time figuring out how to get to bottom line things like Mr. Friend's office in Aptos Village, the last place where we came and asked you not to go forward with that because of all the problems of it which still is so little occupied that we don't have the full effect of what's gonna happen with that boondoggle. We don't know why he has 4,500 square feet there. We don't know why corporate and developer interests get all the attention in this county. It makes no sense to us and we want you to vote for us this time. Chairman Coonerty, members of the board, thank you for all your work for this very difficult, challenging project. I believe this is hard work at its best and each and every one of you have looked at all the issues I believe that need to be looked at. I am Lou Tuoso. I've been in the community for over 40 years. I'm a small business owner in Soquel Village for over 30 years. I'm also a former citizens oversight committee of Carrillo College project that was over $100 million and I also served on the Soquel Union Elementary School District when we rebuilt and built several schools. I served on that oversight committee as well. I currently am on the president's advisory board for Palo Alto Medical Foundation and we've done several projects there. I believe and I see myself as a layperson that's familiar with construction. I've looked at this project, I've looked at it and I've looked at all the details of it. I like it. My father-in-law was a car dealers in Linus for 60 years. These men and women in car dealerships are men of integrity. They do what they say they're gonna do and they improve things like they're supposed to do. The court required that the alternative sites were looked at and all of them were looked at and they were considered to be invisible. This project looks good. It makes sense. It makes financial sense. I applaud you, Mr. Leopold, for doing the kinds of things you did. This is hard to go against the grain but it makes sense for the long term as well as the short term. It brings jobs. It brings improvements to our community. And by the way, I was on that corridor commission. There is nobody breaking down the doors to do another kind of project at all at that location. This is a blighted area. It cost our community a lot of money for our law enforcement to go out there and do the things that they had to do to make it safe so you can walk through the community. I believe that this will be a positive thing. I am hopeful that each of you will vote yes. All of you. Thank you. Mr. Beall, last speaker. Marilyn Garrett. And thank you. I applaud everyone who spoke against this with such clear reasons. And I also urge a five to zero vote opposing this project for all the reasons that have been stated. And I like Nora's statement. This is a corporate corner. And it appears to be a corporate county. The way these projects are going all over to destroy communities in favor of the corporations. I'm gonna add another angle to this a little bit. These car dealerships. They're selling these new cars that have radar. That are electric. That are for the internet of things that connect to the 5G. These are not only dangerous for the carbon emissions and the congestion and the traffic. And by the way, watch a documentary called Taken for a Ride. Taken for a Ride. How we got here. But they're also dangerous for the increased dangerous radiation that is intensified by these cars that operate with the 4G and 5G antennas all over. More and more of radiation. I urge a no vote by all of you and vote for the community well-being here. Not the corporate well-being. Thank you. If anyone else would like to speak to us today, this will be our final speaker. Good morning. My name is Don Gropetti from Visalia, California. I am your applicant for this project. I just wanted to take a moment to thank the county staff and the supervisors for taking the time to review this project. There's been a lot of work, a lot of efforts gone into it over the course of the last three years. And I continue to believe it's a great project. Obviously I would. Before somebody in the audience made that comment, I might as well make it myself. As the one thing I can tell you again, echo the previous comments, not the radiation comments, but the car dealer comments. We are great supporters of the community and our intent is to do that again in this market. While I don't live in this market, it is my intent to be a great member of the community and that's what we do. And I encourage you to support the project. And if there's any questions, I'll be happy to answer them as the time comes. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes public comment. I'll bring it back to the board for deliberation and action. Surveyser McPherson. Yeah, this has gone on for some time. And for many decades, this property has been zoned C2. Get no viable C2 project has been built. Before that parts were zoned M1 for industrial use and other parts were designated as unclassified, but it's never formerly been zoned as C4. Yet the property remained largely unused and history really would tell us that it's really not a viable parcel for a housing project to be there because there have been no sense of urgency to do that. We have a project before us now that we use the property in a common sense manner consistent with the commercial use of nearby properties. The proposed project is adjacent to existing service commercial uses and will complement those uses, I think, in the whole vicinity of the area. It'll also bring some, I think, tremendous infrastructure amenities, improved sidewalks, the right turn lane of 41st Avenue, as well as some other traffic improvements. It's gonna make the ability to get through there, I think, much easier. I feel that the county staff has done its due diligence and responding to the community concerns. They've investigated other sites suggested in the community. It was ordered by the court and required the court and, or as they required the court, but the court found those other options unsuitable. The planning commission has previously voted unanimously to support this project. I think it's a proper, the project is worthy of support and so I would remove the recommended staff recommendation. So, motion by McPherson, I'll second the motion. And I guess, as part of my second, I'll make my brief comment, which is I supported this project last time. I'm reminded of the Costco proposal in Santa Cruz. There's a lot of opposition to it and they showed the data that people were driving from Santa Cruz all over the place to go to Costco's. I don't believe that if you get rid of this cartilure ship that people will stop buying cars. They'll just drive over the hill or to other places to drive cars. I will note that I really appreciate people's comments. I think there should be an awareness and I think some people would be fine with this and some people wouldn't that if you adopted the sustainable Santa Cruz plan, put it in our combining district with the new housing laws that have just passed under the new administration with density bonuses and reduced parking requirements, you'd likely to have a four story housing project there, which would be, in many ways, great. It'd be great for housing, which is a crisis. It'd be great to address climate change. It would also cause tremendous traffic impacts and I think we'd have the same people, many of the same people illustrating the same concerns because if you look at the housing projects that are proposed along Ocean Street and Mission Street and Water Street that are four and five stories, those would be the appropriate kind of project in this place and I'm not sure that we'd have community support and then that land would continue to sit vacant for longer. And so with that, I'll go ahead and let LeChon speak. Sure. Thank you, Chair. So I've been listening to a lot of the conversation I've engaged in a lot of conversation. I've know that there is disagreement. Some of the conversations I've had have been spirited and most people have the best intentions about in that conversation. And so I've also tried to do my homework. Obviously looked at the Sustainable Santa Cruz Plan, read the Soquel Village Plan, I walk the area, I live probably less than a mile away so I've driven by it countless times over the last 26 years. It's not an attractive corner. It's got dumpy buildings, it's got some trees, it's got no wildlife, it's got derelict homes. So we could all agree that we want something different than what's there now. And so I looked at this proposal and realized I needed to make a decision about whether it was appropriate or whether it made sense. 41st Avenue is our busiest commercial corridor in the county. And across the street from this is a car dealership that's twice as big. On the other corner is a regional shopping center. The neighbor is a lumberyard storage yard and the other neighbor is a car wash. I looked at what is being proposed as mitigations that would actually improve the situation. The right turn lane, the 350 foot right turn lane to help with traffic seems worthwhile. The light at Robertson's, you know, in rereading the Soquel Village Plan, I realized that the light is actually envisioned as part of the plan. The synchronization of lights was envisioned as part of the plan. The right turn lane in Soquel Village was envisioned as part of the plan. And at the beginning of this process, people said we should follow the Soquel Village Plan. So when I looked at the information about what things like the light or the right hand turn would do, it would actually improve the traffic situation because for all the different opinions about what should happen on this lot, the number one concern that was raised to me was traffic. And so whether you build a car dealership, a mixed use project, a housing project, there's gonna be traffic impacts. It's hard to use more space and generate less traffic than a car dealership. And there are some people, you know, who seem perfectly comfortable with a project they don't want in Soquel to be placed in Live Oak. That I read in the letters. But when I think when you look at the EIR, this is a superior site. And so, you know, a lot has been made of the sustainable Santa Cruz County plan. I went to nearly all the meetings. I was interested in how the community engage in debate to think about development differently in our community. And I have been maybe the most frustrated by the slowness of the environmental review. But what we've seen in the five years since we passed that is that developers has used other tools to accomplish the goals of the sustainable Santa Cruz County plan. In the coming weeks, we will see a project on Capitola Road with 57 units of affordable housing and new health centers. We will see a project in Pleasure Point, the Pleasure Point Plaza, both which use tools, both which are following what is in the sustainable Santa Cruz County plan. So, when I looked about this dumpy corner, I thought that if there was real interest from real estate interest or others to develop this in another way, that they could have done that by now, but they haven't. So, we've waited for decades for something to happen on that corner. This is a project that I feel fits the existing use. I am, however, concerned, and I'd like to hear from Mr. Grappetti, I don't know whether where he is, at the previous meeting he asked, we had a conversation about the light and the cost of the light, and there was an offer to add more than your share to help pay for the light. And I'm wondering if you're still able to do that. I made the commitment, I'm willing to live up to it. To have my share for that project be up to $200,000. Well, I'd like the maker of the motion to include that as a condition of the project. So, it's there, he's asked for it over a five-year period which seems reasonable. I think that should be a condition of the project. But I support the recommended actions and I recognize that there isn't consensus on this, but I think that given where it is, what it is, and what it surrounds, this project makes sense. It's okay with a second. Okay. Mr. Brezer-Cappen? Yeah, I just, what's the acreage on the property in total? 2.6 acres. 2.6 acres. 2.6 acres. 2.6 acres, yeah. That's a pretty big size lot. We talk about the environment. I don't wanna make a big deal out of this, but if we can up the number on a 2.6 acre or a lot, we're cutting down trees faster than we were planting them. So, I'd just like to add to that is if we can make it instead of 50 trees, we can make it 200. Is that okay? They could be planted along the peripheral. They could be planted along the entrances. They can, 2.6 acres is a lot of land. That's not acceptable to the maker of the motion. Yeah, it's not acceptable. Is any number over 50 acceptable? No, because I think it'd be speed. There's a lot of work that's been gone, that has gone into this. I think we've had terrific oversight. I think they've met the, what they should do. We're going to do climate action manager and decide that. Well, I'm a little surprised. If we could avoid yelling out during the meeting, that'd be great, thank you. Well, if it's not acceptable, but I hear all this talk about the environment and does anybody else wanna jump in on that? You know, this will have six-fold increase in the number of trees that are cutting down, right? Eight are coming down, 50 are going up. And what I heard from Mr. Macbeth, and you could correct me if I'm wrong, is that the trees are spaced in part, apart from each other, to ensure that their canopies do not get intertangled, right? So I don't wanna, I would be hard pressed to pick a number arbitrarily for it without understanding that we would have a planning plan that would actually support the health of the trees, right? So that's why I feel uncomfortable in just sort of picking out a number. But I understand your concern and this corner will look better with 50 trees. It may look better with more trees. I just don't know what that number is. Okay, Mr. Friend. Thank you, thank you for the work on this. I mean, as you know, I didn't support this the first time. My opinion of it hasn't changed. I respect the difficult position that my colleagues are in and respect the amount of work that specifically Supervisor Leopold has put into this. My sense is just that I see that we do future planning at the county and I think that in 10 or 15 years we would envision something else at this location, but it's gonna be very difficult to undo what will be there in 10 or 15 years. So in my sense, it's not the right. It's a very difficult situation because there's nothing else in front of the board. The board is considering what's sitting here and it makes sense to consider what's here and not what's possible, but yet I think what's possible at that location would be different in five, 10 or 15 years than what we currently have, which is why I didn't vote for it the first time and I'm not voting for it today. Thank you. So I have a motion and we have a second. All those in favor. Let me just clarify what you said you're voting no. Correct. Okay. So we have a motion and we have a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. That's four opposed. No. Supervisor Friend opposes that. So that passes. We will now move into a closed session. Will there be any reportable action? There may be. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Exactly. Always. Let's do it. All right. Good afternoon, everybody. Good afternoon. We're going to reconvene for our one PM scheduled item. But before we do, I have a report out of closed session. Your board held a special meeting on October 10th and this is the opportunity to report out from the action that took place on that day. So yes. And so the reporting out from our special meeting was the hiring of a new County Council. We miss McCray who's been here for 18 years as our County Council and has done a really remarkable job. The board wanted to find a someone who can step into her considerable shoes and bring the same level of professionalism and ethics and commitment to public service. And we're very happy to announce that the board unanimously chose Jason Heath as our next County Council. And we're excited to have him. And apparently his team is ready to go. So we're just, we know you very well and we appreciate everything you've done but we're excited to work with you as we move forward. Thank you so much. It's, as I've told each one of you, it's a privilege to do this work. And I'm really honored to be appointed. Thank you so much. I also wanna thank the members of the County Council's office, the staff and the attorneys. They are doing inspiring work every day in juvenile dependency and criminal justice and health and human services. And I really appreciate their help and support and look really forward to leading them in the future. I've been really fortunate over the years to have been mentored and guided by some amazing lawyers who are also incredible human beings. And at the top of that list is your current County Council, Dana McCray. I just wanna acknowledge that she over many years has brought a skill and expertise, dignity and grace to this role that I think is just unparalleled. And I thank her so much without her guidance and support and mentorship. I wouldn't be in this position today. It's a great time to be working for the County of Santa Cruz. There's so many great things that you folks are doing for the public. And I just am really excited to be a part of it. So thank you very, very much. Thank you, we are excited to have you. So let's move on to our 1 p.m. scheduled item which is item number 12 to consider an engineer's report for increased assessment rates for County Service Area 48, CSA 48 to consider a resolution of intention to levy an assessment within CSA 48 and schedules public hearing for January 14, 2020 at 9 a.m. or thereafter and take related actions as outlined in a memorandum of the Director of General Services. And we have the Director of General Services here to speak to us. Thank you, Board Chair Coonerty, Michael Beaton, Director of General Services and Administrator of the County's Office of Emergency Services. Presenting with me today is Chief Ian Larkin, Cal Fire Unit Chief of the San Mateo Santa Cruz, no, I'm sorry. Yeah, San Mateo Santa Cruz Unit and the County's Fire Chief. We usually like to say Santa Cruz and then San Mateo. We'll have to take off his patches for that. Today's presentation will be covering Prop 218, the legal requirements related to a ballot measure, an overview of CSA 48 and local fire protection and the current challenges and risks associated, a recommendation on a special benefit assessment to address those challenges and risks. In doing so, we will be requesting approval to proceed with a ballot proceedings with an intention to levy a special benefit assessment on the property owners of CSA 48. In addition, we will cover the next steps if the Board approves a ballot measure proceedings. After the presentation, we'll be available for questions. Before we began the presentation, we thought it would be a good idea to cover the legal process that County was required to follow in determining this potential ballot measure. This process is called Proposition 218. In 1996, the California voters approved a process in which all new taxes, assessments and fees are required to be followed prior to any levy. Under Prop 218, it requires that any amount to potentially be levied to be based on benefit. For the determination of this potential assessment an engineering firm was contracted to determine the special benefit to the unincorporated landowners of CSA 48. Prop 218 also increased the notification and protest requirements that local governments must utilize. It restricts the use of what the funds can be used for and can't fund benefit that is general in nature, but must be specific to the properties that the assessment is being potentially levied on. Prop 218 also requires that governments be assessed on the same basis and pay their fair share of the special benefit they receive. So following those Prop 218 requirements, today's requested actions, County fire is ultimately requesting a service level enhancement to staffing, equipment and facilities through a potential property assessment of approximately $1.5 million. The specific board actions to determine the public's interest in supporting this service level enhancement is for the board to accept and improve a CSA engineering's report determining the allocation of the potential assessment, adopt resolution of intention to levy assessments, publish and hold public hearing on January 14th and approve the sample ballot and accompanying materials and to direct the mailing of those ballots no less than 45 days prior to the public hearing. With this, I will hand it over to Chief Larkin to give an overview of CSA 48 and why we are requesting this service level enhancement. So to provide a overview of the County Fire Department, the County Fire Department, Department, sorry, operates out of five volunteer fire stations. Each of those volunteer fire stations are situated in a geographical location of one of our Cal fire fire stations. Both the volunteer fire stations and the Cal fire stations respond together in a cooperative response. The County Fire Department contracts with Cal fire through a cooperative fire protection agreement which provides for non-fire season staffing during the winter months to provide year-round staffing. During those non-fire season months or in the winter time, the County contract provides funding for one firefighter and the state provides funding for the operator of the fire engine. Under the current fire flow assessment, it provides a supplemental funding for the operation of those five year-round volunteer fire stations in cooperation with those five career fire stations. It also helps fund the cooperative fire protection agreement with Cal fire and keeps those stations open during the non-fire season months to ensure that year-round emergency response. It also provides for limited weed abatement, firefighter training for both volunteer and career staff as well as administrative support staff provided by Cal fire. The Santa Cruz County Fire Department is funded primarily or solely funded through property taxes and the current CSA fee. The funds paid for the service delivery that the County Fire Department provides including personnel, equipment, training, and administrative support. These funds are provided for continuous service delivery during the non-fire season as well as the volunteer response year-round. We continue to see an increase in calls for service and our current staffing levels don't meet industry standards. The restoration of a third firefighter on our engines will allow for better, for us to be better prepared for emergency response, but will require additional funding. So some of our challenges that we continue to see is the safety of our firefighters and the citizens are our number one priority and having a third firefighter on an engine will help increase our ability to meet that objective. The federal law requires us to have four firefighters at the scene of a structure fire or an incident that has a threat to life where it creates an environment that's immediately dangerous to health and life. That two-in-two out rule requires us to have those four firefighters at the scene, but there is an exception to that rule. And that exception is if we have a known rescue, two firefighters can enter a structure to affect that rescue and exit the building. Having that third firefighter on our fire engines, along with one volunteer firefighter would allow us to have that fourth firefighter in order for us to quickly enter a structure and extinguish a fire, but it will also allow us to perform rescue and provide for firefighter safety at a greater level at the same time. Our local fire stations, as I stated, are short staffed. When multiple calls come in and we don't have enough staff to respond to a second call, this occurred 56 times in 2018 where resources were committed and we would have had to have been required to request mutual aid from another agency much farther away to respond to a new emergency. Along with climate change and the drought, we are experiencing fires that spread faster, are becoming more larger, and they're becoming deadlier. Today we see and respond with 25 fewer firefighters during the non-fire season months and approximately 45% fewer volunteers than we did 10 years ago. Our emergency calls are continuing to increase. A third firefighter and reliable equipment allows the fire department to provide more efficient patient care, reduce response times, and have less reliance on mutual aid. So as we've discussed, our staffing needs, we have other year-round challenges in continuing our reliable emergency response delivery system that we have as it relates to equipment facilities. We have several fire engines that are approximately 28 years in service, so they're 28 years old and are becoming more costly to maintain. We have also deferred all maintenance on most of our facilities, unless they absolutely need to have repairs made. And we also, in addition, are in a position where we need to replace additional personal protective equipment, which is our turnouts, and those kind of items, our wildland gear that we provide all of our staff, volunteers, and career, and EMS equipment like defibrillators and other EMS perishable equipment. In order for us to continue to provide that quality emergency response system that we have. And in addition, emergency preparedness measures need to be taken in order for us to decrease the county's risk. With the operational challenges, as identified by Chief Larkin, County Fire is requesting approximately 1.5 million to address the growing operational concerns. With the 1.5 million, it will allow County Fire to hire six career firefighters, increasing the staffing during non-fire season, purchase the additional PPE, as new regulations and updated requirements come out, start addressing deferred maintenance of County Fire stations. In addition, it will specifically create a funding mechanism to replace the aging and outdated fire engines and apparatuses identified by Chief Larkin. Once the needed service level, once the needed level of service improvements was identified, County Fire contracted with an engineering firm, SCI Consulting Group to undertake the analysis is needed for consideration of an additional special benefit assessment, consistent with the requirements of Prop 218. One of the recommended actions is to accept and approve that engineer's report. The attached engineer's report provides a detailed discussion on the basis for determining general benefit that all properties and the public receive and to separate the special benefit associated with each parcel. As you can imagine, as evident by the engineer's report, it is a rather complex process and applies industry best practices, along with local data, to determine the special benefit for each property and then the associated assessed value. In the audience today, we have Chief Engineer, John Bliss and support staff, Jeanette Heinzen. Close? Okay. Sorry. The authors of the engineer's report, whom will be available at the conclusion of this presentation for the detailed technical questions that may pop up regarding the engineer's report. We, however, will attempt to explain the engineer's report in a not so technical fashion. One of the first components that SCI determined was what was the general benefit for the community and the special benefit that each of the approximately 10,000 parcels in CSA 48 would receive by adding the service level enhancement. SCI further calculated the special benefit using industry best practices and standards for fire assessments and developed an approximate cost that would be levied to each parcel based on a single family equivalent. A single family equivalent is characterized as a typical single family home on a property of an acre or less. The factors that SCI utilized in assessing the benefit amount for each of the 10,000 parcels are parcel use, such as if it's a house, a commercial property, a governmental property, vacant land, apartment, a parking lot, the replacement value of the property, the fire hazard risk factors depending on the locality of the property if it's within a fire hazard zone as determined by the state, and the proximity to a local fire station. They utilize and weigh each one of these factors for each one of the approximately 10,000 parcels. As you can imagine, that is no easy task. So to help explain this, we have prepared a few case examples of parcels that reside within CSA 48. On this slide, we show two different examples, case one and case two of a single family residence that resides in two different fire hazard zones. One very high risk and one relatively low risk and have a different distance from the fire station and different associated response times. As identified in case one, this property is a very high hazard zone with a 10 minute response time and an assessment value would be equal to about $187.39. Whereas in case two, a parcel has a lower fire hazard zone with a longer response time actually has a lower assessment value of $155. The third case demonstrates how the assessment would apply to a vacant parcel with an annual assessed value of approximately $40. Based on the special benefit, because the special benefit is different for each parcel based on their unique factors, the assessment has to be calculated for each parcel based on a base rate and a parcel characteristics and the parcel characteristics. In the engineer's calculation, they determine that the average single family equivalent assessment for a residence would be $148.72 annually. The engineers report details additional base rates for multifamily units such as apartments and other property types which we have highlighted in the board report, identifying property types and their associated base rates. Again, each property rate will be different. So in an effort to make sure property owners are aware of what their potential assessment might be, we will have a link on the County Fire Department's website, www.SanacruzCountyFire.com that allows each property owner to look up their assessed amount that was engineered using the four factors. Parcel owners can search using their parcel APN or by property owner name upon potential approval of the board item. The website will be launched and made available to the public. There is also a paper version available on file with the clerk of the board. In addition, all 10 of the County's fire stations will have a binder that looks just like this with all items in today's board packet including a listing of all the APNs and their associated assessed value for the members of the public to go to and look up their properties if they don't have internet and can't get to a local public library. In order to gauge the community's interest in supporting a County Fire Service level enhancement at these proposed assessment rates, an educational outreach was performed throughout CSA 48 and the County. The County performed an extensive community education outreach with the creation of fact sheets, frequently asked questions, interacted with community through social media channels, mailed approximately 10,000 information packets with materials, held seven town hall events presented at the Farm Bureau, made over 1,250 direct phone calls and sent information through email distribution list to approximately 3,200 addresses. The purpose of this outreach was to discuss the current fire related operational challenges with CSA 48 community members, the proposed improvements and to get their feedback on the potential assessment level. With all the educational outreach, the majority of the responses were in support of a ballot measure for the service level enhancements for County Fire. In addition, the County Santa Cruz Fire Department advisory commission has also made a recommendation in support of any type of funding measure to help support County Fire. However, as you can imagine, there was never 100% support. There are some community members who have expressed opposition to a ballot measure. If the proposed special benefit assessment is approved by the personal owners, it would provide the needed stable local source of funding that will be dedicated to County Fire that cannot be taken away by the state or redirected to the County General Fund. The proposed assessment would be adjusted annually by inflation, not to exceed 4% and would require the Board of Advisors approval to continue the assessment annually and approve the inflation rate annually. Every penny generated by this assessment under consideration would go directly to Santa Cruz County Fire, CSA 48. If today's recommended actions are approved to proceed, ballots will be mailed no later than November 5th, 2019, allowing for 70 days for personal owners to cast their ballots, which is greater than the Prop 2-18 requirement of 45 days. The ballot will consist of a notice explaining the ballot and Prop 2-18. The ballot itself will list the amounts that will potentially be assessed and the corresponding parcel numbers with a fill-in bubble indicating support for or against the proposed assessment. On January 14th, 2020, the County will hold the public hearing and the County Election Office, County Clerk will count the ballots. The weight of each ballot is commensurate to the amount of the assessment they identified on their ballot. The higher the potential assessment amount, the more weight that ballot has. At the conclusion of the hearing, after ballots have been tabulated by the County Elections, County Clerk, the results will be reported to the Board with a 50% plus one of the cast ballots vote required to pass or not pass the proposed assessment. This assessment would go into effect fiscal year 2020, 21, and not be retroactive, if approved. With that, this concludes our presentation with the recommended actions identified and we're available for any questions. So we'll take some questions then we wanna hear from the public. It's a pleasure to have you. You pro, I'm all for it. We all participated and got the word out and everything like that. Who administers the funds? Okay, the, let's say it passes and I pay or somebody pays $100. It goes to the state and then the, no. No, I believe the funds will be collected by the County Treasurer's Office to which then it would be diverted or transferred over to the County Fire Department budget. Okay, and then I know patches and uniforms are very important to firefighters. Some still have the old Santa Cruz County Fire Department on it. Is that affected at all? No, that wouldn't be affected with this assessment. And yes, there are two different patches. The issue with County Fire, when you, when somebody responds, sometimes you either have the County Fire Patch, which is on the screen here today. Right. Sometimes you have the Cal Fire Patch, depending on what type of response is showing up. And that's the choice of the firefighter or? No, it's relative to if the firefighter is a volunteer with Santa Cruz County Fire Department or whether they are a paid staff for Cal Fire. So our Cal Fire employees respond with the identification of the Cal Fire Patch and our County Fire volunteers respond with the logo of the County Fire Department. Okay, so the patches that would be given out from the money that they're passing would be for whom? The patch would say Santa Cruz or Cal Fire? No, they would say Santa Cruz. And it's the current patch that we do issue to each of the firefighters when they conclude their academies. Okay. And then I know insurance, we all pay homeowners insurance and things like that. When you, is it, it would be possible that maybe someone's fire insurance or their insurance out there in those areas would go down because of more firefighters and more trucks and things like that. We would really know the direct answer until we had a reevaluation by the insurance services office, which just concluded their annual or actually it's a more like a five-year annual evaluation of the fire department, which was just concluded this last year, which in turn we saw a slight improvement in our rating based on our current service delivery. So we would know that until they reevaluated that. And the risk that is now is much higher than it would be in the future? Potential. If it passes. Okay. And then just for clarification for everybody to know, who else votes on this? We're all thinking of private owners and things like that too. Does the school get a vote out there? So the vote would go to any property owner currently identified as under the assessor recorder property owner deed, which involves corporations. It involves trusts. It involves individual property owners. It involves government or governmental organizations. It involves private equity firms. Basically, however, the property is held within. So that the school would have a vote. Correct. And the county and maybe even the city of Watsonville. What's the, we own the acreage out there in Corleitas. What is that, grizzly flats or something? I don't believe the city of Watsonville would get a vote in this property. I'm not sure. But if they did own property, they would. But I don't believe Watsonville does own any property in the CSA 48. Even the grizzly flats. I'm not sure. Grizzly flats I think is actually in the state Cal Fire. I'm not sure. Well, it's in state responsibility area, but it is within the boundaries of CSA 48. Okay. So they would get a vote then. All right. Anyway, I'm all forward. I really appreciate what the fire department does. And I apologize for the questions, but I just like the public to know everything that's going on. Thank you very much. Okay. We have one more quick question before I hear from the public, Professor Leopold. Just quickly, the high risk, low risk assessment. Who makes that? And can people see maps of where that is? Cause that seemed to be important. So yeah. So the fire hazard severity zone maps that are determined by the state are available on Cal Fire's webpage under their FRAP page. And it will give you the delineation of what is a very high versus a high and so on and so forth, as well as LRA versus SRA, because they do rate the local response areas as well as the state response areas. In addition, it's also in the engineers report, which we have, we'll have available online and also available at each fire station. Thank you. All right. Now let's open it up to members of the public. If you'd like to speak, please line up. Do you want to go right ahead? No, we're going to stick with two minutes, but anyone who would like to speak, please line up. Go ahead, please. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Arnie Ornick and I'm the fifth district representative to the Santa Cruz County Fire Department advisory commission, also known as the FDAC. I served as a volunteer firefighter with company 29, South Skyline Fire and Rescue for 33 years and was our captain for 20 of those. I'm a resident of CSA 48 and I live in the South Skyline area. As a member of the FDAC, I'm here today to restate our support expressed in our recommendation to the board of supervisors to move forward with a ballot measure for a new assessment to fund Santa Cruz County Fire. As a resident of CSA 48, I also wish to recommend that you move forward with this ballot measure. The impact of this additional funding is critical to maintaining the level of service provided by County Fire to the residents of rural Santa Cruz County and to improving the safety and response capabilities of our firefighters. Regarding community support, I will share my firsthand experience from two of the seven town hall events presented by Chief Larkin. In brief, both town halls were well attended and there was keen interest in Chief Larkin's presentation and in supporting Santa Cruz County Fire and the vital role it plays in our communities. Once again, thank you very much for this opportunity to share my thoughts and recommendations with you to move forward with this ballot measure. Next speaker. Good afternoon. My name is Steve Holman and I have lived in Bonnie Dune in the County Fire Area for 43 years. Cal Fire Chief and the members of his administration are contract employees of your board. The job is to administer County Fire CSA 48, the County's Rural Volunteer Fire Department. They already administer their own paid fire department. The Chief wants another paid firefighter for Cal Fire during the nonfire season months. Right now, this minute, County Fire can put in the field around a dozen fire engines, rescue vehicles and water tenders and over 60 volunteers, although it should be 120 volunteers if Cal Fire was really doing its job. If you're a board and Cal Fire really don't want a large volunteer firefighting force in the rural area, then please let us know and we can have that conversation later. The engineer's report makes very little mention of the volunteer force or how this tax money is going to improve the volunteer force. It just talks about what Cal Fire wants. I've sent an email to all of you regarding my concerns about how in defense of the report's criteria, there's four of them, and I hope you'll read my mail. One thought I want to bring to your attention right now regarding that email is that Cal Fire is 100% responsible for wildland firefighting in the state responsibility areas 365, 24, 7. However, the engineer's report proposes that the structure replacement value of Criterium taxes homes on over one acre for the additional land. Due to the site area, we've already paid taxes to the state to pay for Cal Fire to be wildland firefighters. We don't need to pay them a second time under this proposal to do it. This is ridiculous. Finally, my last question is, whatever happened to the Prop 172 and measure G money that was supposed to go to public safety, including fire? Because county fire never saw one penny ever. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Becky Steinbrunner. I've been a resident of the rural Aptos Hills for almost 35 years and was a volunteer firefighter with county fire in the early 90s. I want to point out in the staff report that it makes it appear that in the last FDAC meeting there were 10 there and there was broad support for recommendation that a ballot measure be forward. I was at that meeting, there are five commissioners and there were only three of them there. They have never seen this engineer's report. They have never seen it and they did not discuss it. So they did support some sort in concept of finding supplemental funding. That's the truth. I have a problem with the general benefit part because in, first of all, people need to understand that this benefit assessment will be on top of the existing CSA 48 money that we're all paying. Now in the engineer's report, it talks about how the general benefit part of this benefit assessment has to be paid for by those outside of the district. But what I see is that the county, the county is CSA 48. It is the great payers now who would pay this general benefit. So it is double taxing. The public benefit part wouldn't come from the county's general fund, would it? You can make that change. I also wonder about the administrative fee because I am also a member of CSA 33 that administers our road. And it is very high, the administrative fee. So I worry that the administrative fees on top of what CSA 48 is already being charged and will also be charged more. And I wanna say I really am opposed to the weighted ballot part. This is being done so that it's only a 50% plus one approval rating instead of the two thirds approval rating. This isn't fair. It's not transparent. And if you do vote to move this forward, I want more town hall meetings out in these communities with general services there to really answer people's questions and make it clear what we're voting on. Thank you. Hi, my name is Richard Conley. We've been residents of Bonnie Dune as a family for a long time. We are certainly not anti fire protection. And there are two ways to go about this shortfall. One would be a special tax, which would be subject to a two thirds majority. It's a flat tax per parcel and it's manageable and pretty transparent. And it's what we just had a fee recently applied. That's fairly straightforward. This one as a special assessment is a 50% plus one. It also requires engineers to come up with four categories to make each parcel a specific entity. And within those details, we tried to get some information we sent to the letter and we talked to the folks at CSI in Fairfield. The four areas just quickly, there's parcel related risk. I'll come back to that later. There's no benefit to any to anyone. If you have 14,000 gallons with fire water to fight, or if you have a sprinkler system inside your house, the big thing in here is the replacement cost, which is not what's being used and what will go out to the ballots on the ballots. They use the database of the assessor's office for your current assessment. There are some people, your constituents, who may see an increase if it was to move from assessed value to replacement value of maybe four to 10 times. So there are some details that are being overlooked here. And I think this market based potential assessment is one of the precedents that's being set here that the constituents don't understand, they don't realize the implications. And all they're looking at is that it's $151 or $140 who wouldn't vote for that. I think there's some precedents in here that really need to be looked at. This is in the civil engineers view, our methodology for establishing a fair tax per parcel. And it's very complicated. We'll become hard to manage and it is subjective. Thanks very much. Hello, my name is Marsh McDougall. And I haven't followed all the details, the legal of this and that, which have been spoken about. And I like very much what I've heard from the speakers in Bonnie Dune. I just like to put in a good note for the fire people down on Swanton Road where I've lived for ever for many, many years, decades. And I remember in the early days when they were not there and we, only people who could fight fires are Bud and Lud McCrary up with their airplane and tractor and help us on the ground. And I remember those fires and it's been wonderful having the fire department on Swanton Road. And I might put in a word that they've personally helped save my husband's life twice which I do very much appreciate. And we all depend on them for everything. They've been so supportive in fires and so supportive personally. Goodbye. Thank you. Hi, my name is Kerry Pico. And actually I want to address more of the audience than you. I do want to remind everybody that this is just to vote to allow the residents of CSA 48 to vote on it. It is not a decision here. You guys are just voting to put it on a ballot and let it go. I want to talk about my wife. In a backyard fell off of a retaining wall. Tell you what, if you would mind just so I can make it. So my wife was on her retaining wall about the height of this about three feet high gardening and she managed to fall off. We live on a slope like the rest of probably CSA 48. And she ended up upside down with a very bad broken leg which has actually been life changing for us. And if two firefighters had shown up they would have just sat there twiddling their thumbs until they had four people to lift her out. And people say, well you could have waited for backup. And I've done my calls around backup can take up to 45 minutes if you talk to the sheriff, the CHP or whatever. And the point is she found out that she had some head injury that needed urgent assistance. So that's why you really need more than two people to show up. That's why this ballot measure is on there. Now let me talk about numbers. I said I wouldn't bring a spreadsheet but we're talking about number one, two and three. I've called around the different counties. There are places where there is only one firefighter per station or in a station. And they don't like it very well. In fact, up in Santa Cruz mountains they used to man it with one person and they will say you need a minimum of three, if not four. Two is still not enough as I mentioned for my wife. And three is still barely enough to get through when you have medical emergencies, accidents and things like that. So the point is people need to understand we're not here to really try and get more money for the department. It's really about adding a person and increasing safety. Not so much for fires, but for all the other issues. Thank you. Hello. Sorry I got to read it because I was kind of like thinking it was gonna be one minute. So let's see what I can do here. Start the clock. I'm Doug Almak. I'm a volunteer. I serve the county as a responding volunteer firefighter with South Skyline fire and rescue company 29. I serve the county as a volunteer firefighter representative to the fire department advisory commission, FDAC. I have served the county as the chairman of the FDAC for the past five years. And currently I'm serving the county as a member of the education steering committee focused on this proposed ballot measure and assessment to further fund Santa Cruz County fire. I'm a resident of CSA 48, South Skyline located in the 5th Supervisorial District. I wish to convey my experience and understanding of this proposed ballot measure critical to funding forward the continued good works of the Santa Cruz County fire department. Simply, we need funding. This proposal measure will greatly help. Year to year, the FDAC wrestles with Santa Cruz County fire budget facing uncertain revenues and growing list of expenses. We live the financial challenges specific to the proposed ballot measure. I have made over 500 phone calls attended many town hall meetings and had many face to face interactions and can report that I've received overwhelming support for continued delivery of emergency services that this funding will allow as a resident as well as a member of the FDAC is my strong recommendation that you move forward with this critical ballot measure. Thank you. You. Hi, I'm John McKeon from the Davenport area and my question is really why wouldn't we want the best up to date equipment and staffing levels for the other half of the year? And if you, the board of supervisors have done your due diligence and concur that this is the most efficient and cost effective way to get that delivered to your constituents it should be done and we should support it. If there are practical ways to lay off some of the costs to tourists and other recipients who are not local they should be implemented or at least considered. I'm not sure there are any practical ways but that would be the only thing I could think of that would help lower the costs and get us where we wanna be. Thank you. That concludes public comment. I'll bring it back to the board for deliberation and action. Anyone like to make that? Sure. Yeah, I wanna thank first of all Cal Fire for its cooperative effort and through the years with County Fire it's really helped us provide as much service with the facilities that you have throughout the year. We all know, especially in these recent days and years about the essential function of fire service and of government and we've had some concerns for many years about our inadequate resources of County Fire. This is not new. It's not just this year it's been for several years running. A large percentage of my Supervisorial District has been classified as tier three fire threat area by Cal Fire and that means it's a very severe or really a severe fire area and has several other areas in the unincorporated area of the county that are served by County Fire and to make it clear, County Fire is not the cities involved in the four cities. It's not the fire districts that are spread throughout the county but it's those rural areas in essence that are outside of those fire districts and cities. I think it's really the responsibility of this board to give out the property owners within CSA 48 the proper information about the service level we were able to offer for the resources we have available and we know that there are many of them are outdated and I really like, I think we need this desperately. You don't know how much you need it until you have and we've heard a couple of examples right here, many of it, much of it is medical assistance calls but we will be very happy that we have this for those types of calls but it should any other fire break out in the so-called non-fire season. So I'd like to really move the staff recommendation to move forward with this ballot and allow those property owners who are within CSA 48 to decide for themselves through the vote. And I'm moving on to Ferrisen, a second by Leopold. Let me just appreciate the presentation appreciate the work that our county fire does every day both with paid staff and volunteers. It's really an incredible service and it's very valued by the folks who live in the district. The last couple of years have heightened our sense of fire danger and I know that the community that I represent up in the mountain, the summit area community has been working diligently to think about what it is they could do. This morning we recognize another neighborhood not in CSA 48 for becoming a fire-wise community the first in the county and we're starting to see that up in the summit area as well, people interested in working together to achieve that designation. They do believe that county fire is a critical resource and it's one of the few things that serves as a bulwark against the threat of a wildfire that we have seen in other communities. We have talked about trying to find a way to fund county fire for a number of years. This is not a new discussion in my district. I know that the residents I've talked with them they are interested in supporting this. They are gonna be working with Cal Fire on a shaded fuel break. We are working with Rosemary Anderson on a number of other pieces along with Matt Machado to ensure that they're safe evacuation routes. So this is part of a plan that's really critical. I'm gonna be supporting this measure and I will be encouraging my constituents to vote for it. I think it's very much needed. Thank you, Chair and thank you for the comments from my colleagues. Also thank you for coming in to answer all the questions that you did at multiple meetings not just the one community meeting we had but in additional discussions that I've had in Correlatives you've made yourself very present both your entire staff and multiple community meetings I've had and this was one of the issues that came up over the last few years not just this dedicated meeting. You know the numbers do speak for themselves. You've got a over 25% reduction in the paid staff about a 40 some odd percent reduction in the volunteer staff while having a 20 plus percent increase in calls over that same time period. And we've heard repeatedly for those of us that represent areas and these rural areas that rely on this that there's a desire for improved protections especially in light of what people are seeing occur throughout the state. And it seems very reasonable to then ask the community to just participate in this question. Do you want additional fire services provided the rural area yes or no? That's what the board's asking is putting forward to you. The answer is no that's gonna be respected by the board if the answer is yes this is what's been put forward to you in order to provide exactly those services. I think that you've done a good job of outlining it in a very clear way of what it would provide. When you live in a rural area you know it takes longer for services to be provided for you by definition. And it makes sense to build up those services that are provided in a way that can help save lives. And I can't say enough to the two that we've honored in previous ways the two volunteer firefighters that are here have actually been acknowledged by this board for their years of contribution and they continue to serve on our commission but we need something that can help shore it up both on the paid and volunteer side. And this allows an opportunity for the community to make that determination for themselves that this is the level of service that they want. And I'm supportive of not just this going to the voters but I'm supportive of this in general so that we can have improved services to the rural area. Thank you. Supervisor Caput. Real quick now volunteer firefighters they require money too for equipment and they also require training and they do get a little bit of money when they respond to a fire that's correct. Is that correct? Yes, they get a stipend for their response. And they come from all walks of life. Yeah, I mean they're volunteers they're your citizens within your community. Okay. What I like about this is it's a proactive tax we've seen what's happened in different parts of the state and it's too late to help them now. Of course we're trying to help them recover like paradise. But I like this because it's proactive it's gonna give us a better response time and it'll give us more personnel out on the field. And just quickly tell you a story about the volunteer firefighters. The old mayor of Watsonville. I think I have this story correct. Bill Murphy, he was a volunteer firefighter and Gene Friend was the fire chief at the time. And when Bill Murphy showed up as a volunteer firefighter Gene Friend would remind him now I'm the boss you're not the boss and make sure you do it the right way. So anyway, it could be anybody who shows up as far as a volunteer firefighter. Thank you. Thank you. And I'll just conclude by saying I think this is an opportunity as was mentioned this is us putting it out to the voters and the voters can decide what they wanna do. I would encourage you to include the link for people to figure out what their specific assessment would be on all the educational pieces because it will differ and it is confusing and it's important that people know when they vote what they're voting for. And so make sure that that information is widely available and included on all of our educational pieces. Finally, I'll say this. There's a lot of talk often or not, there's significant talk about us using 172 money or measure G money. Let me just say 172 money is going to the sheriff's department. I've fought very hard to get a North Coast deputy. I know other supervisors fight hard to have other deputies up in the rural areas. And I'm not willing to lose the North Coast deputy in order to re-divert 172 money into the fire departments. And similarly measure G is going to regional parks is going to mental health and law and public safety. And I'm not willing to also redirect any of those dollars. So to the extent that people want more services, they should support it to the extent that they don't. That's fine. That's obviously their right as a voter. I'm fully supportive of that. But I don't think that's not pretend that there's some magic pot of money that doesn't have already, that is already funding important programs in our community that can be used to backfill these dollars. So we have a motion and can you please, I don't speak out when you're speaking. And so I, so I'd like you to not speak out when we're speaking. So now we have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed that passes unanimously. And that's our final business. So we will adjourn to our next regular scheduled Board of Supervisors meeting.