 Good morning. I will now call to order the regular meeting of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. It is 9 a.m. June 28th, 2022. Clerk, will you please call the roll? Supervisor Friend. Here. Coonerty. Here. Caput. Here. McPherson. Here. And Koenig. Here. Thank you, Chair. You have a quorum. Thank you. We'll now proceed with the moment of silence and pledge of allegiance. Is there any member of the board that wish to dedicate this moment to anyone? Seeing none, then we'll just have a moment of silence then. Please rise for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. A.O. Palacio. So are there any additions to or deletions to the agenda today? Yes, there are some corrections to the agenda. On the regular agenda, item number nine, there's additional materials, attachment three B, insert after packet page 53. And then on the consent agenda, there's item 38. Staff request this item be deleted. This is packet pages 706 to 718 on item 75. Recommended action number three should read, advertise a notice of requests for qualifications for a 10 day period beginning on July 2nd, 2022. And then on item 75, there's additional materials, attachment C, insert after packet page 1479. That concludes the revisions to today's agenda. Thank you. I proceed to item four. Is there any board members that wish to remove an item from consent to the regular agenda? Seeing none, we'll proceed with public comment. Sorry, one moment. Any person may now address the board during public comment period. Speakers must not exceed two minutes in length. And individuals may speak only once during public comment. All public comments must be directed to an item listed on today's consent agenda, closed session agenda, and yet to be heard on the regular agenda or a topic not on the agenda, which is within the jurisdiction of the board. Board members will not take actions or respond immediately to any public communication presented regarding topics not on the agenda, but may choose to follow up later either individually or subsequent board of supervisors meeting. Also just to clarify, for those of you, the item 38 was the item addressing the downtown library and that has been deleted from today's agenda. We will not be hearing that today. And we are gonna try to get to the core item as quickly as possible here. It is scheduled for the third item on our regular agenda, item nine. So I ask if you are here to speak about that to hold comment until we hear the item. Thank you. Please proceed. Good morning, my name is James Ewing Whitman. I'm glad that the core item is on there. I guess I missed that when I was reading it. I'm glad it's on there. Over 1,700 pages today, there were 13 items on the consent agenda that I noted to look at further. 1,700 pages is quite a bit. The number 66, which has to do, I believe, well, I'm gonna look into it, but I was just really questioning that. So, you know, courage is not the absence of fear. Courage means you move forward in the face of fear. I was here last week and I listened to a lot of commentary. It was great. I learned a great deal. I wish that I had shared some other information, but I was here. There's just a lot of things that aren't being discussed and maybe now's not the time. I was graced last week to get on speakerphone with a friend and asked to talk on a syndicated radio station in LA. These three people have been doing this for 30 years. My friend spoke for like the first 10 and I just kinda asked him what was on their mind and stuff. I was able to be recorded for 92% of the conversation for an hour and 15 minutes. I am sure looking forward to listening to that because I was probably able to cite at least 35 different people where I got my information from. So nice to see you guys. Good conversation with you, Mr. McPherson, today. Thank you, Mr. Whitman. I just want to ask a question before I step up. Am I allowed to speak to items that are not on the agenda sort of? You are, we do have a very packed agenda so I did ask that you keep it brief. Okay, thank you. My name is Elise Kasby. I'm a resident of Santa Cruz. I wanted to speak today on the library issue. The, what was known as Measure S in the city of Santa Cruz to fund the libraries. And so I just want to say that I've been watching city council in Santa Cruz up until about two years ago, very, very closely. I went to probably over 70% in the meetings, maybe at least over 60. And I watched our city government proceedings very closely. So I want to say something and I'm going to try not to sound holier than thou, which is my new program to be a kind of activist whistleblower who isn't so maybe righteous. But I do need to say the dealings at Santa Cruz city council have been downright dirty. I haven't seen such dirty politics since I was growing up in the Philadelphia area and Frank Rizzo is mayor of the city of Philadelphia. I saw flyers up on campus at UCSC that I have in my possession accusing Chris Crone and Drew Glover of being sexual molesters and harassers. And I believe those flyers said that they had been convicted of this. I saw the Sentinel lie and I have seen really shady dealings around this entire library issue. So I'm going to ask that the movers and shakers in the county and the city drop the issue of trying to force the library garage to which they added housing to sweeten the deal since it was extremely unpopular. Mr. Coonerty needs to stop his dirty politics telling things that are false to the democratic clubs up on campus. And we need a new era of less corruption and honesty in government in Santa Cruz County. Thank you very much. Thank you, relief. Hello, my name is Helga Nebel and I live in Felton, California. I've been helping the homeless people for over 30 years and I know them all and I don't know what to tell you. I just know if they don't, if you take the showers away from them that you're taking away part of their human dignity. They are looking forward. It's like a treat. They live in the forest. They live under the bridge with like animals. They're looking forward to cleaning, to get a warm shower at least twice, three times a week. I don't know exactly. I think usually three times a week. And so I beg you to consider that as a human dignity aspect because they already have so much, such a hard time. They have no warm food. They live on food stamps, they live in the forest and all they have is the last thing. I talked to some homeless person last night and they asked me to come here and speak for them. They are looking so much forward to clean themselves off living in the dirt. Please consider that as a human dignity issue and not nothing else. Thank you very much. Thank you, Helga. Thank you. Supervisors McPherson, French, Koenig, Coonerty and Capit. My name is Sarah Leonard. I'm from MHCAN and I'm asking again that you fund MHCAN through CORE. My understanding is that you made some changes but MHCAN was not included in those changes. Throughout our whole lives, often people such as I, I'm diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar, autism, PTSD and a few more things. Oftentimes our whole lives we are overlooked and I ask you not to overlook us today. Thank you. Thank you. My name is TJ and I just wanna ask if y'all could please fund MHCAN. Thank you, TJ. Hi, my name is Serenity and I'm here on behalf of MHCAN today. I've been going to MHCAN for eight years. MHCAN is a lifeline for a lot of people in this community. It is the oldest run peer support in California maybe in the nation. It's grassroots, we don't have funding like the managed mental health systems like Encompass and the other things that we're funded through CORE and we've been funded and now you're taking that funding away and it's literally a dignity issue for the people in the community who have mental health challenges and a lot of them are homeless and you're kicking them out of the Benchlands, you're kicking them out of Oceana, you're kicking them out of the Armory and they come to MHCAN for coffee, for showers, to do groups, to fuel their mental wellness. That's what MHCAN is. It's not a clubhouse where people are homeless and mentally ill and we all just hang out and smoke cigarettes all day. There's a real purpose for MHCAN. It's a blessing for this community and if you take that away and you give it to the managed health care systems what you've already done behind closed doors, there'll be nothing left. Santa Cruz is a very special place. Please remember us because we do matter and a mental health is a hot button right now in this country because of COVID. Please take it seriously. God bless you all. Thank you, Serenity. Hello. My name is Shelly Seawald and I am a resident of Santa Cruz. In my lifetime, I have experienced homelessness and while it was homeless I walked into MHCAN and I was able to get support and during that time I got encouragement to get a job, which I did. And during that time when I started that job I still continue to use MHCAN services for showers to do my work clothes, laundry, to eat and rides. And I now have stable housing. I also am now, I've been in this restaurant for a year and a half and I am manager. And all of this is impossible with the help of MHCAN. So I am an example of what is possible with the services provided by MHCAN. It's possible to get off the streets and it's possible to have a life of stability financially and housed again. And I would just like to please beg that you do not because there's many of more of me out there. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Shelly. Hello, my name is Joanna and I'm here to represent MHCAN. I would like for you to continue to support us because I'm also one of the people that have benefited from all their services. So we ask that you do not overlook us and please consider that when you are making your decisions. Thank you very much. Thank you, Joanna. Hi, my name is Chris. I'm here to speak to you on MHCAN. Can I start? Okay, so MHCAN personally is a miracle working place. And if there was more of them, you know, it could do wonders. I was at the bottoms of the depths of homelessness and just on the death's door and by the grace of God and MHCAN is part of my story. It restored my life, you know. It's a good investment for the community, not just for the homeless or for the people with mental health because we all have mental health like at the end of the day. Just some people have symptoms and problems but for the entire Santa Cruz and the entire community, it would be a great investment for everybody's mental health. It serves everybody and it saves lives and it creates community and it gives people a place to be because I don't know if you've ever experienced not having a place to be and not feeling safe and feeling all these things and emotions but if you ever felt that you would know like you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy, so if you could fund it, be appreciated, doing God's work. So thank you, everyone. Thank you, Chris. My name is Richard Lewis. I just couldn't understand, is this just on like showers and mental health or anything that isn't on the agenda? You can speak to any item on the agenda or anything. Well, and I'm happy to be here. There's legislation and I'd like to make it known. It's called California Youth Empowerment but Commission. And instead of being focused on high school, it's focused to the age 25. I've asked in the past to create a hub for youth and youth development. If you've done that, I would sure like to research and learn what that hub for our county is. And if it's not there, I would ask you to do research with staff of what would youth empowerment look like in the cities? Know that at high school in Santa Cruz and Watsonville at the time our CEO here, they had a youth city council. Now that's different if we raise it to 25 and have a youth mayor and a youth city council in places like Scotts Valley or Aptos or anywhere. So I see I've got 39 seconds, but hope that you'll do your research and then bring up what you find with the hub being Cabrillo because we're in the shadow of UC Santa Cruz. And to those who don't know me, I'm full-time and I'll be 85 years young, my prayer to live one more day and I'll put these upstairs because the homies are coming as a club as we move forward, like in across the hill, the Latinos for a new America, I ask you to help move forward youth empowerment in this county. Thank you, sir. Good morning, my name is Joanna Debers. I'm the director of institutional engagement at the Peninsula Open Space Trust, also known as POST. Over a decade ago, POST joined forces with the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County, Semper Virons Fund and saved the Redwoods League to protect a property we now call the San Vicente Redwoods property. It's over 8,500 acres in the Santa Cruz Mountains. And I'm just here today to express gratitude to the Board of Supervisors and the county staff for your support and helping direct some really important state funding to this project. It's item 54 on your consent agenda today. Supervisor, I'm sorry, assembly member Mark Stone championed this project at the state level because it provides some really important public benefits to the Santa Cruz Mountains region. We're going to be able to provide year round emergency access for vehicles into remote parts of the Santa Cruz Mountains. And we're going to do some important shaded fuel break work with this funding. The County of Santa Cruz played a really important role in helping direct this funding to our organization. So thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Devers. Hello, my name is Arlan Torres and I just want you guys to see how fun image can. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Good morning, my name is Becky Steinberg and I'm a resident of rural Aptos in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I want to highlight your correspondence. Here it is AA on your printed on the online agenda it was AF. This is a letter from Matthew Kaufman conveying to you his concerns that he was dismissed as a county fire volunteer. Simply because he questioned some of the tactics that Cal Fire and County Fire did during the CZU Lightning Complex fire. There has never been an after action analysis on this fire by Cal Fire and they have refused to do so. I have asked your board a number of times to do an operational after action review and interview investigation with your county fire volunteers and it has not happened. This is very disturbing to me. Cal Fire is essentially reducing our volunteer force at a time when we need more. This is unacceptable and I ask you to look into it. I want to highlight also that there will be this $3 million 400 feet shaded fuel break on Warren dollar road and Dewey road improvements. That is excellent. I want to see what the road improvements will look like. And I urge your board to also impress upon state parks the importance of reopening the emergency evacuation for the last chance community. A man died. A man died because he was trying to use that evacuation route that state parks cut off. This is unacceptable. Please work with state parks and get that open again. Finally, I want to bring to your attention items 23 and 24 on the consent agenda moving the sounding emergency communications radio system completely changing coverage within our South County area. Moving the equipment from the fire station to in Watsonville up to Mount Madonna. This will have big changes for a communication. Thank you, Ms. Steinberger. And I'm concerned. Thank you. Does that work? Okay. My name is Blair. I go to MHCAN and I'm very glad that you are funding some other organizations that offer services to the community as well. However, I did notice that MHCAN was not being funded and I am a little bit concerned about that. Frankly, I think that cutting that funding will still devastate a lot of the community. I think it's good that you guys are funding other places, but I would really like it if you considered funding us as well as would many members of the community. Thank you. Thank you, Blair. Good morning. My name is Suzanne Schwilke. I work at Community Bridges Mountain Community Resources. I work directly with our unhoused folks who will be severely impacted by the proposed cuts to core funding. They come in for a hot shower and laundry service. They tell me daily how grateful they are for this. We are the only center in San Lorenzo Valley that offers these types of services and now they will end because of the proposed cuts to funding. Where do I tell them to go now? This is only one of the many services we offer to our community that are at risk. And I ask you to please reconsider and fund Community Bridges Resource Centers. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Schwilke. My name is Sean Grodeau. I go to MHCAN frequently as bathing, things like that for hygiene. I do feel it has been a serious influence on the community, something that gives hope positive instead of just referral of what they would be. Maybe somebody would go off the deep end that there's nobody there or anything and offers like music, definitely counseling, AA meetings, stuff like that. And I feel it would really be something missing in everything if it didn't have something of involvement that was, it could be, gives hope, it's positive influence. And myself personally, it's been something that carries me over that personal crisis of status many times. And I turn to somebody and it's just, just a smile, something that has usually been, that gives hope, but there's always more to life than what people can provide that they care about, can't really care for. And I always feel that maybe some kind of influence, maybe bulletin or something, even more involvement wouldn't be a bad thing. And funding, it really would be, it would need something that would guide it in a direction. And I just, well, I don't know, I feel like I'd use something seriously, wherever I go, I don't have family. There's a lot of people out there like that that they've just been, and it's not like they just fell out of the sky. You know, a lot of personal stories, not too many people can say it. And I just, you know, it really is something. So whatever the decisions would be about financing, and it should be known that it has been seriously something that's been a positive influence carried away from many crisis of suicide and other just pointless, endless acts of what it could be. And, you know, I'd like to thank council for considering an approach. I would say, thank you. Thank you, Sean. My name is Lily. I spoke to you guys last week. MHCAN picks up where society leaves off. So we have people who are trying to find a job, but they can't get a shower. And if they can't get a shower, they can't get a job. If they can't wash their clothes, they can't show up to that job. If they're not mentally stable, then they can't show up to that job, JN and Day Out. And that was my story. I had to left the workforce because my mental health and, you know, things go really bad after that. We provide the facilities and the infrastructure to let people reintegrate and rejoin society after they've had a crisis that may have removed them from it. I get emails about people who are struggling with hoarding or anxiety and they're just asking for help. And they're asking for us to help them and asking for a place that they can go to talk about their anxiety and get tools in a community that's not going to judge them and is going to accept them exactly where they are and meet them where they're at. We have been the liaisons between other nonprofits in town helping people get housing and really doing really vital work. And I really hope that the funding is restored. Someone said a while ago that, you know, you might not notice us while we're here, but you'll definitely notice us when we're gone. So thanks you guys. Thank you, Ellie. I won't be able to stay when the item comes up and for core funding. So my comment will be on the core funding. I might, I'm an Endres program director for the family resource collective of community bridges. While they appreciate the efforts to recommend bridge funding, it's simply not enough. It would be ideal for county staff making recommendations to meet with us and hear impacts to make better informed decisions. We are here to voice to our concerns. We want to continue partnerships and find ways that will better serve the community. Thank you to those that made the time to listen to us and to those that ignored our request to me. I hope you're able to find the time. I still have lingering questions, but the most pressing one is, where will we send our participants that no longer will have access to programs being defunded? Specifically, where will our houseless participants from the LSOV area go for services when the transportation costs are at their highest? And for them to go to Santa Cruz regularly, it's not feasible. We are the only agency that maintained its doors open during the pandemic, providing direct essential services. All the other agencies closed their doors, including county agencies. We are past that now, however, it really demonstrates who was at the forefront during the most time in need. We are committed to serving our community. Thank you. Thank you. All right, seeing no one else here in the chambers, we'll go to Zoom. Is there anyone on Zoom who wishes to address this for public comment? Caller ending in 1401. Your microphone is now available. This is Marilyn Garris. Thank you to the previous speakers. And I know that there's plenty of financial allocation for harming the community. And I speak of the telecom industry. Despite their assurances, no safe amount of exposure to radio frequency microwave radiation exists. As Dr. Sharon Goldberg has stated, wireless radiation has biological effects, period. Three major epidemics are related. Mental health issues, diabetes, heart problems, to name a few. Currently, Santa Cruz County is guaranteeing even more biological radiation damage than now exists from hundreds of radiation emitting Verizon 4G sites. Why do I say this? At the February 24th, 21 meetings, Zoom meeting of the Planning Commission, county code amendments were proposed and since adopted by you with a stated overall goal, and I quote, for a rapid build-out of wireless infrastructure and to upgrade existing facilities for 5G networks, particularly in rural areas. Significantly admitted from that document was the fact that no resident and or child has authorized 24-7 voluntary, mandatory, bodily, microwave, harmful radiation trespass. We do not- Thank you, Ms. Darryl. Debbie Hinkie, your microphone is now available. Thank you. I'm resident of Santa Cruz County for 47 years. Now as a CSA 48 taxpayer, being taxed twice, I'm flabbergasted that the Board of Supervisors do not hold the largest entity of our money accountable. Cal Fire is allowed to dismiss volunteers when they should be training them. C letter AA. Cal Fire has not been held accountable for the failures of the CZU fire by not having to deliver an after-action review. You need to require this for future safety of our volunteers and firefighters. Cal Fire is allowed to do what they want when they want that at our expense. There does not seem to be any accountability of the CSA 48 taxes. And I do not support the automatic cost of living increase in collecting these taxes since you've failed to show that they are necessary and appropriate. I do not even know if they have been allowed to hire or if they have gone and hired the third person that they were supposed to on the basis of the CSA second assessment. Also, I ask that you move the 31 agenda to public hearing. This resolution has no basis to support for you to support the downtown library when there is so much opposition to this project by the people of Santa Cruz. It's a waste of money. If you want affordable housing, build it yourselves instead of approving high-end giveaway projects like the Aptos Village. Do not just so support for a retiring supervisor who has no future investment in the people of Santa Cruz by trying to complete a monstrosity of a parking garage, library, and housing, changing the culture of Santa Cruz. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Ms. Hinkie. Serge, your microphone is now available. Good morning, Board of Supervisors. My name is Serge Cagno. I'm the co-chair of the Mental Health Advisory Board. These comments are mine personally. They do not represent the Mental Health Advisory Board. I'm speaking in support of Consent Item Number 59. As you know, filling open positions is a challenge across the county. Specifically, the Health Service Agency and Behavioral Health Department have been struggling to fill grant-funded positions due to there being limited term positions. Please support Number 59 to turn these needed positions into permanent positions within the HSA budget as recommended by staff and to make them more likely to get applicants, needed applicants, thank you. Separately, please support Consent Item Agenda Item Number 48 to be in compliance with AB 1869 for agency pay for inmate electronic monitoring equipment due to the disproportionate low income population which has previously been challenged with these costs. This program allows for lessening of the strain on our daily, daily numbers for those appropriate for this program. Thank you. Thank you, Serge. Airy, your microphone is now available. Good morning. Thank you for having me. I'm Carrie Thompson. I'm with the Land Trust of Santa Cruz. I would like to express thank you to you for considering the funding for the Warren Ella Road Shaded Fuel Break. This is a very important piece of fire protection in our community and will protect the communities of San Lorenzo Valley and Bonny Doon from the heavily forested areas on the western part of the Warren Ella Road. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Thompson. Clay, your microphone is now available. Thanks, board. Clay Kemp, Executive Director of the Seniors Council. And I wanna thank and encourage the board to take the recommendation under Item 65, Community Program Funding. It partially gets us to where we need to go in terms of correcting some of the flaws we have in the allocations being made. I think one of the overarching issues, however, is that it's nice that there was an 11% increase to the total pool, but since we last went out for a bit for these services, there's actually been 18% increases in costs of doing business. So we're losing ground, and that's just going to automatically create some challenges. A couple other things that I wanna bring up is I would encourage the board in future discussions to return to having a designated staff person evaluate and monitor all the programs that are funded and come back annually with a report to the board about how well or poorly those programs are doing. I think that's probably the best approach to making sure your dollars are well spent and also in telling the positive story that most of these programs will provide. Lastly, I wanna bring up just the issue of how this funding is being distributed, not so much the process, but just by the question of what we're trying to do here. Historically, county and city funds have been used as supporting an existing safety net, and the current direction seems to be going towards making more of a foundational approach where we evaluate any given grant without looking at the bigger picture of what our long-term goals and achievements are. So I think that's a lengthy discussion that needs to take place. Hopefully it will occur because I think that drives what process we end up with and what kind of decisions we ultimately make. And I think all of us have the same goal. We're trying to create a better community. So I encourage you to take all those actions. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Kempf. Well, your microphone is now available. Hi, sorry, I didn't mean to. I'm sorry, I think I must have had something. I didn't mean to speak. Thank you. Sorry. Okay, thank you. Melissa, your microphone is now available. Melissa, go ahead and accept the unmute. Thank you so much. Hello, everyone. My name is Melissa. I am a resident of Santa Cruz County, and I'm here today to ask the board to reconsider the allocation for the funding specifically the funding to mental health support services that would support LGBTQ plus youth. I think as a queer person myself, supporting queer youth is incredibly important and vital to our Santa Cruz community. And I just asked the board to reconsider that funding. Thank you. Thank you, Melissa. How many more folks do we have on the agenda? I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. How many more folks do we have on Zoom at the moment? At this time, we have two speakers. Okay, we'll take them. Karen, your microphone is now available. Good morning, board of supervisors. This is, I'm Karen Delaney and I'm calling because I can't stay for the court issue either. But I did wanna say that upon reflection, I would like us to focus a little bit on the larger perspective. This community used to for two decades invest about 1% of its general fund in sustaining the safety net through different iterations of community grant program. If this community were valuing this function, the safety net, the same as it had for two decades, you would be investing a little bit over $6 million in core, not fighting over what, not fighting over process, not fighting over intentions, but really looking at why is it? And this is the question I'd like us to engage in because I don't recall a debate about this. Why is it that this function investing in the people who need services the most has been basically cut in half as a percentage of the general fund in the last 10 years? If that's not a decision that you knew you were making, that's great, you can change it today by reinvesting. If that is, then that's a decision we all have to have. Why do you value this less than your predecessors? And what can we do to convince you that this is a smart investment? I'm grateful for the work, but I feel like we need to ask and answer the right questions. Thank you, Mr. Lane. Raymond, your microphone is now available. Thank you, board supervisors. This is Ray Canceena from Community Bridges. Again, unfortunately I'm unable to stay and unable to join you today because of the lack of childcare. As you know, we've been advocating and speaking to you all about the impacts that core will have on our community. I think it's incredibly a difficult time and I understand that for many people in our community and to hear that a lot of their services and programs across the community, not just community bridges, but programs like Odd Buttsman and Casa have all been selected to be defunded. I understand that there is a critical need to maintain a process which is core and we're not here to debate or argue about points and percentages and differences in that process. I think the process is what it is, but I do think that it's important for you to debate and understand the human impacts of the individuals that cuts will occur and will happen. As you've heard of today and many other people, we have serious programs that are gonna be defunded and shut down or reduced in service. I think that by the result of that, our community is less thriving and less safe and less open to supporting its residents. I commend the board for finding a half a million dollars to help support programs that are not funded for the next three months, but that's gonna do little to really impact the long-term investments and the long-term impacts of those program closures. I know that there's a varied amount of information that is lacking in terms of making that decision and every time you do not have that question in those conversations, it's a zero sum game and you're really just playing with every three years and not knowing what services you're gonna be able to provide to your community. I think with the large reserve that you are building, the rainy day reserve, it's the wrong time to be looking at that when you have so many people still suffering from COVID and I ask you to urge for further investment. So thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Kent, you know. We have no further speakers, Chair. All right, thank you. Father, we'll bring public comment to a close and I'll bring it back to the board for comment or action on the consent agenda. Mr. Chair, if it's okay, I'll Supervisor Friend, please. Thank you. I recognize we have a lot of items and so I'm just gonna speak to one item, but I do have questions of staff regarding item 73. Is somebody present? This is on the vacation rental item. Ms. Hansen is approaching the podium. Thank you. Good morning, Chair Koenig, Supervisors, Stephanie Hansen, Assistant Director with the new Community Development and Infrastructure Department. Happy to answer any questions that come up on this item. Thank you, Ms. Hansen. Thank you for taking the time. I appreciate this item. This item actually raised a lot of red flags for me and produced a lot of concerning data. The board, as you know, had spent a significant amount of time working with your department, updating the ordinance in order to make the provisions around renewal or revocation or even initial application much more stringent as well as the enforcement side of it. So I had some questions of it because this report showcases that there are, well, depending on how you count it, somewhere over a hundred, potentially, multiple hundreds of unpermitted units. And so my first question is just what we're doing in regards to enforcement regarding these unpermitted units. There was nothing that was specified as to what's being done in regards to that. Right, the report does state that we will send out, begin the enforcement process by sending out letters to the properties that are shown not to have permits. So that would begin the co-compliance process for those properties. And how long does that process take? I asked because I just wanna ensure that we as a county are actually providing an incentive for people to get permits. So, I mean, it seems like right now there really isn't an incentive with there's that many people that are unpermitted that are advertising. So what kind of enforcement timeline are we talking about? You know, code compliance is a process, right? So they'll begin with a letter that states what the problem is and the violation and how they need to fix it. Typically, we're trying to get folks to come in for a permit so that we can legalize their situation. They're given a certain amount of time to respond. And when we have communication with them, we will do a round of education as it were to try to help them understand what the process is and the permitting that's necessary, what the rules are for operating a vacation rental. For those that are not responsive, we would begin with notices of violations and citations for those properties. Okay, I mean, maybe other board members would have a different opinion on this, but when we updated the ordinance, as I'm sure you are even more familiar than I am under 694 subsection L, we specifically called out the fact that if people are operating unpermitted, if they had any violation that a violation of the requirements to attain a vacation rental permit may be grounds for denial of a new vacation rental permit application. I mean, I didn't think we were necessarily in the process of rewarding people of coming into compliance. Again, for me, that's an incentive to operate outside of the system because you get to operate outside of the system for an extended period of time. And then the county tries to welcome you into a process that we created a process in order to make it harder for people that are operating outside of the system. This is the bad actor theory that we had presented previously during these discussions of how do we get people, how do we revoke bad actors? How do we deny new applications? And it doesn't sound like that that is necessarily the process. And so I wanna express a concern over that because I think that we aren't doing enough on the compliance side. So I'll just flag that. I think that this is gonna be a comeback kind of item. But I wanted to flag that concern. Also, in regards to the number of complaints that you had received, what is the, the number was pretty low considering the number of emails that I imagine Supervisor Koenig and I received about this of people complaining about permitted vacation rentals or maybe unpermitted. So how do you interface with the sheriff's office then for people that are operating outside of contacting you? Typically co-compliance will reach out to the property owners and before new permits or renewals are issued, we'll double check the sheriff's records to make sure those violations are not raising any red flags and look further into them if they are. The sheriff's office has, you know, citations that are kind of property specific. So they don't really characterize things as far as I know as vacation rentals or not vacation rentals, but we can work with them further to see if there's a way to indicate that particular land use so that we know better what's happening out there. And we can also reach out to the sheriff's office as we begin this process of co-compliance in this round. So I guess what I'm hearing then there isn't an address by address sort of list of when, if somebody were to call the sheriff's office that information isn't kind of, isn't shared over to you. It sounds like, and neither is it specifically sought. I think from a structural standpoint, because in the middle of the night if somebody's having a noise disturbance they're going to call the DSO, right? And I think that we need to then have a way that that information either through a coding or by a permitted or unpermitted address known list is shared with code compliance right now. It doesn't sound like that's the case. Is that true? Yeah, typically it's more of an active look on our part to see what the citations are that are gathered on any particular property in the sheriff's office. But we can work further with them to see if there's a more proactive way to get those complaints to us besides us looking up there on their system what parcel by parcel. Okay, all right, then I think that'll be part of, I guess maybe some additional direction that we can work to create. What I think we need to do is I think that as part of this report Ms. Hansen I think we need to have an annual compliance report that's built into this that actually shows this information, the number of complaints that went under the sheriff's office, the length of time that it took for compliance back from code enforcement, the number of revocations, the number of revocation hearings, the number of people that were denied new applications as a result of that. And all that was really the intent of the modifications of the ordinance that we did that's lacking in this. This just shows me that there's a lot of unpermitted people and it doesn't show that there's necessarily an outcome. So to that also I think then the complaint process itself I think that we need to look into ways to improve that for the end user on our website or wherever it may be. I don't know if you had any thoughts or suggestions on ways that we can improve that but we need to make it easy. We need to make it trackable and we need an internal communication system between your office, the auditor controller and the sheriff's office to make this a unified sort of presence to make this, make compliance improve moving forward. Do you have any thoughts on ways to improve the complaint process for the community? The co-compliance maintains a portal online in which anybody who has a complaint can register their issue. I think what we really need to do is sit down with the other two departments and figure out how we can communicate better on what they're seeing versus what we're seeing. So getting the data from Granicus was kind of step one in this process. I will say that co-compliance continues to be complaint-based. There is, as you know, because you just funded or are helping us to fund an unfunded position which we really appreciate. There's a backlog. Each co-compliance case can get complicated if it involves unpermitted structures or otherwise unallowed land uses. And it's a long process and some of them will go all the way to court. So that can take up a tremendous amount of staff time. So it's a matter of how we continue to use our resources and balance our resources. There are other communities that have very active programs and we understand that, but they're also staffed for that particular co-compliance problem. Okay, I understand. We did approve, the voters I should say just approved a new TOT that include an increase in specific on these vacation rentals. I think that as part of the mid-year budget conversation that should be included as far as how compliance. There's an expect written right into the bout language was mentioning an improvement in compliance. And so I think that we may need to look into that. Then I guess I'll just close on what, I assume I know the answer. So I assume there haven't been any revocations then since the new ordinance or haven't been any hearings or hasn't been any denials of new applications. Is that correct? There have not been any revocations and they don't, I can't speak to the denials. I'm not sure about that, but I don't believe so. Okay, so great, a significant gratitude for you and your team being able to answer these questions and coming forward today. I would like to, when it comes time, Mr. Chair, to make a motion to add additional direction on this item because I think that we do need to establish a process moving forward for the board's previous intent. Thank you, Ms. Hansen. Thank you. I don't know other comments than any other item here, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Supervisor Friend. Mr. Chair? Yes, Supervisor Coonerty. Yeah, so first let me just say, I agree with Supervisor Friend's concerns around item number 73 and we need just more oversight and action to bring these folks into compliance and to collect the TOT and to do the various things that we promised neighborhoods in the community going forward, so I'll support whatever action he outlines. Just a couple of comments in one additional direction. So first, as was mentioned, I appreciate our number 54, this Warren Ella Firebreak as we come upon the two-year anniversary, the CZU Fire. I think it's incredibly important, obviously, that we take, engage in efforts to reduce the risk of fire through suppression and this is an important effort. I want to thank the Land Trust and POST and all the partners we have who are engaging in this project. On item number 68, which is the Veterans Home Key Funding, I really appreciate this effort to house veterans who are experiencing homelessness in our community and I look forward to further state investment in order to serve other populations. This is a small project, but I think it's a great example of how we can build tangible projects that get shelter over people's heads and create a sense of community to help people recover and reestablish their lives. On item number 73, Supervisor McPherson and I would like to recommend that we continue this item to the second meeting in August. Unfortunately, this report was not responsive to previous board direction. In the meantime, he and I will meet with the HSA director to go over specific concerns. When the item returns in August, we would like HSA to identify eight additional disposal kiosks to be installed and managed by the county and also that the August report should contain per previous board direction, the number of needles collected in the kiosks, downtown street streams, save our shores, the city of Santa Cruz Parks and Recreation, all of them keep this data and we'd asked that they be in these reports going forward and so we'd like to see it in the report when it comes back in August. And that's all my comments for today. Thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. And just to clarify, I think you said that was additional direction you're suggesting for item 58. Is that right? Correct. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. On item number 68, Project Home Keem, Vets Village and Ben Lohman, I want to congratulate the Vets Village project team, including our county staff and community members in getting this project off the ground. Chair Koenig and I attended an event at the Vets Village and Ben Lohman on June 17th with Dorados Laredes Castro Ramirez, Governor Newsom, Secretary of Business, Consumer Services and Housing to announce the various project Home Keem projects in our county. I'm looking forward to seeing more of these happen as they develop and I'm grateful that we have these projects in the works and that will help us address our affordable housing goals that we have in Santa Cruz County. On item number 91, the Felton Library and the PSPS events and we've had some real serious outages up in Santa Rosa Valley recently and I hope that PG&E, I've gotten just many, many emails I want people to know that but I hope that they can get to this as quickly as possible. I know that they're trying to do so. We sure surely have given them that direction but I was very pleased to introduce library director, our new library director, Yolan Wilburn to our OR3 staff to discuss the use of the Felton Library during a PSPS event. And kudos and thanks to the OR3 and library executive team for successfully negotiating an agreement with PG&E. We know that events are triggered by a combination of high heat and winds and systemic drought conditions that we're experiencing and in the Santa Rosa Valley we have many isolated seniors and others who are at high risk under those conditions and it's really critical that we have access to water and safe, a cool facility during a PSPS event and they can use the internet and charge their devices. So I thank them for making this happen and in Santa Rosa Valley at the Felton Library and I look forward to an expansion of this in the future. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Okay, a consent agenda, right? Correct, yes. Okay, just a comment on number 69. It's good to see Human Services Department. Turn on your mic. Supervisor Cabo, is your microphone on? What's that? Do you want to check your microphone is on? Or your microphone? Yes, maybe I'm not speaking into it, it's okay. That's fine, I think it's good. Anyway, the Human Services Department working with the Veterans Village Project Home Key application, it'll be a purchase and an upgrade of a 20 rental unit, permanent supportive housing project for veterans at risk of homelessness. And it's in Ben Lomond, not too far from the Ben Lomond market on Highway 9. So I think it's a wonderful project and looking forward to seeing that fixed up and opened up for veterans, thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. Let's add a few comments on item 35. I want to thank Paula Woods for volunteering for the County Arts Commission. All our commissioners really provide a significant amount of expertise and time to provide recommendations on many county functions and we couldn't do the work we do without them. I do think we need to refocus on the resources we provide commissioners so that they're well-prepared as they provide that review and those recommendations. And I know it's always a challenge in keeping them engaged. So on item 39, directing the chair to write a letter to the city of Santa Cruz in response to Mayor Bruner's letter regarding the need for additional transitional and bridge housing. I have drafted a response that makes offers to make County property available to the city for transitional housing. If we're able to agree on some terms about management and it's important that the city and County continue to collaborate in addressing our homelessness crisis and I hope my colleagues agree that we should ultimately make more resources available to our joint efforts. On item 68, I just also want to add my congratulations for the Veterans Village Home Key Project. I know staff work incredibly diligently on that project to help get it across the finish line and as the Veterans Village Project Team as well. A lot of hard work and it's great to see this coming to fruition. I know that it's not over by any means. There's a lot of hard work yet to be done. And so I hope, I know they have volunteer days on, it was the first Saturdays of the month and I encourage everyone to get involved. On item 73, the report on short-term rental permit code compliance. Thank you Supervisor Friend for your comments and look forward to your additional direction. There it is something that my office here is about consistently, especially in the summer months. And I think as was mentioned, the fact that our county does collect a significant amount of transient occupancy tax to support general services, it's important that we do our part as well and ensure that those vacation rentals are good community members. And that's all my comments. Supervisor Friend. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. I will move the consent agenda with the additional direction that Supervisor Coonerty provided on item, I just blanked on the item. I apologize, 58, is that correct? Yeah, thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. And then for the additional direction on the short-term rental item, which is item 73, I think that we just need to make the report that we received, I think we need to make an annual report on compliance and it needs to be more robust. And so I would like to A, make that an annual report. B though, I'd like to have staff come back in, I guess November, just give a few months for this data collection to provide some better compliance information around the number of complaints that we've received, the method of how it came in, such as was it a phone call to the sheriff's office or internal, the status of those complaints, any denied renewals, and also a process to make it easier for the community to file complaints and just a better internal coordination with both the sheriff's office and the auditor, controller, treasurer, tax collector. I think that these are all doable things. And this was all the expectation that the community had and the board had when we first approved these changes to really address not just bad actors, but those that are operating outside the system to not make it easy for them to get a permit would make it difficult, but also to have the community when they file a complaint, feel like that it actually, assuming that it's bonafide, actually feel like that they've got a voice and support of the county on the back end to do it. The last part is that given that we've just approved this TOT, the community approved the TOT measure as part of this report back to also look at whether there's an additional compliance need within code compliance to address this issue. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Supervisor Friend. We have a motion. Is there a second? Second. Second by Supervisor. I'm fully supportive of Supervisor Coonerty's suggestion for having that come back in August on number 58. All right, thank you. So a motion by Supervisor Friend, second by Supervisor McPherson to adopt the consent agenda with additional direction on items 58 and 73. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk, roll call vote please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Koenig. Aye. Consent agenda passes unanimously as amended. Thank you. And we'll proceed with our regular agenda and item seven to consider a presentation on the 2022 California fire season by fire chief, Nate Armstrong as outline and memorandum of the director of general services. And I'd like to welcome chief Armstrong to give his presentation. All right. Good morning, chair Koenig, supervisors, Mr. Palacios, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here this morning to present to you. I know that you have a very full agenda so I'll try to be as brief as possible this morning but did want to take the opportunity just to update you all on where the county fire department stands today and where Cal Fire is kind of looking at the fire season moving forward. So just a real quickie review on the county fire department as a whole. Contracts been in place going back to 1948. It's a pretty long partnership between Cal Fire and the county and the county fire services, the areas of the county that the unincorporated portions of the county that aren't serviced by another fire protection agency. And I'm sorry, but if we can get the slide to advance there we go, beautiful. So what that looks like a year round as far as full-time staffing, we do have two fire marshal staff as well as two training staff that are work year round to train the volunteers and so forth, take care of permitting for buildings within the county fire area. Also provide dispatch services year round for the county fire department as well as the year round management of the five volunteer companies and those exist in the communities of areas of Las Cumbres, Fawni Dune, Coralitos, Davenport and Loma Prieta. You see on the presentation, I put the winter time staffing in quotes because the winter seems to have kind of disappeared for us. Continues to get shorter and shorter what we used to see a five to six month fire season in the north end of the state. We're now seeing a nine to 10 month fire season. So that's why we've kind of coined the term now fire year and we just kind of have a peak fire season. So what that Amador staffing looks like is in those winter months where Cal Fire's seasonal staff would otherwise be laid off. The County of Santa Cruz picks up the bill essentially for keeping five fire engine staff to provide service throughout that county fire area. And if we can move on, please. And a note on that staffing, continuing that staffing was made possible by the passing of the benefit assessment a couple of years ago that did bring that third person staffing back to the fire engines during that Amador staffing period. As far as our volunteers go, we've had a long-term goal of maintaining a hundred volunteers within the county fire department. Unfortunately, we just seemed to hover at about that number of about 70. So you see in your presentation there currently have about 60 of the fire-trained volunteers. And then we have an additional nine what we call emergency medical responders or EMRs. And those folks are trained just to the medical level to be able to respond to medical aids within their community as that is the highest volume of calls that our emergency services see. You can see there we added 13 new members in 2022. And that just kind of replaces 13 folks that we otherwise lost. A lot of folks will seem to fall off after their initial training. They realize it's a fairly significant commitment. And so unfortunate, I could say we kind of replace the same number that we tend to lose through attrition. Some of our challenges with maintaining that volunteer force is the training and just the time commitment. It is significant. We realize people's lives are busy, but we can't drop below a certain level just due to their safety and the community's safety. We are exploring some other options as far as recruitment goes to bolster those numbers. Those look like more of a full-time recruitment effort rather than just doing in the fall as we've traditionally done. It's just a matter of time constraints on our staff as well as trying to explore some sort of auxiliary positions that aren't exactly emergency response, but may add some value to the county fire department mission. And then finally, I have a note there as far as not instituting single function programs. And what I mean by that is we've had several proposals come forward and some of them might come to you guys as supervisors looking for kind of a minimal training in one particular facet of emergency response and then just allowing those volunteers to do that one thing and never really have any ongoing training. And it just as a safety standpoint, I've yet to have one that we feel comfortable with safely come forward in terms of there seems to be a perception that wildland firefighting is not as dangerous as structural firefighting. I can tell you that's definitely not the case. So I think we have more of our full-time folks injured in the wildland firefighting environment and structure fires. So we just haven't really got to that point of finding a happy balance of bringing a program like that on. Moving on to our mobile equipment replacement. So moving into a couple of years ago, the county fire department was in kind of a deficit spending and so we had the last benefit assessment in 2019 passed and that's allowed us to move forward with replacing that kind of a hodgepodge of some of the equipment that we had throughout the county and making it more standardized. I do want to talk specifically to some of the types and kinds of fire apparatus that we have because they are aimed at an all risk mission. We are just focused on any one thing as far as structure fires or vegetation fires, rescue, whatever you might have and different apparatus suit different needs. So the first thing you see on there is the type one fire engine. I think a lot of people perceive a type one fire engine as just a city fire engine, but we customize these engines for a true rural response in mind. You can't tell by the pictures on there because they're kind of a little bit stretched out. That bottom left photo is one of the two brand new type one fire engines that'll be going to Corralitos and Davenport. That fire engine actually has a shorter wheel base than our wildland firefighting engines. We build those things so that they can handle our roads. They do look bigger and they're definitely boxier, but they aren't that much larger than our type three wildland firefighting engines. The important thing to note on those type one fire engines is you need those fire engines for our ISO rating or insurance services organization that rates communities and what everybody's homeowner's insurance is based off of those rates. A large portion of that ISO rating has to do with the ability to move water and a lot of water. And those type one fire engines have a 1500 gallon per minute pump versus the wildland firefighting engines that only have to have a 250 gallon per minute pump. They also carry quite a bit more water, 100 to 200 gallons more than our type three fire engines. Moving on to the type three fire engines that we have that we've been continuing to be able to replace. Those are traditionally built with the wildland response in mind. However, what we tend to do in the fire services is we try to make everything similar for whatever reason. So we really build those type three fire engines to also be able to handle structure fires. Our whole intent is to make sure that whatever piece of apparatus is responding, they will be able to handle pretty much anything that is thrown at them. And then the other two portions of the fleet is the water tenders, which is just a giant tank of water on wheels. And our rescue vehicles, which don't require a special license to drive. And that's kind of the first thing that our volunteers move into as far as being able to drive an apparatus is that smaller vehicle that responds to medical aids, rescues like over the side kind of things. And our intent throughout the county fire is to make sure that each of the companies has one type one, one type three, one water tender and one rescue vehicle. And we should be to that standardized point within the next couple of years. That was again made possible by the passing of the last benefit assessment. So real quick on the couple of apparatus that we currently have on order. We have two brand new type one fire engines. If we can go to the next slide, please. Two of those type one fire engines those will be going Corleos and Davenport. Our folks were actually back in Wisconsin doing the final inspection on those last week. And we should see them in California here in the coming weeks. We have two new type three fire engines that were on order since last year. Those should have been here by now but due to supply chain shortages we won't see them till the beginning of 2023. Those are gonna go to the communities of Bonnie Dune and Davenport. We have two new rescue vehicles that are currently being outfitted. Those are gonna go to the communities of Corleos and Davenport. And then moving into this next fiscal year we actually moved up on our vehicle replacement a little bit due to the length of time it's taking. It's now taking two years to get a fire engine built. So it had a fire and our fifth type three fire engine added to this upcoming fiscal year's budget rather than waiting until 2024. Moving on to just the last kind of final updates for County Fire. In this last year we did update the County Fire Handbook. It was a needed update. Our last revision was in 2015 and this was just an overhaul kind of updating some things like forms, procedures and some of the changes that we've made in our training standards to try to move volunteers through the ranks a little bit faster. On the County Fire Master Plan also a little outdated. This Master Plan is the primary role of the Fire Department Advisory Commission, the FDAC. All UC provisors have a commissioner that sits on that. We are working actively on the revision of that and we're exploring some possibilities to seek input from the public as far as internal and external stakeholders as far as what we wanna see as that driving force for the County Fire Department moving forward. And I'm sorry if we can advance the slide again. I just put a note here of some kind of current advancements based on the previous Master Plan that we're still working under and that's embracing technology. So the County Fire website unfortunately is outdated. It's been a little difficult to maintain. And so we're working on migrating that to a new environment right now and making it a little bit more present with the times trying to add the ability for volunteer candidates to be able to apply through that portal and just generally be a little more current. We've instituted with the other fire agencies in the County, a tablet command software which is an incident management platform. And we're also working on instituting a new statistics and kind of fire prevention software that'll help us catalog some of our efforts a little better. Moving on to some fire prevention measures on the Cal Fire side. So in that photo there, sorry it's small but you can see that little machine out in front of the gentleman in the woods there. That is the County Fire Purchased Masticator that was purchased this last year. Purchased by the County, we're operating it in the County Fire area with Cal Fire firefighters during the fuel reduction season. And what that's given us the ability to do is it clears about a quarter an acre an hour with a decent operator I guess. We did put about 100 hours on that piece of equipment since January and it worked on three separate projects in the County Fire or sorry, four separate projects so far, three in the Bonnie Dune area and then one on West Ridge near Loch Lomond. The interesting thing about it is that we as Cal Fire builds out vegetation management projects, we have to do it a couple of years in advance due to the amount of time it takes to go through the secret process or California Environmental Quality Act. Not a lot of our current projects were built for mechanical disturbance. So all of our future projects knowing that we have this piece of equipment now will be written with that in mind so that we can utilize this on more projects throughout the County. Also looking at kind of getting a more robust pool of operators to include some of our volunteers so that we can continue those fuel reduction efforts year round. Just a couple of pictures so you can see these firefighters out in some brush that's kind of typical vegetation understory that we see through a lot of the County. And if you go to the next slide that is the same piece, sorry, it's taken from a different perspective but that's the same piece after a couple hours of work and you can see it's a nice little park-like setting. So it's a really great tool and we hope to continue to be able to use it more. Moving forward into some curtain burners. So these are a really interesting tool that we've been able to recently acquire. Cal Fire as a whole on the statewide owns 10 of these curtain burners. And what it is, you can see it kind of looks like a roll-off dumpster. It introduces a curtain of air that provides a more complete combustion. It also keeps those embers and smoke and everything inside of that vessel while it burns. And so we see very little emission. We see very little embers flying out. And what that does for us is it gives us the ability to consume a lot of dead and down fuel. And it allows us to burn later into the summer and we keep people monitoring these things. We have a fire engine there or some source of water but it does allow us to burn when otherwise burning season is suspended. Like I have here, one curtain burner can burn up to about 20 tons of material per day. Again, that has to do with orientation and a good operator, I'm sure. But the one thing that we see is efficiency. So if we can move to the next slide, like I said, Cal Fire owns 10 of these. Our staff was able to acquire three of those 10 and this is the last time I'm ever gonna talk about it publicly because I don't want the other units to catch on what we're doing here. So having those three curtain burners is a lot more efficient. We can be burning in one while we're unloading one and loading another one. And if you'd seen in the previous photo we don't need to go back but what comes out of that is basically a small pile of ash and char and we're working with some outside folks right now that might have a use for that char. So it might be a very sustainable thing. And we do have projects throughout the county that we're looking at using these on. We're working real closely with the fire safe councils and some other land managers with the use of these. And I never miss an opportunity to plug our fire safe councils. They're an absolutely tremendous group of folks who are doing really great work through the county. So thank your board for the support of those folks as well. One more kind of note on fire prevention. Cal Fire was able to purchase and place five new 10,000 gallon tanks. We do place three of those in Santa Cruz County. They're metal tanks. They're a lot more resilient than some of those plastic or composite ones. They're placed in some remote areas of the county and they've either all been filled or are currently in the process of being filled now and those are for fire protection purposes only. So finally moving forward into the fire year outlook. It looks grim as always. I'm sure you guys have gotten used to that. Looking at this past rainy season that we had is interesting. It's, you know, I'm sure many of you remember and are probably maybe monitoring as much as I am started out with a good bang in November and early December seemed like we were gonna as like the optimist to me wanted to say, hey, the drought might be over. Then came January through March and what we experienced the one stat that I saw was it was the driest first quarter in the Bay Area at 107 years. And many of you guys might remember that period. We didn't get much of anything. Had some 80 and 90 degree days as a matter of fact, I think in February. So then we came back in the late spring and did get a little bit more rain. So depending on where you sit in the county you may have seen close to an average rainfall year due to the number of micro climates and geography that we have. It just, it varies greatly throughout the county where I live in the San Lorenzo Valley we did get 50 inches of rain, which is great. It's right at that average, but not the whole county saw that. The other thing being while we did get those brief spouts of heavy rain, it's not enough to crush the long-term drought. And we're seeing that in our fuels right now as we continue to take fuel moisture samples throughout the county, we see those continuously being either at or very near historic lows. And what we look at those live fuel moisture for is basically their resilience to fire spread. The other component of that is the dead fuel and we're seeing a drastic increase in just dead fuels which as you can imagine, the fuel moisture of those is relatively zero. So there's a lot of dead fuel, a lot of very receptive fuel in the county that may provide for fire spread. Looking at some of the predictive services kind of outlooks for the year, they've been spot on so far. They talked about monsoonal moisture, which is what you get the lightning out of. Monsoonal moisture sounds good, but sometimes it's wet, sometimes it's dry. And that's what we saw in this last about 10 day period, maybe not locally here, but throughout the state is right in line with predictions that there was gonna be flows that moved from the south to the north and had a lot of lightning strikes throughout the other portions of the state. We've avoided them so far and some of the local, more local for us outlook has said that we should see fewer extended heat waves, which if you look back at 2020 when we had the catastrophic fire season here locally, that was spurred by one of the things was we had like a week long terrible heat wave right before that dry lightning came through, really prepping a lot of the fuels. And we should see a lot fewer of those this year, according to models, should also see a little more prevalent coastal influence moisture. So hopefully we continue to see that. We have what the current outlook says is that July into August will be above normal fire potential throughout the region and that, oh, that's it actually that I had on that. So as you see right now, all the grasses throughout the county are already cured and it's a little early or they hit that point a little earlier in the year. So we'll just, we will see, we're obviously already seeing those initial attack vegetation fires already starting. Looking at kind of some current trends if we can go to the next slide, these figures are as of a week ago today, I'll probably get another update today. Those numbers will obviously all be higher, but we're seeing the trends stay consistent that we're seeing fewer fires statewide and for fewer acres than the same timeframe last year, which is favorable for us. And I'm sure kind of a result of those late season rains that have hit kind of throughout the state. And that same goes that statewide. And then in the Northern region, which we fall in Santa Cruz County, we see the same thing. We're seeing fewer fires for fewer acres than the same time period last year. So that's encouraging. I think I just have one or two more slides here on outlook as far as resources. Everybody is always asking, what do we have more this year than we did last year? And unfortunately, not much. So what's happening on the aircraft side of things, we're seeing more of those, I have S70I there. That's what everybody knows is the Blackhawks or the Firehawks. We're seeing more of those placed into service statewide. The one that's closest to us, that's right by Lexington Reservoir, is still one of those current old Vietnam-era Hueys. That will be replaced by the Firehawk later this year. And it'll unfortunately be moving to Moffitt Field then, just due to its size, but it does fly a lot faster and it carries four times the amount of water. So we think that trade-off is probably gonna be good. What we've seen as far as staffing, we don't have extra bodies, any more bodies than we have the last couple of years. We hope to see some more come through the governor's budget. But what we have done this last couple of years, last year and this year, was being able to bring back our seasonal staffing earlier through an augmentation piece through the Department of Finance. And so whereas normally we wouldn't be bringing back our peak firefighters until like right now, we're able to bring them back in April. And I'm sure with the recent fire activity, you can appreciate that that was a good move, being able to bring those folks back early. Like I said, we're just waiting on the final governor's budget to see if we get any base-level staffing increases and hand crews continue to be an issue. We have a little over 200 funded hand crews statewide between the relationship with CDCR, relationship with three Cs and then our own seasonal firefighter hand crews that we've been at the gun to utilize the last couple of years of those 200 funded crews. Statewide we're currently looking at anywhere between like 60 or 70 or staffed at any given time, just do the shortage of personnel to put on them. And just for context, 60 to 70 crews, we used to put that on one fire. And that's what we have in the entire state right now. So we're hurting in the crew world for sure. We are projected to begin acquisition of some more helicopters, bulldozers, fire engines, everything at the statewide level to be able for that surge capacity in the peak fire season. Just a couple of hindrances on that. One, I just told you about lead time it's taking two years to build a fire engine. So it'll be a couple of years before we see those. Also, they don't come with the personnel form. So we're constantly pushing to get personnel added for all that extra equipment. And finally in summary, it wouldn't be a fire year outlook without a look at the Sierra snowpack. There it is, it's not existent as of today. So thank you very much for your time and I'm happy to answer any questions that the board might have. Thank you very much, Chief Armstrong. Other questions or comments from members of the board? Yeah, Mr. Chair, Provost McPherson. Yeah, my thanks to you, Chief Armstrong and Michael Beaton, the County Director of General Services. I have several questions and you've maybe sort of answered them. And I think I'll just ask them one by one and so maybe you can get through the direct. On the, are the 13 new volunteers part of the total of 71 or is it 71 plus 13? They are part of the total 71. Okay. And regarding the LAFCO fire feasibility study, do you have a timeframe for the study and what'll be the process to work with the fire department advisory commission or FDAC and the fire districts to discuss the study? Do you have a timeframe? I don't want to speak out of turn on that one. I don't know if Director Beaton might have a better answer is we're kind of working on the actual proposals for them and when that might be awarded. Well, yeah, and what's the prior addition to that is what's the process to renegotiate the Cal Fire and County Fire contract to? We're going to hand. Thank you, Supervisor Michael Beaton, Director of General Services for the County of Santa Cruz. So to talk about the Cal Fire Agreement, it is currently under the just finishing second year of a three year contract. We'll begin negotiations regarding a renewal of that agreement for another potential three year term, probably starting in about three months or so with Cal Fire related to the LAFCO study. It is an item that has been brought to the fire department advisory commission for review as well as we're still working with LAFCO to do a potential special fire study to look at County wide services, not just those provided through the CSA-48 and CSA-4, but all County fire districts throughout the County. That is currently underway. We are working with LAFCO right now to develop what that scope of work might be to potentially be issued through our local, through LAFCO. Okay, and FDAC is going to be involved in the process or whether input be taken into consideration as part of the process then? Yes, the fire department advisory commission, their scope and role is specifically related to the CSA-48 area and the CSA-4 area. We have reviewed some of the annexation areas that were recommended in the LAFCO report. They have not aligned as far as whether support or no support for the different areas, but they are aware of it. And it's something that we continue to have on our agenda with the fire department advisory commission, but they will have a significant input into the process as we move forward. We do hope then that the County master plan would be completed or the new and updated wind. What's your best projection? Great question. So the fire department master plan, we are actually hoping to have it done before the, so we have a better input from the community as far as what they expect and what they wanna see their fire department services as. Timing-wise, I believe that we're gonna run in concert with what the special fire study is gonna have. So I do believe that we'll have the, at least a draft for your board to consider for the fire department master plan, around the same time that LAFCO will be, I believe concluding or almost concluding their special fire study for fire department services, County-wide. Yeah, okay. And maybe Chief Armstrong, I think just on 60 minutes, there might have been a rerun about the big holes, 3,000 gallons or something. Is that the one that's gonna go to Moffett Field? There was a- If you're talking 60 minutes. If you're concerned about how they were allocated and there was a lot of fires going on at the same time the CZU fire was going on, but is that where that would be hooded then in Moffett Field? So that's a slightly different deal, but it also dovetails into a new effort by Cal Fire is, so that came about in about 2020 and those helicopters were primarily out of Southern California. They were operated in L.A. and Orange County from what I remember and they were actually funded by electrical utilities. So those are the big Chinook helicopters. Those are still in place in Southern California, something that Cal Fire did this year and I think the number is 14. We have exclusive use contracts with 14 of similar large Chinook or Blackhawk helicopters that are able to drop a significantly amount more water. Those are committed purely to Cal just like they'd be a Cal Fire aircraft and we saw this last week in, we had a 20 acre fire in San Mateo County threatening a lot of homes right off 280. I think we had four of those large helicopters on that fire. So they are available to us locally. And we hope to not see them is the thing. They really operate very well at night too. Is that correct? It all depends on conditions. So as far as night flying aircraft goes where they would be most effective is stopping a rapidly expanding vegetation fire and maybe keeping it from going to that major incident where we saw some comments about the use of those on major fires is their effectiveness at night on something that's already 100,000 plus acres is still kind of in debate but they may be available for that purpose. Okay, thank you for the upgrade and everybody's on pins and needles. Thank you. Absolutely, thank you, sir. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Mr. Chair, thank you. I'll briefly just answer one of Supervisor McPherson's questions is that the item, the feasibility study comes to Lafco for approval of the contract on August 3rd at that meeting just so you can get a sense of the timing of this kind of the kickoff of that process. And Chief, great appreciation to you and your team. I feel like congratulating you again on your current role. And let me just say that I do have a lot of concerns with what the state may do in the renegotiation of the contract. I have concerns over the long-term viability with Amador and I would encourage, and I know you will but active participation in these county wide feasibility studies as Lafco as agencies look for consolidation and mergers you need to have a seat at the table as I know you will but also we need to be looking at the long-term viability of fire protection within this county and to me it's unclear with some of the state investments a lot in equipment, less in people. And in an attempt to maybe renegotiate some of these agreements in some of these communities that the long-term viability of our current funding mechanism is really present. And so I'm concerned, meaning that I think that we need to look more toward some of these mergers and consolidations that are on the table in order to ensure that some of these rural communities continue to have that level of fire protection. So I recognize that you represent various roles in your current capacity but as we work on these renegotiations to the degree that you can look into a crystal ball and see the long-term financial commitment from the state or not that it really is going to dovetail in with the need for these consolidations. So that's just my pitch to ensure that you have an active role in this discussion at Lafco and with these agencies that are coming forward in the CSA 48 to look at current mergers so that we can have soft landing should there be a pullback from the state on some of these agreements. So thank you, sir. Thank you, Supervisor Friend, Supervisor Coonerty. Thank you. Thank you, Chief, for the presentation. Good news about the new equipment and hopefully the weather forecasts hold, as you mentioned, two questions for you. One is, what are we doing to create a pipeline in of firefighters in order to make sure every industry in Santa Cruz County is facing this challenge where it's an expensive place to live. And so it's difficult to recruit and retain firefighters. So first question is, what are we doing to ensure we have an adequate supply of firefighters who can live and work in this county? Yeah, and as part of the FDA see they do have a volunteer recruitment subcommittee have done a couple of surveys of items that of current and former volunteers to find items that they feel might bring in that pool. A couple of those things are things I already mentioned, kind of having that year-round recruitment, adjusting the training portion a little bit to be able to get people in sooner. We realize in looking at the past that some folks' interest falls off and from the time that they sign up and they say they wanna do it and then the time that we actually are able to get them through their initial training. So we're trying to speed up, kind of lower that bar of entry so that they sign up and right away they're in the pool, they're getting some sort of training before they get the big formal training. That's kind of the most current one. As I said, as we move forward with the county fire website and some other marketing tools that we have digital marketing that we hope to put in place, we're hoping that we're able to pull people in right now to be quite frank, the application process is a little bit cumbersome on folks. So we're really looking to streamline that process and really capture people that may have interest that we're currently missing. It's basically trying to really retain the whole pool that may have interest as well as like I say, going after some folks that may not know it's there through some digital marketing that we've never done before. And this is, my question was primarily around the paid firefighters who have trouble recruiting and retaining. Gosh, it's difficult right now. I was just having a chat outside in the hall here before we started and the workforce seems to have dried up a little bit. And that's not unique to Cal Fire. It's not unique to the County Fire Department. That's unique to a lot of public service agencies right now we're seeing fire departments and police departments offering signing bonuses, which I can't believe where a lot of us when we started 20 or plus years ago had to apply with 10,000 other people for two jobs. And we're seeing the opposite of that now. So I wish I had an answer for Supervisor Coonerty. It's a statewide problem that we're all looking at right now. Okay, I appreciate that. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if there's worth partnering with the various school districts or the County Office of Education, try to create a pipeline and let people know early that there's an opportunity here to serve their community and make a good living by staying in the community and serving in Cal Fire. But my second question was, I think I appreciate the efforts that you're engaging in to reduce fuel. And we also are working with property owners through Firewise and other efforts to reduce fuel. Do we have a sense of like what the number of acres is and how many acres we've addressed? Like, are we working based on data or are we just doing sort of project by project where there's funding and opportunity? Like, do we know how big the problem is and how much of an effort we've made it? We're reducing some of that fuel. Sure, man, I wish I had a square number for you and I'd be happy to get it to you. The one major, so we have several different varieties of projects that Cal Fire itself does. Those usually be in fuel reduction, the shade of fuel breaks that you see like the photos in the presentation through prescribed burning, which was minimal this spring here locally. But the one major thing that we're seeing and it's kind of the easiest to track acreage on is the grants. So like I said, that quote unquote winter period keeps getting shorter and shorter for us. That's been the time that the Cal Fire folks have been able to commit 100% to fuel reduction in that period's only two or three months now. So I wanna say that locally our folks weren't able to treat more than about 100 to 200 acres this winter season. But what we're really seeing is the management of grants. Locally, my staff is managing a little over $28 million worth of grants that have to do with fire prevention fuel reduction for us health resilience. And the vast majority of those are here within Santa Cruz County through the RCD, the local fire safe councils. And those are actually measurable and we could bring some numbers back to the board as far as how many acres are treated and so forth. Great, I mean, I think it's probably a good thing for the county operational plan to have that as a goal, have the number of acres and the number that we're able to address through these programs and then be able to chip away at it a little bit every year in order to reduce the overall fuel capacity and danger. So thank you very much. Thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. Thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. Thank you, Mr. President. Thanks for all the work you do out there. It's been really difficult the last few years and I guess on the burned out area where the fires were about two years ago, that area should be fairly safe and as far as another fire is starting in that area, right? I mean, when it's burned out, it doesn't have a lot of fuel. How many years does that actually last though? Do we have any idea? Yeah. I wish I could say it was totally safe, but unfortunately firefighters are terrible. We're always doom and gloom, right? What we have in that area is a lot of dead fuel that is ripe to burn and we also have a lot of new growth of brush and you put the, so basically that entire landscape has changed and we're seeing some fuel types in there that weren't as present before. So we do have that combination of new types of brush as well as a lot of dead fuel. So I wouldn't say that it's completely safe. I'd say that through the areas that had a little more complete combustion or burn in them, that those might be slightly reduced kind of fire problem in there, but for a large portion of the perimeter of the fire, like right on the fringes of it, was really what we call kind of a dirty burn. It didn't burn real complete. It's real patchwork mosaic and so you do have a lot of dry fuel left immediately around that fire area from two years ago that's still just as dangerous today as it was then, if not a little more so. Right, okay. And then I guess it must be difficult to recruit actual helicopter pilots. Are they full-time firefighters or are they on call? Yeah, so the pilots for the Cal Fire Helicopters are actual Cal Fire employees and we see a lot of veterans. And so that's part, it's not the reason that we went to Blackhawks, but it's also a benefit that we went to those Blackhawks because we have a lot of exiting veterans from the military right now. They have a lot of experience flying in those aircraft and we capitalize on that by recruiting those folks and getting them into the system. So they are full-time. They work year-round and they're trained specifically for fire and rescue missions. So if they're not flying a helicopter, they're a regular fighter? No, they're just, they're there to fly the helicopter. They're fire-trained, but they're a pilot and pilot only. Okay, okay. And then I saw something on the screen there, it's kind of, I missed it. Something about monsoon rains. What was that about? Yeah, and that was something that we're seeing as far as the long-term models that show monsoonal moisture, which is where you get your thunderstorms and lightning out of monsoonal moisture. So they can't be specific enough in these long-term outlooks to tell us where they're gonna land. So we don't know if we'll get the brunt of it or we'll get kind of an edge. We don't know if it'll be wet or if it'll be dry, but just know that there is that possibility of some sort of monsoonal activity coming through. They're saying continuing through the end of July. And that's statewide. That's not specific to Santa Cruz County. So I know the target is on California, just don't know exactly where it was in California. Okay, and the last question, what was it a couple of days ago in Watsonville? There was ash in the air. Was that a lightning fire type thing somewhere? Yeah, there was, gosh, there was right near the slew. I believe there was about a two-acre grass fire the other day that was, it wasn't immediately threatening anything we were able to stop it relatively quick, but we probably had a little bit of an onshore flow, which creates and put that ash out in the air and raining down on folks. And I guess over by Madera and all that, they had a lot of lightning. Quite a bit more. Yeah, but quite a few fires are minimal. What we're seeing so far, quite a few fires, but they've all stayed small, which is great for this time of year. And it again is kind of probably testament to some of that late season, late spring season moisture that we had come through keeping those fuels dampened a little bit right now. Had we got that lightning surge two months from now, we'd probably be looking at another scenario like we had statewide in 2020. Well, anyway, thank you very much. And God bless you and all the men and women in the fire department. Thanks, sir. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. One question for you, Chief Armstrong. We hear a lot about concerns for evacuation routes from constituents. What is the best way to get new evacuation routes established? Ooh, man, that's a big partnership. And I know I don't want to speak for OR3, but OR3 was just working on a project for exactly that. Unfortunately, funding sources have changed. So it's really incumbent upon all of the agencies involved between OR3, ourselves, public works to really be nimble, and able to spring on as we plan these projects, being able to pivot to new funding sources or kind of other options for creative involvement from the community to allow those. Another issue that we see is some folks just don't want to grant passage through their property, which is unfortunate, but we'll continue to try to work through those scenarios to try and enhance, I'd hate to ever see an issue like happen in View County in 2018 where you have a huge community with only one way out. And we do have several of those, unfortunately, in the county. Right, so our Office of Response for Covering Resilience applying for grants, obviously your team applying for grants, as far as citizens themselves, I mean, should they get involved to FireSafe Council and FireWise to help identify those projects and elevate them then to your team? 100%, yeah, and we work very closely with the RCD and the FireSafe Councils on anything that comes forward and trying to support their efforts financially or however we can support it operationally. All right, thank you. Thank you, sir. All right, do we have any public comment on this item? Yeah, please approach the podium. Thank you. Chief Armstrong, my name is Becky Steinbrunner. I live in rural Aptos in the mountains. And I noticed that none of you asked him about the problems that are ongoing with volunteers that have been dismissed or harassed to the point that they resigned. I talked with you earlier about Mr. Kaufman's letter and none of you asked him about it. So I'm gonna ask the question. Chief Armstrong, as the Chief of County Fire, why has County Fire lost six well-trained volunteers some of them resigned because of harassment or the way they were treated during and after the CZU fire? One, Mr. Matthew Kaufman recently was dismissed, not put on suspension, but dismissed because he simply questioned Cal Fire and what happened in the CZU fire. I want you to explain that to the board and to the public this morning. It is reducing the well-trained volunteers that we depend on who stayed behind in the CZU fire when Cal Fire was not there. And they saved their communities working with volunteers who were their neighbors. I wanted an answer this morning. I also have questions about access and thank you Supervisor Koenig for bringing up the access. What is going on with State Parks, Big Basin? I'm sorry, I'm asking you, Chief Armstrong, what is going on with the access to Big Basin for the last chance road? Part of what is happening with our volunteer recruitment is it's the poor treatment that they are given. I have personally witnessed Mr. Beaton who is part of County Fire Volunteer left in the station of Coralitos with a couple of other well-trained volunteers and the Cal Fire staff went out on a County Fire engine and left the well-trained volunteers sitting in the station. Is there anyone on Zoom that wishes to comment on this item? Let's just take, finish public comment and... We do have speakers on Zoom. LS, your microphone is now available. Thank you. I'm a resident of Felton. Our house was half a mile from the CZU fire at the time it was contained and we owe that existence of our house to Cal Fire and certainly without local volunteers and as controversial as it is. And I don't have a strong opinion to locals who stayed in dangerous areas to slow down the fire. I don't know that Cal Fire could have saved us alone. My comment is that I know a young lady with experience with wildfire in another state. She moved to Santa Cruz with the dream of fighting wildfire but the cost of housing, she's finding herself working two jobs, trying to find a third. I know she's not the only person, she's stuck with limited career opportunities without financial support or education. And so she can't volunteer for years to work her way into a paid position. I'd love to see some community fundraising to try to get folks to stipend so that you can have volunteers for longer. The turnover can't be cost effective and you lose skilled volunteers. I would also love to see volunteers get some support at the county level or from Cal Fire to encourage employers to hold their jobs and accommodate their volunteer work by giving them makeup hours to keep a steady income. With the workforce shortage, you might have some leverage to get a list of employers who've made a vow to support the volunteers. I know a lot of employers, even large companies that have the finances don't wanna give overtime hours. And if this is already being done, I apologize for my ignorance. Thank you so much. Thank you. Colin, user one, your microphone is now available. There is answer Becky Steinbruner's pertinent questions. Stop treating members of the public who are well informed, like we don't exist. Those are key questions. I would like to add some, it's pretty outrageous and the way you treat women asking questions, right? So that was an informative presentation that raises a lot of questions. And I'd like to give you some references that serious need to be investigated. We need to remove some known but rarely publicized causes of all these fires. One reference is geoengineeringwatch.org and the weather manipulation that is taking place with patents destroying the ozone, causing the droughts. geoengineeringwatch.org with Dane Wiggington. Another known cause is PG&E's defective power lines and policies that they continue. Another source of fires is the so-called smart meters, fires and explosions, fatalities and these smart meters are on utility poles where all of these four Gs seem to be 5G antennas are. I'm quoting from the softsmartmeters.org. Fatalities and serious injuries have been caused by smart meter fires and explosions. Following fire incidents, hundreds of thousands of smart meters were recalled in Saskatchewan. Thank you, Mr. Harris. William, your microphone is now available. Excuse me, can you hear me? Yes. This is not William Mulholland, this is Douglas Deitch. I am a long-term resident, Hudson Lane Deitch Drive at the boundary of Cabrillo College. Chief Armstrong, could you please listen to this? I have a question. First of all, I'd like to generally commend law enforcement and our fire departments for doing an excellent job. It's a tough job and particularly now. And so generally I'm very pleased with what's going on. In my specific case where I live for 50 years, what we have is a problem dealing with existing county laws which are not being enforced specifically, flammable access from public and private access roads, of 10 feet, horizontal, 15 feet vertical. I've spoken with the last two fire department chiefs in Central Fire. They basically refused to follow the oath of office and law to follow these laws. The county fire code. So what I'd like to know is, is it in their jurisdiction to be following these laws? And as a board of supervisors, I've tried to contact you to convey this to you because it's threatening unsafe access in egress as Chair Coney was talking about is exactly what I'm talking about. I have developed the property up there, probably $30 million worth of homes which has a maybe $300,000 potential tax revenue to the county, private road, privately maintained. And all we'd like to do is have our laws maintained and the owners at the bottom of Hudson Lane who are not in our road group to be cited for their violations of that. So they will change it. And if we have to go to court, we will have documented the violations that were there. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Deitch. We have no further speakers for this item, Chair. All right, thank you. Then I'll return to the board for action. Did that Chief, did you want an opportunity to respond? We normally don't engage in a dialogue as we're doing all communications. I'm sure the Chief will be happy to answer questions outside the meeting. Great. All right, thank you. Then I'll return to the board for action. Recommended action. I don't know. Yeah. I believe this is just to accept. Do we need to accept this item? No, there's no action necessary. Okay, very well. Thank you, Chief Armstrong for your report. I will proceed to item eight, public hearing to consider County Service Area 48 and County Service Area four, fire protection special benefit assessment charge report for fiscal year 22, 23 and adopt resolutions confirming said reports for CSA 48, 2020, CSA 48 and CSA four as outlined in the memorandum of the Director of General Services. Director Beaton, will you be providing an overview? Thank you, board. Michael Beaton, Director of General Services, just available for staff as support to this item. If there's any questions from the board or the public. Thank you. Are there any questions from members of the board? Seeing none, any member of the public that wishes to comment on this item? Thank you. Thank you, Steinbrenner. I'm a resident of rural Aptos, I'm a taxpayer in CSA 48. First of all, can each open public hearing. And second of all, the only reason I found out about this is because I happened to look in the legal notices of the Santa Cruz Sentinel on June 18th. I saw that this was gonna happen. There is absolutely no notice on County Fire website about this, about the budget, the proposed budget, nothing. And I understand that websites take maintenance, but the County Fire did put a press release on the homepage of the County Fire website about the close of burn season on April 6th. So it is possible. Public has had no notice about this hearing at all. I'm opposed to these increases. And it isn't that I don't support fire protection. It's the way that the money is being managed, mismanaged and really for all the talk about FDAC, they really are not given the information in a timely manner to be able to make recommendations to your board. There's no notice on the, this is the first today I've heard of the draft master plan being open for public comment. There's nothing on the website. How are you expecting the public to be, to give meaningful input when no one even knows it's happening? I am opposed to the increases. The special benefit assessment was put through, in my opinion, illegally. It was an assessment district. It was tacked onto, visibly on the ballot, a county service area, which is a completely different funding mechanism. Special benefit assessments are illegal under government code 5078.2B, that clearly states, you cannot levy special benefit assessments for fire suppression on state responsibility lands. Thank you. I will officially open the public hearing and please note, make sure that Ms. Steinberger's comment of opposition is added to the record. Seeing no one else here in chambers, wishes to address us on this item. Is there anyone on Zoom? We do have one speaker on Zoom. Colin, user one, your microphone is now available. Brad, I'm also opposed to these increases. And I would like to see Becky Steinbruner, who is very knowledgeable and it's been a volunteer firefighter. Do a presentation on this topic of fires. The point she just made that a special benefit assessment, the way you're doing it, are illegal. And will anyone on the board of supervisors address these serious issues? I am, I just over and over feel like the public is not being well represented. The wellbeing of the public is being harmed through many, many aspects. And what are causing all these fires? This is not natural weather we're experiencing. It is not wise to let PG&E cause fires. I'm opposed to this and answer Becky Steinbruner's questions. It is not appropriate that you say, oh, they can be answered in the hall. The public needs to hear. You are supposed to represent the public, not special interests. Those are my comments. Thank you, Ms. Garrett. We have no further speakers for this item, Chair. All right, then I'll return to the board for action. Ms. Chair, if I could, as one who worked on CSA 48 and the update, we went through all the legal processes, looked at them all, and I think that they were fully met. And I guess it's for me to ask the County Council in one word answer or not, did we follow the legal procedures that were necessary to upgrade and establish CSA 48? Yeah, thank you, Supervisor. We've been litigating this case with the petitioner for almost two years now and petitioner has not been able to move it forward. I've seen no indication of any illegality or any impropriety associated with the election proceedings or with the implementation of the electorate's decision. And frankly, we just look forward to getting into court to continue to defend the case at some point. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson, we have a motion. Second. Second by Supervisor Coonerty. Any further discussion? Seeing none. Clerk roll call vote, please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson and Koenig. Aye. This item passes unanimously. Thank you very much, Director Beaton. We'll now proceed with item nine to consider the approval of final recommended awards from the collective of results and evidence-based investments request for proposals process. Consider approval of three months of transition funding for fiscal year 21, 22 core programs not recommended for funding in fiscal year 22, 23. Direct the Human Services Department to return to the board on or before December 13th, 2022 with an update and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the Director of Human Services. Welcome, Director Morris and take it away. Good morning. Thank you. And good morning, Chair Koenig. Randy Morris, Human Services Director. I'm joined by Kimberly Peterson, the Deputy Director, though today's presentation is much shorter than the one that brought us in front of you on June 7th. So I will be the one presenting today, but Kimberly's here with a lot of materials in case there is a question and answer so we can be responsive. On June 7th, just to briefly catch us all up, your board approved our recommended actions of moving the slate of recommended awards forward. But you also gave us one additional direction and that was to remove one particular grant and to come back today with a recommendation to how to repurpose those funds within the core allocation. And you also gave us one last additional direction which is to return today and speak to how the contracting oversight would look which we speak to. I do wanna make sure to remind your board and the public listening that this is a dual jurisdiction funding relationship with the city of Santa Cruz. So I do wanna make sure everyone is aware that that afternoon, Kimberly and I co-presented to the Santa Cruz City Council and the city council also approved the recommended actions and they gave very specific direction to the city manager's office to return at their budget hearings on June 14th to look for a new funding source to try to help support funding for the community-based organizations that were not funded. So they had a different but very specific direction. At the city council's June 14th budget hearings, the city council adopted their $1 million and $80,000 of appropriations to the core allocation and they deferred the request until this afternoon where Kimberly and I will be to look for new funding to try to help support those agencies that were not funded. I'm sharing that background because bundled this afternoon on consent is our core funding allocation and the cities as approved by the council and this afternoon we'll be in front of the council to close out this discussion and to also have discussion which is part of our recommended actions to find some new funding to help support some of the agencies. So this brings us to today. A short presentation. The first is we have modified the recommended actions that we brought to you on June 7th and we essentially have two new ones. One is an adjustment and those who are being recommended for awards which I'll speak to in a minute and the second is we did identify a $500,000 one-time funding source which I'll speak to what that source is for some a second action in front of you. The second agenda item is a very quick update on what happened in the appeals process and I wanna bring the community's attention and remind your board that in the materials is a letter from the general services department director Michael Beaton, his team managed the appeal and he is here and available to answer any questions about the appeal process if necessary. And then finally just sort of walk through what the next steps are depending on the direction of your board and the final direction this afternoon from the council. Okay, so that brings us to the first of the modified recommend actions in front of your board today. I want to underline that this recommended action is all within the parameters of the RFP that your board and the city council approved. We have taken the direction to eliminate one grant that we were given on June 7th and come back to recommend how to repurpose that money. And secondarily, we have taken the board approved RFP parameter of staff discretion to recommend up to a 10% reduction in the grant awards to all applicants and we have come back to recommend moving to what was a 3% reduction to a full 10% reduction. So by putting those two funding streams together it allowed us the opportunity to follow the rank order of those who applied in the medium and large chair where the biggest competition was and fund one extra large grant. And that is the senior network services aging and community program. That is a program that in their application stated that if funded by local general fund core money they would be able to leverage state and federal area agency on aging money an issue that was brought up as an area of concern for not getting funding before. So this recommended action allows us to fund this organization. There was not enough funds to look at a second large application. So we then turned to the medium tier where there was quite a bit of competition and because those grant applications are much smaller we were able to fund in this recommended action the next four highest ranks programs. This list is not in rank order but I just wanted to say the first in the medium is the Big Brothers Big Sisters program which is a mentoring program. The second is family services agency who is the regional 988 provider soon to go live under federal action to provide suicide prevention hotline to the community. The third is community ventures guaranteed income program which proposed to serve 30 Latin X family is in the communities that are low income to help them with financial literacy guaranteed income to help support them become a community that is not gonna be dependent on these funds. And then also the diversity center LGBT to keep TQ mental health services. So these five new recommended awards are modified from what we brought forward to you in June 7th. And I wanna take a moment to recognize that the overall package in front of you is an 11% increase in what the current core allocation is that totals $545,000 more dollars. I also want to make sure your board is aware if people have not done the math that of the agencies being recommended for award two thirds of them are current core providers in terms of the dollars and one third are new. So that's just so you know how the math lands and I also wanna remind the board though this is a shift in some agencies who are providing certain services as we presented on June 7th. There is an equitable distribution by geography, by age, by race and core condition of wellbeing. So the funding in front of you does spread services around the community that we do recognize some of the agencies who are not receiving funding as a change for them. The second slide here covers the rest of the recommended actions. I wanna take a minute to talk about item two because this is new and I wanna share with your board that this is outside, above, beyond in addition to the actual RFP frame. We have identified a one source, one time source of funding and I wanna take a minute to explain what it is because some questions have came forward. In County Human Services budgeting as we shared at our budget presentation last week 88.5% of our budget is state and federal dollars and the 11.5% that is in our budget is general fund that your board approves every year and we'll hopefully approve this afternoon. When we have unexpected increases in the state revenue that we receive, which we only know as we get towards the end of a fiscal year, that relieves the pressure on the amount of general fund that we need to sort of balance our budget. So given the state economy continues to be very strong there continues to be a lot of vehicles being purchased, vehicle license fees, a lot of people who are spending a lot of money in the economy still, our state revenues in the last two months have come in stronger than anticipated. So in collaboration with our County administrator who would otherwise pull that general fund back not needed as approved in our budget, we together are bringing forward this one time $500,000. I wanna underline this one time and that's because it's only a byproduct of what I just said in next fiscal year we don't know what it'll be and the economist predict will be in a recession. So we felt it better to use this one time money to bring forward a new recommendation which as listed in the materials is a recognition of what we heard from a lot of the community-based organizations that it was gonna be very difficult given we agreed to delay the applications because of the Omicron variant. It pushed these recommended awards to the very end of the fiscal year and there are a number of agencies who've had this funding for a long time who did not submit competitive applications are not being recommended awards. So put together, we recommend a three month bridge to help fund all agencies who are currently providing core services and not recommended for award to help them with their transition. I wanna recognize we submitted additional materials which were in the package as 3A because there was a question to which the answer was very reasonable because this $500,000 we identified is not tied to the RFP parameters. We as staff, though we have put forward this recommendation we do not feel we need to be tying it to any particular parameters that were listed in the RFP and this is money that your board can look at and consider other options. So we put forward an additional document that outlined how that $500,000 could be purposed should your board want to. So we wanted to have a full transparent open discussion about that. I would say if your board as you hear public comment and you begin deliberations see these as because they are two separate budget actions you might wanna consider having separate motions and vote on the first recommended action separate and then this is a separate action if that is agreeable to your board and helpful to make the decisions in front of you. The third and fourth recommend actions are just sort of process that we need your approval to have both our department and the auditor controller to execute these actions quickly and before we come back to your board that way we don't have to come back to your board to get approval to release money to start new contracts or if you approve the second action to get money bridge money to the current providers we can do that right away. And then the fourth one as chair Coney you said in the materials we are recommending that return in December for comprehensive report on everything including any direction we get today. This last asterisk I wanna share is I had shared in our department budget presentation last week that your board had passed in consent a deferral of the actual core budget from last week to today so that the policy discussions in the budget could be discussed in one day. A technical issue the actual core budget itself is in consent this afternoon. So I just wanna share that as a matter of full transparency and the second is it is actually the budget for the county and it includes the city budget because the city passed their budget on consent and we have an MOU at your board and the city council approved on June 7th. So just a technical issue that the full budget of city and county are on consent this afternoon. This is a very brief update on the appeals. I had said with Kimberly on June 7th that that was step one of three and that our recommendation as staff was to encourage people who were disappointed in the recommended awards in front of you on June 7th was to proceed with an appeal. There is a letter from a general service director Michael Beaton who outlines this but the quick summary is 19 of the agencies that were not recommended for award did file an appeal. They were allowed to appeal on as many specific items as they wanted. And so those 19 agency appeals had 73 specific items in them. 30 of those items were deemed what's a technical issue called a protest or a statement. They weren't within the parameters of what is appealable things like my agency provides critical services and there will be issues and concerns amongst the people I serve that is a statement. It's not a question about whether that statement is just or righteous. It's just not an appealable item. 43 of the items were deemed appealable within the RFP parameters. 42 of them were denied. And the one that was partially substantiated is there was a recognition in general service departments review that one of the agencies was scored in the medium range on one particular budget item though the panelists comments in the comment sections were positive about the budget. So general service turned that to us. We raised that score to the top score but it did not result in an aggregate score that put them that particular agency and to change any of the awards that were brought to you on June 7th. So I'm gonna close the presentation with sort of talking about what is next because I really wanna create more space for your board to deliberate in the public to make comment and we're here for any questions. Immediately pending your board's decisions in front of you today. If you approve both items we will immediately execute the new contracts that will include three months of upfront payment to the new providers and their new contracts while we work on the contract scope of work. And we will also pending your board's approval of the recommended actions and be able to immediately execute the three-month bridge payments. And when I mean immediate that means in county time we turn it around and we don't have to come back to your board but we'll start working on us as soon as possible. The second is fall of 2022. There is a tremendous amount of energy surrounding this program historically when it was community programs every year's budget hearings. When core moved from community programs to core this has been a program that brings a lot of energy and a lot of attention and we want to immediately harness and capture all the lessons learned, all the concerns all the things that people support and be able to come back to a public meeting in December and talk about some of the lessons learned and take this as far as we need to so that when we have in three years from now are confronted with another opportunity to do another RFP we can harness all the lessons learned apply what worked well and then make edits as needed adjustments going forward. Though this says fall of 2022 that's when we'll start the public process but we're gonna begin work immediately on building up a system and a process to engage all elected officials and all community providers and other stakeholders. And then finally, as is in the materials today we are recommending you direct us to return in 2022 for a very comprehensive report on a number of items that includes this has almost forgotten the mix of everything being discussed we have not come back and given you a full report on the five years of core contracts and the outcomes that just played out we'll include that in the report we'll give an update on the lessons learned my prediction is that we will continue will be an update and we'll have more time to go through other lessons learned discussions in early 23 we'll provide an update on the status of contracts and if you support the bridge funding and then finally to the additional direction we were given on June 7th we will also be able to give a full report on our efforts to establish contracts that are agreeable to your board under that direction to make sure we have accountability measures and outcomes I do want to share is just one final comment we did sense that June 7th directive confirm that the contract templates that we have do address accountability I do also want to comment that when your board approved our budget last week and there were some other comments earlier today that included some extra staffing in our contracts unit which will give us more resources to track accountability and outcomes in the core programs and all of our contracts so that sort of ties together well and we will be able to report on sort of where we are with execution so I'm going to close out by again repeating is this of course your decision to make but as I've been tracking the conversation I just want to highlight that the core budget and the recommended action one to approve the five recommended additional awards is one budget item and you might want to consider taking that as one motion and the $500,000 is a different item a different one-time source and if that is easier for you to sort of process the two that could be a separate item if that's agreeable to you so Kimberly and I here for any questions and Chair Cohn I turn it back to you. Thank you, Director Morris and Deputy Director Peterson are there any questions or comments from members of the board? Let's have a brief one if that's fair Mr. Chair Thank you Director Morris and Ms. Peterson as always on the $500,000 I just want to express that I appreciate the idea of the bridge funding I'm not actually supportive of the three month I think that some of the other policy options that were presented to be better and I would appreciate after getting public input hearing my board members, my colleagues thoughts such as the ability to fund for a year some of these programs at 50% for example I think because it just would be more targeted and more useful amount of money for programs and the other thing is that I think that the board should take the opportunity recognizing that this process was followed but also recognizing that we are seeing some of the challenges that the process created to actually provide some direction and some guidance on some of the things to be reviewed in that process I know it's going to be a comprehensive look but it's also useful to have the board make some specific suggestions I believe coming back as to what could be looked at I do have some thoughts that I can share on that I think that the board probably ultimately would just like some greater flexibility ultimately in the funding decision at the end but I have some, I did notice some concerns in regards to the process that I think that I'd like to include a director Morris coming back that also get reviewed but that's it Mr. Chair just some brief comments as an introductory but I look forward to hearing the public comments then when it comes back for a greater discussion for a motion. Thank you Supervisor Friend. Any other comments or questions at this time? I just have one quick question which is for the $500,000 in funding why do we focus on their requested amount versus what they were actually funded at over the past five years? So I'll start and Kimberly has all the materials with her to clarify for the staff recommended action in front of you of three-month bridge funding I'm confirming that is at their current yeah so Supervisor Coonerty for the staff recommendation of three-month of bridge funding it is at their current contract amount not what they requested. We acknowledge that when we added the additional materials we looked at what people applied for and the possibility of bringing forward some ideas which was really following the issue of trying to spread money more around and one time giving some of these agencies an opportunity with what they requested but there is a difference between those two but Kimberly, do you wanna add anything to clarify or Supervisor Coonerty if that answered or did not answer your question please follow up with another? It answers my question up but I guess I was confused because the language says it's bolded of requested funded. So as for the additional item the material three or A and B A, A, A, A, A Also option one in the bolded line says requested and so I'm just trying to make sure we're all clear and we're all we're talking about. Right, so that particular policy option that's different from the recommended option so it's in the recommendation it's the three-month bridge funding is based on current levels and the organizations that we had identified and if you chose to take that dollar amount and those organizations and spread that out over more than a quarter at a lower amount we could do that but to provide a different type of option a different way of looking at it these are examples of how much of what they were requested what percentage of what they requested could be provided in different increments so it was just a different type of option. Different cut, okay, thank you. Thank you Supervisor Coonerty. Thank you Supervisor Caput. So Randy and Kimberly thanks a lot it's a lot of work to go through all this and I guess if my count is right we were over and we only have so much money and there's a lot of they're all great causes and people are asking for more or less or whatever I believe if you count all the umbrella agencies that are under one bigger one there was close to over 70 applications, is that correct? One Kimberly will probably give you the exact numbers I think one of the numbers we've been being very clear on in staff reports have been there was about three times the amount of money requested from the core contracts than the actual money appropriated so it was triple the need in the community and we only had one third that amount but Kimberly if you have the exact number in front of you 127 proposals were received. Right, okay, yeah. And it's tough because all of them are doing great work out there and whenever you're allocating money you can only do so much. So what I'm getting at is you were put in a very difficult position and you handled it very well and respect the work that you've put into this. It's not perfect, but nothing is perfect. So and the one thing that I've noticed we haven't talked down on some that were not funding as much or not at all and it's kind of like we're not saying one program is better than another. What we're saying is we're seeing a community need in certain areas and I think overall when we look at it we're gonna see that we are providing that community need that is out there. And the other I like the idea of the transition, three months transition money that 500,000 came from where. Yeah, so I tried to explain that it's a technical and complicated issue. So our budget, the human services budget that your board approved last year included a certain amount of county general fund which we need to draw state and federal money to run our programs. The state revenues that come in we track every month in the last two months and we don't actually know the finals for this month were much higher than expected. And so every year usually it goes the other way they're lower than expected. But they were on point, they were higher than expected. So that offset some of the general fund in the budget that goes back to the CAO. So in communication with our CAO's office and ultimately Carlos as our CAO we agreed that given this one time moment it would be a good opportunity to help address some of the community concerns about this transition and agencies losing funding. Yeah, and the other thing that I do like is that in December it's gonna be kind of like a report card for all the groups and the money. Depending on what you mean by report card we have a lot of process updates to share where we are. Whether the money is being spent wisely and well not every dollar but are the programs that they're promising still functioning or the new ones up and running? So let me answer that in two ways. In December it will be a report on the five years of the core contracts that are just coming to an end now. So in that respect if I understand your statement report card it would be an update on sort of what money was used, how the services are delivered and a comprehensive report on the last five years of service. Looking forward depending on whatever your board approves today we would be giving an update on establishing the new contracts. The process in place, the accountability measures in them but it would be too early to actually have a quote report card just a few months into the contract cycle that would probably be after that where we'd talk about the future contracts and what services are being provided. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. There are no other comments or questions from the board. Sorry, Supervisor McPherson. Yeah, I was gonna wait to hear from public comment but I just wanna thank again the human services departments and all the participants and the rating panels, very difficult situation that you had. Thank you to all the organizations who supplied for core funding, 127 proposals that just a fraction of the nonprofit or community organizations we have in the county. It's in the hundreds probably certainly more than 500 closer to 1,000. So it's a tough thing that we have at the department has the rating panel had to address simply put there's not enough money to support everything we want or that it was requested. I think there was about $16 million worth of requests and we have just sort of $6 million to allocate. So I think that our staff intends to work previously funded program organizations to see if there are non-core dollars available and I'm glad that we went to that extent. And there's been a lot of work that has gone into laying the groundwork for this shift of funding that we have seen and my sense is that we're gonna continue to see and what could be done and learn from it and be responsive to the feedback. The biggest concern I've heard about in my office is the fact that no services were directly allocated to the Santa Rosa Valley in the Fifth District but it's also my understanding that the number of organizations recommended for funding have identified their applications that they would serve the Valley as a percentage of their client base. For instance, the United Way, it's application for cradle to career, one third of that allocation is going to the Santa Rosa Valley. So it's, you've got to look into it deeply to find out where the money is being allocated, where it's going and how it's serving. I'd like our staff to get more specifics about how we can assure through our contracting process that organizations will be successful and I think you're going to do that in December. But overall, I appreciate Mr. or Supervisor Friend's recommendation but it's getting late in the game and that's not to the fold of his. We didn't know what was going to come up with this extra hundred or $500,000 but I can support both of the options as they are presented today either separately and I think it should be separate or to realign the original funding to include the capacity for bringing additional or on additional organizations that were mentioned and adding the new funding to support the three month bridge. You're right, it's not going to go on forever but we really have to be careful with recession looming if it's not upon us already what we were going to be able to do next year with the funds that we have and it's going to be coming in from the state. So I would, I think it's really late to try to refocus how we're going to allocate that $500,000 that was mentioned. And I think the proposal by the Human Services Department is on target and I would be willing to support either. I think we should support them in a separate motions. That's my thoughts. Thank you Supervisor McPherson. I want to open it for public comment now. I know you've all been waiting patiently so if you have a comment to make please approach the podium. Good morning chair supervisors and staff. I'm Helen you in story. I'm the acting executive director of the community action board. As you know, Cabez the County's designated community action agency charged with eliminating poverty and creating social change through advocacy and essential services. We serve over 10,000 low-income people annually including through our youth and adult employment services and our Davenport Resource Service Center on the County's isolated North Coast. I'm also here today with my colleagues from Caps Immigration Project and Homelessness Prevention and Intervention Services. We'll speak in a little bit. We're here today to thank you and let you know that we support the adjusted recommendations for Caps Corps proposals which will support thousands of low-income people including at risk, at promise youth, and adults, day workers and farm workers to access needed services and supports to more fully thrive in our community. We also appreciate that this is a challenging year for the County as we continue to recover from the pandemic, from the fire as well as the current economic situation we're in and we know that we're facing a recession as well. However, I just wanna say we know that this is also when safety net services are needed the most when the community is hurting. So I really do want to respectfully encourage you to continue to look for additional funding to support safety net services for children, seniors, you know, mental and physical health, many of our colleagues in the community that provide very valuable services in order to keep our community strong as we weather these difficult times. Cap, thanks you. And we continue to look forward to our continued partnership to equitably serve our community. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Story. Good morning, Chair, supervisors. My name is Paz Padilla. The Housing Prevention and Intervention Service Director for Community Action Board. We serve hundreds of low-income and diverse homeless households per year, providing vital services such as rental assistance to avoid eviction, homeless intervention and stability support for vulnerable youth and young adults. We appreciate it and we support the core recommendation for CAB's Housing Prevention and Intervention Service. We understand this is a difficult year in our community and are thankful for the recommendations so that we may continue providing rental assistance to avoid eviction and prevent homelessness for our low-income families, seniors and disabled households throughout the county, including South County with our partners, California Rural Legal Assistance, Families and Transitions, PV-USD Healthy Start and PV Shelter. Again, thank you so much for your support, your partnership, your commitment to equity in our community. Thank you. Good morning, Chair and supervisors. My name is Kate Hinenkamp. I'm Operations Manager for the Community Action Board Immigration Project. And we serve at the Immigration Project over 6,000 immigrants and family members from diverse low-income households. We provide community education and immigration legal services county for people from all over the county. And we're grateful to the HSD for the core recommendation to fund CAB's Immigration Project. We know this is a difficult year as we've just heard that there's some difficult decisions in front of you. And we support the recommendation of funds to our Immigration Project at CAB. This would allow us to launch the very first non-profit immigration services office in the city of Santa Cruz. And it will also allow us to expand DACA and citizenship services countywide to take advantage of $600,000 that we've been awarded by the state for scholarships for DACA and citizenship. So this would really help your funds to go further to help folks, immigrant families and the community. At the same time, we strongly encourage you to look for additional funding to support other needed services for a strong, effective safety net. Our programs are interconnected. We've been working for decades with partners like Community Bridges that helps us extend our reach. So immigration, right now we subcontract with Community Bridges for referrals to our program. And if program agencies like Community Bridges and others are not funded, all of our work is truncated. We can accomplish less. So we encourage you to continue to look for options. And we just wanna thank you once more for your support, your partnership and your commitment to equity in our community. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Hannon-Kam. Good morning, Board of Supervisors. It's a pleasure joining you today. My name is Maria Cadenas. I'm the Executive Director of Ventures. We're very honored to be recommended for funding for Semi-Guitas, which is the college savings account program throughout the county that supports kids by creating a college savings account and additional contributions until they turn five. I'm also excited to say that's part of that program we're aligning with the state program that's to launch this summer. So hopefully your kids get $1,000 by the time they enter Kinder for the future education. This is a huge growth and it will leverage the county's investment. In addition, as a new recommended program is including organic income pilot, which we call ALAS, which we launch with the hope of trying to prove ways to enhance and support our safety net programs so that people can move out of poverty and have economic mobility. The program itself, I just got an email right now that the IRB process has been approved by UC Santa Cruz. So we'll be partnering with UC Santa Cruz who will pay for the evaluation of program that hopefully will give this county tools to look at and how we best leverage and work together to get people out of poverty in an equitable, sustainable way. Again, I'm thankful for the support, thankful for the efforts that have been made to continue to support the safety nets and here to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you, Ms. Cardenas. Morning, Supervisors. Before I start, is it possible and appropriate to provide just some letters from some community members in a district map? Sure, if you're on record, please. Thank you. Welcome to hand those to the clerk. Good morning, Chairman Koenig, Supervisors, Director Morris, Nicole. I'm sorry. Yes, the Nicole's are on my mind today. I wonder why. Thank you so much. My name is Steven Matzi. I am the Santa Cruz County Long-Term Care ombudsman program coordinator operating under Advocacy Inc, which had not been recommended for funding, which was very disheartening considering the uniqueness of our program and the only provider of ombudsman services to the 1800 beds in skilled nursing and residential care facilities in the community. However, I'm here to say thank you. Thank you to Director Morris and to County staff for finding some money to recommend some bridge transition money to our program. That will certainly be helpful. I do want to remind everybody that we are still in the current pandemic. And if we've learned anything over the last two and a half years, that our older adults living in long-term care have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic and continue to suffer through lockdowns, up and down lockdowns. Low staffing at facilities as a historic staffing levels have been reduced because of pandemic. And as those staff members and facilities are leaving, our ombudsmen, including myself, are going in, donning N95s, face shields when necessary, gloves and full PPE to protect ourselves and to protect our community members and those residents living in long-term care. So again, this is just a reminder to everyone here today that those folks often get overlooked because the doors are closed on those facilities, please do not forget about them. I will be honored to come back on a regular basis to speak to you more about our program and offer an invitation to each of you to join me on a drive-by into a facility in your district to meet the residents that are your constituents. Thank you so much for the funding recommendation for the bridge transition. We do certainly appreciate that. I want to personally thank you also. Unfortunately, you got left out and that hurt. And I guess what I'm saying is you're one of my favorite programs that are out there helping the community. And going through the whole COVID thing must have been very difficult because not only were the people in the rest homes, you know, they couldn't even have visitors. And it must have been very, very difficult. And I want to thank you for in the past helping out South County. I went out there with Wayne Norton and he's doing good in retirement, I guess. And we had some big battles down there with a couple of rest homes. So without an ombudsman, we wouldn't have been able to fix things. Supervisor Caput, thank you so much for your support of our program and for all of the board members that are here today. And we're still fighting the good fight. We'll still do that regardless of where the funding is coming from. Thank you. I'll give you a call sometime. Maybe we'll get coffee, okay? I'd love that. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Cheryl Frenzel. I am the executive director at the Diversity Center and we're here just with the great privilege and honor of saying thank you for looking for ways to fund more organizations. We are being considered for funding in the new recommendations and we wanted to personally show up and say thank you so much. I can't imagine the job that you've had to do and it's been something to watch. And so we really heartfully thank you because what we're gonna be able to do is work with the crisis and the LGBTQ community around mental health. And we're also gonna be able to be a strong and important partner with all of the organizations who meet on a monthly basis to try to address the mental health crisis within the youth. And so now we get to utilize these funds to support not only ourselves but other organizations struggling with the same issue. And so we're here with some of our community just to say thank you. Thank you very much and please approve the new recommendations. Thank you, Ms. Frenzel. Good morning. My name is Larry Friedman. I've been a resident of the county for 50 years and I've lived in the unincorporated areas as well as in the city and I've been a taxpayer for over 40 years. I'm a member of the Diversity Center community. I'm a longtime volunteer. I was one of the people that started the First Gate Pride in Santa Cruz, 1975. I've been here fighting the good fight and I wanna thank you all for considering the Diversity Center for some funding in this next round here. There's so much need. I've been a volunteer at the front desk at the Diversity Center for years and between old seniors who are coming in or who are isolated and don't have support and youth and trans kids who are needing mental health support. It's really a godsend to have you supporting us. I was a social worker at Watsonville Hospital for 13 years, social worker at Dominican Hospital for about 20 years and the need for mental health services has never been greater throughout. So I know it's been a hard job. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Friedman. Hello, my name is Barb Jordan. I'm a resident of District One and I'm also a donor to the Diversity Center and I brought Roof here today just to work me. I wanna commend Ken Staff for really working creatively to try to adjust the recommendations in response to community input and also to find additional money. I think that's really incredible work. There are so many worthy entities here and I appreciate hearing appreciation from you about the work that all of these nonprofits are doing. But finally, I wanna urge the Board of Supervisors to act today to approve the funding for the core grant program, including the Diversity Center and also the additional $500,000, thank you. Thank you, Ms. Jordan. Hello, my name is Andrea Damon. I run parent groups for trans families of Santa Cruz County and we have not applied for funding for you but I'm here today to speak to the importance of the Diversity Center programs for our youth and I'm so heartened to see that you've decided to include them in your grant program this year. As you know, the pandemic has taken an incredible toll on the mental health of all youth but trans and LGBTQ youth in particular. And as a group facilitator talking to parents every day, I've been a first person witness to the mental health struggles of these young people and also can attest to the really life-saving programs that they have been offered at the Diversity Center. Having the youth groups has been a lifeline for LGBTQ youth in our community and I'm so glad that their work is being recognized and I want just to stand here and help you understand how valuable and critical it is. So thank you so much for including them in your revised proposals, thank you. Thank you, Ms. Damon. I just wanted to express gratitude for the Mountain Resource Center and what it's done for me. I was illegally evicted during COVID. In other words, I paid taxes for law enforcement to come out and break their own laws. And so not everybody who goes homeless is with the stereotype deserving it or have brought it on themselves. We mentioned veterans earlier, people mentioned people with mental health problems and that sort of thing. And so I feel like it's necessary and helpful and I just wanted to say that I was thankful for what they've done for me and I hope that they're able to continue. Thanks. My name is Corey, I'm an advocate at Mountain Community Resources and I've worked with Jim and he actually was and still is working at Safeway and I'm using our showers and laundry and has transferred back and forth from different locations still able to use our services still needing assistance to try to find housing in the Watsonville area now. So using more than one of our centers. I have a question for Bruce for the Cradle to Career program. Does that include any help for the homeless? And that's a huge question because we built these showers from housing matters, monies years ago right during the CZU fires. So we have these showers and laundry that are gonna go empty. I would support a 50% one year rather than the bridge funding so that we could at least try to find a way to continue that service and not have wasted services. Thanks. Thank you, Corey. My name is Sandra Rudello and there's no translator today. My name is Sandra Rudello, my name is Sandra Rudello. I just wanted to share some of the art that my clients had up bring through these years and it is heartwarming. My clients have grown with my parenting classes through the years that have been there. And they come with a lot of issues like any other agency. I do thank you for finding additional funding but I do hope that you could continue looking because as you see, I just not serve now the one child or a member of the community I serve the whole family and they do appreciate with words, with actions they leave those for me to remember them. And when I see them in the community they say thank you for transforming my life. Again, thank you. Thank you. Hello, my name is Myra. I'm here in representation of Community Bridges Family Resource Centers. I work as an advocate and I just wanna support additional funding to be relocated to these centers since we do have more centers across the county that are serving a wide range of individuals of different ages, backgrounds and different services. And I think it's highly important that we kind of look that these are evidence-based funding recommendations. So we have to look at the prospective statistics that will come up when these centers are closed and reduced hours are being created. There are currently long lines our Watsonville Center which serves a lot of vulnerable families specifically those that work in the fields and it is highly important that we kind of provide a lot of funding for these families since we have the human services agency right across the street. Yeah, we still see a wide range of individuals come and look for assistance for their disability, for their unemployment and for the CalFresh. And it's really critical to look at that statistics of like our wide range of impact and or outcomes because then that kind of shows you that there is a reason why a lot of individuals are seeking our services and we do not discriminate and we do not and we provide a whole range something as simple as providing a charging station, making a phone call and we really have to look outside of our neighborhoods and outside of our perspectives and see that just because it's not a need that we need or that we see around our community, it does not mean that other people in the outskirts of our towns are not needing these services. So any additional funds would be great because it provides a little bit of a safety net while these people help try to find something else in the meanwhile. Thank you. Thank you, Myra. All right, seeing no one else here in chambers which is to address us on this item, is there anyone on Zoom? Yes, Chair, we do have speakers on Zoom. Colin, user one, your microphone is now available. Marilyn, Garrett and Santa Cruz County is not alone in this misery and war on the poor. A book that puts us in a framework is titled The Real Anthony Fauci Bill Gates, Big Pharma and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. This is part of a global war on democracy and public health. And listening to people who are doing vital work for the community, who are being made more poor by these cuts shows the county's miss direction in priorities while millions of dollars literally go to wireless microwave, 4G, 5G technology. People are going hungry and being harmed at the same time. This title here is Collective of Results and Evidence-Based Core Investments. What are the results? And looking more deeply into where the money is misappropriated in this county, like for Verizon, Cruzio, all that, it's all backwards and it's a retired teacher of 30 years. I think of that bumper sticker, it'll be a great day when the schools have all the money they need and we could add social services. And the Air Force has to have a bake sale to buy a bomber. This is all backwards. We're fighting over crimes left after approximately half our tax dollars. Thank you, Ms. Karen. LS, your microphone is now available. Leah Samuels, Executive Director of the Human Care Alliance. Thank you for the amended recommendations. Having a response to these public comments in the form of action really helps move forward to collaborate and meet our shared goal of an equitable Santa Cruz. Some nonprofits now have time to get their bearings as we go to the next phase of this work. Despite the release of additional information and I thank you, Randy, for that, there's still a feeling we need more information to sort what happened. There's some trust that needs to be rebuilt and even some funded organizations have reached out with concerns. HCA proposes that you officially authorize HCA to partner with Randy Morris in his work leading up to December. Mr. Morris has been generous with his time and I can't speak for him, but my impression is our conversations have been mutually beneficial. Please also include in direction to staff that consider nonprofits that have not previously been funded, for instance, in considering ways nonprofits can get specific contracts outside of core. Those previously not funded, mostly smaller, should have the same opportunity in details. HCA accepts all nonprofits that educate or provide services in Santa Cruz. We make membership accessible regardless of the size of agency. Current membership represents a meaningful number of large nonprofits and a fairly balanced cross-section of provider categories. I hope you allow me to use that access that I have not only to members, but beyond to be an official part of the process. More can be done, but we can't get into the details now. As a working mom, even as I speak, I've got two young children at home, so the hit to childcare is particularly painful and a disruption to micro opportunities. Both nonprofits and government have work to do. Personally, I feel I failed my members in a way not being involved throughout this process more. It was largely due to us not having funding for more work and more help. It's hard for me to see this play out and not wonder if I could do more. I hope you'll seriously consider our offer. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Sammels. David, your microphone is now available. Okay. This is David Bianchi, Executive Director for Family Service Agency. Good morning, chair, members of the board. I appreciate the original funding for those that are not scheduled to receive funding, but that had been funded. I think I do believe based on my 35 years of doing this process, that this particular version had some serious flaws, but that everybody involved had the best intentions. It used to be for many years that county staff would take the time to visit and audit our programs in order to know and understand them. That doesn't create bias, that's just a foundation for any good relationship. I am obviously disappointed that five of our programs that were contained in one application will go unfunded. Those programs are the result of four smaller agencies merging with us, which was a long held community goal to provide services in the most efficient and cost effective way possible. I don't believe that we failed this test. I think the test failed us in the community, and I don't think our panel was able to process our proposal with multiple mental health programs and services that shared common objectives and outcomes. I also don't think that disenfranchising the over 400 clients, including family, children and seniors in counseling and women with cancer, survivors of child sexual abuse and care facility residents advances the stated cause of equity that this process represented. So I hope you will take the time to look for additional resources and support us in whatever way you can as we try to figure out the future on how to serve the needs of these clients that had been served for decades with county and city support. Thank you for your time. Thank you, David. Serge, your microphone is now available. Thank you. Good morning again, Board of Supervisors. My name is Serge Kagnu. I'm the executive director of the recovery cafe Santa Cruz. We were one of the new agencies to make our first application and appeal for core funding. We were not selected for funding, but we appreciate the integrity and sincerity of county staff and the creation and management of this process. For future iterations, we look forward to collaboration to use lessons learned to improve this process. For where to go from here, we would like to state our appreciation for Mr. Morris's fourth recommendation. Each of the nonprofits works hard to diversify their revenue streams. As Mr. Morris is referring, there are other funds which county departments have access to. Departments make contracts with nonprofits for needed services. Departments co-sign grant applications with nonprofits. Departments see grants which they do not apply but could suggest nonprofits apply. We simply ask that the Board of Supervisors include in its direction to staff to include those nonprofits not recommended for funding who have not previously been funded by core. Mr. Morris's recommendation is a momentous step towards officially collaborating between the county and local nonprofits to finding opportunities to meet the goals of our county departments as well as supporting our local nonprofits. Our ask is for a modification of recommendation number four to both include the Human Care Alliance and exploring other funding sources and to include all agencies who did not receive core 2223 funding regardless of whether or not they previously received core funding. We also ask that if the $500,000 is not used for three month bridge funding as mentioned in Supervisor Friend's comments that the Recovery Cafe Santa Cruz is considered for some funding so that we can provide the needed service to support the healing of both house and unhoused partner participants dealing with mental health, substance use, domestic violence, justice involvement, previously foster youth and the LGBT community. Thank you for your time. Allison, your microphone is now available. Thank you and good afternoon Supervisors and fellow community members. My name is Allison Guevara. I'm the director of Cradle to Careers Santa Cruz County. I'm a social impact consultant and mom of three children. And I just wanna thank you again for your recommendation to invest in Cradle to Careers expansion. We're really excited to be growing into several additional communities outside of Live Oak. I feel that we've heard from several folks today just talking about the needs specifically for example in underserved areas like in San Lorenzo Valley and leading up to our application. We did talk to Superintendent Chris Schiermeyer about the needs that he sees showing up at their schools every day. There are a hundred families that are still living in trailers or housing insecure as a result of the CCU fires. And that has implications for how the children show up at school and impact learning for everybody within that school community. And Cradle to Careers is going to be able to strengthen the relationships with those families, identify their needs and link them to vital services in a much stronger way. But of course we don't do that in a vacuum and I really appreciate the deep thinking and the deep care that I'm hearing from everybody today to really look holistically at our community's needs and services. And Cradle to Careers is really committed to helping be part of addressing the root causes of adversity and working together to deliver more sustainable, robust solutions so that every child and every family can thrive. So again, I want to really thank you for your investment, for your hard thinking and planning around this and really excited to see all that we are gonna accomplish together over the next three years. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Guevara. We have no additional speakers for this item, Chair. All right, thank you. Then I'll return into the board for deliberation and action. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Supervisor McPherson. I appreciate that comment from about the United Ways Cradle to Career. I think it's open to everyone. And I just want to assure everyone here that the Human Services Department and our Health Services Agency are searching for funds all the time. We're very open to it. We're a very aggressive Board of Supervisors to see and what is available, to direct them to see what's available and to go after it, which we have done successfully in this situation. So I just want to assure everyone we're not giving up this money that we're talking about is our general fund, money for the county, which we increased by a million dollars what, three years ago or so. So we would like to give more. And I hope that we can in the future, but I just want to assure everyone that we are searching our departments, the two major departments, Human Services and Health Services agencies are continually seeking funding for these types of human service programs. With that, I would, as I said, I appreciate and Supervisor Friend's suggestion, but I'm not sure how that would, we've got to put this, if we're going to have this bridge, we've got to let them know if they're going to have it or not. We're going to have to make a decision or would have to, I think, today on some other programs. But I, as I said, I support the options that have been presented. I think they're very well thought out and as fair as can be expected under the circumstances. And so I would be, I think that we should have these in two separate motion. First to realign the original funding to include the capacity to bring on additional organizations. And maybe I should just make that one motion and then go to the second one for the funding of the three month bridge for the others. So I would make the motion to follow with the recommendation of the Human Services Agency to realign the funding for the include the capacity for bringing on the additional organizations. So this is recommended action one, correct. Mr. Church, as a point of clarification, we have multiple recommendation number one. So under the board agenda packet, there's a set of four recommended actions. One of them is listed as number one. And then sub to that is what Supervisor McPherson is referring to, which are additional recommended actions, number one. And so I just think that we need to get a point of clarification of what the board is actually being asked to do right now because I think there's some just kind of clerical recommendations under the set of the original four that maybe can be folded into this. The ultimate discussion here is on the 500,000 funding as well as additional direction on the report back. That's where I think that there needs to be greater debate not on the thing that Supervisor McPherson is referring to. But I don't think that I actually don't think he's moving the correct recommendation. So I just want to make sure we're totally clear on where we are in this. Well, to clarify, I mean, and maybe I should, Mr. Morris will to reduce the allocations for those who were funded from the 3% reduction to 10% to allow for the new agencies that are listed here in the large tier and medium tier to get the funding that is requested under this recommendation one. That's my motion. And I think I'm making it correctly. And so it covers those that were in the original allocation reduced by 10% but adding these other five that have been recommended for funding. So I will share with you what I believe is under discussion and certainly welcome council to help if there's a technical issue I'm not tracking here. To Supervisor Friend's point, the published materials, the actual memo itself, recommended action number one is the modified awards that we've brought forward, the five additional within the confines of the RFP. And in looking at the recommended actions, number three actually bundles with it because if you approve the recommended awards within the RFP process, the additional five, recommend action three also then authorizes the auditor controller and HSD to immediately execute that package of contracts. So that could be one action. I would recommend keeping two and four separate because four, if you give additional direction to us, what you want to make sure we look into, there were some public comment asking us to look into things, I think you could leave two and four separate based on where your deliberations go and make sure in number four, we do whatever you direct us to do and the lessons learned and the report back in December. So that's the way I'm tracking one and three first, two and four second, council, I don't know if you have any other thoughts, but that's the way I read this. Supervisor Friend, yes, there was additional materials that had ones and twos in them, but those will get covered under the formal recommendation action number two. And I'm supportive of that Supervisor McPherson of his item one and three and a recommended actions, then I'll second that motion. Great, thank you. Okay, then we have a motion by Supervisor McPherson and a second by Supervisor Friend to adopt recommended actions one and three on the agenda memo. Any further discussion? Yes, first we're gonna have another one probably, right? Right, in regards to the $500,000 bridge funding. One, four. I'm happy to read it for you, Supervisor Caput. Correct, so the first motion here is to approve recommended actions one and three from our agenda packet. Recommended action one is to approve fiscal year 22, 23, collective of results and evidence-based investments requests for proposals, final recommended awards in attachment one, which include just proposed adjustments to those outlined to the board on June 7th, 2022 and delegate authority of the Human Services Department to execute agreements of all final recommended awards prior to September 30th, 2022. And then the other... No, no, I am reading it from the agenda here. All right, any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk roll call vote please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Koenig. Aye. Recommended actions one and three, pass unanimously. All right, thank you. Then we'll continue discussion on items two and four. Supervisor Friend. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Supervisor McPherson, for that. So I just wanted to make sure that we're all on the same page with what I was actually proposing. What I'm proposing is an option that's before us. It's not, I'm not trying to do something that hasn't been transparently presented under the attachments that one of the options is policy option two, which is to fund additional proposals by the RFP rankings. It's to take $500,000 and break it up over various ways. The way that I would recommend is what's being proposed right in front of us, which is over one year to take the $500,000 and to fund it at 50% funding for the next ranked eight medium and one small, which would be just to read it, would be the hospice of Santa Cruz County, New Life for the Gemma House, the parent center, the senior citizens organization in the San Lorenzo Valley, the mentors program, PVPSA, Elder Day from Community Bridges, and then the faith community shelter program with the association of faith communities. And then the small tier would be the senior council project scout program. So that was my, what I was recommending as opposed to just doing a three month transition funding, doing something more meaningful, which is under our options that are being presented to provide an entire half funding for these programs that were in order of their rankings. Now, there are other options that are presented under those policies, but that's, that was what I was recommending doing. I just wanted to make sure you had made a statement of that this, in essence, there wasn't a policy option that was before us. I want to be clear that this is something that's being presented as an option. I'm just choosing a different option than just a three month bridge funding, providing a more meaningful 12 months of those programs. Is that a motion? I'm okay with continuing to have a dialogue before I have motion just thrown down. Thank you, Mr. Chair, but I wanted to hear Supervisor McPherson's thoughts. I think it's really important the board be united on this issue. I mean, I'm not opposed to three month transition funding. I just think this is a more meaningful investment if the board majority feels that the three month transition funding is more, is a better way to do it. I'm not opposed to that. I'm just making a policy decision that I think the 50% for that number is better. Thank you, Supervisor Friend. Thank you. Supervisor McPherson? Yeah. I'd like to, I appreciate your recommendation. And I think I could get behind it. I'm just trying to get a sense of what it really means and how much to whom, I guess. I mean, obviously Supervisor Friend has those targeted. He has certainly not talked to me about those that he has brought up today and that's proper. Maybe he has with one other board member, but I just would like to get a sense of who is involved again. Supervisor Friend did mention it. I think there's some legitimate reasoning for following that. I mean, it just, it reestablishes or continues to establish those that, I think there's six agencies that he mentioned, but I know that the others for continuing for three months that some of the who were not getting the funding they wanted, they said, okay, we can at least go with the three month extension. So, well, it's one of those decisions we're just gonna have to make. Can you just reiterate what those agencies were and how much is involved? Survivors McPherson, this is Attachment 3B. I'm not picking and choosing organizations. Oh, I see, okay. This is outlined by the Human Services Department as the next highly ranked sets of agencies. So under the medium tier, if you fund it for 50% one year, that would be the first eight agencies. And for the small tier, that would be the first agency. That's just, that's how those agencies came about. So that's, that is Attachment 3B. Okay. Ms. Morris, could you just comment that you've been in this discussion with everybody and so I just wanna get your sense of where we'd be going with this. Yeah, and let me offer some full disclosure about the sequence of events. When we really late as we were finishing publishing the materials, we literally the last day or two came up with this $500,000 for the reasons I described. So the first action was to respond to what we would have been hearing from community providers about this transition that was really rushed and some form of transition funding would help. So that was what was published. I just wanna make sure for those who don't track this level of technical detail, we then submitted additional materials. So that's what came up as 3A. The reason we did that is literally we got the materials done at the very end and added that $500,000 reference. We immediately realized that because that $500,000 is not part of the RFP parameters, it's going to raise questions about, well, what else? So our staff recommendation remains three months of bridge funding. It was directly in response to community provider feedbacks about their concern about not having a bridge. But this is $500,000 that could be used differently. So then we submitted attachment 3A, which gave a few policy options. So they are very different policy options. And as is the whole core discussion, it's not in a month. We wish we had enough to all of them. So we just have different options in front of you. One is the bridge funding. That's our recommendation. Then to your question, Supervisor Marie Pearson, we broke down a few ways, sort of slicing and dicing and taking that $500,000 to do some different things. What Supervisor Friend is then referring to is what's attachment 3B. And I think due to the timing, it didn't actually get published in the materials, but is in the public record. So what all board members have is then the ranking list that you have in front of you of who was the next in rank. If that's the policy choice you choose, you would be saying, let's not give everybody three months of funding, let's instead go with those next ranked in that document 3B. I'm going to use that frame to turn it over to Kimberly and she can repeat. If Supervisor Friend, you can clarify the exact option in front of you, then Kimberly can read the names of those organizations from the 3B document for the public to hear. Yeah, it's a few, it would please you when you go to next rank order just down the line. Yes, I've got 3B. Go ahead, Ms. Peterson. Go ahead, I'm apologize. Oh, no, it's okay. So for the option that would be 50% funding for one year, that would cover access for hospice of Santa Cruz County access to end of life care for all. New life community services, Gemma House, the parent center, their parent center program, senior citizens organization of San Lorenzo, their senior citizens program, mentors driving for change, two generations service to strengthen relationships, Pajaro Valley Preventions to the assistance, Community Bridges Elder Day, and Association of Faith Communities of Santa Cruz and Project Scout, which is with the seniors council. So I just want to say, I appreciate that you took the first action because that sort of closes that budget. This is a different one time budget, one time only the money we have and the two choices in front of you are very different. Taking that 500,000 for a three month bridge or taking that 500,000 for one year of partial funding to the providers that can really list at two very different policy choices. Right. So I can be acceptable to that. The, but with the knowledge that it may not be there next year. Well, I think it, I have to say as a human services department director with every economist prediction of a recession coming, and our budget so dependent on federal and state funding. I think the community deserves transparency that this is for sure one time funding because the state economy is strong. And if the state economy turns away, it's supposed to that particular funding stream is very likely not going to be here. We would have to do what you said earlier, Supervisor McPherson look for other grants, other opportunities. I don't think general fund is likely to be there. I just don't want to mislead the community. I think that this would go beyond one year. Supervisor Coonerty, did you want to win? Sure. So let me just say, I think I agree with, I agree with Supervisor Friend that it's important that we move forward collectively on this. And it's, you know, as everyone said, there's too much need and too many organizations doing good work and too little fund. And we're going to continue to work to find that funding. As director Morris mentioned, there's really sort of two different policy objectives here, right? There's the policy objective of the recommended action, which basically gives people a little bit of a softer landing during this transition for those who got no funding. And then there's what Supervisor Friend is recommending, which is the other policy option, which basically says, look, we just, let's give half a year funding to these organizations that rank the highest. Some of them are new. Some of them are ones who lost funding and let's have a bigger impact rather than sort of spreading the peanut butter extra thin. I'd humbly propose us what I think is a middle ground here, but I want to see what folks think, which is that we fund those who got, those who were funded for the last five years, but who did not get funding, but we fund agencies who received grants over $25,000 last year, because I think sending folks a check for $1,200 or $1,500 in the large scheme of things won't make a substantive difference. And I'm sympathetic to what Supervisor Friend is driving at here, which is I'd rather make a more substantive investment and help people move forward. So the idea being that let's provide a cushion for folks who had funding in the past and who are not getting it, but that let's have that floor so that we have more dollars to spend among organizations that are basically seeing a bigger cut in their budget. I'm not gonna make a motion because I want to hear my colleagues and I'm open to whatever direction folks want ahead, but that was my suggestion to sort of hopefully meld a little bit of the two goals, policy goals that people are talking about in this case. So to be clear Supervisor Coonerty, you're suggesting funding organizations that previously received funding, sorry, over $25,000, what was the... It's the recommended action from the Human Services Department, but setting a floor of we only provide bridge funding to organizations that received more than $25,000 last year. And with the idea being that that would allow us to provide more bridge funding to those that are above that level. Yeah, and who are taking bigger hits, taking a $60,000 hit is a lot bigger than taking a $12,000 hit. Director Morris, do you want to comment at all on how that... I have a point of clarification for Supervisor Coonerty. This is very complicated. So bear with me as I make sure I'm very, very clear so that we can execute if this ends up being part of the direction. There's actually two adjustments to what I'm hearing Supervisor Coonerty, I want to confirm I heard it. So one is to sort of create a only above X amount of dollars because it's too small amount and that gives a little more to spread around but I want to confirm the second. In the item 3A, which is not the bridge funding, it includes everybody who applied for funding, not just those who are current recipients of funding. So I just want to confirm if you're also recommending to remove any applicant for funding who's not currently a core recipient because if so, that would end up actually pulling more money to spread. And my final comment is wherever you go today, I hope we can take some time at the end to get very clear policy direction. We will not have the numbers today. We will not have the exact names today but we can absolutely execute the policy direction. I just want to be realistic what there's some things are in front of you. We know what it is. If you choose to go this route, we can execute the direction but we won't be able to tell you what exactly that lands because we have to go do that math. Yeah. That's right. Is that what I hear you correctly? Just be clear. Yeah. My idea for this $500,000 is that we've had agencies who have been funded for five years and in many cases longer. They weren't recommended for funding under this new core process. I think as a matter of public policy, we want to give people cushion and time to adjust and change their or partner or do whatever, find other sources of funding, do whatever they need to do to adjust this reality. And so it would be funding programs that were funded last year, over $25,000 that applied for funding and that we would provide a bridge cushion based on their funding from last year. Whatever, however long we possibly could based on the amount of money that's left and the number of agencies. Okay, that's clear. Thank you. I'll just add, I don't know that shifts the calculus all that much. I can't imagine there's a whole lot of programs under $25,000 and given the size of the other ones, I mean, maybe we're talking about another half month, months for... I think if I'm following Supervisor Friend's proposal of going with the option listed in attachment 3A and then 3B list the agencies at 50% for one year. If you add Supervisor Coonerty's comment, I think you would pull a little extra money on two fronts. One, you would not be funding agencies below, I forget the number 20 or 25,000 Supervisor Coonerty, but number two, I'm hearing Supervisor Coonerty, then pulling funding to agencies that are new applicants. If I have that both, then we could do that math and it would mean instead of 50% funding, it would go up a certain amount of percentage point. So all the current providers that were next ranked would get one year of something more than 50%. That's what I'm tracking. And I think Kimberly wants to clarify and or give some details. I think they're talking about, I think as I'm understanding it's this conversation about actually our recommendation but modifying our recommendation. That's correct, Ms. Peterson. These are two very distinct things. Director Morris, Supervisor Coonerty is proposing accepting the staff recommendation, but just modifying it to not include organizations that received less than 25,000 in funding. So it's three month bridge funding or potentially longer for the remaining organizations. And then my proposal is on policy option two. I'm not opposed to Supervisor Coonerty's proposal. I mean, I think that I hear what he's trying to get out. My main argument here is that is whether the three months was substantive with a really provided meaningful input versus the more legitimate investment, which is why most of that money is going for a medium tier, eight of the nine organizations that are being funded, which would be over 50,000. So, but again, I think it's important that the board be really unified on this one. And so if that's the direction the board wants to go, I'd be supportive of that as well. Mr. Chair, I mean, I know you haven't weighed in on it yet, but I could go either way on this just as I heard Supervisor McPherson could. I don't think that there's a perfect answer to any of this. I just think that what I'm trying to come up with is the best answer in an ideal situation for these organizations. And with that clarification, then Supervisor Coonerty, I can answer your question more clearly. Thank you, Kimberly. I was conflating the two. Then we would do an analysis and it might go up to three and a half months or maybe four, depending on how that math lands. But if I heard that correct, we wouldn't be able to do the math now unless our staff texts Kimberly with an answer because there's people listening, but we would do the math and apply the direction. And then we could give a report back and where it landed later. Do you have an idea? I mean, we're gonna be off in July. Would you be able to do it by the first week in August? Tell us what we're doing. I think depending on your direction, what would be realistic would be a consent item somewhere, just kind of listing what happened, if that would be agreeable to make sure this circles back because I understand December is a far way out versus, because we spend a lot of time and energy getting reports together. But if that would be agreeable, I think just giving like a written materials back to you at some time with kind of where, depending on what direction you give us kind of where we're going. And then we could give a more detailed regular report that the December would be practical for us. Thank you. And to be clear, Survisor McPherson, neither of these actions delays funding to these organizations. I mean, it's either a bridge funding, we're providing the authority to the Human Services Department to do this now. I mean, they would be either providing the bridge funding for those over 25,000 or we would be funding these eight medium and one small now for 50% for a year. So the only thing that they'd be coming back with is just a list of the organizations. Thank you. I'll weigh in on this as well. I mean, I don't have a strong preference one way or another. I think that there are merits to both of these proposals. I mean, on the one hand, we're able to make a more substantive difference for the nine programs, eight medium, one small that are next in line to receive funding that honors the process and makes a larger impact for the organizations that are funded. And on the other, I mean, it's June 28th and we could be talking about these organizations using their funding within the next few days. That's pretty extreme. And I think as much as possible, we should be letting people down easy and recognizing that many, five years that they've had funding, all that good work that they've contributed and trying to make the transition as smooth as possible. And I believe that recommendation actually came in part from the nonprofit community as a way to facilitate the transition. I mean, I guess I'm dealing a little bit towards the latter given that it just helps with this transition process. And ultimately, I think we'll be a soft landing for what has been a difficult decision-making process for this entire funding package. Mr. Chair, then I'd be prepared then to make a motion which would be to move Supervisor Coonerty's recommendation which is bridge funding for organizations that received greater than 25,000 in funding for the 500,000 and delegating all necessary responsibility to the Human Services Department to effectuate that bridge funding. And then on option four, which was recommended option four in regards to the report back and just bringing up the item language real quick so I can add some additional direction. To direct the Human Services Department to return on it before December 13th with an update on the transition funding and the newly established contracts and performance tracking mechanisms and efforts to explore other funding mechanisms for agencies not being recommended for award and progress on the lessons learned. As part of the lessons learned, I would just like some review on whether we should continue funding school districts, whether we have an out of town funding situation, whether we should continue to fund out of town, whether we should continue to allow self attestation of the nonprofits which may have miscategorized some of them which made it harder for some of them to compete for funding to take a greater look at those that use leverage funding and how that's ranked. And then lastly, I'd like to create a flexibility option which is I think that a lot of this would have been obviated if say 75% of the core funding was allocated directly associated to the ranking process but another 25% were set aside where the board would have flexibility to review those that had applied but not receive funding or those that receive funding but it wasn't full funding to make a decision at that time with the 25% held back for greater flexibility. So it's just providing direction. This is just to come back in December with these additional things to be part of the analysis of lessons learned. I think that some of these were some of the flaws that we saw within the process. I'll second that. Can I just motion my supervisor, friend second my supervisor, Coonerty, supervisor McPherson. I just want to make it just to clarify this. We're just talking about the $500,000 that's clear because we had the other motion, right? There is, I'm hearing only the 500,000 right which is two and then supervisor friend just added some specificity to item four which is to make sure when we do the lessons learned we include everything he listed which we can do in the lessons learned process. Good, that's great. And to be clear, the item two is modified as recommended by supervisor Coonerty to only be for organizations that receive $25,000 or more in 21, 22. Here's the mark. Any further discussion? I don't know. Supervisor Caput. Randy and Kimberly, the motion is what? By supervisor friend seconded by Coonerty. Correct, yes. Okay. Are we unraveling anything? No, your acceptance of what I admit was my recommendation to do items one and three together. That is where unraveling could have happened if you went against the recommended rankings in the RFP within the RFP budget. So that's been passed now unanimously. So what we're talking about now is just a policy decision of your board. A, how to spend the 500,000. We have clear direction and the motion makes sense. B, to make sure when we do the lessons learned process and report fact that we include everything supervisor friend listed which we will interview board members and we'll talk to community partners. There's a public comment about working with CBOs. Of course we'll do that, get their feedback on parameters. So all of that makes sense and we can execute on the motion that's on the table. And we have the money. Yes. CBO fellows. Okay, thank you. All right, well, if there's no further discussion then clerk roll call vote please. Supervisor Friend. All right. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Koenig. Aye. Recommended actions two and four passed unanimously as amended. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, we do have a number of other items on our regular agenda but we have been going for about three and a half hours but recommend is that we take a lunch break now until about one o'clock, come back, try to finish the remaining items on our regular agenda and then move right into budget hearings at 1.30. That's amenable to everyone. Then the board will recess now. Thank you. All right, we will resume the regular meeting of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors and we'll begin with a roll call please. Supervisor Friend. Here. Coonerty. Here. Caput. McPherson. Here. And Koenig. Here. Thank you, Chair. You have a quorum. Thank you and for the record it is 1.01 PM. We will proceed with item 10, a public hearing to consider the approval of revenue notes by the Santa Cruz County Capital Financing Authority in order to provide interim financing for the Pajaro Valley Health Care District purchase of certain assets of the Watsonville Community Hospital. Adopt resolution providing for the issuance and sale of a 2223 grant application note in the amount not exceeding $30 million approving a fiscal agent agreement, local obligation note purchase agreement and placement agent agreement and authorizing certain other matters related to articulated actions outlined in the memorandum of the Auditor, Controller, Treasurer, Tax Collector. For a report on this item we have our Auditor, Controller, Treasurer, Tax Collector, Ms. Eustricial. Good afternoon, Chair and members of the Board. The item before you today outlines the proposed funding and attached documents required for the issuance of a revenue note in order to provide interim financing for the Pajaro Valley Health Care District. Their purchase of certain assets of the Watsonville Hospital Community Hospital. Watsonville Community Hospital. Approval of the interim financing in the form of revenue notes requires adoption of resolutions by the Board of Supervisors and by the Authority Board after the Board of Supervisors conducts a public hearing. As background, the county and other community stakeholders have been instrumental in the formation of the Pajaro Valley Health Care District. The county has been working diligently with members of the state legislature to obtain grant funding from the state for a portion of the purchase of certain assets of the Watsonville Community Hospital. The documents here reflect the words up to 30 million, although it appears as of now, we'll be looking at getting 25 million from the state. After acquisition of the assets, the hospital will be operated by the Pajaro Valley Health Care District Hospital Corporation. I am here today along with Suzanne Harold, the municipal advisor who will explain the funding structure in a moment, giving you more details. These items are on your agenda today as time is of the essence for funding to purchase at the hospital. The deadline for purchase has been set by the bankruptcy court as August 31st, 2022. And although we are very appreciative of the state funding, it is not anticipated to be received in time to meet the court mandated deadline of August 31st. The county has proposed to provide interim financing, interim funding, to Pajaro Valley Hospital by August 31st, 2122 to be reimbursed when the grant is actually received from the state. I will now ask Suzanne Harold to provide more detail on this financing item and she'll do so via Zoom. Good afternoon, members of the board. I know you have a lot on your agenda today, so we'll quickly move through the presentation. As Mr. School mentioned, the Pajaro Valley Health Care District has raised about $25 million to purchase the hospital out of the bankruptcy. And the state in their recent budget bill has provided $25 million in grant funding to assist for the hospital purchase. And the state budget includes actually two line items for this grant expected to be signed by the governor by June 30th. Next slide. As Mr. School mentioned, the bankruptcy court has set August 31 as the deadline and unfortunately the grant funding will probably not be received until October by the time they process all the paperwork at the state level. And so this county grant anticipation that will provide the interim funding between the acquisition date sometime in August and the receipt of the grant sometime in October. Next slide. The note structure is for the financing, the county's financing authority to issue a revenue note which will be sold to an investor. The financing authority will take the funding that it receives and purchase the county's grant anticipation note and the county grant anticipation note proceeds will be held until the hospital escrow closing. As in other financings the county has participated in, the county's financing authority was formed to assist in county financing such as this. And then once the grant funding is received, the county note and the financing authority note will be redeemed or prepaid at the earliest possible date. So the recommendation by the board of supervisors is to conduct the public hearing and receive testimony, adopt the resolution approving the issuance of the county note and the form of documents and authorize the payment of costs and interest on the note. And for the financing authority board of directors to adopt the resolution approving the issuance of the revenue note and the form of the various documents. That concludes my presentation and I'm just happy to answer any questions. Thank you to both of you. Are there any questions for members of the board? Mr. Chair, I don't have any questions. I just have a comment. First, a great appreciation to our state legislative delegation for the securing of the funding. Also to Ms. Harrell and also our wonderful auditor, controller, treasurer, tax doctor for all of your work on this process. This is an essential thing. We have to do this in order to ensure that the hospital is stood up. And we have repeatedly said as a board that this is an equity issue that we are gonna lead on. And realistically, this is a very, very, very minimal risk deal for the county considering the fact that we've got the state funding coming to back end. It is just really a timing issue. So I just want to appreciate how much what's being presented here goes by quickly but there was a massive amount of work done by the county team in order to make this possible. So just a appreciation to everybody involved. Thank you, Supervisor Friend. Supervisor Caput. Thank you very much. Thank you. And I don't like to tempt fate but we're getting close. We're not over the complete threshold yet, right? I mean, I actually deferred to... Yes, we're getting closer. And this is a big step in getting us to the final goal. We were 16 million dollars short where we needed to be. This is $5 million more than we anticipated. This still leaves us with $11 million to get closer. That's after, you know, we needed 61 million. So now we're down to 11 million short but we, and we are confident we're going to make that up in the next month. We have a lot of good leads but we're still have a little bit of work ahead of us. Okay, yeah. I know it's been a big project and close is only good in the horseshoes, right? So it's all or nothing. If worst case scenario, if we fall short, let's say we fall short by 3 million, 4 million. With the August 31st, I don't, they wouldn't say no, right? I will defer those questions to council and the CAO. I don't know what to say. I don't know how to phrase the question any better. We intend to close the sale and the purchase of the hospital by the deadline of August 31st and we're confident we'll be able to do that. They're okay waiting until October for the state money, right? No, we're going to be, that's what we're doing today. We're going to be taking out this grant anticipation note. So we're going to get the money, borrow it, give it to the hospital for the purchase and then we will get reimbursed by the state of California whenever the grant comes in. Okay, okay. Yeah. You could think of this as a bridge funding. We're bridging that gap. Yeah. Time gap. We'll pay it and get it back. Correct. Okay, great. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. Mr. Chair, can you supervise him in person? Yeah, I just want to just really thank our legislative delegation and also our CAO, Carlos Palacios and our former health services agency, director Mimi Hall, who've been very active in making this happen and I shouldn't mention some others, I know, but those are two that I can think of right away. I think this is, we just had a full morning of health and human service discussion this morning. This is the most important thing for this county to succeed in of any of those health and human services agencies that we've talked about the long-term impact of this and providing hospital services to the South County, especially where we have an equity concern as well. This is the biggest health and human services agency criteria or accomplishment, excuse me, that we can make. And I want to thank each and every one of you who've participated in this and made it happen. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Any further questions or comments? I think none. I'll officially. Maybe one, just one more. Sorry, go ahead. With the Power River flood acquisition of the money we got, I thought that was the biggest project in years for South County. Now when we have the hospital before us, it's as big a project and the importance to everybody in the county is equal to that. I mean, we got to keep this hospital open. Otherwise, Dominican would be overrun, I think. And then what about the center hospital, any indication we might get a million or something from them? So again, I'm going to focus on this bridge funding and I'll let Mr. Carlos, Mr. Palacios, answer that. We have a request to a number of our healthcare partners and we're hopeful that we're going to get more funding from them as well as other state and federal donors as well. So we have a lot of asks out and we're hopeful that we're going to get more help. Good, okay. I'll leave it at that, okay. But we'll solve right now in September 1st. That's the plan. Hopefully. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. There's no other comments or questions from board members. I will officially open the public hearing to any member of the public who's to address us on this item. Seeing none here in the chambers, is there anyone on Zoom? We have no speakers on Zoom, Chair. All right, then I will close the public hearing and return to the board for action. I'll move the recommended actions. Well, second. Motion by Supervisor Friend, seconded by Supervisor Caput to adopt the recommended actions. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk roll call vote, please. To clarify, this is for item 10, the public hearing for the revenue notes by the Santa Cruz County Capital Financing Authority. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. I just want to say thank you again, Edith and Carlos and everybody. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Koenig. Aye. Item 10 passes unanimously. Thank you. That resolution being adopted will now proceed to item 11, which is as the board directors of the Santa Cruz County Capital Financing Authority to also adopt a resolution authorizing the issuance sale and delivery of a 22-23 revenue note in an amount not exceeding $30 million, proving a fiscal agent agreement, a local obligation note purchase agreement and placement agent agreement, and authorizing certain other matters relating there too. And take the lead actions outlined in the memorandum by the executive director. Thank you. The presentation for this item is very similar to the first one. So I will just let the recommended actions stand as they are. All right. Any comments or questions from members of the board? Seeing none. Is there anyone in the public that wishes to address us on this item? No one here in chambers. Is there anyone on Zoom? We have no speakers on Zoom, Chair. All right. I'll return to the board for action. I'll move the recommended actions. I'll second. Motion by Supervisor Friend. Second by Supervisor Caput to adopt the recommended actions. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk roll call to the police. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. This item passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Triscoll. Ms. Harold, thank you very much. We'll move on to item 12 to consider adoption of resolution pursuant to government code 7522.56, exempting the hire of an extra help retired annuitant from the 180-day waiting period as interim staffing support for the Pajaro Valley Healthcare District has outlined in the memorandum of the county administrative officer for reporting on this item. Assistant CIO Lisa Benson. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you. We will make this very quick. This is an item required under CalPERS rules. It has to be on a regular agenda. We're asking you to adopt a resolution that would allow us to hire Beatriz Flores as a senior departmental administrative analyst to join our interim staffing team that is supporting the district and the hospital corporation board in our pursuit of buying the hospital out of bankruptcy and returning it to a public ownership as you just learned by the end of August. It's a very tight deadline. We have a lot of things going on and we feel incredibly fortunate to have Ms. Flores available and willing to come and provide her expertise in supporting these boards and helping us along the way. So again, typically this is not the kind of thing we would have on a regular agenda but that is something that is required by CalPERS. I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Ms. Benson. Any questions or comments from board members? Seeing none, any member of the public that wishes to address us on this item? We have no one here in chambers. Is there anyone on Zoom? We have no speakers on Zoom, Chair. All right, and I'll return to the board for actions. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. Motion by Supervisor Friend. Second by Supervisor Caput. Any further discussion? I think it was Coonerty. Oh, sorry. Second by Supervisor Coonerty. Seeing no further discussion or roll call vote, please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Koenig. Aye. This item passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Benson. We'll proceed with item 13. Do you consider approval of the measured D5 year plan for 2022-23 fiscal year and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the Deputy CIO Director of Community Development and Infrastructure? And for a part on this item, we have our Assistant Director of the CDID, Mr. Steve Wiesner. CDI Department. Yeah, right. Steve Wiesner. Thank you very much. I guess I'm on here, yeah? You are on. Okay, all right, great. Appreciate being here this afternoon. We'll try to be very brief. Hello, Chair Koenig and board members and CAO, members of the public. My name is Steve Wiesner. As you said, I'm the Assistant Director of Community Development Infrastructure, the Public Works Division. And here with me today is Casey Carlson. He's our Senior Civil Engineers in charge of the County's Pavement Management Program. And Matt Machado, our Director is in the board chambers as well. Mr. Carlson and I are here today to present your board with a brief Measure D five-year plan update. In our presentation, we'll cover a brief history of Measure D, our past year's projects, this year's project, and then the Measure D five-year plan update that you have before you today. All right, so with that, there's just a few bullet items here. Just to remind everybody, that Measure D was a countywide half-scent sales tax measure that was passed by our voters in November 2016. It provides some critical funding. It's a 30-year funding source for transportation projects countywide. The county road revenue this year is estimated to be approximately 3.6 million. This is in the next upcoming fiscal year. And per the annual requirements of the ordinance that the Regional Transportation Commission has, we're required to come back every year to update our five-year plan in a public hearing. So that's why we're here today. After Measure D was passed in 2016, we actually went out and polled many of the communities in the unincorporated areas of our county. And the top priorities we found that our folks wanted was maintenance and repair of county roadways, specifically in our neighborhoods and with a focus on safety. Next slide, please. Thank you, so just very quickly. So this is the fifth year of implementation for Measure D. It's been a great program for us every year since 2018 when we started building a bank for these projects we've been able to put out a payment management project. So I'm just gonna briefly go over the first four years. Next slide, please. Great, so in district one, back in 2018, we did a little bit of work up in the summit area on Miller Hill and Miller Cut-Off. 2019, we're able to hit some neighborhoods down in the Live Oak area. 2020, we hit some of the roads down in the Thurber area. And in 21, we focused in some of the Soquel neighborhood streets. In district two, we started out in the La Selva area of that district. The next year on 2019, we moved into the Rio del Mar area. And in 2020, we were able to hit some roads in the C-Clip neighborhood. And then this last year, we did a couple of roads down in Coralitos. In district three, which has actually not as many of the roads as some of the other districts in our county, to do a meaningful project, we actually have to bank for a couple of years. And so we banked to 18 and 19 and we're able to complete all the entire length of Martin Road. And the last couple of years, we've been banking towards a much larger project out on Swan Road. In district four, the first year of money, and you would call Supervisor Caput, we were able to replace the Casserly Bridge, which was kind of an emergency at that time. And then in 2019 and 2020, we'd saved up enough money to do the entirety of Lakeview Drive over those two fiscal years. We were presently banking money towards Pulse and Road, which we plan to deliver next year. And in district five, it's been great. We've been able to hit like the downtown core areas of the San Lorenzo Valley area. We started off in 2018 in Boulder Creek, moved to Ben Lohman in 2019. And in 2020, we were able to hit downtown Felton. And now we're back up in Boulder Creek and starting to work our way out towards the downtown core area. Okay, so with that, I'm just gonna have Casey briefly go over the project that we have going on this year. Oh, if you click the button, there you go. Can we know? Yeah, all right. Thank you. So for this year's project in district one, we've got work on Thurber and Fairway, as well as Portola and the seventh. On Portola, we're gonna be doing some green bike lane striping in addition to the resurfacing. Next slide, please. Gotcha. District two, Real Domar. We're gonna do Cliff and Martin, as well as Venetia and Marina. Some other streets in the flats there, and as well as some work, we're doing a conjunction with Soco Creek Water District in the Cabrillo College area for some water main work that had been done there. Next slide, please. District three, as Steve said, we are still reserving funds for Swanton Road. We're hoping to have a project out there on about 2025. Slide, please. And district four, we've been reserving funds for Paulson Road. We hope to bring that next summer in 2023. And district five, we're working in Ben Lohman now and proceeding well. Everything's going well in the project so far. And back to Steve. Yeah, I would agree. So what you have before you today is the 2022 Measure D five-year plan update with your approval will be forwarding that onto the RTC for their records. The one thing to note in this year's plan is that we've recommended a set-aside, a $400,000 set-aside just right off the top. And that's gonna provide some critical match funds for a grant that we want to rebuild the multi-use path along Green Valley Drive down in the southern portion of our county. Other than that, the plan looks pretty much the same as it has in the last couple of years. And we've been working our way through that initial five-year list and we're doing very well. So with that, really appreciate your support on this program. The recommended actions for today are to adopt the attached measure D five-year plan update for this next fiscal year, for the 2023 fiscal year and authorize public works to submit a copy of the approved board package to the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission. You're welcome. All right, I think that was under five minutes. And with that, we're happy to take any questions that you might have. Thank you, Assistant Director Wiesner and Mr. Carlson. Other questions or comments from members of the board? Supervisor McPherson. Yeah, I'd like to take every opportunity I can to look forward to presenting that this is presented to thank the voters for passing measure D in 2016. When we became a self-help county, meaning that the state recognized us as a community, a county that said, okay, we want to put something in for our roads. The state said, okay, we'll help you with that and match it. So it was a twofer in that respect. And we positioned ourselves to leverage measure D dollars to qualify for millions of dollars from the state and federal transportation grants as well. So it was just a great success story. And one that the voters, two thirds of the voters Countywide saw and the fifth district, which is mine, I think there are 13 projects this year for the measure D funded projects. And when you mentioned the 3.6 million, that was for just the Countywide roads as cities. When it gets to that, it's probably five or six million total, isn't it? When they have their road improvements, money too. That's right. Well, so there's a bunch of different buckets for the measure D sales tax measure and the local neighborhood projects are about 30% of the overall annual take of which the County gets about half of that. Yeah, so if we're getting 3.6, then yeah, it's seven, seven and a half to eight million is what, yeah. Well, congratulations again and thank you, Mr. Wiesner. And the whole public works department, you've been very responsive to people. And if they want to know what's in it for me, where would they go to see it on the website every day? Yeah, so we do, we do have a link to the measure D five year update on the public works website. And I think the RTC also houses that link as well. Thank you again. Yeah. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Any other comments or questions from board members? You're welcome. Supervisor Caput. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I want to thank you guys for all the work you've been doing. I'll miss you next year and I won't be bothering you. So everything looks good. Paulson Road, is that towards the flooded area? Yeah, it is. From Green Valley down to where Whiting starts. Yeah. Are we going to be able to do anything to keep it from flooding as bad as it was? You know, this project doesn't entail any type of drainage work now. You'd have to build the bridge, right? There's some pretty big drainage improvements will be required. Yeah. It'll make it better, at least. And who came up with a great idea? The Casserly Bridge that we replaced over by Smith Road. Yeah, that was actually, it was an internal design, our road design section that's headed up by Tim Bailey. They came up with that idea. You want to take credit for that? I'm not going to take credit. I'm passing that credit along. Yeah, we have some good engineers who work for Public Works and they came up with that idea and we were able to get it done in short order. I was a genius. It was going to cost four times as much as we spent and we only had so much money. And if we did it, the paperwork away where everything had to be done a certain way, it would have delayed the project probably two years and it cost four times what we spent. And out of your office, you came up with a plan that satisfied Fish and Game, satisfied everything and we were able to get it done in like three months. I thought it was remarkable. Thank you. I'll pass that praise. Yeah. So give my thanks to who came up with the design. His name is Tim Bailey and he's our senior design engineer in the road section. You did a great job. Yeah. And we're spending some of that money on Paulson Road, but maybe in about two years, we might be able to, how about next year, we'll be able to at least patch potholes on Murphy Road? Well, for sure. Our pothole patching program continues annually, but after we build Paulson, we'll start building a bank again for Murphy's Crossing. We know that's the next priority in your district. We think it's about two to three years to save up enough money to do that. Yeah. And it'll be a little embarrassing for a year because modern array is probably gonna start next year. We understand their project is going. Yeah. And then when it gets to the Santa Cruz side, but within a couple of years, we'll catch up. Okay. It was either Paulson or Murphy with some of that money, right? That's right. Okay. And then let's go, Murphy and Paulson. You know, that's pretty much it. I, oh, a whole hand and highway 152, we're gonna start pretty soon. We are actually, that's not funded through Measure D, but that project is actually on track to hopefully be put out this fall. Okay. They gotta start it before the rain season though, right? We'll get into construction and then if rain delays us, then we'll be delayed. But yeah, our plan is to just go forward with it. So we're thinking around September or October? Yes, that's right. Okay. Hey, thanks again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. Well, it's hard not to get excited about road projects. It's, you ask the voters and it's just consistently at the top of things they'd like to see more of. So we're grateful that we do have Measure D. I mean, of course there's a lot of unmet need throughout our road system, but Measure D does allow us to make some essential repairs. I'm really excited about the repairs we've been making in the first district. You know, with that limited amount of money, we are focusing on some major collectors and arterials where I know a lot of people are gonna be able to appreciate those improvements. And I'm also grateful for the fact that we're looking at ways to improve bike and pedestrian infrastructure at the same time as we undertake those projects to really get as much bang for our buck as possible. Supervisor Friend. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. Obviously, share the appreciation. I have just a brief question and then a comment. The comment is just as we, if the board ends up moving forward on the combined departments analysts that handle communications, I think to the degree that we can improve some of the Measure D and storm related damage, the website and sort of the outreach would be preferred. It is sometimes kind of tough, I think for constituents to really know what's coming up next, what the timelines are of things. I'm intimately familiar with the page that you have for SB1 and Measure D, but that still requires some deconstruction. So I think that just to the degree that that information is easily accessible to the community to make it better. I did have a follow up. My question just deals with once mobilized some of the adjacency advantages for roads, is it possible as we go into at least next fiscal and we go to bed? When I look at some of these roads, I sometimes see that there are some, this is what happened in Coralitas, as you may recollect last year, we were doing a number of roads. There was kind of a stranded small road that ended up being about 25 or 30,000 additional dollars in order to complete. Your team was very generous of being able to do it. I mean, it came out of my, the second districts allocation for this coming year for Measure D funds, but all the same, there was an adjacency component. Is there a way to just moving forward on these roads to structure an RFP as such, to kind of see whether there's, whether we can grab an extra road or two in each of these districts or make a determination as a board, even regarding general fund allocation for additional backfill on Measure D funding. I feel as though sometimes when we have this mobilized, it's actually a pretty de minimis cost for this additional road that may be adjacent, but we're not really given an option because we don't see that as a price point, sort of as a menu price point. Well, that's a good point and also a great question. We do look at adjacency to the projects that we have out there. If our bids, we've only been using Measure D funds for this program. So if our bids come in a little lower than what we had anticipated, then there might be an opportunity for us to add a road, let's say mid-project through a change order or something like that. It's hard for us to know exactly how the bids are gonna come in. So we can't 100% anticipate that and we don't necessarily wanna telegraph that. That said, we're definitely always looking for opportunities to get more done when we're in an area. And so, yeah, to your point, we would always be looking for that. What are the degree, I appreciate, I hear what you're saying about how to structure the RFP and I recognize telegraphing. Do the degree though that information, that could be found out even ex post facto once mobilized would be useful for the board then make a determination. This all falls during budget time anyway, Director Wiesner, so to me, I feel like meaning that when we make these, the projects are done during the summer or the budget the board is making these determinations around the same time, the Measure D five year plan comes at the same time. So that would be a time for a last day discussion potentially of maybe it's not an additional significant amount of money and you get to add a road per district. I don't actually know what it would be, but I just want, I'm talking about for future boards, especially to be able to have that kind of flexibility for adjacency might make sense as built into your communications program as part of the budget time. We're certainly willing to have that conversation. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Friend. All right, seeing no other comments or questions from board members, I'll open it to the public. Any member of the public wishes to address us on the five year Measure D plan. Seeing none here in the chambers, is there anyone on Zoom? We have no speakers on Zoom, Chair. All right, then I'll return to the board for action. Good action. I'll move. So we have a motion by Supervisor McPherson. Is that a second by Supervisor Cabot? All right, any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk will call vote please. Supervisor Friend. All right. Coonerty. All right. Caput. All right. McPherson and Koenig. All right. This item passes unanimously. Thank you both. Thank you. All right, we'll now proceed. We are for those of us joining in the public audience today. We are still on the regular agenda and we just have a couple more items and anticipate beginning the, or continuing the budget hearings shortly. So we're on item 14 from this morning's regular agenda. And as the board of directors of the Freedom County Sanitation District, we'll hop at public hearing to consider 22, 23, Freedom County Sanitation District sewer service charge report and adopt resolution confirming the 22, 23 sewer service charge report as outlined in the memorandum of the district engineer. For report on this item, we have Ashley Trevillo. Hi, good afternoon. On May 10th, 2022, the board approved in concept the fiscal year 2022, 23 sewer service charges for the Freedom County Sanitation District and set today as the date of the public hearing for the sewer service charge report. The sewer service charges are increasing by an overall amount of 7.4%. The sewer service charge report containing the assessor's parcel number and the amount of the service charges was electronically filed with the clerk of the board for public review. We therefore recommend that the board make the recommended actions read by director Koenig. Sorry. All right. Thank you. And I'm available for questions. Thank you, engineer Trevillo. Are there any questions or comments from board members? Seeing none, I will officially open the public hearing. Any member of the public wish to address us on this item? Seeing none here in chambers. Is there anyone on Zoom? We have no speakers on Zoom for this item, chair. All right. Then I'll close the public hearing and return to the board for action. I'll move the recommended actions. Motion by Supervisor Friend, second by Supervisor Coonerty. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk roll call vote please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. McPherson and Koenig. Aye. This item passes unanimously. Thank you. We'll now proceed to item 15, which is as the board of directors of the Davenport County Sanitation District public hearing to consider 2223 Davenport County Sanitation District water and sewer service charge reports and adopt resolution confirming the 2223 water and service charge reports as outlined in the memorandum of the district engineer. Thank you. Ashley Trevillo, sanitation engineer. Again, on May 10th, 2022, the board approved and concept the fiscal year 2022-23 sewer service charges for the Davenport County Sanitation District and said today is the day of the public hearing on the sewer service charge reports. The water service charges are increasing by an overall amount of 4.9%. The sewer service charges are decreasing by an overall amount of 3.5%. The water and sewer service charge reports containing the assessor's parcel numbers and the amount of the service charges were electronically filed with the clerk of the board for public review. Therefore, we recommend that the board make the recommended actions from Chair Koenig. Thank you, engineer Trevillo. Any questions or comments from members of the board? Seeing none, I'll officially open the public hearing. Is there any member of the public wish to address us on this item? Seeing none, is there anyone on Zoom? We have no speakers for this item on Zoom, Chair. All right, then I'll return it to the board for action. I'll officially close the public hearing and return to the board for action. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. Motion by Supervisor Friend, second by Supervisor Coonerty. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk roll call vote, please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. This item passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, engineer Trevillo. All right, I am now going to adjourn the regular meeting of the Board of Supervisors so that we can resume the budget hearings. This regular meeting is adjourned.