 Good morning. I'll now call to order the regular meeting in the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. It's Tuesday, August 9th, 9 a.m. 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. Now, I understand we're having some technical difficulties this morning with our agenda management software. Clerk, could you please? I'll let the audience know how to participate and make comments. Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Chair. Due to ongoing technical difficulties that we're experiencing with our agenda management system, users will be unable to view today's meeting through the IQM2 platform link as it's currently not functioning. Anyone wishing to watch today's meeting can do so by viewing the live stream on the County of Santa Cruz's Facebook page or online via the community television broadcast at communitytv.org forward slash watch forward slash CTV dash government dash education dash two six seven two forward slash. Additionally, the public can join and participate in today's meeting via zoom. The zoom call in number is one six six nine nine zero zero six eight three three and the webinar ID is eight five one six three two one zero two zero zero again that number is one six six nine nine zero zero six eight three three and webinar ID eight five one six three two one zero two zero zero. Additionally, the zoom link to join online by web is HTTPS colon forward slash forward slash us zero six web dot zoom dot us forward slash j forward slash eight five one six three two one zero two zero zero our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause and we appreciate your patience. Thank you. Thank you, clerk. We'll have a moment of silence and a pledge of allegiance. Is there anyone on the board that wants to dedicate this moment of silence to anyone? Yes, Mr. Chair, I wanted to ask people to keep in mind the Mackey family. Russ Mackey, who was a longtime Bonnie Dooner, very active in fire issues and just generally an advocate for his community passed his what passed away and we want to keep him and his family in our hearts. Thank you. We'll keep Mr. Mackey in our hearts. I'm going to silence. I believe this through the flag of the United States of America, the Republic for which it stands, foundation under God, with liberty and justice for all. Item three, CIO plosios, are there any additions or deletions to the regular agenda today? Yes, we do have a few corrections on the consent agenda. Item 30, Attachment A page 355 was replaced to add section 1.1.1 terms of the contract and then on item 34 on the consent agenda, the formal title should read, approve the consultant contract and the amount of $283,747 to develop the Santa Cruz regional vehicles, vehicle miles traveled, mitigation program, adopt a resolution accepting unanticipated revenue and the amount of $448,000 and take related actions as recommended by the deputy CIO director of community development and infrastructure. That concludes the corrections to the agenda. Thank you. Move to item four, does any board member wish to remove items from the consent agenda to the regular agenda? Seeing none, we'll proceed with public comment. Anyone wish to make your comment, please approach the podium. We'll accept your comments for two minutes per speaker and you may address your comments to any item on the today's consent to regular agenda or yet to be heard on the agenda or addressed by this board. Board will not respond immediately to any comments we hear today but may follow up with you via email or phone call. So please begin. Good morning, supervisors. My name is Nikki Yates. I'm the president of the mid managers association. As you notice, all the mid managers behind me are standing in support. The message that our members want to convey to you is that they feel unhappy, unappreciated and undervalued. A recent survey conducted by MMA found that 55% of our respondents are actively looking for work elsewhere solely due to feeling unappreciated and undervalued. I don't need to spell out for the board how disastrous it would be to lose approximately 60 mid managers. The members are very unhappy with the following items. A 3% per year for cost of living is not acceptable in today's economy and it only continues to negatively impact the salary compensation for mid managers. Members who have reached their vacation cap due to furloughs and impacted schedules are losing those hours and not being able to have them paid out. The county negotiation team continually denying our requests to bring healthcare contribution in line with terms already agreed to with SCIU. The hours of uncompensated overtime worked by our members in calendar year 2021 equal over 24,000 hours. This is the equivalent of 11.6 years extra work. That's a staggering number. The value of the county proposal for retro pay is about 12 cents on the dollar. Being told by the county that are uncompensated overtime is a lifestyle choice. The fact that the county had the mechanism to reimburse managers and get reimbursed themselves with FEMA funds but chose not to do this is simply demoralizing. No offer of hero pay or bonuses even though SCIU members got that. Mid managers made less than their staff during the public health emergencies. In conclusion, in the past years have taken a huge toll on morale. We asked that the latest proposal by MMA be seriously considered by the county and showed mid managers the respect and compensation they deserve in recognition for their contributions to our community. I urge you to read all the letters that have been sent in by our members in the past few days. Thank you. Thank you. I don't think I've ever gotten a pause before I spoke. I couldn't help myself. Good morning. I hope you guys all enjoyed your vacation. Glad to be here. I must have missed something. I'm always missing things. So I don't know what kind of media people are really looking at in Santa Cruz County, California or the United States of the world. But I'm very happy that you guys over four days approved your $1.3 million budget. I just don't know what's secure anymore. Once again, I got here late. So there's a lot of things that seem to be going on around the world that are almost never brought up in this room. And I hope that it's great to see three of the five of you and everybody else in the room. I'm glad I didn't have to wear a mask or put on something because I just forgot it. So, hey, I've been on vacation too, but I'm getting my vacations right now are paid vacation. So I like that. I don't know really where to begin or where to end. I was really, oh, there's at least one other community member that's here constantly. So nice to see all you guys. I hope to see the two missing members. Ryan Coonerty hasn't been here once since this was opened up for public comments and Zach Friend has at least been here once. So you guys know what I say. It's all recorded. Nice to see you guys. Thank you, Mr. Whitman. Good morning. Welcome back. Hope you had a nice break. My name is Becky Steinbrunner. I live in rural Abtas. I'm disappointed, Chair Koenig, that you would not pull item number 14 for public comment off of it for better public comment off the agenda consent agenda. This has to do with your board's responses to the excellent grand jury reports that have come out. I really think that it would behoove your board to set it as an agenda item for public discussion and staff reports. It's buried as item 14 in the consent agenda. There are two excellent reports in there, I think, especially the use of Measure S library funds to build a community center. The responses that the board, I don't think you wrote them, that were given on your behalf are vague and unacceptable. The responses for the misuse and deception of Measure G, the half-cent countywide sales tax that voters were led to believe would fund fire and have not funded fire at all was deceptive. And the grand jury spelled this out. The responses are vague and unacceptable and will not lead to an increase in public trust. What I ask you to do is to come back to this issue and to discuss it publicly and to assure the voters, what are you going to do to improve this? What are you going to do? And that's the subject of the third excellent grand jury report. I'd like to move on now to item 15, the ongoing disaster of the fuel tank with county fire. And now CSA 48 voters are going to have to pay for that and work still hasn't been being done. Ms. Stein-Berner. May I just say one please complete your comments. All right. Thank you very much. I have concerns about item number 49 and 34. Countywide mitigations for developers, traffic impact fees will not work, that it needs to be done in the area where the project is, that's 34. And 49, the emergency um 41, the emergency routes are not going to be repaired this year. That worries me a lot. Thank you very much. Oh, and and it was a real hard time for the public because the website's meeting calendar did not work at all yesterday. It didn't work until almost eight o'clock last night. I could not register comments because my whole password and everything has changed. I tried to register to change my password and did not get the necessary message on my email to allow me to do that. So I just want to put that on the record. There's some difficulties here and thank you very much. Thank you. Seeing no one else here in the chambers that wish to address the board. Is there anyone on zoom or on the phones? Yes, we do have speakers via zoom. Michael Lewis, your microphone is now available. Good morning, Supervisor. This is Michael Lewis. I live in Live Oak. I publish a weekly compendium of local government meetings called Santa Cruz online. Unfortunately, because the problems with the calendar system, my readers were not able to click to attend this meeting. And I hope that they knew how to do it as I did by using the same contact number for zoom to get to the meeting. I wanted to talk to you this morning about another subject that is equally important. And that has to do with the advisory bodies, particularly our commissions that serve the board of supervisors by providing advice based on input from the public. Over the years, our commissions have drifted somewhat from neglect. And now the procedures for running these commissions vary from commission to commission. There's no consistency in agendas. There's no consistency in running the meetings. There is no consistency in advice by staff given to the commissions on how to conduct meetings. And this is resulting in some difficulties in our commissions, as many of you are aware. I think it's necessary for the supervisors to come up with a handbook for new and prospective commissioners as well as existing commissioners and staff on the founding documents for our commissions, such as County Code, the Brown Act, and even the bylaws of each individual commission, so that commissioners have what they need to conduct efficient meetings that serve not only the board of supervisors, but the public. And I hope in the future, in the very near future, that you'll work on getting such a handbook to our commissions so they can do their job effectively for you and for the public. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lewis. I love the way you call in user one. Your microphone is now available. This is Marilyn Garrett. I'd like three minutes. What is our taxpayer money funding 77 years ago today? The U.S. unleashed a second atomic bomb explosion, radiation, liberate, obliteration of a civilian Japanese city, Nagasaki. August 6, the U.S. pulverized Hiroshima, a population mainly of women and children. Approximately 100,000 people were killed each time. Will you please address your kind of guidance between the jurisdiction of this forum? Let me finish. Our county has this shame, our country has this shameful record of being the only country to drop nuclear bombs on another country. To demonstrate why, to demonstrate to the U.S. that the U.S. was the dominant and most threatening power in the world. See Oliver Stone's untold history of the United States. Today, little of our county's tax money actually benefits Santa Cruz County residents. How so? Because approximately 50% is siphoned out to the military industrial empire complex. I call on you supervisors to halt this robbery of our tax money to fund war manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and as the Attorney General of the U.N. states, the world is one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation. Either Russian or NATO has agreed. Krista Corwin, your microphone is now available. Good morning supervisors. My name is Krista Corwin. I work at the Regional Transportation Commission, but I'm here as a member of the public to support the efforts of the labor group that spoke at the beginning of this communications session, the MMA group. I support public workers and I think that this board should take their request seriously and understand that a 3% COLA increase is just not enough to sustain a public servant's life and livelihood here in Santa Cruz County. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Corwin. We have no additional speakers at this time, Chair. Thank you. Then I'll return it to the board for action on the consent agenda. I'm Mr. Chair. I'd like to present a few items. Item number 29 on the Veterans Village in Ben Lohman. I want to congratulate the housing for health staff and the veterans advocates for working together to solve the contractual and cash flow challenges associated with this great project in Ben Lohman. I also want to thank our state Senator John Laird and his staff for assisting with the communications with the state housing and community development department. This is a tremendous project that's going to benefit a group of people, veterans that are really challenged with getting their housing needs fulfilled. Item number 37, the Boulder Creek Library completion. I'm really pleased to see the Boulder Creek branch renovation is complete. We had a very nice community celebration for that in early May. And likewise, we had a great celebration this last Saturday for the reopening of the Scotts Valley branch after some improvements were completed, thanks to Measure S, passed by voters in June of 2016. There is one place where we did or the voters saw what they voted for and it's coming to fruition. There's a big project now in Aptos and others have been completed or are underway, but the three in Ben Felton and Boulder Creek and Scotts Valley in the Fifth District, which I represented, have been completed. And again, I want to sincerely thank the voters who approved Measure S in June of 2016. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Supervisor Cabot. Yeah, I'm not removing anything. I'll just comment on the number 49, which is the approval of Measure D, Master Funding Agreement between the County of Santa Cruz and the County Regional Transportation Commission to go forward and fund transportation projects. So thank you, Supervisor Caput. Any other comments? Supervisor Friend? Sure, Mr. Chair, this will just be brief. Just a continued appreciation for our community development and infrastructure department, the Public Works team on the storm damage repair. Each of our districts are seeing continued work done on the contracts today. And I just appreciate in particular, again, Steve Wiesner's work to continue to close those projects out. Thank you, Supervisor Friend. Supervisor Coonerty? Yeah, I have no comments today, but I will move the recommended actions. Second. Oh, second. All right, we have a motion by Supervisor Coonerty and a second by Supervisor McPherson. Any further discussion? I will say that with great thanks to Public Works for continuing to chip away at the storm damage repairs of some notable roads being fixed in the first district, including Shelty's Road, North Rodeo Gulch, and the Old Santa Cruz Highway, I will recuse myself from voting on Item 45, awarding a contract for Redwood Road as I do a family that lives on the road. All right, just to know for the discussion, please call the roll call vote, please. Supervisor Friend? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. Caput? Aye. McPherson? Aye. And Koenig? Aye. Consent agenda passes unanimously with Supervisor Koenig recusing on Item 45. Thank you. Thank you. And then we'll proceed with the regular agenda and Item 7 to consider in concept and ordinance amending Section 1.04.140 of the Santa Cruz County Code relating to definitions associated with the Department of Community Development and Infrastructure to define the integration of two former departments into a new department known as the Department of Community Development and Infrastructure Schedule Ordinance for Final Adoption on August 23, 2022. There's outline in the memorandum of the Deputy CAO, Director of Community Development and Infrastructure. And for a report on this item, we have Matt Machado, our Deputy CAO, Director of Community Development and Infrastructure. Thank you and good morning, Chair and members of the Board. As introduced, Matt Machado, your Deputy CAO and Director of Community Development Infrastructure. The item before you today is a modification to our current ordinance. It further defines the results of our consolidation of planning and public works in the one department. And so the ordinance before you is adding definitions to define the words of public works, planning the departments and the directors as being equal to the Community Development Department and its director, and so making them all the same in our codes so that as those departments, those prior departments of planning public works are referenced in the code, they'll relate now to the Community Development Infrastructure Department. And so this is a critical step towards our transition to this consolidation. Some other critical steps that I'd like to share with you today just since we're on the topic of consolidation and transitioning into this new department. We've made quite a few other steps along the way. Your Board approved our consolidated budget, which was a great milestone. We've now adopted a new logo. We have new lobby signage to represent our new department. We're working on an updated website for our new department. Our UPC is in an interim form right now and operating very well. We're getting a lot of positive feedback from the public in terms of their accessibility to us. All of our divisions are represented at this one front counter. And so we're seeing some big milestones going forward as part of the consolidation that your Board approved back in about February. Coming up, I will also add that we plan to provide a comprehensive update to this consolidation in November and we'll get into much more detail. I would like to thank all of our department staff, including our assistant directors for the heavy lift they've been doing to bring our teams together to formalize it with a new website, a new logo. It's a big lift and so I appreciate everybody's efforts. I also appreciate your support. The item before you is an ordinance to add some definitions to include the Department of Community Development Infrastructure. The recommended actions are to approve and concept ordinance amending section 1.04.140 of the Santa Cruz County Code and secondly to schedule the ordinance for final adoption on August 23rd. And so with that, I can answer any questions you may have. Thank you, Director Machado. Are there any comments or questions for members of the Board? Mr. Chair, this has been a long time coming, very much well accepted and appreciated. Although we have discussed this in previous meetings and previous years for that matter, I think it's worth repeating what a great effort and what a tremendous cooperative effort it's taken to get to this place and it's important that our public works and planning functions are collaborative and customer service minded. I'm very supportive of the UPC or Unified Permit Center concept and look forward to hearing more about it in November and tell us how we are doing. I think this is going to, as you have stated, the general public is very appreciative of what you have done to get us here and thank you, Mr. Machado, for leading the way and getting this to become a reality. It's going to be a really high point in what we do from this day forward in our planning processes. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Supervisor Caput. You bet. Thanks a lot for your report and also thank you for all the attention you give to South County and it says no financial impact. Would it actually be a little bit less financial impact if you're consolidating the two? Of course, you would have only one director, right? So there would no longer be a director of planning? So the one director of the community development will be the director of planning and the director of public works. So there is some savings with regard to that. But the financial statement for the board item in front of you is just regard to changing the definitions of an ordinance. So no financial impacts to an ordinance change, but yet you're right on in a sense that consolidating the two departments, we did see some savings and some streamlining which results in efficiencies. So yes. You bet. Okay, that's real good. And just thanks for the work that's going on on Hula Hand and Highway 152. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. I'll just add great thanks and enthusiasm for this project. I mean, as you know, Director Machado, our permit center is one of the main ways that the public interacts with the county. Of course, it's also central to addressing the housing crisis. The report's showing that we are the second most expensive rental market in the country. That's more important than ever to reduce permit processing times and help people add new housing and rental housing to our local market. So this combination of planning and public works into a new department really demonstrates our commitment to improving the customer experience. I'm also really excited about some of the developments that we've seen in terms of holding ourselves accountable with permit processing times and that dashboard that's online is really helpful in showing exactly how many days it's going to take to get everything from a deck permit to a solar permit to an ADU permit. I did share that in my newsletter yesterday and it was the most clicked link. So I think it's not the only person interested. Hopefully it'll be useful for people as they're planning their projects. So with that, we'll open it now for public comment. Anyone who wishes to address us on this item, please approach the podium. Yeah, agenda item seven, the consolidation of public works and the planning department. I've been dealing with planning departments and public works since 1988 extensively in this county, including environmental health and building since 1996. So I've probably been in this building a thousand times. Some of the definitions are really just kind of interesting. I don't know if I need to go into it. I haven't tried to go into public works to find any more specific information about the military weaponry that was already installed when I spoke about it three years ago in the city council. At that time, you could clearly go right into public works and look at the commercial sets of plans and see if these actually were the weapons that have been described. Good, I got a minute left. But when the scam demo started, public works went crazy. Gail Newell had a five page document. I think on page five, it had about 35 different reasons why you could be out in observations in the public. I matched five of those at the time. Now I actually even match more. It's really fascinating. You guys are just reading scripts. Maybe you guys just don't have a clue because you don't have the experience or interest because you guys are given scripts about what's going on. There has been a consolidation agenda going on for quite a bit. But when the UN was established by Brock Chisholm, excuse me, he was just simply the first inspector general from 1948 to 1953. He wrote a document in 1946 how through psychiatry and stuff, the population was going to be controlled. It's a document that came out in 1946 and it describes exactly what's going on. I have a personal friend who experienced a sad part of that about that anyway. In closing, I'm interested if the process is any easier or more difficult. I have always enjoyed working in the building and departments here. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Whitman. Good morning, Becky Steinbruner in rural Aftos. I'm curious about this consolidation because of what I've read about Monterey County doing a similar action. It did not go well and after 15 years, they undid the consolidation because it was just too broad and they found it was unmanageable by the staff that they had. I'd like to know what are the criteria that will be used by this consolidated effort to measure objectively improvement in service to the public? While Supervisor Caput, I appreciate your point out that a consolidation often means less management overhead. There are actually Mr, as I understand it, Mr. Machado is the director of the new department, but under him will be Ms. Stephanie Hansen, the director of planning and you're shaking your head. Carolyn Burke, the director of environmental public work. That's how I understood it was set up. Mr. Machado, maybe you can explain and clarify for the public because whenever I am communicating regarding planning department issues, for example, the very critical document, the general plan update, it always goes to Ms. Hansen. I want to know what this effort is going to do to help the CZU fire rebuild people. That is a nightmare and it is not only being handled through the Permit Recovery Center, but they are often sent up to the regular planning department and it is a nightmare as you know, Supervisor McPherson. So how is this going to help them? That's my big question. And are the UPC, the Permit Center, counteroff hours going to be expanded? Right now it's very limited and I think by appointment only. Thank you. Are there any other comments online or on Zoom? We do have one speaker online. Oh, they've just lowered their hand. At this time, we do not have any speakers chair. Okay, then I'll return it to you. They've put their hand back one moment. Let me check. Colin, user one, your microphone is now available. This is Marilyn Garrett and thank you so much for the comments of James Ewing Whitman and Becky Steinbruner on the problems with this consolidation. I also have learned about Monterey's problems when they consolidated and it did not work well. How this seems to me is that there are less services to the public and less personal contact where you can meet face to face with someone who can help you and more computerized stuff. Praising a new logo and website doesn't seem to me to benefit the public and reality. So I find this very troubling along with what has been happening over the last few years of where the public is kind of pushed out in terms of decision making on what could actually benefit the public. I'm thinking of the ordinance on the wireless communications that you know, proliferation of 5G antennas everywhere without any informed consent of people to be radiated and harmed 24-7. So this is something that I would vote. I vote no on it. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Garrett. We have no further speakers chair. Thank you. All right, then I'll return it to the board for action. All right, motion by Supervisor Caput and second by Supervisor McPherson. I wonder, Director Machado, if you could just take a quick moment to respond to some of the general inquiries we heard and maybe clarify the public, you know, how the organization, the department will work in terms of public works versus planning decisions and some of the key metrics you'll be looking at. I know obviously the combination of these departments goes far beyond Amir logo into some much deeper, more meaningful outcomes. Bruno, absolutely. And you know, I'd start by pointing out that our new department is made above six distinct groups and each of those groups are led by an assistant director. And so for instance, in the planning side, in the planning division, we have assistant director Burke who leads our permit center. We have assistant director Hanson that leads our policy and housing group. And then on the public work side, we have assistant director Wiesner doing transportation, assistant director Edler doing special services, which is sanitation, flood control, stormwater. And then we have assistant director Moore who leads our administration group, support services. And then director Kerry of our capital projects leads capital projects, which includes real property. So there's distinct groups led by distinct leaders. And those are assistant directors in essence with regard to our consolidation to serve the public. We see real value in the permit center with that we're working on right now, streamlining our process of review or permits. And also we're streamlining how we comment. And we're trying to simplify that a bit and allow our professional community to do the design work. Historically, we've touched on these permits with a pretty heavy hand. And we're trying to step back a bit and promote the codes, promote safety, but allow our professional consultants to do their good design work. And we're here to support that. And we're seeing success by having all of those divisions work together under a single management structure. That's the unified part of it. And we think that's going to result in better customer service. It's going to result in a quicker turn around times for permits. I think that's even being seen right now in the RPC. The RPC today, I think they're about a 333 either active permits or permits ready to be processed. And that's a pretty good number considering it's over half of the people that have come into our department for rebuild. Additionally, our combined department is working to support that RPC. We're currently working on some fact sheets to address things like fire sprinklers and other critical pieces. And even including sewer expansion. And so there's a lot of collaboration between the different divisions and is really helpful to be under one management structure and with a unified voice. And so I think that applies to the RPC, to the UPC, and to just about everything we do to serve the community. So hopefully the answer is a question. And with regards to the dashboards, we have some dashboards up and running and we'll continue to add metrics. And we'll continue to listen and see what the public really wants to see in terms of whether it's review times, whether it's total number of permits issued. We're willing to try all the metrics and see what resonates the best and serves the community the best. So it'll be a work in progress for sure. Thank you. Thank you, Director Machado. That's very helpful. And of course, in the passage of the 22, 23 budget, this board also committed to the success of the new combined department with five new planners for the Unified Permit Center. So we hope that if anything, that'll lead to more in-person touch for anyone who wants to take that route to applying for a permit. And of course, we're also, as you said, committed to developing the online tools and the FAQs as well. So people have a good sense of knowing what they're coming into before they even set foot in the building. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, Mr. Chair, I'd like to mention, yeah, this has been a very difficult situation, unlike anything we've experienced. And we have to meet standards of the state geological standards to match what we want to have to happen. We have to listen to the fire department because they want to have a sprinkler system that's adequate for any rebuilt house. And if we give permits without going through the proper authorizations, we're going to be held responsible. And so I get the frustration with a lot of people, but we just had a meeting last night with folks up in the Fallen Leaf area. It's a whole different situation with a private water company that really is making this more complex. And it should be. But people are getting a better understanding and understanding the process that we're in. And we're ahead of many of those agencies and areas that were burned out. And there's plenty of them in the state of California. And our record of rebuilding is ahead of, I think, just every one of them, even as slow as it may be to some. So I understand the frustration, but also we have to meet the standards of whether it be fire, water, whatever the situation may be. We have to protect those people when they're rebuilding in the process. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. All right. If there's no further discussion, we do have a motion to accept the recommended actions or adopt the recommended actions from Supervisor Caput, the second by Supervisor McPherson. Clerk, please call the roll. Supervisor Friend. All right. Coonerty. All right. Caput. All right. McPherson. And Koenig. All right. This item passes unanimously. Thank you. This ordinance being approved in concept and scheduled for final adoption August 23, 2022. We will now proceed to item eight. This is the Board of Directors of the Davenport County Sanitation District. I will have a public hearing to consider in concept and ordinance amending district code Title III Chapter 3.08 Water Service Charges for Davenport County Sanitation District and schedule ordinance for final adoption on August 23, 2022 is outlined in a memorandum of the district engineer. I'll officially open the public hearing. And for a presentation on this item, we have Ashley Trujillo, District Engineer. Thank you. Should I start over? It'd be great. This is Ashley Trujillo from the Davenport County Sanitation District. Today's item is a public hearing to establish rates for bulk potable and recycled water sales by the Davenport County Sanitation District. The proposed rates for 2022-23 are $13.74 per 100 cubic feet of water for potable bulk water and $6.87 per 100 cubic feet of water for the recycled water. The proposed rates reflect the cost of producing and providing water plus the added administrative costs for district staff to work with the individual water haulers. The recycled water rate is proposed at being currently set at 50% the bulk potable water rate to encourage conservation and recycling. The district staff recommends that the board hold a public hearing upon its conclusion and upon its conclusion, consider approval and concept of ordinance amending District Code Title III Chapter 3.08.205 water service charges and direct the clerk and the board to place the ordinance on the August 23, 2022 agenda for final adoption. And I am available for questions. Thank you, Mr. Trujillo. Are there any questions or comments from members of the board? Mr. Chair, a quick question. Supervisor Caput, you have the floor. Thank you. That's all I wanted to say. Okay, thank you. Supervisor Kennedy. Yeah, thank you. And I just wanted to confirm that the water haulers this is a competitive rate that will generate sales just because no sales, if we have a perfect rate, but if we don't have sales, then there's no revenue. I address that. So the recycled water, I assume that's the one you're talking about? Yes. So the recycled water, we do believe that is a competitive rate and that it should generate sales. Like I said, it's not being charged at the amount that it's costing to produce it, where we're reducing that down. We can evaluate this on a yearly basis when we set the rates. So if we find that it needs to be lower, we can look into that. Great. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Supervisor Kennedy. Another question for you. Is it expected that most of the sales of recycled water would happen for immediate customers that are piped, that water is piped to or would be hauled away with trucks? So there's no piping for the recycled water. We have a truck fill station. So people could come and they could fill canisters to use at their homes for watering gardens. Businesses could use it for watering their landscaping. And then larger trucks can come and get the water. And we're anticipating that they would be using it for construction purposes. During construction projects. Got it. Thank you. All right. Is there any member of the public that wishes to address us on this item? Morning. My name is James. Thank you, Ashley. What was the previous cost for the 100 cubic feet of water for both the potable and non-potable? That's my question. Thank you, Mr. Whitman. Thank you for this report. My name is Becky Steinbruner. I'm interested in water projects throughout the county. I'm curious why there is no piping for a recycled water project that costs the county a lot of money to put in. Costs the ratepayers a lot of money. And there is an agricultural area up there that could benefit perhaps by the use of this recycled water if it meets the Title 22 quality levels. So that leads me to, that's my first question. Why is there no piping? Is there any plan to put in a piping so that this recycled water can be used more widely rather than just trucking? And the second part is what quality tests are done on this water to assure those who are using it for their gardens that it is acceptable. Putting recycled water on leafy greens generally is not advisable. So what caveat and do people are people given at the time they get this water? And what tests are run? I want to point out that the city of Scotts Valley provides free water, recycled water to gardeners on certain days of the week. And so I wonder if that could be possible to encourage the use of recycled water, especially during times of drought. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Steinbruner. So you know what else here in the chambers? Is that anyone online or on the phones? Yes, Chair. We do have one speaker online. Colin, user one, your microphone is now available. Marilyn, we're all very worried about water and drought and I also find recycled water very problematic. Becky Steinbruner referred to Title 22 Quality Standards. That's an important question for you to answer. I understand with like this so-called Pure Water Project of Soquel Creek Water District, there's no way to remove the pharmaceuticals. They admitted that even with all the filtering they do. What we really need to see is that their corporations that pollute are prevented from doing that, like pesticide corporations. And I want to refer you to a website called geoengineeringwatch.org about weather manipulation and the drought. Ms. Garrett, will you please keep your comments on the Davenport Resolvable Water Project? That is the only insight on water. And raising rates on everything is very difficult for people to meet these increased costs every year. Thank you. Thank you. We have no additional speakers, Chair. Thank you. Then I'll return to the board for action. I'm ready for Supervisor Coonerty. I'll move the recommended action. Second. Motion by Supervisor McPherson, second by Supervisor Coonerty. Any further discussion? Seeing none. Clerk, we'll call it, please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Koenig. Aye. This item passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Rio. That will now proceed with item nine to conduct a study session for Housing for a Healthy Santa Cruz, a strategic framework for addressing homelessness in Santa Cruz County's six-month plan implementation and related updates. Accept and file various progress reports, ratify agreements with community bridges in the amount of $300,000, California Rural Legal Assistance Inc. in the amount of $200,000, Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County in the amount of $1,110,400, and CFSC Inc. in the amount of $95,000. Direct Human Services to return back to the board on or before February 2023 with an update on Housing for a Healthy Santa Cruz and take related action to this outlining the memorandum of the Director of Human Services. And for a report on this item, we have our Director of Human Services, Randy Morris, and Director of Housing for Health, Robert Ratner. Take it away. Thank you, Chair Koenig, and supervisors and public watching. Randy Morris, Human Services. Here, as Chair Koenig said, with Dr. Ratner, who will give the bulk of the presentation after make a few very brief introductory comments. As a reminder, today is the third six-month report in of our three-year strategic plan that your board adopted a year and a half ago. So we are at the halfway mark of our three-year strategic plan. Supervisor Koenig just outlined the recommended actions in front of you, three of which are the basics to conduct the session. Accept and file all the materials we submitted, which are voluminous on purpose, outlining everything that we've done in the last six months and what we're looking at going forward. And then the one set of contracts that, thank you, Chair Koenig, for listing all of them. We were in front of you in March to talk about eviction prevention, one very important component of our work is preventing homelessness. And your board approved us moving forward and executing the contracts that you listed, Chair Koenig. But we were asked to report back to you to ratify those contracts and in the materials are a report. In front of you today, this being the third presentation is both a look back on what we have been working on in the last six months and a set of proposed priorities for your board's deliberations, public comment, what to focus on looking forward. I do want to invite those watching constituents, media, anybody. There's a lot of materials that we've put together and I know often people it's hard to read through those materials just hear the presentation, but you're just going to hear in Dr. Ratner's presentation a brief summary of a large volume of materials. And we're doing what we can as a county human services department in partnership with our city jurisdictions and our other county departments to outline and describe what we're doing with a very, very complex issue trying to prevent and end homelessness. So we really do want to invite people to read those materials, make public comment, keep in touch with us because this is something we can only do working together. I'm just going to make a couple of comments about what strikes me in the materials today looking back and what strikes me looking forward as you then hear Robert's overview. So first in the last six months the COVID shelter system was demobilized because of COVID we had a large volume, almost a hundred million dollars of new FEMA funding to stand up a large number of shelters and those all ended on June 30th. So we have a whole set of materials speaking to you what happened at the end of that funding and the impacts and what that means. We also need to highlight that every year there is a national report on housing affordability and in the last six months the next yearly report came out which highlighted the county of Santa Cruz moved from the third highest cost jurisdiction in the United States of America to the second most expensive place to live in the United States of America next to the county and city of San Francisco and when you control for income levels in a jurisdiction we are actually the most expensive jurisdiction in the United States of America to afford housing. So that context needs to be highlighted and underlined because preventing and ending homelessness when it is that expensive to live here for our staff or for people who are struggling to keep housing or find housing is very significant. To address that issue we have a historic opportunity with the state of California in the project home key effort. You just passed an item in consent on Betts Village one of our project home key applications to help develop more affordable housing and in the last six months two of those four applications have been awarded and finally the every other year point in time count that was delayed one year because of covid is in draft and we put in the materials a highlight of the findings and hope that we can have some discussion about what that means because that is a significant moment when we do that point in time count to give us an idea of what's in front of us. I want to end my comments about what strikes me about looking forward. I think we need to constantly have a discussion about not just focusing on what to do with those who are unsheltered and how to manage the various issues in front of us but the issue of preventing homelessness is going to be a more profound issue in the upcoming year with the economy getting more strained income and equality worsening and as I said earlier the cost of living getting more and more difficult in our community doing anything we can to create more affordable housing has to be a key. I also think that it's worth noting that though we have had an infusion of federal and state money and the economy has been relatively strong we are preparing for a recession and we are built upon as was shared in our budget hearings with your board in June a lot of one-time money from federal and state sources so as we brace ourselves for recession and the federal and state funding that really funds about 95 percent of the work we do in housing for health is something that's going to really challenge us we're going to have to keep communicating about and my final comment here as a county staff person in front of the board of supervisors I want to end my comments by recognizing the importance of the collaboration that we as staff have with you as our elected officials and this is the last six month presentation where Supervisor Caput and Supervisor Coonerty are going to be seated members of the board and I just want to recognize Supervisor Caput and your work with the city of Watsonville what really struck me as I thought about this is my last time to be in front of you you literally have an office in where one of our shelters were and would walk through the shelters and meet people and talk to us and really want to recognize your support for a very complicated issue as the city of Watsonville has been struggling and Supervisor Coonerty had a chance to share this with you privately but your leadership with the complications in the city of Santa Cruz a former mayor a former elected there we've worked a lot with you and your staff and really want to recognize this is our last chance and a lot of what we've done has been thanks to the success of working with you and Supervisor McPherson and the two by two with complicated issues with the city of Santa Cruz so I just feel like I wanted to note this will be our last chance in front of the two of you and appreciate your support so with that said I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Ratner and he and we have a PowerPoint presentation and look forward for public comment and dialogue with your board. Thank you Randy and thank you members of the board and the public for this chance to provide an update on how we're doing relative to our housing for healthy Santa Cruz framework that was adopted nearly a year and a half ago. This is going to be an update for the six month period of our work together between January and June and the overview of what I'm going to cover today is similar to what's in the board packet review of what we've accomplished and worked on over the past six months. Randy alluded to we completed a point in time count of people experiencing homelessness in our community so we'll provide a high level update on that and how we're doing relative to goals in the framework that the board had adopted. Provide an update on the status of temporary housing shelter and transitional housing and housing wave effort as the shelters that were stood up during the COVID pandemic have closed down over the past few months. Then a little bit more information on affordable housing and project home key and talking about the prevention related contracts that are part of the board packet and then the last item I wanted to cover is a partnership between our agency, the new community development infrastructure department and the health service agency to get some more supportive housing resources out to the community. So over the past six months and our last meeting we identified 26 key areas where milestones are goals that we wanted to try to accomplish and we actually partially are fully completed all those milestones and I wanted to highlight a few of those items for the board. We executed over $1.6 million worth of contracts related to eviction and homelessness prevention and our team will be working significantly closely with members of different community-based organizations try to help people keep their housing as Randy indicated. We have a lot of concerns about the impact of the recession and rising housing costs on the community's ability to retain housing. Our rehousing wave effort helped a lot of households get into permanent housing prior to the closure of our COVID shelter is 145 households moved into permanent homes and we're still working with many of those households to help them secure permanent homes. We deepened our partnership with Central California Alliance for Health. I think a lot of people aren't aware that the state of California and particularly through the Department of Health Care Services has shifted a lot of funding to Medi-Cal managed care agencies to engage in the issue of housing and homelessness. So the partnership with our local Medi-Cal managed care plan is really critical. So we worked on applications for funding and we're developing plans of collaborating around contracting and I think that'll be an important thing for us to look at over the next six month period as well. We had submitted four applications for Project Home Key which is this incredibly unique state funding opportunity to create more supportive housing at a pace that's unprecedented in California. Of our four applications, two of them have received award announcements. One received an initial denial that we're appealing and another one is still in process and we're hopeful that it will get funded. We're also planning to apply for some additional funds and then we launched a new structure for how we work together under a federal requirement of establishing a consumer of care group of organizations and people coming together to prevent homelessness and we started that new process over the last six months. So one of the key things about our framework is there was goals established in two areas. Well there's overall goal in terms of reductions of homelessness and un-childhood homelessness but how we were going to get there. There were some capacity targets, how much capacity we wanted to add to our system in Santa Cruz County in certain areas and improving the performance of the organizations that are working to prevent end homelessness. So this slide shows you how we're doing relative to our targets baseline prior to the framework being adopted and the trend lines. So you'll see for temporary housing which includes shelter and transitional housing in the community. Before the pandemic, before the framework was adopted, there were around 440 beds and our target in our framework is 600. We exceeded that during the pandemic. We were over a thousand beds but because of the reductions in federal funding and other sources, we've dropped below our baseline during this period. So one of the key things we're working on over the next six months is to ramp up our shelter and transitional housing capacity. Rapid rehousing slots have remained steady since the last six month period but we're far below the target of 490 that was a part of the framework and permits for housing we've exceeded our goals and the number of units with the permits for housing we've secured is vouchers that need to be used in the private rental market and because the private rental market is so tight people often have vouchers that are really difficult for them to use. So we have work to do to create more building-based supportive housing where there's actually a structure that's built without purpose like the Veterans Village that was discussed earlier and continuing to deepen our partnerships with the private rental market to create more opportunities for folks who have those vouchers to help make housing more affordable. And then the bottom area is a conservative goal that we established in the framework of meeting our regional housing needs allocation targets for creating more very low-income housing in Santa Cruz County and the eight-year targets which are a target for December 2023 were 734 new units and we saw an increase in this last six months up from 103 to 151 units but we've got a ways to go to get to arena targets. And one of the key things that's in the framework is tracking how we're doing over time with the annual point in time counts. The goal for the overall framework is to reduce unsheltered homelessness. People with no safe shelter by 50% and 25% reduction in overall homelessness. And what the 22 point in time count showed us is that we've got a really mixed situation in terms of how we're progressing on these goals. With families with children and youth we saw significant progress in the 22 data compared to where we were in 2019. You can see in the slide that the number of unsheltered families dropped 94% and overall 59% which is definitely on target with our goals. Young people went down 61% in terms of sheltered and overall. But we saw significant increases in adult-only households 25 years and older and the bulk of those increases were among certain sub-populations of people who are more likely to experience homelessness. So veterans went up significantly. Seniors and people with disabilities and folks who've been homeless for a long period of time. We saw increases in the numbers of people in those categories. So what that says to me is we over the next months really need to do more work to help people with behavioral health conditions in particular mental health and substance use issues. Folks who were self-reported they were struggling with those challenges went up significantly. And we also have to really connect our services to housings to help folks with disabilities be able to be successful in those units. So I think that's a real key focus for us over the next six months and part of that is applying for more project home key funds and supporting those projects to go forward. This slide just is a quick overview of how are and I alluded to this earlier how our shelter and transitional housing capacity has evolved and a lot of different policy makers will debate what's the right amount of temporary housing to have in the community. There's a few jurisdictions around the United States that have a right to shelter. For example, New York State and the city of New York, but they still have tremendously large homeless populations and they invest a lot of public dollars in the shelter. So I think there's tradeoffs in using public funds for temporary housing versus permanent housing. Here we established a target of 600 and we're not there yet. So we've got work to do to raise the money to get us to that point. I project we have a gap of around eight to $12 million depending on the types of shelter and transitional housing we're trying to create to get to that 600 bed capacity. One way in which we're trying to close that gap is through a partnership with the Central California Alliance for Health because their CalAIM, MediCal Managed Care role and engaging more helping their members who are on MediCal and part of their managed care plan includes post hospitalization shelter. So we're going to be working with them on at least one project to expand shelter and temporary capacity for people who are their members and in the healthcare system. And then I think we'll need to continue doing some fundraising and looking at finding appropriate locations and operators for more temporary housing. This slide talks about a rehousing way in which we created about a year and a half ago to support the guests at our COVID-19 shelters that we knew were going to close. There's three housing navigation, case management teams, boat services, housing matters in our own division. We have a contract with the boat services to partner with private rental owners and property managers. We have a flexible rehousing fund to help pay for application fees and furniture for folks who are participating in the program. We had a really generous and critical commitment from the Housing Authority to link one-time emergency housing vouchers with the effort and the Vets Hall Board of Trustees that's been involved with the Vets Village Project also was involved with helping with care packages and move-in supports for folks as part of this effort. We've been operational for about 13 months with this collective team effort and 323 people have gotten services and 145 have moved into permanent housing and I think that number will be growing between this presentation and the next one. And then emergency housing vouchers I was just in a meeting with our colleagues in the Housing Authority and as a jurisdiction we're way above average nationally and in California in terms of the use of those vouchers which is I think a reflection of the board's commitment and our community's commitment to bringing these resources together to help folks use that one-time set of vouchers from the federal government and we look forward to finding opportunities for those with vouchers that haven't been able to secure housing yet and look forward to continuing that partnership with the private rental market and as the bottom says our biggest challenge because that's our permanent supportive housing that requires a partnership with those that own private property is finding available rental units in a tight market and part of how we're doing work in that area is we're talking to people about options outside of the county if they're struggling to find a location here because the particular vouchers that we have the emergency housing vouchers allow for people to use them outside of Santa Cruz County right away normally vouchers require that you move into a unit within the county for a year before you transfer out so we're continuing to really explore that with folks and other places that they would be willing to consider living. Randy alluded to this statistic and I'd prefer not to present this information I'm hoping in 2023 we see the trend line going the other direction but the national low-income housing coalition produces an annual report looking at the cost of rental housing across the country. Randy alluded to the fact that we went from being number three most expensive rental market to number two in just a year and we stand out also in terms of the average wage or an income of households that are renting requires that people have 3.1 jobs at that average wage to be able to afford a two-bedroom apartment. I want to provide that a little bit of context for those numbers and one is if a typical minimum wage worker you need four full-time jobs to afford a two-bedroom apartment so you'd have to have two people working two full-time jobs to be able to make housing affordable here and then for our rehousing way which I just talked about a lot of our staff who are doing the housing navigation case management work can't actually afford to live here they need to work 60 hours a week on their salaries to make housing affordable for them so emotionally and psychologically kudos to the staff to continue to do this work even when they're struggling with housing on their salaries they're still working really hard to help people find housing and so I think it's critical as we talk about homelessness to remember that the affordable housing issues in our community are really impactful just beyond the issue of homelessness homelessness I think is the kind of tip of the iceberg the worst-case scenario when there is housing affordability challenges but it impacts employers ability to keep and retain workers extends commute times the stress on people's lives when they're spending so much of their income on housing has health impacts as well. I wanted to share how we're doing on the regional housing needs allocation goals relative to other communities in the central coast and you can see here that San Benito has only just got close to one percent of the very low-income housing goals Santa Cruz were at 21 percent Monterey and San Luis Obispo have gotten closer to their very low-income housing goals one of my personal goals over the next six months is to take a look at the point in time count data across California I have a hypothesis that communities that are moving closer to hitting their very low-income rena goals are more likely to see reductions in homelessness Monterey and San Luis Obispo their point in time counts were released and they both saw reductions in the numbers of people experiencing homelessness so I think there's a correlation between local support for more affordable housing development and progress on the issue of homelessness so I hope that we can continue across all of our jurisdictions in the county to get closer to our goals with this cycle of rena I alluded to this earlier and this is a slide that I've shared before just our division is called housing for health and part of how I shifted from being a health care practitioner to getting into housing as I saw that the impact of housing struggles on people's overall health and well-being behavioral health issues physical health issues and in the context of a community where housing is incredibly expensive anyone stressed in someone's life can tip people into a period of housing instability they may need to leave the area the term displacement when people have to move even though they've got support and job opportunities here the next level of I think severe impacts is people having to couch serve for move from one place to another hotels we have a very large numbers of families in the Department of Education definition of homelessness which is broader than the one we're talking about today but a fair number of families are struggling with housing instability and then literal homelessness where people are actually on the streets or in any of our shelters and as those housing stability issues become more intense the likelihood of health issues increase significantly there's a series of studies that show folks who experience homelessness for long periods of time are more likely to die 20 kind of 25 years earlier than the general population so the health impacts of not having a stable place to live are really significant and I think that's one of the reasons why our managed care partners are getting more engaged in the issue as well what are we doing about creating more affordable housing we're working on home key and other funding opportunities round one our county didn't apply for the initial home key funding in round two we submitted four applications this slide talks about the two projects that are received awards and our hope that the other two will get funding and we're planning for additional applications in the next round we have one project we're working on in the unincorporated very Watsonville to create a new transitional housing program for youth experiencing homelessness and we're partnering with mid pen housing and housing matters on some projects around their coral street campus so we expect at least one application going in round three and likely more to secure more resources to help us get closer to our rena goals and more building based supportive housing one other strategy we're using is through a partnership with the health services agency both of our agencies even though we're not housing agencies I think both healthy human services realize that for the people we serve to be healthy and to thrive they need to have stable places to live so the health services agency secured whole person care funding um a few years ago that they're committing to support the creation of more housing for people with mental illness and then our department applied for funding from the california department of social services to get some funding for people with disabilities so the two departments agreed we would combine those pots of money and create a request for proposals process over the next six months to get that money out the door and try to create as many units as possible at the lowest price possible for the investment so I hope this is a trend for us in the county in general of increasing our investments and creating more affordable housing and supportive housing in particular and then one to end with what are the big things that we as staff have planned for the next six months the materials that we submit to the board have a much longer list but these are the things that really stand out from the staff perspective so uh this slide also shows the kind of four areas that we articulate in the framework that we're focusing on building a coalition we all need to lean in and make changes in our lives and our work to to make an impact on this issue and um the build a coalition is intended with that kind of spirit in mind so we are going to be managing a process to secure some more HUD funding over the next six months there's some increases coming from the federal government to address homelessness and we want to be competitive for those dollars the partnership with managed care and then we're working on updating our standard policies for how we assess and match people experiencing homelessness to resources uh Randy alluded to the focus on preventing homelessness we've created a movement toward a centralized more easily accessible at least that's our intention fun to help people with housing related needs both preventing the loss of housing but also helping people get back into housing we're relaunching an effort for seniors and people with disabilities who contact APS that have housing instability issues we're expanding that program thanks to some new funding from the state and then we want to support the eviction and homelessness prevention efforts of our contractors and organizations doing that work in terms of connections we have some resources to expand outreach to folks who are unhoused I think that's going to be really important we outreach to veterans if you look at the data we also have a lot of veterans who are unsheltered that and I think we can rally around that and try to help get them connected to services and then expanding the temporary housing and then most importantly I think expanding permanent housing through the mechanisms that we talked about earlier in the presentation and that's the end of our overview and we're happy to take any questions or comments thank you both whether comments or questions from members of the board and mr chair I have a brief question thank you dr retner yes I had a question specifically regarding the veterans outcomes and the point in time count that just came forward you spoke a little bit about the veterans at the end and aside from the veterans village recognizing that there is the hud bash availability and aside from just pure outreach what is really preventing us from getting that down to a functional zero I was under the impression that it wasn't necessarily a limit and please correct me if I'm wrong but it wasn't necessarily a limit of hud bash vouchers just of people willing locally to provide the housing or rooms for people is it a combination and more complicated than that and it really is an outreach issue where veterans aren't aware of what's available or is it simply just a room and housing availability issue in order to improve those numbers I was surprised to see recognizing the point in time count and all of its flaws for trying to drill down on a number but I was just surprised to see any sort of veteran increase yeah thanks for the question supervisor friend I was also surprised and I think many other people in the community because we were making progress on the issue over the past counts and seeing reductions and I think there was a lot of hopefulness that we could get to functional zero we need to do a little bit more research to understand what's actually happening the number of households that have bash vouchers that haven't been able to find housing has gone down significantly in part because of our rehousing wave efforts there I think still around 40 to 50 veterans who have vouchers that haven't been able to use them so our home key projects that we alluded to if all those come into fruition all those folks who have bash vouchers will have 15 units so I think there is a shortage of bash vouchers to meet the need among veterans I think the other major issue is that the VA programs are mostly available for people that have honorable or other than honorable discharge status and what I've seen over my career is individuals particularly people with health issues or mental health or substance issues that have dishonorable discharges and identify as veterans have a really hard time accessing VA resources and I have a concern that that's a part of the story here and I think as we get more outreach out into the field and identify veterans we'll know if the issue is they're just not eligible for VA resources or if they're just not connected and I think that this community has been deeply invested in addressing homelessness among veterans so I think we'll be able to make a push to try to turn things in the right direction once we get a little bit more information about what's going on. Dr. Ratner that's very helpful so for me just to understand and I think maybe for the community at large when we see these numbers of these are self-identification numbers I imagine through the point in time count therefore there could be some fluidity by which those numbers are reported if I make a headline that somebody may self-identify as a veteran that may or may not qualify specifically for the services may actually not even be a veteran but and in particular also on some of the family identification so some of this is just the underlying challenge with data collection with this population and some of this is also just the structural issues regarding housing costs of living and availability of those things but I appreciate that additional information it just strikes me that it just seems like a population that the community I mean also families as well which has shown the decline really should be the easiest nothing's easy but the easiest to rehouse if the community is willing to open up its doors for those with these with the vouchers thank you thank you for the comments thank you mr chair thank you supervisor friend supervisor person yeah thank you thank you for this not disturbing but I wish it wasn't all realistic report and homeless as we have a tremendous challenge really unlike anybody else in the nation or few in the nation with their housing costs and so forth I do appreciate this report and I had some concerns echoed by supervisor friend you mentioned the relocation into permanent supportive housing in other communities is there and maybe you touched on it but is there anything else we can do to try to push that I mean everybody says to you know put your homeless someplace else but so how can we you know shall we say speed that process yeah I think one of the observations I have is that the populations that are the least likely to be able to relocate are the ones with disabilities that need a lot of support so individuals that have access to transportation family support networks I think this is part of why we're seeing some reductions in family and youth homelessness is that there's a little bit more mobility and ability to to leave the area the level of functional impairments among people experiencing homelessness and the aging of a population I don't think I can house how stark it is and the living conditions that people are in it's a reflection of closures of skilled nursing facilities licensed board and cares so we have people with really significant health issues that need a lot of support to get back into housing and I think that's one of the reasons why if you just look at a snapshot in time which the point in time count does that really stands out in the data that we have a lot of people in our community who have struggled with significant health issues and it's really challenging to help them locate to another community without knowing that those supports are there to help them keep their housing part of that process is partnering with our managed care entity and seeing how we can work across counties to make sure that if people are going from one county to another that those supports are there that they need to be successful in housing right and I think the other is that just acknowledging and and having more realistic conversations I know we talk about this at the staffing level with staff who are struggling to be able to afford to live here and the trade-offs we have to have those conversations with people who are unhoused or struggling as well analyzing the pros and cons of staying in the current situation where it says taking a unit and other community and I think that folks are doing more and more of that one of the concerns that I hear a lot from folks who do this work is that well are you just throwing your hands up does that mean you're not going to try to build affordable housing and I don't think that's what we're saying trying to acknowledge the reality at the moment while we're simultaneously trying to work on the affordable housing issue and not let people suffer and stay in situations while we're waiting for years because these projects take years to develop so I think it's an ongoing community conversation I think if members that do this work feel like we're collectively committed to addressing that affordable housing issue locally I think there'll be a little bit more comfort with doing work to help folks find other options I think it becomes this either or either you ship everybody out or you build housing for everybody here and I think for me that it's a more nuanced approach really honoring people's choices and the options and the reality of the moment while we work on the long-term issues at the same time and Supervisor McPherson if I can just jump in and share as a human service professional I feel like I need to call out the human element both recognizing what Robert referred to as our staff and what a tough conversation that is to have but also that the population is very diverse that we're serving and it's hard to parse out but I want to recognize that some this is their community and being offered an opportunity to move somewhere else where they would lose all of their connections even if they've been here for a long period of time is a very complicated conversation to have and you know to make the public policy comment adults have a right to self-determination and we can't tell people to leave so I think I just want to recognize the staff we're working directly with people who are having these conversations we can keep doing what Robert said but in the end of the day it's a really complicated moment and some people this is their home I can understand that you know they have this is home to them so you don't want to move them from home but more specifically the large number of persons experiencing homelessness and self-reported substance abuse do we know how many of these folks reported and both of these issues homelessness and in need of well substance abuse issues I've heard the third maybe up to a half maybe yeah so the the full data for the point in time report will come out in the next couple weeks but it's a really significant percentage in Santa Cruz County so on the positive side when talking about recovery from addiction one of the first steps is acknowledging you have an issue so the fact that people are willing to acknowledge through a survey process that they're struggling with an issue I think to me is an indication that people are more receptive to getting connected to treatment and it's a really significant change between 2019 and 2022 the numbers of people who are struggling with and reporting mental health and substance use issues I'll say that it's over half you'll see in the reports of the folks in the survey and the number of people who reported having a health condition they felt was disabling was close to three quarters of the population so earlier my statements around the the folks who are unhoused here really struggling with significant health issues that make returning to work and getting back into housing really challenging and I think we'll have to do and we have emphasized in our next six month plan kind of working more closely with behavioral health and trying to help get people engaged with treatment and bringing in more resources to address that issue thank you understood and very disturbing and I think the coordination between the units as you're trying to do is is essential I'd like to see the board and this is a 25 page report and it's very thorough but for us to have a maybe a study session healing the streets for both funding and operations and what coordination looks like maybe within a six month period or before January so we can have the input of supervisors community and cap it but I also in saying that there's this really push for more housing and we haven't in Santa Cruz County been able to reach our arena numbers and now the state is saying you've got to increase those by three or four times and if we did that the impact on our other infrastructure of water transportation etc would be immense I think we need to do it we need to address it but it's it's a full blown problem that reaches out to other areas besides housing and the impact will have on other residents of Santa Cruz County I really appreciate your broad view of this and giving us the true facts of this disturbing information that you've presented but we'll just keep working at it and I really appreciate the coordinated effort that you have put forth to this point I think it's going to help us to get to a better a solution to our housing crisis in Santa Cruz County Supervisor McPherson can I just recognize what I heard as a request for the board to consider having us come back the next time we're scheduled to be back in six months would be after supervisors cap it and community are not here and if I heard that right in the reference to the nexus of mental health services in our division could I recommend that we consider if we do this if this was your board likes that we wait until after the state makes a final decision on the care court because I think the if that legislation passes and what it looks like and whether or not there's funding will be a profound game changer and I feel like it would be premature to have that discussion if it's pending a state final action and yeah we didn't get into that today but that would be absolutely profound and would probably be gummed up in court systems but it's an effort by our governor to try to address this issue and have people have various opinions but that's going to be significant whether that passes or not I agree and I in the state legislature and the governor should decide that this month maybe we'll wait to see what they do and just get a guess of what impact that might have and so let's wait for a scheduled study session until we see what the state does and then see how we might approach it if we can at all thank you thank you Supervisor McPherson Supervisor Coonerty thank you Mr. Chair thank you for this presentation as as was mentioned this may be my last although Supervisor Pearson maybe adding maybe adding a new hearing on but you know in thinking about the progress we've made over the past eight years and the challenges ahead I sort of came to really six three generally positive three challenges that I see for future policymakers and those implementing the policy and you know at the risk of putting a big burden on the next people who are sitting in these seats I think you know the positives are what I'm seeing is that this is really data-driven and for the first time we're starting to get a handle on what the challenge is and how we're doing and addressing it and that the board can keep putting pressure on this issue and keep a focus on this issue by these through these hearings through these working through plans and through being transparent with the community about where where we're making progress and where we're not I think it's really important the second one is that I like this emphasis on prevention it's really if you think about the pain that a person or family will experience experiencing even brief homelessness and the impacts community and the cost of the system the more we can spend up front the better and then the third part that I really want to celebrate is I understand the limitations of a pick count but the but the progress we made on families and on sheltered families is is incredible and I really appreciate those who've advocated over the years for this including my staff Alison Ender this was one of her primary issues and the fact that we were able to make significant change I think is a big deal when I look at the challenges first is this more than doubling of people who were chronically homeless or to fell into the definition of chronically homeless you know even with the problems of the pick count that is a troubling issue because I think it signals a real challenge ahead and also the fact that we may be having people who are chronically homeless coming to Santa Cruz and even if it's only a fraction of those given the complexity of the cases and the difficulty in finding housing we have to make sure that Santa Cruz County and specifically Santa Cruz City is not trying to solve what is a national problem what where other counties through different policies are pushing people this way likewise I think the the numbers around substance use are challenging until we recognize the significant role that specifically meth it's playing in this in as part of as a driver of this of this crisis and until we can do a better job at intervention and treatment I think I think we're going to see an even more difficult problem and then finally to the exchange that just occurred I think it's really critically important that that we be clear that we will that any strategy that is predicated on housing people in this community is destined to fail and that has real consequences if we are giving people a sense that there's a path to housing where even if we get a lot of dollars and build a lot of housing and take on a lot of neighborhoods and all that we can at best maybe house one out of every 10 maybe one out of every eight people who are experiencing homelessness in this county and that leaves a lot of people on lists to nowhere and we need as a community to recognize that it's not about putting people on buses and just getting them out of our community but it is about finding places where people the work housing balance is more in line and they will have more opportunity to be supported and whether we are not only paying for folks to relocate but support when they get there I think is key because it is we are otherwise we are fighting an uphill battle and as long as we hold on to this idea that we just have to wait for you know literally thousands of affordable units to be built people should should should subsist trying to survive it's not a humane or practical approach for either the people experiencing homelessness or the community thank you all for letting indulging me in my observations after all these years of and scars of trying to address this issue but I appreciate the work and I appreciate the forum and the opportunity to to to be data driven in this conversation. Thank you Supervisor Kinnerty. Supervisor Cabot. Yeah thank you for your kind words and I want to thank both of you for all the hard work and great work that you've been doing over the past months dealing with critical issues that are facing us locally and I know it's very difficult. I only had one quick question and I'm not sure how to phrase it but when there's specifically working with veterans there is money for programs does the federal government offer money for programs and then it comes to the county and you have to look for it or do you have to go look for it before and try to you know get money so when it comes from the federal government it it has to go through the county right but how to spend it? I'm going to make a comment about something that many California County Human Services Department manage including us that answers your question directly and then I'll turn over to Robert to speak to more of the world of affordable housing and services the only direct funding that flows from feds to state to county human services a veteran services office so as you know we have the veteran services office you've worked with and it is not an entity that receives money to deliver services it is primarily an office that helps veterans navigate federal and state programs so it's basically an in between to help nap so we very often get calls to say I'm struggling I need to appeal something but the services are from the feds in the state and then some of what the veteran service office does is federal and state law asks a local veteran service office to sort of confirm somebody as a veteran in order to basically stamp a piece of paper sometimes literally so they can be eligible for something but all of that something comes from somewhere else so that's a very small veteran service office very small programs in California County Human Services I'll turn it over to Robert to speak to the issues of the vouchers and the housing and kind of homeless services that are traditionally not directly run by human services veterans resources to help prevent and homelessness are managed by the VA at the federal level and they issue requests for proposals and typically county governments are not involved nonprofit organizations often apply directly to receive those funds and there was just around recently where some of our local nonprofits applied for some additional funding for program called supportive services for veterans and their families and then the the VASH vouchers the VA supportive housing program is a partnership between the VA and HUD and the local housing authority so one of the issues I think that we have to work on over the next six months is how do we because the VA is in some ways created a separate system that has made a lot of progress nationally and addressing veterans homelessness we've got to figure out how to connect in more with the system and understand our point-in-time count data and our HMIS data are not synchronized with the VA's data as an example being data driven I appreciate it and Supervisor could even mention that we've got to be able to understand where are the veterans that are not connected why are they not connected and do that from a place of partnership because we aren't actually managing those resources directly so we want to just be at the table with the VA and figure this out together I hope that answered your question yeah it does basically and it's very similar to what we're doing with the home key project with in Boulder Creek with the veterans housing there right some some similarities some differences I mean in the case of our home key projects we're a co-applicant for funding and for the VA resources that's generally not required non-profit organizations can apply without a county or local jurisdiction supporting the application and I think the other difference well let's say let me move away from difference the veterans village project is an example of I think this is what you're getting at with Supervisor Caput partnering with the VA so we applied for this funding to help the VA and the Vets Health Board of Trustees address homelessness among veterans and we did that with multiple home key projects because we saw an opportunity for us to bring in some money that we qualify for to pair with their federal money I think that's an example of what we need to do more of is figuring out I mean we have another example actually we are taking some state funding to help the VASH program find some resources to create incentives for private property owners to take in folks with fast vouchers so that's another example of what I think you're talking about partnering with the VA resources by bringing in other resources you bet thank you thanks a lot thank you Supervisor Caput I'll make a few remarks I want to start by just congratulating the entire team working on this to for the reduction in homelessness among families and youth I mean a 94 percent reduction in unsheltered families is amazing and I think we need to celebrate our accomplishments where we can get them so you know this is such a huge and complicated issue and I think really this this shows the way to how we can begin to tackle it was we've got to break it out into chunks that we can meaningfully accomplish and so you know it's great that we took this focus on families and youth and and made this kind of progress I think as a Supervisor Friend and Supervisor Caput have alluded to veterans are a next logical group to focus on and really try to make substantive inroads and reducing homelessness among that population well of course continuing our commitment to youth and families I have just a few questions so the first is talked about the gap in funding to reach our the number of shelter beds 600 the goal from about 382 today costing 8 to 12 million dollars is that the one-time funding we would need to get those beds in place or is that ongoing funding that we would need annually thank you for that clarifying question it's ongoing funding to support the operations of those programs and one of the trends in Santa Cruz County is that we've had a lot of one-time investments in shelter that would be open for six to nine months and then we close it and I think for us to be successful we've got to find ongoing stable sources to keep quality programs going and helping folks go from homelessness to housing and the 8 to 12 million figure does include a potential amount we would need for capital I think there's more resources available for one-time capital funding it's the ongoing operational dollars that are really a big hole that we need to fill and may I piggyback on that if your board agrees between now and the next strategic plan and certainly my recommendation is when we develop a next strategic plan I think we would advance the effort if we not only parsed out everything we're doing and it's some component parts but I think the issue of funding needs to be broken out into what I think is behind your question what is one-time money versus what is ongoing money for all the various interventions because it's very complicated to explain the universe of this issue from prevention to encampments and everything in between and then throw out numbers as we do because we're getting more experiences saying what things cost but parsing out those numbers so that elected officials and constituents and advocates can sort of better understand the trade-offs because this is never going to get solved by county general fund or city general fund county and city general fund sort of chip away at or leverage things but in the end we need to be very thoughtful about how to grab federal and state money and I think to what your question is if I'm hearing it right I want to underline the importance of us continuing to communicate with our elected officials about the true costs the current strategic plan does not have costs it has numbers and goals but it doesn't break out what the cost is to get to those goals so I would really like us to continue to focus on that I think that would be a more open discussion and it's a hard one but I invite the hard questions about really it costs that much and we will answer those questions and we welcome the public debate but I don't think people understand how expensive it is to stand up a program that's going to work many communities have stood up programs that were underfunded and tend to lead to huge constituent problems because the neighborhood then feels like it was a bad intervention to fund something well that's successful that's integrated in the community costs a certain amount of money and I think we have enough information to speak to that so that that's my follow-up I think we can do more of explaining the cost of these things I love you could do some of that right now I mean if you talk about being adding 220 beds for you know at least 80 million or $8 million I mean that's essentially $40,000 a year and I know a lot of members of public sort of scratch your head and say well how much does it cost that much just to provide a bed and so first off what are we what are we talking about providing I mean is this a cot and a shared room or is this like a you know individual space or room in a dormitory and then can you just speak a little bit to the some of the services that go into that that that make it cost so much yeah numbers that we're using are between 80 and 120 dollars a bed night depending on the kinds of structure and services that are available the assumptions behind the numbers that we share with the board are that we're creating shelters that have opportunities for more privacy and that are low barrier so you have to have adequate staff for folks who may have health issues or other challenges to be able to support them when they come into shelter and to be able to store their personal belongings and potentially have partners the other key part of that is having staff that aren't just there to help people stay in shelter but they're actually helping people return to work helping people will get on a path to housing and I think it was the last board meeting we presented the relative cost of shelter versus a permanent housing unit and actually subsidizing permanent housing is cheaper than paying for a shelter bed because in a shelter there's no rent being collected we're often paying for the food and the extra services and to help people get on a path to housing and there's costs associated with people living in community and maintaining the property and having the frequent turnover of spaces so depending on the the structures used in the location the level of services in the target population you kind of see a range of cost but it is quite expensive our COVID shelters which were private hotel rooms were much more expensive than that they're three meals a day services private accommodations that was more in the hundred fifty one hundred eighty dollars per night and I want to connect a dot with Robert's answer to your question with a previous discussion and this is a recognition to our community-based organizations because to have an effective program you need to have a community-based organization who can deliver the service at decent quality and the ability of a community-based organization to hire qualified staff that don't deal with what a lot of our nonprofits deal with back to the affordable housing is paying a community-based organization enough money to attract and pay for qualified staff ideally locally who aren't struggling and don't turn over because a big issue that is not nonprofits fault but nonprofits challenge is having huge staff turnover so I just to invest in the actual cost of a high quality program you have to pay for it and most systems don't pay for the kind of shelters at the lower end of a lot of services and therefore you have quality that matches the cost I just want to make that connection as well you have to pay for good quality services and I would say that building on that our local data shows that the outcomes for different shelter and transition housing programs in the county are pretty strongly correlated to the amount of resources and staffing and staffing retention and the level of exit related services so the programs that are making the most progress have resources to help people exit and to have them come into a stable environment the lower resourced programs tend to have a lot more people returning to the streets within the first month or two because they don't feel safe or welcome and are not appreciating the program and they have much lower outperforming outcomes in terms of helping people get income and benefits and exits to permanent housing so it's a quantity versus quality dynamic and I think one of the things that we're trying to do in our our messaging and our work is really promoting quality and resourcing programs well to get better outcomes great thank you for the explanation you know the maybe one of the most troubling statistics that you shared was you're not just the increase in chronic homelessness but this 282 percent increase in people with self-reported substance use disorder I mean that is just leaps off the page so an increase of 281 in 2019 to 1073 in 2022 do we have I mean you mentioned maybe some factors that might be playing into that just you know potentially good news that people are just more willing to admit that they have an issue you know supervisor Coonerty talked about the increase in meth and of course we've Matthew's and of course we've seen that in terms of just cause of death in our community is it is it an all of the above do you have any for the description you can you can provide why we're seeing this kind of an increase yeah I think we're all generating hypotheses now at this point about what's really going on there and kind of adding to the list of things that have already been discussed we we're still in the kind of tail end of a pandemic and one of the things that I think people are under appreciating is during the pandemic residential capacity across the board was reduced so residential substance use treatment capacity across the state has gone down and I hesitate to call it residential capacity but prisons and jails released people without options for where they were going to go and a lot of people who are cycling in and out of our justice system have struggled with behavioral health conditions so I think there was a pandemic kind of we need to keep the inside safe not a lot of thinking about okay where are people going to go and what are the supports they're going to need to be successful and I also think that across California there's been not enough conversation about the challenges of substance use disorders there's a lot of stigma associated with it even the managed care medical reform that I talked about that substance use is not a top topic and I think we as a state need to get beyond the the moralizing around it and as a healthcare person it substances can lead to ongoing permanent changes in people's neurochemistry and brain structure and we need to treat those issues as health issues and we need more resources at the state level and we need to be creative locally about how to expand options I think the other thing I would say that the Santa Cruz Sentinel recently had an editorial about how horrible the housing first model is and that we need to address mental health and substance use issues first and as someone who worked in Bavor Health for 14 years and saw what it was like to work with people who are sleeping in tents in large encampments and who would come into a 12-step program and then go back to the tent where the person who was using meth or dealing drugs was outside their door you can't have recovery without a stable safe place to live for almost most people so the idea that you can treat and help people get on a path to recovery when they don't have a stable place to live in my experience and the experience of many other people who do the work it just it's not it's not pleasable I mean there's going to be the rare folks who can get into a treatment program and return back to an unsafe situation with a lot of triggers and maintain the recovery but it's the pairing of a stable safe place to live with the treatment that makes the difference so I think we need more residential capacity recovery residences residential treatment we also need more affordable places for people in recovery to sustain that effort and I also do think we need to continue to look at expanding the treatment the other thing about the pandemic and I think this is underappreciated we've all been living through an incredibly stressful time and folks who have a greater risk of experiencing a mental health or substance use issue as stress levels go up the likelihood of actually experiencing mental health or substance use conditions goes up so the the rates of mental health problems have significantly gone up during the pandemic and substance use is a part of that as people struggle psychologically and emotionally they look for avenues to address that pain and suffering so I think those are all factors and the the culture of a community and how accessible substances are is a well-known and established factor in terms of rates of substance use disorder so I think we need to look at locally our culture around substance use and promoting prevention recovery across all age groups to really get a handle on this so multi-factorial probably more than you wanted to hear Supervisor Koenig that's helpful not to I think you named a few factors in there that we hadn't talked about before the report mentioned that permanent supportive housing capacity is underutilized because we need a higher level of service so are we just sort of missing the health care staff our ends etc but when I hear that I hear that the rooms are out there thank you for clarifying the vouchers are there and so the challenge is for people with vouchers it's really challenging to be able to use a government subsidy in the private market without someone to help you navigate so we have a lot of people with vouchers that don't have anyone helping them navigate that process and in a tight housing market it's almost next to impossible to find a unit on your own if you're struggling out on the streets so that's the biggest number one pairing is just what we call housing navigation I think the other issue that the data is showing us is that there was a significant increase in the number of people who had been in affordable housing that had lost their housing and I think this is a reflection of the aging trend and more health issues and we've got a reoriented our health services to help people stay in housing so I think it is what you're talking about field-based nursing and mental health care and in-home supportive services we have social workers who are helping folks move their beds and unpack their belongings because they physically can't they're moving stuff from storage from being on the streets into their unit physically they can't unpack on their own so we need to figure out how do we help people with those kinds of challenges to get the supports they need to stay in housing and I think as the population ages this is going to be a bigger and bigger issue more people living on fixed incomes who have health issues that need that kind of mobile health and human services support all right thanks for the clarification last question for you you know we've got this a little something to look forward to and that we've got this 4.6 million dollars combined you know of funding for I believe it's for permanent support housing right so is that again this one-time money that with will there be any ongoing funds or I mean is that just a matter of connecting people with vouchers to pay ongoing costs yeah can you speak a little bit more to what that yeah I appreciate that you picked up on it is one-time money and it has to be paired with an ongoing money for the services that we just talked about and for the the cost of managing the housing so for those dollars to be successful we're going to have to find applicants who have vouchers or other ways of making the housing affordable over the long term that are tied to the building and then a partnership with managed care I anticipate to help make sure we're funding the services proactively in the front end for the folks when they move in so in the support of housing world people talk about the three legs of the stool there's actual the building then you need the money to operate the building and then you need the money for the services so what we're proposing is the money to help build the buildings but we all have to pair with those other resources to make those projects successful great and anticipate when you anticipate releasing that RFP well I'm hoping that we will bring back to the board in this next six months perhaps before two supervisors retire legs the proposed RFP for you all to consider before we release it and so depending on how that review goes but my intention is that we'll we'll get something to you all in the next six months so we can get it out as quickly as possible okay looking forward to that thank you I know for their comments or questions from board members I'll open it to the public this approach to podium thank you that's a lot of information and a lot of good well presented information thank you I I'm also distressed to hear the increase in homeless veterans and I'm wondering if some of those have come from the CZU fire area I know some that that is their case are these new people coming into the area because we have such a wonderful climate and a reputation for taking care of people I I want to ask Dr. Ratner what is the possibility of doing an ibogaine pilot project here that is a treatment that has been used with success in other areas of the world to help people eliminate in effect their addictions to hard drugs it's been very effective from what I've read I would like to see Santa Cruz be a pilot study area because the problem is so great I want to ask the board of supervisors why 12 trailers that the county was given for COVID isolation for transitional use are now being used by the parks department for programs if they are at all it wasn't put back into housing how can that be and and I have that information from you Chairman Koenig 12 brand new trailers did not get used for housing continuing after COVID ended or at least the money for it why are we not looking at county properties such as the the property behind the county medical facility in Watsonville at Freedom and Crestview it sits empty during the 1989 earthquake that was a site that provided emergency housing for many many FEMA trailers while people's homes were being rebuilt why aren't we doing something there uh the new places need to be safe all you have to do is spend some time looking out back in your backyard and see what goes on and it is hair-raising people are not safe there people who pass by are not safe there there's there are drugs they come in every Thursday at 4 p.m. I'm told and things get crazy there are gangs there are women being drugged and sold in prostitution and they're being stabbed and have bones broken this is not a good place out here we can do better we declared our county housing crisis to get a large grant two or three years ago why not follow the model of Sonoma County and create palette communities and put people together in their communities as you've said they do have communities within these places comments uh on zoom or on the phone yes chair we do call in user two your microphone is now available and Garrett um becky steinburner always has valuable suggestions that I would like to see the board follow through on I always ask the questions why is something happening and who benefits and we got a very disturbing report just now with figures and how this is a multifactorial problem and Ryan Coonerty I think you express well how what we're doing or what we're able to do is inadequate to address this huge problem an article that gave me insight on to this I like just because we're not the only county this is and I gave you a copy of the article chair conic because it was also written by a Peter conic it's called the implementation of the qr code for absolute control by Peter conic this is global research dot c you can keep your comments here are the figures some of what you were discussing here according to Forbes the economics analysis there were 2668 billion errors on april 5th of this year 2022 that's about a 34 percent increase in each stage you can clearly see that while the world population has become poorer the wealth of the rich and especially the super rich has multiplied bill gates wealth just one example has increased from 96 billion in 2019 thank you mr search your microphone is now available good morning chair conic and board of supervisors thank you for allowing me to speak this morning my name's surge cagno i'm the executive director recovery cafe Santa Cruz thank you randy and robert for your work your expertise and your outside the box thinking to help our community with our homelessness crisis thank you also for the point in time count preliminary report i've spoken before about recovery cafe Santa Cruz which present presently has 49 independent recovery cafes across the us in canada thank you supervisor friend who came and visited our program supervisor cap it who i've spoken with about our program in this discussion regarding homelessness including the intersection of mental health and substance use issues i would like to also add into the discussion that isolation and lack of community makes it more challenging for many to engage in services many people experiencing homelessness are not willing to receive shelter or shelter support services or consistency and engaging in the support services they're receiving recovery cafe Santa Cruz believes everyone needs a community i would like to invite the board and the housing for health staff to accompany me for a tour of recovery cafe san jose to see what partnership with the city of san jose using cbdg funding to create a beautiful environment to provide support services to increase service engagement housing stability and multiple outcomes of quality of life i'll be sending an invite for a tour if you're not available i hope you're able to send a staff member in your place i would also propose a pilot study showing the effect of the recovery cafe model in san jose on placing people in housing and maintaining housing for our community thank you for your time thank you for your and housing for health extensive work and creative problem solving with this public health issue be safe thank you mr kagno your microphone is now available can you hear us it seems like the speaker's having a difficult time connecting um this was the last speaker at this time all right thank you then i'll return to the board for action i'm happy to move the recommended action i don't know if supervisor berson wants to add any additional direction well i know i'll um don't hold off on that i think um let's get real about and get the information to see what the state does um and then uh if we can i would like to get a special study a study session before the end of the year well the complete um five member board of supervisors we have today is still here but we'll wait and see on that i'll second the motion uh just as presented okay motion to adopt the recommended actions by supervisor cunardy second by supervisor McPherson any further discussion seeing none clerk roll call vote please supervisor friend hi cunardy hi cappit hi mcpherson hi and conic hi sign him passes unanimously thank you directors randy and uh randy morris and robert ratner very much now proceed with item 10 to approve and concept and ordinance adding section 2.02.070 to the santa cruz county code to implement term limits for members of the county board of supervisors schedule a special meeting on the board of of the board of supervisors for 4 p.m on august 11th 2022 to adopt a resolution calling for an election to adopt the term limits at fourth in the draft ordinance as outlined in memorandum by supervisor cappit supervisor cappit please you bet uh thank you uh won't make it into a long presentation but i think most people are uh familiar with term limits and uh they've been proven successful with both the federal and state level as a means and also county and city level to encourage political participation uh by newcomers and to diversify the representation of the voting public um there is uh incumbents tend to have an advantage in almost every election um and uh uh name recognition is of course one and then uh the other would be uh you know political uh fundraising but uh they uh term limits have been popular uh some people say that things aren't any better or they might be worse since we've had term limits but if you think back uh about 20-something years ago uh pensions were out of hand and that was done before term limits came in all the ones that were elected on uh term limit uh laws were uh the ones that have changed the pension uh so it's sustainable and uh there's other there's other examples also so anyway uh there's many uh counties and cities that have instigated uh term limits and about 11 years ago i brought up a proposal for eight years um and if you notice this has changed it says uh you cannot uh run for a fourth consecutive election and uh i changed that so that allows 12 years but it also allows after four years uh the same one can come back and run again if they wanted uh it's a it would be a four-year break basically so those are two key changes i i do have a limit to my uh hypocrisy because if i if it was passed 11 years ago uh we wouldn't be in an uh uncomfortable position right now i wouldn't be here if it was passed eight years ago 11 years ago actually and uh this one doesn't affect current uh you know in a certain way it doesn't affect current supervisors because let's say uh supervisor right now has served two or three times terms like myself uh they would be able to run for three consecutive terms if i'm correct Jason so they could actually run for 12 more years take another break and come back and run for another three consecutive terms so anyway at the least uh this is calling for putting it before the voters and i think uh even if it was defeated there would be a benefit in a healthy uh public debate that uh voters could actually decide the whole issue uh i don't see it as being really controversial i think it's fair and i think it's very equitable anyway uh i i put it before you uh through your consideration thank you thank you sir supervisor capis supervisor McPherson yeah i i really don't have a preconceived thought on this of whether we should do it or not i do not think we can have a special meeting in two days of august 11th on it i couldn't make it at 4 p.m so that have to be somewhat i'd be surely open for discussion uh but as um as approved by the state legislature previously uh there there it has to go to a vote to be approved by a majority of the voters um and there have been some examples as the representative of the california state association of counties there are 12 counties now that do have some form of uh term limits the most popular being limited to three consecutive terms and and those are in the counties of los angeles san betel san aclara and dentura uh three counties have two consecutive terms that's eldorado orange county in san francisco um and then there's one uh with no fewer than two terms san bernadino was trying to limit it to one term but they said no that's too stringent uh two terms two terms total of san diego and san wakene and um two consecutive terms so i just mentioned that i think but there's 12 counties of the 58 now that have some form of term limits so it's not unusual i'd be open for the discussion but um at a time late august or sometime in september would be uh appropriate i think superb supervisor fran yeah mr chair i mean i appreciate um this supervisor cavin's been consistent about this um actually when he first ran he said no more than two terms and and here we are on the third term so i appreciate the change but but i was trying to figure out uh what problem we were trying to solve here so i went ahead and looked at the history of the board of supervisors you can uh look up every supervisor the the library actually has everybody's terms and in the last 170 years there have been a total of four supervisors that have actually served by my estimation longer than these 12 years so this isn't this isn't an issue in our counties what i'm saying in fact two of them it happened over a hundred years ago the last person to do it uh was uh supervisor patin about 30 years ago so i just don't know that this is really an issue i mean if this had been an ongoing in fact our chair is sort of evidence that it isn't an issue in regards to running against an incumbent that had served three terms so i just don't know that it makes sense to create this i'll say as somebody who i know that supervisor cappett said that that that there uh is proof at the state and federal level that this works at any public policy study seems to show the opposite of this in fact the term limits uh do create some issues in regards to uh not just institutional knowledge but also increases special interest uh funding and other issues so i don't know that this is really necessary if i'd seen when i'd gone back and looked at santa cruz county history of the board of supervisors that this had been an ongoing issue i think that there would be some merit to this but given the fact that the voters ultimately have a say every four years and whether or not they they want us to end our term at that time i think that it it actually doesn't make sense and i think that just looking at the history as i was saying supervisor cappett i mean it this isn't even a recent memory situation we're talking four and 170 years that have served in our positions two there over a hundred years ago that served longer than 12 years i just don't see this as an ongoing issue so i don't think i could be supportive of what's being presented because i just don't think it's it's really an issue and i think the voters should ultimately make it a determination for themselves as to whether or not they want any one of us to serve uh longer than those 12 years thank you mr chair thank you supervisor friend supervisor cunnerty sure supervisor friend made every point i was going to make ultimately um it's up to the voters and um this uh you know if this was a real issue we would see evidence of it but we haven't had a supervisor here for more than 12 years in uh in 30 years so uh it's uh it doesn't seem to be an issue right now and ultimately the voters i trust the voters to make this decision on who they want to have um in office thank you supervisor cunnerty i could just ask a couple of process questions the first is um you know around the proposal so the supervisor cappett's asking us to put this on the november ballot if i understand correctly and that requires a special meeting it does require a special meeting because august 12th at five p.m is the last time to put anything uh on for uh the november election and and if this board chose to it couldn't we couldn't just choose to put this on the november ballot now uh you arguably you could choose to put it on the november ballot now however staff has scheduled it so that you'll have the correct documents in front of you the resolution calling for the election and combining it with the general election for a special meeting on thursday okay thank you um and also just to point a clarification um to provide the cabinet was saying it wouldn't apply to any of the current board members but um you know for example myself i would still be limited to three terms even though i'm already seated i mean it's not that that that's correct it um and i can explain further if there's any confusion around that it's it's the the ordinance is is meant to apply prospectively according to state law so it is in effect as of the date that it is adopted right i think that's clear right and uh i do apologize in the sense for uh putting it up late uh you know could have been brought up earlier the problem was we were dealing with so much especially with covid homelessness and uh the uh nonprofits uh dealing with that and approving a budget and uh actually i talked to jason at that time and it just seemed like we'd probably still be talking about it after some of those meetings uh that we did have so uh i i don't know if uh does it would it have to be uh if we're proposing this for the next election in november that would require a special meeting or can we say that we're approving it for an election two years from now basically what your options you could adopt it you could adopt an ordinance like this at any time that you wanted to and the ordinance will not become effective until the voters approve it and so um that is an option yeah it doesn't have to be a specific election then your board could choose uh to adopt this ordinance today and not hold a special meeting and and decide when and if at a later date you wanted to call an election for the voters to implement it yeah i i just think it would be healthy for uh to firstifying the uh board and and uh you know letting newcomers uh uh we i think we'd have more participation in the in the future so i'm open to um amending it or going ahead with it and uh saying we'll do it for november either one's fine with me all right thank you um you know i just had a couple comments yeah certainly i appreciate you bringing this forward supervisor cap it um you know in in principle um clearly i i agree i ran on uh the the phrase the 12 years was enough sure um and i i think that ultimately voters are happy to tell us when they've uh had enough of any of us and um you know have an opportunity of course to express their opinion during those elections um i i'm i'm sort of ambivalent about whether or not it actually needs to be added added to statute um in our county code i i do agree with the comments of supervisor friend doesn't really seem like it's a problem um and um you know anytime we are creating a law um it doesn't have a defined problem i think just in in principle wary of that um and in adding unnecessary code um so uh yeah i i i guess i don't feel strongly about the need for an actual ordinance because i think voters uh ultimately like i said we'll tell tell us when they've had enough of us and three terms seems to be pretty consistent there in terms of that the length of time any supervisor on average serves okay well this is kind of like uh yogi bearer said uh deja vu all over again so anyway we'll we'll see what happens here thank you supervisor cap it i'll open it now for public comment thank you becky steinbrunner let me give you a different perspective from the other side of your dais i i have run for county supervisor twice and it was very difficult supervisor conig you know how hard it is when you have a well entrenched incumbent what what helped you is that you had a lot of money behind you to even put on television ads i had no money i had to borrow money to pay the $1,200 filing fee to run so there's a difference there and as a member of the public and a former candidate and i'm not a sore loser i i ran to give the people a choice on the ballot because they always need a choice what i think is healthy is that there are term limits and i support you putting this to the voters this november because it not only maybe it hasn't been a problem in the 170 years of the county but that doesn't say that it wouldn't be in the future and what it gives the public assurance is that there is an intent that a candidate will come in by a clear vote do the work they promised be mindful be transparent be accountable to the public and leave that's why our constitution is set up that way the president can only serve two terms because they recognize the responsibility to the public and that there needed to be a turnover regularly that needs to happen in santa cruz county whether it's it's supported by an ordinance or not but an ordinance makes the intent clear to the public and i do think as a member of the public that it should be on the ballot this november i'm sorry that it came at a last minute but i think it needs to happen we have no speakers on zoom at this time chair all right then i'll return to the board for action and mr chair i just think it's just i don't normally respond to these comments but i think it's important to note i mean the constitution actually wasn't set up with presidential term limits um that was the 22nd amendment in the early 50s and i think it's important if we're gonna at least uh cite the constitution we know what the constitution said at the beginning and all the way through that's the point of the amendment process we you know i think that our county has not had this issue historically um and if it becomes an issue moving forward uh every four years there's an opportunity or as as miss steinbrunner well knows there's also an attempt to try and recall candidates if there's some sort of uh issue that they have which also can or can't be successful there's a lot of there's a lot of of tools in the toolbox for people uh in a democracy uh to to be able to address their elected officials performance and this i think unnecessarily hamstrings future voters ability to make a determination of who they want to serve i mean right now what you're saying uh right now you would have a voter making a determination in november potentially to create a term limit that somebody who's six years old or seven years old won't be able to have their own say maybe there's at some point in the future when they have agency they would actually want somebody to serve 16 years or 20 years maybe there's a value to it i don't know um but we take away and limit their options by doing this this is a bright line and and so i think that this is actually a removal of options for for the voters and not the other way and i don't think that that makes any sense or hasn't been a historic issue in regards to this and so i'm just gonna i'm not going to support i know that uh supervisor cabell make the motion but i'm not i'm not going to support the motion for all those reasons thank you mr charles i might make a quick comment uh it does allow for it's basically a four-year break it would be three consecutive elections you take a four-year break that same person could come back and run again for three more so technically a supervisor could serve 24 years out of 28 is that correct yes that's correct yeah yeah so that it's basically it's not saying you couldn't run again and i do agree with you on the shelf life of a supervisor tends to be about 12 years i don't know i could the the exception of course was gary badden more more recently and if you go back farther in history there were a number of them that serve for more than 16 or 20 years consecutively but uh yeah more recently it would be the gary badd and he was a fine supervisor i have no problem with that thank you all right well then um is there a motion okay i'll i'll move to uh uh consider uh putting it on the ballot either for november or approving it for a future election uh um either either one if if there's a second thank you i'll second for the sake of discussion okay thank you is there any further discussion but yeah too uh too fast too soon now i'm gonna vote no thanks for a call vote please supervisor friend no coonerty no cap it by mcpherson and conan no this item did not pass all right thank you thank you very much that concludes our regular agenda for the day the board will now move into closed session but council is there any items that will be reportable out of closed session no reportable items today all right thank you very much then that brings the public portion of our meeting to a close the board's next regular meeting will be august 23rd tuesday at 9 a.m thank you