 Good morning. I'll now call to order the regular meeting of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. It is December 13th, 2022, 9 a.m. Clerk, will you please call the roll? Supervisor Friend. Here. Coonerty. Here. Stop it. McPherson. Here. And Koenig. Here. Thank you, Chair Yevgorov. Thank you. We'll begin with a moment of silence and followed by a pledge of allegiance. Supervisor McPherson, I believe you had a few words to share with us this morning. Yeah, I'd like to say that we remember today a tremendous individual, a great guy and a tremendous public servant, Judge Paul Maragonda, who passed away. He was a true public servant, a great family man, a great friend. He served on the Scotts Valley City Council before he became assistant district attorney. And he was named to be a judge here in Santa Cruz County. And December of 2006, and I was very happy to be one that suggested to a governor-owned short snigger that he'd be a public physician, a vacant physician and judge. That's me, sorry. A tremendous community, a public servant, served this county very well. I'd like us to remember Judge Paul Maragonda. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. I'll judge Maragonda in our hearts in this moment of silence. Please rise to the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the blood of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. C.A.O. Palacios, do we have any additions or deletions to the agenda today? Yes, we do. On the consent agenda, item number 35, there are additional materials, revised memo, packet page 966 replaced, recommended action three should read, direct staff to finalize contract negotiations and return with the final contract for board approval. And then on written correspondence, there's additional material, proclamation for national homeless persons Memorial Day, insert after packet page 2988. That concludes the additions to the agenda. Congratulations. Thank you. Moving on to item four, does any board member wish to remove items from the consent agenda to the regular agenda? Supervisor Cabot. I'm not going to remove it, but if we can, when we vote on the consent agenda, I'd like to just comment on one item and then I think there's a member of the public, they said they wanted to make a comment to- Certainly. And we'll now proceed with public comment. Any person may address the board during public comment. Speakers shall not exceed two minutes in length. And individuals may speak only once during public comment. All public comments must be directed to an item listed on today's consent agenda, closed session agenda, yet to be heard on the regular agenda or a topic not on the agenda that is within the jurisdiction of the board. Board members will not take actions or respond immediately to any public communication presented regarding topics not on the agenda, but may choose to follow up later either individually or on a subsequent board of supervisors agenda. Supervisor, there's a personnel matter on the consent agenda. Oh, yes, thank you. One moment. All right, pursuant to government code, section 54953, I'm announcing that this consent agenda includes item 46, which is an amendment to resolution number 279-75 to increase the salaries schedule for specified classifications in the unrepresented group, which includes local agency executives, staff recommendation with detailed information is outlined in the resolution as recommended by the personnel director and county administrative officer. I'll now proceed with public comment. Good morning, board. Is this on? It is, thank you. Jim Hart, chair of corner and Supervisor McPherson, I agree 100% with everything you said about Judge Maragana. He was truly a wonderful man. We're gonna miss him greatly. But I came by this morning. I'm aware there's an 11 o'clock agenda item to recognize Supervisor Caput and Coonerty by the scheduling conflicts. I wanted to stop by this morning and express my appreciation for Supervisor Caput for your 12 years on the board, Supervisor Coonerty for your eight years on the board. It's been an honor to work with you. We've had some remarkable events occurred during your tenure on the board, whether it was the historic rainfalls in 17 and all the road damage that occurred to a tsunami to the fires, to a pandemic, and in addition to all that, just the day-to-day governance of the county. And I believe that we owe you guys a debt of gratitude. We appreciate you. You don't hear it enough, but we appreciate the work that all of you do on this board. You're gonna be missed and I just wish you the best in whatever your next adventure is. And on behalf of the Sheriff's office, I have some certificate or each of you have a certificate of appreciation here. So thank you very much. Thank you, Sheriff Hart. Oh, you wanna reset the timer? Thank you. I want more than 41 seconds. Good morning. My name is Cynthia Drulli and I'm here today as the chair of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Commission. As you may know, California Welfare and Institution Codes requires each county to have a Juvenile Justice Commission. Our mission is to advocate for and protect the safety and well-being of dependent and juvenile justice youth and to promote intervention and prevention services and programs in Santa Cruz County. Welfare and Institution's Code also mandates that our commission conduct an annual inspection of the Juvenile Hall to evaluate its practices and to ensure the safety, health, education and programming requirements for youth at the hall or men. After the inspection is complete, we report our findings, which include making recommendations for areas of non-conformance to the Chief Probation Officer and the Board of Supervisors. Due to some miscommunications rounding its submission, a copy of the completed annual Juvenile Hall Inspection Report was attached today as written correspondence item N instead of as an agenda item. I'd like to request that the inspection report be put on the agenda for the January 10th meeting so that we can discuss this very comprehensive report which totals almost 200 pages and our recommendation to probation and the supervisors. I'd also like to thank Supervisor Caput and Supervisor Coonerty, both of whom I've worked with and my past life as director of Santa Cruz County and thank you very much for your service. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Drilly. Good morning. My name is Tom Reef. I'm known to several of you. Hi, Bruce. And I'm here just to speak on behalf of Rodeo Gulch Mobile Estates and the fact that the county and thank all of you on the board and your predecessors for supporting rent control in Santa Cruz County which is not always operating. I've lived in this mobile home park for 20 years and I could afford to do it because rent is controlled. That is it goes up periodically as part of the CPI and so it has risen but in terms of landowners turning on us and trying to do it, we've seen examples in Capitola and in Santa Cruz in the last 20 years of mass movement of people away from mobile homes because it was basically the rent control ordinances were allowed to lapse by legal action. You folks have stood up to this as recently as five years ago and you're probably gonna be facing that again and I just wanted to thank you on behalf of all our residents. We have a 255 residents plus and 205 units on four acres. That's a very high density for Mid County and in some sense of your support for people with low income are all seniors and we vary in age from 55 on up to our 90s and while I can't speak for all of them I have served on their board in various capacities and I've lived and managed another park as a member of a board so it's a great adventure. All I wanna say is thank you for your support. People will be coming to you at various times over the next year probably because of the very complex nature of these supports and defenses and I wanna thank you on behalf of all the residents in our park. So you all have a Merry Christmas, smile, you do great work and we'll see you around, okay, bye-bye. Thank you, Mr. Reef. Good morning, my name, good morning members of the board, Chair Koenig. My name is David Brody, I'm the Executive Director of First Five Santa Cruz County and I'm here today to thank you and Supervisor Friend in particular for proclaiming January 2023 to be the 11th annual Positive Parenting Awareness Month in Santa Cruz County. As many of you know, Positive Parenting Awareness Month is something that started right here in Santa Cruz County but is now replicated in counties across the state and even statewide through renewed action by our legislature recognizing Positive Parenting Awareness Month in the entire state of California. As many of you know, this growing movement to recognize that Positive Parenting is a powerful, recognizing that Positive Parenting is a powerful predictor of social, emotional and physical health of our young people and it acts as a protective factor helping prevent and heal against childhood or adverse childhood experiences. The importance of Positive Parenting is important and the importance of evidence-based programs that support Positive Parenting are equally important. This was recently reinforced as many of you may know by the Department of Healthcare Services and the New Children, Youth and Behavioral Health Initiative that released an RFA in support of Positive Parenting work and named two in particular evidence-based programs out of four in total that it would fund through the statewide initiative including Triple P and the Healthy Steps Program which you'd be familiar with both. The First Five Santa Cruz County, as you know, we are very proud to manage and operate the Triple P program in concert and coordination with this board, with your Health Services Agency, your Human Services Department and the Probation Department and many community partners. And if you're also well aware, you are champions of the Healthy Steps Program implementation in our county through the Thrive by Five program. So in summary, I just want to, on behalf of the First Five Santa Cruz County Commission, thank you all for recognizing Positive Parenting and Awareness Month in 2023. And of course, we're being ongoing supporters of children and families in our county. And a special thank you to Supervisor Caput and Supervisor Coonerty at this final meeting. Thank you. Thank you, Director Brody. Morning. My name is Tom Dubono and I'm a resident of Shoreline Mobile home of states on Merrill Street. And I'm here to speak on the agenda item regarding the rent controls and the CPI issue, totally supported. And we have 165 units in there. It's a senior park, 55 on up. And this is truly an affordable housing complex for the seniors in the county. I've spoken with, emailed with Manu Koenig, Supervisor on this issue in the past. I know in his neighborhood, he's got a couple of mobile home parks and those also are like a hundred plus units. So I strongly encourage you to vote on this issue in a favorable manner. And I appreciate all the support that you've given the rent control and supported in the past years. But just thank you for looking at that and appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Dubono. Good morning. Just wanted to confirm, Mr. Chair, here for item number 10 on the regular agenda, would the time to be speaking is now or when that item comes up? You're welcome to speak either now or during the item. I'll wait for the item then. Oh, thank you. Morning, my name is James Ewing Whitman. I don't know the last time I've actually witnessed all five of you here together in person. So December 6th, there were five items on the agenda on the 130th, item 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17. They're now part of the consent agenda, I believe from 24 to 33, unless a citizen makes note that there's some questions about that, they can't take legal action. So there's a couple other items that I'm just not familiar with. I mean, today must be a record. There's almost 3,000 pages in those two binders out there. What can I say? It's just good to be present. It's nice that all of you are here and that's about it for now. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Whitman. All right, seeing no one else here in, or if anyone else here in chambers was like to comment on the Consent Agenda or any regular agenda item, please go ahead and speak now. Any item? You may. I just came a little late here. I'm sorry. My name is Antonio Rivas from the City of Wansumel here. And the only reason I'm coming in before you, I'm very concerned in regard to the Live Oak Senior Center because you are aware the planning to close down the Senior Center in Live Oak at the end of this month. That will be the Christmas present for our seniors in Live Oak. It is my hope that the County Supervisors be able to step in and hopefully the Senior Center will not be closed down. It is my hope that maybe the new members of the City of the County Supervisors, the new members be able to bring this Live Oak Senior Center into putting them in the agenda so they can be able to come out with some options because the people are Live Oak along with the County or the Senators at the County of Santa Cruz, they're gonna suffer. It is my hope that maybe you can be able to bring this item and put in the agenda and discuss it and see if we can come out with some options for the Senior Center at Live Oak. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Rivas. Anyone else here in Chambers that would like to comment? Seeing none, is there anyone on Zoom? Yes, Chair, we do have speakers online. Marianne? Marianne, it looks like you're using an outdated version of Zoom. I'm going to go ahead and move to the next speaker unless you're able to update that we can come back to you. Caller ending in 1401, your microphone is now available. This is Marilyn Garrett. I'd like to refer people to a document. I think it's put out by Westonaprice.org. The title is COVID Shots for Adults and Children and you do have an item on the agenda regarding shots. What we know now is very well documented. Here's some of the topics on this. People are doing fine without the shots. The shots won't prevent COVID-19 and could lead to even worse outcomes. Adverse reactions are to be expected. Adverse reactions are not rare. The shots are affecting menstrual cycles and causing miscarriages and could make women sterile. There is ample cause for concern about the COVID shots ingredients, not all of which have been disclosed. The safety of administering COVID shots at the same time as other shots has not been studied. COVID shots are liability free. Under US law, the manufacturers of the COVID shots are protected from all liability. If you are injured, you cannot sue. Who will help with medical bills if you or your child is injured? Who will care for your child? Are you willing to take the risk? And here are some additional sources, a documentary titled MRNA Vaccine Genocide. Thank you, Ms. Pierce. CP, your microphone is now available. Hi, thank you. My name is Cindy Pierce and I live at Shoreline Mobile Home Estates. And I also urge you to adopt the proposed amendments to the county's mobile home park rent adjustment ordinance. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Pierce. Michael, your microphone is now available. Good morning, commissioners. You may be aware that there's been some problems with the online agenda since Thursday. It's been up and down and up and down. When I tried to start the meeting this morning using the link from the online interactive agenda, the Zoom ID that is posted on the agenda this morning is incorrect. I had to go to the PDF copy of the agenda to find the correct ID number that would allow me to join. So there may be a number of people who have been trying to join this meeting today who could not using the online interactive agenda. Thank you, thank you, Lewis. Norma, your microphone is now available. Good morning. My name is Norma Mulatt and I am a mobile home owner in the Rodale Gulch Mobile Home Park. And I strongly urge the Board of Supervisors to adopt the proposed amendments to the County's Mobile Home Park Rent Adjustment Ordinance. I thank you for doing so and I thank you for all that you do. Merry Christmas. Thank you, Ms. Mulatt. Jan, your microphone is now available. Good morning. I am a mobile home owner in Shoreline Estates Mobile Park. I urge you to adopt the proposed amendments to the County's Mobile Home Park Rent Adjustment Ordinance. Thank you. Thank you, Jan. We have no further speakers at this time, Chair. We have one more speaker here in chambers. Go ahead. Yes, thank you. What a great pleasure to see all five of you here in person. This is really great. It's been a long time over two years. I would like to speak Consent Agenda Item 17 regarding remote and hybrid workspace for County employees. I would like to propose that the Board consider offering shared parking space to those hybrid employees so that when they are here working their two days a week that they can be staggered and actually share parking spaces in the lot at 701. It could reduce their cost for parking here and it could also free up parking spaces for the public and for jurors, which is really hard to find many, many times. I would like to speak with you about Item Number 23, your decision last week to change the Fire Department Advisory Commission residency requirement. Under this change, those who serve the rural people in County Service Area 48 as their commissioners will not even have to be part of CSA 48. They could be urban dwellers. And I told you last week, I'll tell you again, this is a disservice, a real disservice to those of us who live in County Service Area 48 and depend on the commissioners as our voice to you for recommendations. This group makes budgetary proposals, policy changes. If they're not affected and they have no idea what County Fire is, we are not being served well. And this happened, you know, Supervisor McPherson in the CSA 48 2020 special benefit. It was the FDAC that did all that work, working with your office, but they did the work. So please do not ask this change. You will not serve the people well. Thank you, Ms. Steinbrenner. I also. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Steinbrenner. Yeah. All right, so you know further public comment, I'll return to the board for action on the consent. Chair, we've had one more, we have one more speaker on line. Okay, thank you. Karen, your microphone is now available. Thank you. I am Karen Lynn. I also live at Rodeo Gulch and I want to thank you all for supporting us as mobile home and especially senior mobile home owners and to keep the rent affordable for us. Thank you very much for having our backs. Merry Christmas. Thank you, Ms. Lynn. Thank you. We have no further speakers. All right, then now I'll return to the board for action on the consent agenda. Okay, I'll move to approve, but I'll make a comment on item 55. Go ahead, Supervisor Caput. You will. Okay. Did you want to comment on item, no, go ahead. Now's the appropriate time. All right, I'm probably one of the few in the audience that remembers us. Item 55 deals with bathrooms that are locked up when you go to get coffee like at Starbucks, the one here on the parking lot. They have all the bathrooms locked up and people can't use them or whatever. So item 55 is looking at that. Now, when I say I'm old enough to remember, maybe Supervisor McPherson will remember this. Back in the 1950s, my mother used to have to carry, she had to have nickels in her purse because you had to put a nickel to be able to use the bathroom, to be able to go to the bathroom in a public restroom. So that goes back a long time ago. There was a woman in the 1950s that was a regular mother, housewife, whatever. And she got on a campaign. Her name was March Fong Yu. And she became known and it went national is that she came out and said, that's not fair. It's not right that you have to have a nickel to use the bathroom. And it was very difficult for mothers with kids and all that to go in and use the restroom. Anyway, she went on to a political career and got elected year after year as Secretary of State of the State of California. And she was a very popular politician for many years. So anyway, and also a quick story, a good friend of mine, Haskell Dane in Watsonville was a Baptist preacher. And when he got older, he had to have a radiation treatment. And he had to go from Watsonville, drive his car from Watsonville to Monterey. So when he got about halfway, there was a barn near Castorville. And so he would pull in to that barn and then he'd run around the back of the barn and go to the bathroom and then get back in the car and go on to Monterey. Well, the farmer came out finally that was working in the field and caught him and said, what are you doing? Three times a week, you're coming in, you're going behind my barn or whatever. And he said, well, I'm getting radiation treatment for cancer and I can't hold it. I can only go so far and I have to go to the bathroom. So what I'm getting at is, we have a lot of people with disabilities, we have a lot of older people that are getting maybe treatment, medical treatment or whatever. All they have to do is put a combination maybe on the bathroom and give the code out. I know that there's a problem with the homeless situation. But anyway, it just in my final shot here on the board, I thought it would be a good idea to have some kind of ordinance locally to require businesses that are open that have to have a bathroom for people. And I know Antonio Rivas is a former mayor of Watsonville and he's here and he'll comment too. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you very much, Caput. Mr. Rivas, I do appreciate that and recognize that you support item 55. We've had public comment period. So I'm gonna... Oh, I'm sorry. But your support is noted. Thank you. Yeah, I support that. Okay. Thanks, Antonio. All right. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. Any other Supervisor Coonerty? Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. First, I wanna thank the staff for making my last meeting a small, easy agenda. Just ease me out the door. But thousands of page later, just have a couple of comments I wanted to make. The first is an item number 58, which is the public defender report. I just wanna appreciate our public defender, Heather Rogers, for really focusing on outcomes in a report and in her department's operations. And I think that in collaboration with the other justice partners could have make a real impact, positive impact in our community. And I wanna commend it and I hope it continues. On item number 75, which is Thrive by Five, I just wanna note that we had some really remarkable outcomes for babies and toddlers in our community have reduced poverty, fewer low-weight babies, more prenatal care. And that I'm just thrilled with this program and the way that we've been able to invest in moms and babies. And it's gonna have a generational impact. Finally, well, actually two more items. One is on a 78, which is the vacation rentals. I just wanted to note that when we sent out these letters to 500 vacation rentals, there was one number and one staff member who had to take all the calls. And I wanna appreciate Patty in planning for, right over here, for taking that burden. I think it's one of those things that like, when we pass policy, we don't think about the folks who are on the front lines as often. And I heard it was an experience and I just wanna appreciate you for doing that. And then finally, Cynthia Drewley for the Juvenile Justice Commission, the amount of time and effort that those citizens put in to do that facilities report is remarkable, as many of our commissioners are in their volunteer efforts. And I wanna take a second to appreciate the professionalism and thoughtfulness of their inspection of our facility, which houses children. And it's incredibly important that we have that oversight. Thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. Supervisor Friend. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Couple of brief things for us to register and to vote on item 19 on item 78, which is the, as Supervisor Coonerty had mentioned, deals with the enforcement efforts on short term. Rentals I had requested that this item had come back. So a lot of appreciation for the amount of work, hundreds of hours as it showed in order to do this. It did show to me that there are some pretty significant gaps though in both resources and our own internal systems communicating that need to be remedied moving forward. Because ultimately we've been through multiple iterations of this ordinance. And we clearly did not set up a structure to actually allow for enforcement of the ordinance. And so if you were an individual operating illegally of those that we know, because the ones that we know are the ones that actually paying taxes. So I'm sure there's hundreds more that aren't. We can assume that there's hundreds that we're actually paying taxes outside of our system. Really have no incentive under our current ordinance to actually do anything because we're saying right here in this board letter that we don't have the resources to do any enforcement. So given the fact that we just passed, the voters passed an increase in the TOT associated with this, to me there's clearly should be some resources dedicated from that to go back to planning to help with this enforcement process. And it was actually committed to in the ballot language anyway. But I do think that, especially working with the auditor's office, and I see that auditors here, we need and I see that there have been some system improvements and changes on the movement and platform, but we clearly need a system that shouldn't take 500 hours to see whether somebody's registered or not. I mean, there are ways to write code to actually have things communicate with each other so that we can, the two systems can communicate in a way that makes people's lives a heck of a lot easier on the enforcement side. And we need to be able to ensure that those that are following the rules within the neighborhoods are rewarded and those that are problematic within neighborhoods are not. We don't even have a good section, a good way to correct data on whether or not people are actually violating. I mean, we have the sheriff's office is now having these regular scheduled meetings, these calls that come in are not necessarily coded or associated with vacation rentals, given the fact that our ordinance is also lacking and requiring that there be a permit number in the actual language on the posting. I think it's difficult to do a simple cross-check like other communities have. The long way of me saying that I support these recommended actions, but it's clear that we need to do more. We obviously are lacking in the regard of enforcement on this. We have resources coming in out the TOTs. My expectation would be when this item comes back or in a mid-year budget component that it's that we provide the needed resources associated to the planning department to ensure that we can improve enforcement on that. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Supervisor Friend. Supervisor McPherson. Yes, I'd like to come out and wanted item number 48, the Equal Employment Opportunity and Cultural Competency Plan. I especially want to thank the CAO and the personnel departments and the commissions for providing this report to the board. And thank you to the commissions in particular. They've worked really hard on this multi-page report. I was glad to see that the county continues to increase representation of women and people of color within the county workforce, especially in the areas of administration and protective services. We have some areas that still need improvement. We recognize that, but I know we're committed to having our county workforce mirror the community and ensure that we are in and ensure that we are encouraging diversity and equity through the recruiting and hiring process. So I especially want to thank our CAO, Carlos Palacios to putting this on the front page, literally for our county operations and this county board of supervisors too that has always been front and center in making sure that we promote equity for everyone in our personnel department. And I really do appreciate what they've done. And I'm really proud of what the county is doing and what it will do in the future. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. On item 67, accepting the completion of six shallow monitoring wells for Mid County Groundwater Basin. I'd just like to congratulate the Mid County Groundwater Agency and thank County Resources Manager, Sierra Ryan on the completion of these six monitoring wells as our county faces uncertainty of our water supply. These monitoring wells are part of a sustainable groundwater system that we're building to be able to collect surface water during rainy days like we've been having and stored in the ground for those hot summer days ahead. These monitoring wells will tell us just where we're at in terms of aquifer levels and I think this progress is very reassuring. On item 78, the report on proactive short-term rental enforcement efforts. First, unless anyone get any ideas from this report, I think that we actually have been pretty effective as far as collecting the transient occupancy taxes in our Auditor-Controller-Traitor-Attacks-Collector's Office and really where we need to step up efforts as Supervisor Friend said on enforcement against problem vacation rentals that are bothering their neighbors or lack of permit from our planning department. So I also want to acknowledge the efforts of our code compliance and planning staff on this as it was noted by Supervisor Coonerty. It took over 500 hours that they invested in this. We have gotten some substantial improvements. I appreciate the new button on the website that makes it a lot easier to report a vacation rental violation. I appreciate the initial conversation with the Sheriff's Office to improve tracking of complaints. I think we have a ways to go there still, but it was a good step in the right direction. And of course, just the process of beginning to share data between the planning department and the Auditor-Controller-Traitor-Attacks-Collector's Office is a good step. So for next steps, I'm looking forward to further discussions about increasing staffing during the major budget hearings. Thank you. Is there a motion? I'll move. The blue is to approve. Second. That motion approved the consent agenda with a second by Supervisor Caput, second by Supervisor Coonerty. Any further discussion? Seeing none. Clerk will call vote please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. McPherson and Koenig. Aye. Incent agenda passes unanimously with a no vote registered from Supervisor Friend on item 19. Thank you. We will now proceed with agenda item seven, which is a public hearing to consider a resolution of approving amendments to the unified fee schedule as outlined in the memorandum of the County Administrative Officer. And for presentation on this item, we have our County Budget Manager, Marcus Pimentel, and Mike Ars, our Associate Administrative Analyst. Good morning, Board. Thank you. I am your County Budget Manager, Marcus Pimentel. Thank you for holding today's public hearing on the proposed amendments to our unified fee schedule. This is my quickest presentation ever. I'm gonna turn the rest of the show over to our Associate Administrative Analyst, Mike Ars, who's gonna provide the overview. And we have departments here who are available for questions. Good morning, members of the Board. I am Mike Ars, from the County Administrative Office. Mike, if you could just use your microphone, please, thank you. Press the button. It is green. Okay, just get a little closer. Sorry about that. Good morning, members of the Board. I am Mike Ars, from the County Administrative Office. Twice each year in June and December, the Board adopts amendments to the unified fee schedule. On November 15, 2022, the Board set a public hearing for today for the latest proposed amendments. There are revisions from the Clerk Elections Office, the Community Development and Inference Structure, Public Works, Parks, Health Services, and the Sheriff's Office. Representatives from each department are available to answer any questions. It is recommended that your Board open the public hearing for comment, close the public hearing, and then adopt the resolution, revising the unified fee schedule. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Arsé. Are there any questions or comments from members of the Board? Seeing none, I'll open the public hearing. Good morning, my name is Becky Steinbruner, I'm a Resident of Rural Abtos. I always investigate these issues because I find them interesting. And I know that the fees for reservations of certain parks is going to go up. And I do not think that is necessary because the voters passed Measure G and that gave quite a lot of sales tax money to support the parks. And Abtos Village Park was one of them. In the ballot language fine print, it said that Abtos Village Park would get $435,000 from this tax. And it's gotten none. So to raise the fees for people to use the park, I feel is not in the public's best interest, especially when the voters have approved money to support that park and others that are also going to experience fee increases. I also want to point out to your Board that the most substantial fee increase I saw in reading the documentation was the application fee for concealed firearms, going from $25 to $474. I spoke with a couple of law enforcement people coming up in the elevator. They say it does not affect law enforcement people. They are allowed to have concealed carry permits free of charge, but it will affect the public. And I would like your Board to request law enforcement staff to verify why this extreme increase in cost is coming about and what improvement in service and public safety it will provide. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Steinbrenner. Anyone else here in chambers? Which is the comment on this item? Seeing none. Is there anyone on Zoom? Yes, Chair. We do have a speaker online. Call and user 1401. Your microphone is now available. I wanted to thank Becky Steinbrenner for her research all the time on these agenda items and letting the public know the implications. I was agreeing with what she said about the park fees. I had no idea why it hasn't the money gone to the parks as so designated and public parks should be available for people. Always our taxes paid for them and not additional costs. So thank you, Becky. That's the end of my comments. Thank you. We have no further speakers for this item chair. All right, then I will close the public hearing and return to the board for action. With the recommended action. So motion by Supervisor Coonerty, seconded by Supervisor Friend to adopt the recommended actions. Any further discussion? I will just add that there was one question raised about fees, particularly for concealed carry permits. Really the Board of Supervisors may not levy fees that are beyond reasonably necessary, those reasonably necessary to cover costs. So the fees for issuing a concealed carry permit have gone up. I think it's probably because the extensive amount of background research that is required for that. It's a lot of staff time. And again, we're not legally allowed to charge anything more than just cost recovery for this. So with that, there's no further discussion. Roll call vote please. Supervisor Friend. Hi. Coonerty. Hi. Robert. Hi. McPherson. And Koenig. Hi. Item passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you, staff. We'll now proceed with item eight, which is to consider the terms and conditions of the purchase and sale agreement to acquire real property located at 5,300 Soquel Avenue. Santa Cruz APN 029, 021 55 and authorize the Deputy CAO Director of Community Development and Infrastructure to execute the purchase and sale agreement on behalf of the County and authorize the Department of Community Development and Infrastructure to complete the feasibility studies required to waive the contingency set forth and the purchase and sale agreement and so forth. We'll now have a presentation on the item by our real property manager, Kimberly Finley and Tiffany Cantrell Warren, our Assistant Director of Health Services Agency and Monica Morales, our Director of the Health Services Agency. Good afternoon, Chair and members of the board. My name is Kimberly Finley. I'm the Chief Rural Property Agent with the Department of Community Development and Infrastructure. I appear before you today to recommend execution of a purchase and sale agreement to purchase real property located at 5,300 Soquel Avenue to serve as a children's crisis center. The 5,300 Soquel Avenue property is improved with a 30,220 square foot, two-story multi-tenant flex office building. The building was constructed in 2001 with a concrete slab foundation, reinforced concrete and wood building frame and is comprised of 11% warehouse. The parcel is approximately 0.47 acres with 59 dedicated parking spaces and shared use of an additional 300 parking spaces. The purchase as proposed is 100% grant funded. The property is located in Midtown of Highway One at Soquel Avenue and Chanticleer Avenue. It is located on the shared campus with the existing Sheriff's Public Safety Center. It is close to Dominican Hospital and the location of the proposed Kaiser campus. The property is envisioned as a children's crisis stabilization unit and short-term residential therapeutic program to be operated by the Santa Cruz County Health Services Agency. The proposed new program will support youth in crisis on a local level as opposed to being sent out of County for hospitalization. Additionally, the program will be designed to address and reduce the behavioral health disparities that exist over the Latinx youth and families in our County and will provide bilingual care. As part of the initial feasibility work for the property, HSA hired an architect to create the initial design of the proposed program floor pan. The architect created a test fit visual model based on the as built drawings of the property and has confirmed that the property will meet the space needs of the program. To further discuss the community needs and detail of the program, I will pass the presentation to Monica Morales, Director of the Health Services Agency. Hi, good morning. Thank you for having us here today. This is a very important initiative for us in our community. Many of you have met with me and discussed the needs for behavioral health services for our youth. And so this is such an amazing opportunity for us to really build the system of behavioral health for our youth in our community. As you guys are aware, currently, we do have a crisis stabilization unit in our County, but unfortunately it's under the capacities not there for the need that we have in our community. We know that our hospitals are struggling right now with diversion options for youth and adults. And so for us, this is gonna be a significant opportunity to really expand that care. One of the issues for us is the space. And so what an opportunity now that we were able to identify this building. And so I'm really urging the board to consider approving the purchase of this facility. What really we're planning for is that we would actually expand our crisis stabilization programming from four bits to eight. And that's quite significant for us. It would be almost stumbling. Currently what we're experiencing unfortunately is that sometimes you don't have any bits available. That's where you see the range from zero to four currently. And so what we're hoping is not only what we have the ability to stabilize our youth, we actually will also have the ability to provide residential programming for them. So that means that we stabilize them, we then move them even within our County into a residential program. Currently we have to send our children out of County. And so that's devastating not only for the youth, it's devastating for the families and even for the system that we have here because we have to spend resources on travel, resources in our staff and the families themselves also have to spend resources to travel out of County. So what we're seeing is that we'll go from having zero support on our residential to 16 potential beds, a significant improvement for us. We have worked on the strategic plan that you set forth. As you can tell, this meets one of our key indicators which is really expanding the integration of behavioral health services. So it goes and it's very much aligned with what the community needs, what the board has set forth for our County and specifically for the vision of HSA as well. To support this project, HSA has already obtained approximately 13 million from grants and other sources. Additionally, HSA was recently awarded a grant of just under 12 million from the behavioral health continuum infrastructure program. And HSA is currently investigating whether these funds could be applied to future tenant improvements for the program. The total available and potential grant funds available are currently 24,770,000 dollars. The real property section has negotiated a purchase price of $7.9 million or 5,300 SoCal Avenue, which equates to $261.42 per square foot of gross building. The purchase property of 7.9 plus the feasibility which will need to occur, the soft costs and the potential tenant relocations are anticipated to equal 9.5 million for the full acquisition. Based on this $9.5 million acquisition cost and the total available and potential grant funds, this will leave approximately $15 million left for potential tenant improvements in the future. So next steps, the purchase and sale agreement contains a 150-day escrow period. This includes a 120-day physical contingency period. During this term, real property will complete a facility condition assessment, asbestos survey, lead-based paint inspection, mold inspection, short-term radon testing, ADA assessment and seismic investigations. If the property is determined to be a sound investment based on investigations, County will waive the contingencies and move towards the 30-day close of escrow. After close of escrow, the Capital Projects Division of CDI will begin implementation of a project to convert the building to the Children's Crisis Center, which will include a zone change, CEQA review, an RFQ for final design, and a return to the Board of Supervisors for approval to bid the project. Based on the following, we now recommend the Board approve and accept the terms and conditions of the purchase and sale agreement to acquire real property located at 5300 SoCal Avenue, Santa Cruz, APN 029-02155, authorize the Deputy CAO, Director of Community Development and Infrastructure, to execute the purchase and sale agreement on behalf of the County. Authorize the Department of Community Development and Infrastructure to complete the feasibility studies necessary to waive contingencies set forth in the purchase and sale agreement. Authorize the close of escrow if and when all contingencies are met pursuant to the terms of the purchase and sale agreement, and authorize the Chair of the Board to execute the certificate of acceptance for the associated deed and escrow documents as required to effectuate transfer of the property to County. Thank you very much. This completes our presentation and we are available for questions. Thank you, Agent Finley and Director Morales. Are there questions or comments from members of the Board? I'm surprised you can or didn't, sure. So let me just say this is a critical need. I hear about it all the time from families in crisis and I'm so glad you're moving forward with this project. Do you have a sense of the timeline and when those beds sort of would come active? So in terms of the timeline that Kimberly presented, we probably are looking at May, hopefully a little sooner. Go ahead, Kimberly. And then I'll talk about the programmatic pieces. Do you want to? Yeah, so I do just want to clarify that we would be closing escrow and May so therefore County would be owner of the property. However, we would still need to go into final design construction estimates, return to the Board for bids on construction and then perform construction. I am not managing that project and so I don't want to over speak on that timeline. Okay. So for us, we would piggyback off of that timeline. Let's just say, it's towards the end of the year, really it's gonna take us, we're in the middle of conceptualizing what an RFP would look like for these services. It's two different services. So we have to think about packaging that as you're aware that takes a few months to do and also the recruitment of some of the lead staff that would oversee. So my goal is to try to get something by mid-2024, the latest based on infrastructure timeline. Yeah, so that was the second part of my question, which is the physical building takes time but hopefully soon around later. But I also know that recruiting staff is always a challenge and how do you feel about your ability to appropriately staff these beds so that we can have them available when families need them? That's right, one of the key strategies for us is actually contracting with a vendor for this care. And so that should hopefully help that you're absolutely right. We still have the challenge of internal staff that would oversee the project. Currently what we're doing is we're leveraging existing expertise in the department to make this work. So we don't have staff right now, but this is a commitment that we have in our department to move forward with this. And I definitely want to see if Tiffany has anything else to add on the staffing. Okay, great, thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. Supervisor Friend. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do have a question, also some comments. My question is, and maybe I missed this in the report, but does the funding restrict the population that can be served to just children on MediCal or is it available to the broader population of children? It can be available to the broader population of children. We haven't gotten that far in our planning, but there's no restriction on that. Thank you. I mean, as the Criminal Justice Council, some of you are involved just completed a behavioral health report with frontline law enforcement. I mean, the overarching theme that continued to stem from it was the lack of beds and the sense of where the number of diversions that occur because of telecare for the adult population, the out of county transports for children and just a general sense of an increase in the number of calls that are coming into both health and local law enforcement agencies associated with this without necessarily the resources to address it. So this purchase and this conversion has an opportunity to be transformational for youth in our community to really provide, to extricate out of the criminal justice system, children that are really having a health issue and also to supplement the health system to ensure that those resources are provided. And a third thing that isn't really discussed for the parents who really do not know who to turn to in a time of crisis and want to be able to provide not just love and support, but the adequate treatment that their children need but don't know what to do. And so having this facility would really, I think will completely change the trajectory for a number of families in our community. Unfortunately on a need that continues to grow and recognizing that this is just the end of a beginning step. And we clearly need to continue to expand in order to meet this growing need in our community. But I appreciate you answering that question about the population that could be served. And I just appreciate that the overall work has been done on us. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Yeah, I would reiterate every comment that's been made. I look forward to requiring this program that really meets a critical need for our youth and the families and our guardians. I also think it's significant to note that this is meeting a real key element of our strategic plan that was implemented by our CAO several years ago now. And we're putting it into place, what we said we needed to do and what is needed in our community. And to congratulate you for putting together a great grant application program, $24 million doesn't come and go every year. Significant way of really serving our community. We all know there's a tremendous need in our community and really throughout this state and nation to address some of these issues of behavioral health, especially with our youth. So I am really happy that we're able to do this. And I wanna congratulate each and every one of you. And again, for this county, for looking ahead to say this is really a tremendous need in our community. And we put it in our strategic plan and we're gonna meet it. So I appreciate it very much. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Yeah, I'll just add that this is clearly, we've had a lot of discussions about some of the shortcomings of our behavioral health system today. And I think this is gonna be a huge step forward in the right direction to meet some of those needs. Chair Koenig, if I could comment. Oh, certainly. See you. I just wanted to congratulate our staff for moving so quickly on this project. We only became aware of the opportunity a few months ago and they have moved with light speed to get this to the point it is. So I congratulate them on their sense of urgency, which we all know is it's a very important need that we need to meet. The other issue I'd point out is that this is a unique opportunity to acquire an existing building. And so we had originally been talking about building a building from scratch, which would cost roughly double. So by taking an existing building and remodeling it, we're saving quite a bit of the public's money. If we were trying to build them, building from the ground up, we would still be trying to raise funds. So this is a unique opportunity and we do recommend the board approve it. Thank you. Thank you, CAO Palacios. I said, it is an incredible opportunity. I'm excited to support moving forward with it today. And I'll just add, I'm really excited that this is a facility that can be located in Mid County, especially given the importance of youth having their friends and family nearby and for this facility being accessible. I think it's great that it'll be ultimately right in the middle of the county and as accessible to everyone as possible. Thank you. So any member of the public that was to comment on this item? Thank you. Becky Steinbrenner, resident of rural Aptos. This is an incredible opportunity. And I wanna thank staff too, for doing a great job of getting this grant money for our community and that I think is a real, unfortunately, a real growing need. And I am happy that these youth will be able to stay in this county rather than being shipped to San Jose or Fremont or Napa even sometimes they are taken. The issue I have with this property is the issues that have come to the county taxpayers to repair 5,200 Soquel Avenue, which was built at the same time and by the same developer, Barry Swenson Builder, taxpayers have had to do a lot of building repairs to 5,200. So I hope that the 5,300 will be very carefully scrutinized for the issues that have been that the taxpayers have had to repair in its twin building next door, the Sheriff's Center. There were foundation drainage problems, cracks, water leaking in through the windows. So please take care and make sure we are not saddled with that problem again. I also am worried that there's no public transportation to this area, not at all. And I want that fixed, it's going to need to happen with Kaiser Medical Program down the road. I have concerns hearing that it could be managed by an outside vendor. I hope it's not telecare. We have had many people who have registered complaints and concerns with you about telecare. So I hope that that is thoroughly vetted and that we have good staff that will treat our youth and their families with the good care and not prescribe medications. I have a concern about the satellite. Thank you, Ms. Steinburner. Thank you. Seeing no one else here in chambers, is there anyone on Zoom? Yes, we do have speakers on Zoom. Caller ending in 1401, your microphone is now available. This property being adjacent to the share of station is problematic in terms of the satellite that Becky started to address. I've brought this up before, I'm a retired teacher and I was with a group farm without harm. So the first thing with children, the priority is that the environment be safe and healthy working and living environment, however it is, that's the top priority. So by having this location and telecare also is very problematic. Next to this giant radar side, I refer to the September 11th, 2022 front page of the Sentinel. What's that giant orb radar installation now? Todd Santa Cruz, Sheriff's office rooftop and a whole article on it. And then it referred you to a book, The Zapping of America by Paul Brodure, 1977 about the dangers of radar. So you are planning to put children to help them, bringing them out of poverty and having full employment for the parents might be the best thing to do, right? In a dangerous location, that's what the evidence is here. And the study of military personnel by radar installation shows health problems. Thank you, Ms. Kara. Mark, your microphone is now available. Hi, hopefully you can hear me. I'm Mark Yellen. I'm one of your emergency physicians at Dominican Hospital. I've been there since 1987. I also serve as medical director for the paramedics in our community. I could take many minutes describing what we've been dealing with in the ER and how to deal and dealing with our adolescent pediatric population and our behavioral health problems. But to keep it short, I totally support the endeavors and the planning and the proposals presented here. It will be a huge, huge improvement in our system, something that's extremely needed. And I think I can speak for all of the providers in the emergency department at Dominican, and I'll even stretch my neck out and say for once and for two, that this is a huge gap in our system that we've been dealing with. And everything that you as a board and our community that we can do to support this and to expedite it will only be a positive point in our system and fill a big gap. There will be problems. I'm sure there'll be some issues and there's never gonna be a perfect scenario, but this is something that we desperately need. And I encourage you to all vote in favor of this and help move it forward. Thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. Yellen. We have no further speakers, Chair. All right, then I'll return to the board for deliberation and action. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. Motion by Supervisor Friend, second by Supervisor McPherson. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk will call the police. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Captain. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Koenig. Aye. Item passes unanimously. Thank you. I proceed with item nine, the public hearing to consider adoption of a resolution authorizing the application and adopting the Permanent Local Housing Allocation Program Plan, the Permanent Local Housing Allocation Program Plan. And a presentation on this item, we have our principal planner, Suzanne Isay. Thank you, Chair Koenig and good morning, Board. This item is essentially what I consider a sort of minor tweak to our existing five-year plan. I can move my slides forward here. For those who are not familiar, the PLHA program, it's the Permanent Local Housing Allocation Program was created through state legislation in 2017. It was a bill that Senate Bill 2 that did a number of things for affordable housing and one of the key points of that bill, which you may recall, was to create a new permanent ongoing source of funding to be generated through the state to support localities, cities and counties efforts to support affordable housing and provide programs and facilities to address homelessness. So that's where the program comes from. The funding is generated from a fee that is paid when people record certain types of real estate documents with the county recorder. Generally, these are for certain types of property sales, financing of properties and so forth. So the initial amount that was generated in the first several years, we just had estimates from the state as to how much we might get in the five-year period. Currently, they now know up to year three of how much we will get, but we still only have sort of placeholder figures for the years four and five. One of the primary motivations for creating this new source was the state's Dissolution of Redevelopment Agencies in 2012. Some of you may recall the county had a redevelopment agency and that was the main source of funding that the county had for supporting these types of programs and housing developments. At this point in time, as the state, it's being a very new program. It took them a little while to develop the guidelines and administrative processes for this grant. And we've really just learned over the last year, year and a half, some of the nuances of working with this program. And so one of the nuances that came out more recently is that one of the activities that we had chosen with our plan required a lot of advanced coordination with the state in order for us to even be able to make a commitment, not to spend the funds, but just to give a conditional letter of commitment of funds to an entity, whether it was a housing sponsor of a new affordable housing development or it might be that we wanted to commit funds to let's say renovate some existing shelter facility or transitional housing facility. Before we could make that commitment, we would have to draft loan documents, deed restrictions, which are, these tend to be voluminous documents, lots of pages, and send it up to the state for their contracts team and their legal team to review it in advance before we could provide such a commitment letter to that entity. That process often can take anywhere from four or five months to more than 12 months in my 20 years of experience of working with this state department. And so we were really concerned about that. We reached out and we attended technical assistance workshops with the state staff and everything and they clarified that this is in fact the case, that this is an ongoing requirement. And so we were sort of searching for like, okay, this is problematic because it's a really costly delay. And as you just heard in the prior item, timing is everything and we need to be able to respond with lightning speed to opportunities that arise with housing developments and state grant funds very often come out of nowhere and you have five or six weeks to respond. And so having this lengthy delay would eliminate that opportunity for us effectively. And so through our research, we learned that there is another comparable activity available in the guidelines for this program which the end uses of the funds are essentially the same but without this lengthy delay and state review of the documents ahead of time, which is that we take the funds and instead of just holding them in a new grant account, we deposit them into our existing low-moderate income housing fund which is residual monies from that redevelopment agency we used to have. And because that fund is already monitored by the state, we have to do audits every year, we send them the reports on that. I guess they feel comfortable with us once we've deposited those funds into that account we don't have to do this advanced review process with them of our documents before we can even commit funds to a project. So the change that we're recommending to you today is essentially that we move the portion of our monies in this plan that had been allocated to what we called Activity One which is for affordable housing uses, rental housing primarily. And we change it to what they call Activity Two which is matching funding for the funds that we have in our existing low and moderate income housing fund. And then we can use them as we would have if they were just ordinary low-mod funds that we had had previously. So the reason we're coming to you today is primarily because it is the time when we need to submit the application. There's a periodic every so many years we have to reapply for these funds even though it's a formula that we're qualified for a certain amount every year but every so often they require us to submit a new application and a new resolution. And we're at that time where we need to do that for years two and three of this five year period. And so that is why we are requesting adoption of the new resolution. And so our recommended actions are to hold a public hearing on the amended five year plan, adapt a resolution authorizing the application and the amended PLHA plan and authorizing the planning director or their designee to submit the amended PLHA five year plan and application for 2021 and 2022 PLHA grants to the California department of housing and community development and authorizing the planning director to execute a standard agreement with HCD for the PLHA grants and submit any related documents required to access these grants. And I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Isai. Are there questions or comments from members of the board? I missed you. Thank you. This is most welcome news in these times of our housing crisis here and throughout the state since we've lost redevelopment several years ago it's been very difficult for us to act promptly and this will allow us to speed up the process. I'm glad we're able to do this especially when the state is putting very, very heavy edicts on us to provide more housing and it's not easy to come by. So this is gonna be a welcome addition to let us do this in a timely fashion. So I appreciate our adjusting to this and I highly recommend this. I thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Just real briefly. Thank you for this. Thank you for this, I'm supportive. I think this is emblematic of the state who is always banging on the table saying they want more housing but also making it impossible to build housing through their bureaucracy. So we'll adjust and we'll keep adjusting and trying but it'll be nice if the state would actually make it easy for jurisdictions and affordable housing developers to build housing rather than harder at every turn. Thank you, Supervisor Kinnerty. If there's no other questions or comments from board members, is there any member of the public who would just speak on this item? Thank you. Becky Steinbruner is in the rural Aptos. Thank you, Ms. Issae, for that very clear explanation of this issue. I had read the documentation in the staff report and I appreciate your complimentary explanation. As referred to by you supervisors, the sixth cycle rena numbers are triple what we've had to build in the past. And what I have a question for you, Ms. Issae, is you state that this money would support low and moderate housing projects. What about those that include very low? That's the market that we really need to support and that often does not get included if at all we're very marginally in developments that are termed affordable housing because the developers say it doesn't pencil out. So I would like to see the money focused on building and making the very low income people to have a place for rental market housing, rental low income housing. I also want to ask if this grant money can be used to support alternative housing lifestyles such as a lot shelter communities. The board has recently asked a tiny home on wheels ordinance that would allow tiny home on wheels to be deemed primary residences. If we had something in some land the county was able to get or maybe already owned such as on the Freedom Campus in Watsonville, we could put up something there and use this money for that. If that is agreeable to the terms of this new activity that the money could be spent on. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Steinbrenner. Is anyone else here in chambers? Is there anyone on Zoom? Yes, Chair. We do have a speaker online. Colin user ending in 1401. Your microphone is now available. The very low income people are not provided for. I think affordable housing title is a misnomer. Affordable to whom? And we have the very poor because we have the very rich. This looks like a drop in the bucket to me at a time where more people have been driven out of their homes and forced unemployment during these last two years. It's increased. I think we have an economic structural problem. And I have mentioned this in previous meetings. A real insight to me when I got to visit the former Soviet Union in 1966, a relative in Moscow at that time, they had affordable housing. My relative paid about 5% of her income for rent. And it was a small but pleasant housing with parks surrounding the area. This is a myth of remedying a problem that's a structural problem. We need a system change that provides for everybody that doesn't make more people homeless and give all our tax money to the military while people here are hungry and unhoused. That's my comments. Thank you, Ms. Garrett. We have no further speakers, Chair. All right, then I'll return to the board for action. I'll have the recommended action. Second. Motion by Supervisor Coonerty. Second by Supervisor Friend. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk will call the vote please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Cappett. Aye. McPherson. And Koenig. Aye. Thank you, Ms. Issae. All right, we will now proceed with item 10, which is to consider a selection of one nominee for appointment to the Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District Board of Directors as a net large general committee member representative from the nominations of Daniel Dodge, Jack B. Brown Jr. and Michael Rotkin and approve final appointment of the selected nominee to Metro Board of Directors for a term to expire December 31st, 2026. A little further in the way of introductions. On this item, the Board of Supervisors gets three public appointments to the Santa Cruz Metro Board. The terms are four years long each. The term for one of those appointments expires December 31st of this year, and we are considering three nominations for that one seat. The two other appointments do not expire until December 2024 and December 2025, respectively, and are not under consideration today. I'll also add that this appointment to the Metro Board is significant. Metro has a big role to play in the way people in our community get around, and it will need to play an even bigger role in the year to come if we're gonna meet our climate action goals and our housing goals. Well, Supervisor McPherson and I presently sit on the Metro Board, and I can tell you that we're at a really pivotal time for Metro. At the beginning of 2023, we're going to break ground on the Highway 1, bus on shoulder auxiliary lane project, as well as the Soquel Drive multimodal project, and both of these projects will create significant infrastructure enhancement for Metro and create opportunities for improved service. However, improving service in one area could mean cutting services somewhere else. It'll be difficult decisions ahead. Additionally, Metro will need transition to purchasing all zero emissions buses by 2040 and replacing more than half its fleet ahead of that time. And finally, the agency like all transit agencies in America today is facing challenges as we grapple with the end of code funding and new community reality. So of our three nominees, I see that we do have two here in the audience, and I'll let them speak here in a moment. First, we have Mike Rotkin, who has served as one of our appointments for two Metro for eight years, two consecutive terms. And he's been nominated to serve a third term by Supervisor McPherson and Coonerty. And I thought that with any election, so with any appointment that it's good to have some competition. So I have also nominated Jack Brown, who I think would be a dramatically forward in technological know-how. And also Daniel Dodge would be a representative from South County. As I said, on the board, we get three public representatives. And today, two are from North County and one is from Mid County. And so it struck me that we should certainly at least consider someone from South County. Now I'd like to invite Michael Rotkin up to Mike to speak. Thank you, Chair Koenig and board members. I sent you an email responding to what I, what's heritably described as misleading information about my supportive unions. I wanna thank you for the nomination. And I just, I'm here to answer any questions that you may have. I'll return to my seat, but at some point you have any questions. I'm here to answer them. Thank you very much again for the nomination. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mike. And next I'll invite up Daniel Dodge. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, Board of Supervisors, brothers, sisters, siblings. First of all, I'm Daniel Dodge, senior, just taught a little clarification for somebody else and how to select this office in this County. I'd like to take a moment to thank Supervisor Caput for all the years of service to our community and wish him the best in all the endeavors that he takes on in the future. My name is Daniel Dodge, senior. I'm a former mayor, former city council member. I've chaired three commissions here for the County, LAFCO, Santa Cruz Metro previously, and Latino Affairs Commission, the Metro Board. I served previously as an elected official, as I mentioned in the chair. I've been very active in working with the ADA community was on when I was on the board. I received the Kudos Award actually from a supervisor community at that particular time many, many years ago. I'm very interested in representing my community, the Baja Valley, the city of Watsonville. Recently, we've had some cuts to the lifeline of our area and 69 in the 71, the express buses. I certainly believe that Metro allows the opportunity for people in my community to have access to healthcare, employment, education, and we want to be able to make sure that when we talk about equity, we want to be sure that we have a provision of equity of services to South County. Have an extensive record in the community, public service. These days I might retire, but currently that's not on my list of things to do. I'd be happy to serve in this role. I'm here to take any questions that you might have on me and thank you for accepting my application and moving it forward. Shit that. Thank you, Daniel Batch, senior. All right, at this time, I don't believe Jack Brown is with us today and he's online, I don't think so. All right. Does not believe me. Any questions or comments from members of the board? No. Supervisor Caput. You bet. I'm sure all three are well qualified and everything, but I've had the pleasure of working with Mike for 12 years and I don't know why, but I like you, Mike. Okay. Anyway, I consider you a friend and I appreciate all the work you've put in. So like I said, I'm sure all the others are qualified, but I like Mike. Thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. Oh, sorry. Supervisor Caput, Supervisor Coonerty. Sure. So I just want to make a comment. So I have a long relationship with Mr. Dodge and I appreciate everything he's done for this community. I appreciate the voices of the smart folks who I assume we'll hear from shortly. The reason I nominated Mike Rock in three reasons. One is I think he's done an excellent job of serving our community in this role for many years. The second piece is that the public members, it's my understanding, one's from Aptos and one's from Happy Valley. And so we don't have a representative from Santa Cruz where there's a majority of the writers are, there's also the Metro project, which will be coming online and significant budget impacts. And so from my perspective, it's incredibly important to have that voice on the board. And then finally, I gotta say Mike Rockin has been my union representative for 18 years, fighting for better wages for not only everyone in my union but across different unions. And he's been a real labor advocate. I think we need to be in a place where people can disagree, people can have different opinions and we don't have bright lines on every issue and can appreciate and put into context his whole career where I felt incredibly represented as a union member, dues paying union member for 18 years by Mike Rockin. And I appreciate everything he's done. So I appreciate people coming forward and being willing to serve on this role. I think it's critical that we have somebody from the third district representing us in one of these public seats. And I appreciate everything Mike's done for this board and for our community over the years. Thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. Yeah, I'd love- Supervisor McPherson. I just appreciate those, the three who have applied for this. I looked here, public testimony first, but would be willing and able to make the, recommended action when it comes for the appointment. All right, thank you, Supervisor McPherson. All right, I will open it for public comment. Good morning, Supervisors. My name is James Sandoval. I am the chairman of smart local 23 who represents the bus and paratransit drivers at Santa Cruz Metro. And we come to you with the concern of the possible reappointment of Mike Rockin. This is nothing personal, it's strictly business. We've had a few issues with Mike Rockin in the past and as recently as this year, where our union proposed legislation to improve labor relations at Santa Cruz Metro as in SB 957. It came at no cost, but it was a tool for our toolbox to get through times where we couldn't come to an agreement. And we thought Mike Rockin would be the first one to support us on that. And he actually came out strongly opposing it. It did not make sense for us, for anybody to not support it since it came at no cost. And we did have a lot of times where we came to no agreement with the previous CEO. And we also, despite a strong objection to it, we did get support on our board of directors to move that legislation forward, including getting it through our assembly Senate and eventually signed by the governor. But this is more than just about our concerns with Mike Rockin, it's about making sure we have a voice for Watsonville. We have three out-large members on our board out of 11, and one represents Mid County, one is a former TAPS director for UCSC, so that is the Santa Cruz voice, and the other one is Mike Rockin. Daniel Dodge would bring us the voice for Watsonville, and with Watsonville representing about half the population in our county, it's only fair to them to give them another voice on our board of directors where they only have two seats. We should give them at least three. And so, like I said, nothing personal against Mike, but we do need more representation for our Watsonville folks. And I ask for everybody to stand with me today that supports the same concern. And as you can see, there was 160 emails that were sent to you all with the same concerns as well. This is not just our union. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Sandoval. Good morning, Chair Moenig and members of the board. My name is Jeffrey Smedberg. I'm a resident of the city of Santa Cruz, former employee of the public works department here at the county, still an active SEIU member. And I am the vice president of the Monterey based central labor council. What's before you today is an appointment of a public representative on the Metro board. And what that means is somebody to represent the general population. And as I'm sure you're aware, most people in Santa Cruz County are working for a living and therefore they're working people. And as I'm sure you're also aware, labor unions are the strongest and most consistent voice as advocates of all working people, not just members of their own unions. If anyone has been traveling on Highway 1 between Santa Cruz and Watsonville lately, you'll know that there's a lot of people moving from Watsonville who live in the South County and coming to Santa Cruz. And it's very important that those people have a voice. And so on account of those two points, I know two of the nominees and personally, and I recommend you're appointing Daniel Dodge Sr. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, members of the board or supervisors, staff and the community. My name is Nahara Villalobos. I am a Watsonville resident, a career alumni and a San Jose student. I'm asking you to please appoint Mr. Daniel Dodge Sr. for the followings I'm about to state. Number one, Mr. Dodge is a Watsonville resident. He will be giving the South County voice that we all need. Number two, if it wasn't for his influence, telling me how to go to school, come back and use the bus. Because if you don't know, the 91X is the fastest route to go to a career college to and from to Watsonville. Mr. Dodge has been an advocate for the ADA community that have acknowledged him, his efforts in ADA issues, especially from Felipe de Leo and then the Longers here. And my sister, Miriam Villalobos, have recognized him and given the Kudos Award in 2016. He has a voice to change. He is a people of the people. And who else could do this job as he's done this before? Thank you. Thank you to everybody. Thank you, Naraha. Hi, good morning. My name is Bonnie Moore. I'd like to thank Supervisor Caput for his time on his service here on the Board of Supervisors and Ryan Coonerty as well. Thank you for all your service. Really appreciate it. And I kind of look forward to more democratic, kind of eye-opening speakers that you've been able to bring to town. So thank you for that. I'm also here to speak about the issues of the appointments that you're looking at today. One of the things in your own appointment direction is somebody at large, a person at large, or somebody, a community member, somebody that rides the bus, maybe somebody that has knowledge or is dependent on the bus. That's not what you have here today. You have repeat political positions that are people that are coming back for additional appointments onto different commissions. I'm gonna, you know, Michael, you know, we go back a lot of years and I'm not here to argue with history, facts, or anything along those lines, but supportive towards labor has not been his best suit in our area, in our arena at the transit system. The fact that, you know, he does not ride the bus. He's not that familiar with the bus system. He sat there for a number of years as a political position and he sits there currently today at the same thing. There are people in our community that deserve the ability to sit on that commission and take a look at the public transit system to see what works for our community. We're going into times now where and the environment is huge. Our system has been shrinking and that is not okay. What we're doing today and looking at this appointment, it does not work. His alignment with labor outside of the university is not as good as you think. His alignment with the transportation system has not been that supportive and we need to have somebody there that really rides the bus and understands the system and is dependent on it and you don't have anyone there that does that. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Mark. Good morning, my name is Brandon Freeman. I'm the senior vice chair for smart local 23 at Santa Cruz Metro. First, Mike, thank you for your many, many years of service on the board. We don't wanna trivialize any of those things that you have done to help us out. However, my main concern is the coming service changes that we have coming up. As most of you know, we have an operational analysis coming up at Metro. One of my primary tasks with the union will be to represent our side in that. Thus far, making changes to routings to scheduleings that's been extremely difficult to get any kind of representation out of Watsonville. Ari has helped when she can and Jimmy is extremely busy but tries to make time. Today I'm asking you to appoint Daniel Dodge so we have a more well-rounded and better feedback system for all areas of our county as we go into the operational analysis. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Freeman. Hi, my name is Veronica Hamilton. I'm a graduate student at UCSC and I was the chair of my union during our five month Wildcat strike three years ago. And as you likely know, we are one month into another strike up at campus. I'm here to speak against the reappointment of Mike Rockin. Mike has been antagonistic against labor and Metro workers are incredibly important to the broader labor community and Santa Cruz. I would argue at least at this time that he is not supportive of labor on our campus. I've seen that with my own union. Graduate students are in strong support of Metro drivers. We know that the reappointment of anti-labor Mike Rockin will go against our shared goals of labor peace. As Metro goes into contract negotiations, it's important that you know that if Metro workers have problems that we're all gonna have problems. If you want labor peace, do not reappoint Mike Rockin. I know you have a lot of projects going on this year. You certainly don't want another issue. Labor supports Daniel Dodge. Thank you. Thank you. Hi there. My name is Luna. I'm an academic researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, with local UAW 5-8-10. The Metro workers have always been there to support the two strikes that I've been a part of in the seven years I've been here and always standing with us, making sure they're not crossing the picket line and showing solidarity. That's why I'm here today in solidarity with Metro workers and other unions locally that are urging you to please appoint Daniel Dodge to the board, the Metro board. Despite claims to be supporting labor, unfortunately, Mike Rockin's record has not supported that claim, both with SB 957, opposing that legislation to support Metro workers, as well as opposing our strike that is going on currently with UAW at the university. I urge you not to vote for your friends or people that you may know with historically, but instead to vote for higher representation from people from South County who are all here to urge you to do the same. So please stand with us in supporting working people and labor by appointing Daniel Dodge. Thank you. Thank you, Lionel. Hi, my name is Nate Abrego. I'm a long time South County resident and long time user of the bus in my teen years and eight years into my work with Santa Cruz Metro, I'm a paratransit operator and have done that for 14 years now. I urge you to appoint someone who can properly, who can bring more voice and equity to our entire County, South County has noticed lacking transportation options. It's slowly been dwindling down and in this pivotal time that we're going into where restructuring is definitely on the horizon for the Santa Cruz Metro, it is imperative that South County has proper representation. And I assure you Santa Cruz will have their voice. South County needs their voice too. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Abrego. Hey, how's it going? My name is Nate Adenhofer. I'm a graduate student and teaching assistant up at the University and a member of UAW 2865. And I just wanna, yeah, again, echo everyone here saying no to Brodkin and yes to Daniel Dodge. Brodkin opposed SB 957 with, so in opposing the rights of the Metro workers, right, to have the same rights as public employees as other public employees. He's also been unsupportive of us in our current strike on the campus, our current ULT protected strike. So he has not been pro labor. I think it's also important to have a voice from South County, which is another important reason that we support Daniel Dodge. And if we care about public transit, we need to care about the workers driving it because there is no public transit without the workers driving it. And that's why labor supports Daniel Dodge senior. Thank you, Mr. Adenhofer. Hello, my name is Monica. Thank you for your service. I'm a community member. I'm here to support Daniel Dodge Jr. He has continuously stood up for working families, not only in Watsonville, but also in Santa Cruz County. He has a great understanding of South Santa Cruz County and he knows the residents needs. And we need a lot of help there. And I would appreciate your support in electing Daniel Dodge senior. Thank you. Thank you, Monica. All right, so you know, and else here in chambers, is there anyone? Sure. Thank you for this opportunity. I'll be very brief. I just want to correct some of this information. I support the graduate student strike. I walked on the picket line, signed the petition, canceled my class, instructed other lecturers on how they might meet their legal obligations to like provide education for their students, but without crossing the picket line. So I don't understand where that's coming from. I am a bus rider. I don't ride it regularly, but I ride it more than any other member of the board as far as I'm aware. And so I'm somewhat baffled, frankly, at this charge that I'm anti-union. I just don't get it. But I just want to provide an information for you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Rockin. Mr. Dodges. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Just to know, I want to take a moment to thank everybody that spoke on my behalf, but it's not just my behalf. I've been able to... I'm a former bus rider. Well, I haven't ridden in a couple of weeks, but I used to have to ride it for my everyday life back in the 70s when we first started the transportation system in this county. The 71 was the lifeblood, which is the lifeblood of the county. Frequently, it took me to all those things to be able to better my life. And so I just want to say that as a passion, because what we're talking about here at times is a South County representation. And if we're talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion, which are the buzzwords that we hear all the current time, I want to be able to speak on the behalf of the borough residents of the Valley of Borough. So I think that I wanted to be able to echo that because I didn't want to get lost in some of the discussion. So we're talking about South County representation. I live there, I live it. I'm part of the people that live there. I'm happy that people stood up for me today. I didn't necessarily ask them to. So it makes me happy that we're in this chambers. That we're in this chambers here at the Board of Supervisors. It's took a lot of hard work for us to be able to have a voice here in the county. And we're still working on that. So thank you for your time. Thank you for considering my application and really I want to be able to help the Metro Board grow into what it is going to become in the next couple of years. So thank you very much. Thank you, Daniel Bodger, senior. Is there anyone on Zoom? Yes, Chair, we do have speakers on Zoom. Brian, your microphone is now available. Hi, this is Brian Peoples from Trail Now. We're a local advocacy group trying to build the Coastal Trail. Myself, I've been personally involved in Santa Cruz Transportation for over 20 years, actively engaged with the Regional Transportation Commission for over 10. I actually wrote a California Assembly Bill that would divert tax dollars to public transit. So I'm a big advocate of transit. I've actually participated and a lot of people don't know this that Mr. Rodkin actually has voted against Metro at the Regional Transportation Commissions in the way of funding going towards them versus other alternatives. He has an ideology that really directs him away from Metro and funding Metro buses, what I've observed over the decade that I've been participating on the Transportation Board. At the end of the day, I think you should step back and understand that Mr. Rodkin brings a lot of controversy. He did, I'm sure, some good work, but he brings a lot of controversy. And I think our community, after we saw Measure D and all of the issues with the elections and the general controversy that we have with transportation, I think it would be a step forward for our community if do we shift the gears and we chose not to re-elect Mr. Rodkin? Our community really needs to mend and be better focused on improved communications and working together. And I think it's obvious that Mr. Rodkin brings controversy. And I don't think we need to continue that. We need to move forward. And Mr. Daniel seems like a very good advocate for moving forward, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Peoples. How many more folks do we have online? We have nine more speakers, Chair. All right, I would just ask, since a lot has been said already, and we are running a little bit over for both the 1045 item and ultimately 11 o'clock item that just ask public speakers to please keep their comments succinct and if you agree with any comments made by four previous speakers, just to mention that you agree with us, thank you. Matt, your microphone is now available. Thank you. Supervisors McPherson and Coonerty for bringing forward Mike Rodkin's nomination for reappointment to the community representative position on the Metro Transit Board. I'm speaking today as a representative for Friends of the Rail and Trail. And we encourage you to reappoint Mike. We think that he brings a long term historic understanding of transportation issues in the county and in the transit district. And this is background will be coming in critical in the coming years. Thank you very much for the opportunity to comment on this item. Thank you, Mr. Farrell. Cesar, your microphone is now available. Yeah, good morning, everybody. Cesar Lara with the Monterey Bay Central Labor Council were 80 unions, 37,000 union members. And I want to come to you today to talk about the importance of representation in South County. Many speakers have already talked about why they don't feel that Mike Rockins is the right appointment. And I want to echo those, but not repeat them in respect of time, but do want to talk about the importance of representation for working families and needing somebody in South Santa Cruz County as a voice. Transportation agencies across the United States and including ours are influx and really trying to morph to the new normal. And we need somebody that could clearly work with unions, both SEAU and SMART unions are supporting Danny Dodge Sr. and his appointment to this board, along with all of our other labor unions. And we feel that it's important and to have a voice that A is experienced as he's been on the board before, but B that has the positive relationship as you could see from our labor community. We clearly just don't see Mike Rockins as a voice for working families. And labor and with all the years of being on the board, I think it's time for him to move aside and appoint somebody from South County. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lara. Liam, your microphone is now available. Thank you, board. My name is Liam McLaughlin. I'm a political organizer with SCAU 521 here in Santa Cruz, Salinas and Watsonville. And I'm here in solidarity with UAW. I'm here in solidarity with SMART as well as our own employees in Metro. We are strong in solidarity. Labor is strong and united right now. We're speaking up for the working class, public transportation, this whole system benefits first and foremost, the working class. So we strongly feel that we want someone who's heart lies with those people who are working, who are traveling from Watsonville for work. So we strongly support Daniel Dodge Sr. And we strongly oppose Mike Rockins. He mentioned he wasn't sure why labor is speaking out against him, but I think it's pretty clear. He did not support SMART with their sensible legislation earlier this year. He did not support SCIU county workers. He did not support SCIU city workers. So that's no surprise to me that we're speaking out against him in favor of someone who really does care about the working class. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. McLaughlin. Brenda, your microphone's now available. Okay, hello everybody. So I hope you can hear me. My name is Brenda Garcia. I've lived in Santa Cruz since I was seven years old. I'm 26 years now. I used the bus to go to elementary school, high school, colleges, sorry, classes at Cabrillo. And then I used it for work. So I've been using the bus for a long time and the well-being of the workers there is very important to me. I'm a new person here. So I normally don't come to these meetings. I was just told about it. So I'm kind of like an outsider here. And I really liked what I've heard about Daniel Dodge so far because I'm Latina. I organized the union in my workplace. And I know that there can be no equity of services without labor power. So it's really important for me to hear all these statements from all these people who are involved in their union. And so because I'm new here, I do want to say to the white men on the board, I just want to reread some of what y'all said in the beginning that kind of caught me off guard. You said, I don't know why, but I like him about Mike. And then you said, I felt incredibly represented as a union member without acknowledging that you're a white man. And so I just want to kind of reread this out loud to y'all so you kind of get that like what you say might not come off right to other people, especially if they're people of color who are wanting representation and leadership. This is not a voice club. And I just really want to like let that be known and just think about the people that you're serving like me who've lived in Santa Cruz for so long and use the services here. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Garcia. Jordan, your microphone is now available. Hello everyone. My name is Jordan Vasconis and I'm a Senator's Metro employee and also represent Metro workers serving as their SEA chapter president and SEIU local 521. In my time serving in this position, I've witnessed Mike Calood against Metro workers and other anti-labor board members. He excused bad behavior from the previous CEO, Alex Clifford, and did anything and everything to prop him up while over 90% of Metro employees expressed discontent via a vote of no confidence. Mike, you do not stand in solidarity with Metro or UCSC workers. The labor movement is no longer yours to co-op, so please stop the charades here. Mike does not currently hold any democratically elected positions and we should elect someone to the Metro board who serves the public through democracy and not nepotism. The public of Santa Cruz deserves a higher standard of representation for bus service, especially in South County. And unfortunately, Mike Rockins does not provide this. I'm also Bruce McPherson's constituent as well and I'm urging him to stop promoting old guard politicians here in Santa Cruz. The public of Santa Cruz County, especially young people and those of lower socioeconomic status have had enough of this and deserve more fair representation. We wish to see the appointment of Daniel Dodge senior on this board seat instead. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Vasconas. Jared, your microphone is now available. Hello, everybody. My name is Jared Pettit. I'm a resident of Santa Cruz and a member of UAW 2865. I'm here in support of my comrades who work for Santa Cruz Metro and in support of the appointment of Daniel Dodge senior. Organized labor rejects the anti labor reappointment of Mike Rockin on the Santa Cruz Metro board. Mr. Rockin act baffled about his opposition but doesn't address his own opposition to things like SB 957, which would have recognized the rights of Metro workers. I urge you to support working people and the residents of South County by appointing Daniel Dodge senior to the Metro board. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Pettit. Call-in user ending in 1401. Your microphone is now available. I rode the bus for many, many years and I am in support of labor. Without the bus drivers, everything would fall apart and it's clear who labor supports for this nomination. I also am interested in a response from Daniel Dodge on his work with the Americans with Disabilities Act community. I have also attended before the lockdown meetings of the Metro board with the issue of ADA and that the bus using all this wireless microwave technology is a violation of ADA because of the adverse health effects that have to do with chronic fatigue. If you have anything else to say about the appointment, we'd appreciate it, but... I would like to see someone on the board who is going to remove this harm of the wireless microwave technology, so-called smart. It isn't smart at all. It's harmful. And I do not ride the bus since I had cataract surgery. I drive, but I would not want to get on the bus because of the toxicity of the radiation. I would like to see this issue addressed where the radiation arm from wireless is removed. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Carrot. Barry, your microphone is now available. Thank you. And my name is Barry Scott. I live in Aptos and I don't envy your situation in having to make a decision. I want to say I support Mike Rotkin. I think he's been a very effective leader both on the RTC matters and Metro. At the same time, I'm a huge supporter of all things South County and unions have been a member of the union. I strongly support unions and I see nothing unfavorable about Mr. Dodge. I wish we could appoint both. At this time, however, I think we need to keep Mike on the board and I would love to see it the next opportunity to add a member that we consider Daniel Dodge. Mike, among other reasons to keep Mike in the seat is the fact that we have defeated measure D and made the determination to move forward with rail transit, which is likely to be integrated with Metro services. So we need someone that has the background and the experience and the kind of the institutional knowledge of all the decisions that have been made by both Metro and the Regional Transportation Commission and we need to preserve that continuity. I would love to have Daniel Dodge become a more active participant in these matters, but for this appointment today, please permit Mike Rotkin to continue in his role. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Scott. Michael, your microphone's now available. This is Jean Brocklebank using Michael's computer. A fresh face on any public body is always a fine idea. I want someone who wants a strong, efficient bus system on the Metro board. My husband and I rarely use the bus right now because as everybody knows, we walk everywhere, but I'm looking forward to using Metro when we can no longer walk. I know Jack Brown would do well in this position because I know him and I know his engineering capabilities. That said, what I have heard today from Daniel Dodge Sr. has impressed me greatly and I think he would be a fine new fresh face on the Metro board. I hope the board of supervisors will vote to approve the appointment of Daniel Dodge Sr. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Brocklebank. Emily, your microphone is now available. My name is Emily Robertson and I would just like to echo my support for the appointment of Daniel Dodge Sr. along with other community members and workers from the county. I think better representation for South County would be great and a fresh face on the board as well. Thank you. Thank you, Emily. JS, your microphone is now available. Hi, my name is Josh Stevens. I was wanting to advocate for the election of either Mike Rockin or Daniel, but I prefer Daniel because of the facts that you look at the streets of the place he represents and they do not have the safest public transportation infrastructure. You look at the streets to cross. You look at the bus stops that aren't being as well taken care of and you compare the South County region to North County or let alone just the city of Santa Cruz and it's just a whole different world. Quoting the words of an executive director of a transportation nonprofit, the West Side rules Santa Cruz. And with that said, I believe that we need someone who represents the county at large and not the city that pretends to always be in charge. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Stevens. We have no further speakers, Chair. All right, thank you. And I'll return to the board for deliberation and action. Supervisor McPherson. Yeah, I'd like to, I'm going to be supporting Mike Rockin. First of all, I wanted to thank all of the three applicants, Metro is a very vital service as we all know and Santa Cruz County. I'm really taking it back and surprised at some of the statements that have been made. Some of them, I believe were unfounded. And, you know, I'd like to remind everybody that the bill that everybody refers to is a split vote on Metro as well. So it makes it sound like Mike Rockin, they're alone to speak against it. But he has decades of experience and I have not always agreed with Mike Rockin. So this is not something that I'm recommending the appointment of Mike Rockin because he's always agreed with me, not by a long shot, but I respect his input and what he has. He's an expert at Metro operations. Mehendi understands thoroughly the issues and much added services are being added to the Watsonville area as I speak. And I think those operations include some of the labor issues that were discussed. So most importantly though, he has decades of institutional experience that's very much appreciated, reviewing transportation policies and the projects and has a deep understanding of the complex elements involved. I've, like I said, I have not always agreed with Mike Rockin and won't tomorrow either probably, but I do respect his input. What I really appreciate is that when he makes a point, he has some facts and figures about it that to support his viewpoint. He's always been upstanding in that respect. And like I said, I don't always agree with him, but I do respect him. So I would like to make the nomination for Mike Rockin to be the at-large representatives on that matter. I'll second that. All right, motion to make the provisor McPherson, seconded by Supervisor Coonerty. Any further discussion? Supervisor Friend? Yes, I want to make a few comments first because I think that it's important to recognize what the at-large positions are for. There's an, it's an 11-member Metro. Currently five of the members are from North County, four from mid-counting, two are from the area south of Rio de Mar Boulevard. So there's a significant lack of representation in the South County, including actually even from this board. I mean, our two board representatives, I'm not saying that they don't raise a voice for South County, but the point when you go back to the original bylaws and the creation of the Metro, the point for the at-large memberships was to have a geographic diversity, which doesn't currently exist on the membership. I got to defend Mr. Rockin. The things that were said about Mr. Rockin have not been my personal experience. I understand the caller talking about the need for diversity on the board, and I believe me, you'll understand why I'm in support of that in a second. But I've worked with Mr. Rockin on a number of issues across the county and he's been one of the strongest voices in every experience I've had. And by the way, in a lot of closed sessions that aren't, obviously we can't have discussions about what are said in there, but he's one of the strongest voices I've seen on a number of boards I've been on on behalf of Labor. So I just wanna defend Mike's name in that regard because I feel like he's been maligned in a sense that people don't want him to be on the board, but I think that we're sort of misrepresenting his positions as a result of that. With that said, I'm gonna put forward a counter nomination because I think that the actual point of the at-large positions is to have geographic equity, which does not exist. So I'm gonna put forward a counter nomination for Daniel Dodge Sr. Just because of the numbers that I put forward. I mean, you can't have nine of the 11 members to be functionally north of 41st Avenue or west of 41st Avenue and feel that we have geographic diversity or representation on the board. I understand Supervisor Coonerty's point about, he made a comment that the majority of riders are from the city of Santa Cruz. Technically, the largest number of riders are for the university buses specifically, but they come from different locations throughout the county. The number two most used buses is 71, which comes from Watsonville and gets connected into places up in the university and other places. So I think that, I mean, look, this board has done a lot toward equity in the last couple of years from investments in the Papua River, the healthcare project, the new South County Service Center. We also have to recognize a lot of people live in Watsonville because we don't have a lot of affordable housing for people to live anywhere else. A lot of people that rely on the bus from an economic standpoint live in South County. And so there should just be an additional South County voice, whether it's Mr. Dodger, I mean, it's not even necessarily an endorsement on Mr. Dodger as much as it is on that, that voice needs to be elevated from South County. So with that, I'm putting forward a counter nomination for Mr. Dodger. I mean, I can count the votes and I figure out that they're not there, but I think it's important that we have this discussion to say that there should be South County representation that we got to do better than the current board makeup as it is. I mean, this nine to two is not really representing South County. I mean, by any sort of a strategy, whether that means we have a different discussion on this board about moving forward about who the two County supervisors that are representing the Metro Board, maybe that could also happen. But at a minimum, we should work on this geographic equity with the at-large positions that we have and we're currently not meeting that moment. So I'll put forward a counter nomination of Daniel Dodge Sr. if there's a second for that. I'll second because I do feel that, while I also like Mike and I've enjoyed working with him and I think he always brings a lot of dedication and information to everything that we discuss, I think that just fundamentally, we can't have reports that like Santa Cruz like me that talk about the lack of representation from South County and from youth and from our Latino population and then go ahead and have three white members on our three appointments for the Metro Board. I do think that North County is well represented today with Larry Pegler who, while a first district resident, was also the former director of the Transportation Parking Program at UCSC and so it was a strong voice for that institution and for North County. And so yeah, that's why I'll be supporting Mr. Dodge. So I think we would treat that as a substitute motion and take a vote on that first. All right, there's... Yeah, I'll just say for the record that under Rosenberg's rules, the last motion is taken first. All right, the last motion in order. Okay, so any further discussion? All right, so just to clarify, just clarify this is a vote on Daniel Dodge Sr.'s nomination for Metro. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Appet. This is for Daniel Dodge Sr. We're voting on Dodge. I thought we had a motion for Rodkin first. It's a substitute motion, it's taken first. Okay, no. Supervisor McPherson. No. And Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Motion fails three to two. All right, I'll now proceed with the nomination of Mike Rodkin. And so Clerk, if you could call the roll on that. Supervisor Friend. It's strange to vote against you, Mike, but no. Coonerty. Aye. Appet. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Koenig. No. Motion passes three to two. All right, Mike Rodkin is our new nomination. Thank you. That's an invitation for your process. I know that for 10 bucks. All right, thank you. We are running a little bit behind schedule, but we do have a scheduled item for 10.45 a.m. before we proceed with the issuance of proclamations, item 13. So we'll now proceed with item 12, which is the Board of Supervisual Recess. So the Board of Vectors of the Santa Cruz County Flood Control and Water Conservation District of Zone 5 can meet. And I'll hand, is it me? All right, we do mix these up a little bit. So then I'll give a moment for Rachel Fatui to join us. Welcome. All right, for those directors joining online, if you'd like to turn your cameras on, we'll go ahead and get you on screen. Thank you. All right, I will now call to order the regular meeting of the Board of Directors of Flood Control and Water Conservation District, Zone 5. But could you please call the roll? Director Friend. Here. Coonerty. Here. Chappett. Here. McPherson. Here. Brown. Here. And Chair Koenig. Here. Thank you. You have a quorum, Chair. Thank you. Are there any additions or deletions to the Consent or Regular Agendas today? Thank you. Just check your mic, make sure that's on, that you got the green light there at the base. All right, are there any oral communications for the Flood Control District? Any members of the Board? All right, seeing none. We'll proceed with item four, approval of Zone 5 meeting minutes. Any comments or questions from Board members? Approval. All right, if there is no public comment, is there any public comment on the minutes? Anyone online? We have no speakers online. All right, we have a motion by Supervisor Coonerty, seconded by Supervisor Friend to approve the minutes. If there's no further discussion, we'll call vote please. Director Friend. All right. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Brown. All abstain as I wasn't present at the last meeting. And Koenig. Aye. All right, thank you. We'll now proceed with item five, action on the Consent Agenda. This is items six through nine. Any comments or questions for Board members on the Consent Agenda? Any member of the public that wish to speak on the Consent Agenda? All right, seeing none. Is there a motion? I'll move the recommended actions. Seconded by Supervisor Friend, seconded by Supervisor Coonerty to adopt the Consent Agenda. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk will call vote please. Director Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Brown. Aye. And Koenig. Aye. Item passes unanimously. All right, thank you. District Engineer Fatui. That concludes our regular meeting of the zone five district. All right, we'll now resume the meeting of the Board of Supervisors and proceed with item, where are we? 13, proclamations for Super, we are. So I think we did skip one item, which is item 11, the ordinance amending Santa Cruz County rent adjustments for mobile homes. And we will hear that this afternoon after the 1.30 scheduled item 14. So now proceeding with item 13, which is to consider authorizing the issuance of proclamations honoring Supervisor Coonerty and Supervisor Caput to be signed by all members of the Board. All right, well, does any member of the Board wanna start with comments? Supervisor Friend. I'll kick it off because I know there's gonna be so many nice things said, at least about Greg, that I wanna make sure that we also get something in about Ryan. It's good to see Neil here. Bruce and I and Greg are old enough to remember when Neil was up here too. But let me take an all seriousness song to start with Ryan and then I'll move on to Supervisor Caput. And so I've worked with Supervisor Coonerty for over 20 years during his time at the city of Santa Cruz. And it would be hard to find another person within our community that believes so much in public service, especially even in the face of a lot of the challenges and adversity that we have right now. He's one of the strongest voices for the belief in good that local government and government in general can do. He's also one of the strongest voices in elevating other voices, especially behind the scenes. You make sure that whether it's a commission appointments, whether it's just people that have an interest in public service or in his class, which I've had a good fortune of guest lecturing, the amount of time that he will take with a student who has an interest in public service or doing public good is really remarkable. And these aren't things that the general community sees, but to develop that kind of talent, to develop that kind of interest in public service and to truly believe in this position in a greater government sphere is a place for good is something that's just falls within his ethos. On top of that, he's an exceptionally ethical person. He's just somebody who is viewed not just as a community leader, but across the country, he's elevated the voice of Santa Cruz County in ways that not a lot of previous supervisors have. A lot of it's very easy to become pretty myopic and pretty focused on issues locally, but Supervisor Coonerty has been a strong voice both in Sacramento and Washington, DC to elevate the needs of not just Santa Cruz County, but counties across the country. I also say that he's clearly somebody who actually reads the packet, which I'm not gonna guarantee every elected that I've ever heard what does. And so somebody, yeah, they deserve some clapping. Thank you. Yeah. And just that alone, having an informed, somebody who's informed, whether you agree with them or not necessarily on the issues, they help elevate the entire discussion of the policymaking of the county by raising points that somebody else hadn't thought of. Ryan, you've really served the role with dignity. You've served it very well. I've been proud to serve with you and with your dad previous to that. It is definitely a loss having you step down, but the one thing I do know is that you're gonna continue to do good and make good wherever it is you end up after this because you are fundamentally driven by how to make other people's lives better, especially those that are most marginalized, those that don't have a voice. And that's exactly the way that the world becomes a better place. So congratulations. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah. Mr. President McPherson. Yeah, I can repeat a lot of that. And the Coonerty name is just really, really significant in this community, this county, the city with Father Neil there, if you will. And Ryan, I just really have been impressed weekend and week out with the input, honesty, direct, sensible recourse that are presentations that Supervisor Coonerty has had. I mean, he's been in 18 years of this on the city council and as a county supervisor. Really a phenomenal commitment to public service that has been dearly needed in this community. And I really appreciate his civil, well, his ability to really promote civil discourse in our, it goes on here in the county board of supervisors. And the same goes for Supervisor Caput. I'm especially impressed. He does such a broad range of things very well. And his really key interest though has been in serving the youth of our community and to see that they have a better life ahead of them and their families. The Thrive by Three, the nurse program, the Mercer's program, the partnership program that he has there to give low income people of color a better chance at promoting the family life that leads to better citizenship for everybody. It's really remarkable how he's put together some of these things and what he has done. And then he goes through the far reaches of the university where he does the lectures there, as was mentioned. But again, addressing some of the really key issues, the long range development plan, which is always controversial and not fun. I know, I can, I've been up on that campus with you several times on that, but what he has done on that and some of the things that he's done on environmental protection and really protecting our shorelines here of Santa Cruz County and the state of California. He has been a voice, a big voice in that as well. He really helped bring the Santa Cruz Warriors here too, which has been a phenomenal addition to our community. One that you can go there, it's kind of like cheers. Everybody knows your name when you go in to see a Warriors game. And he has brought a community together in that respect as well. He's done so many things that you just can't, can't mention them all. But I think in particular, his commitment to making family life a better life for everybody in this county and giving them a better opportunity is what really sticks in my mind of what he has done. I do appreciate working with him. I'm gonna really miss working with him on this County Board of Supervisors. I can tell you that for the last eight years. He's been a tremendous advocate for so many things as I've mentioned and more. So it's been a real pleasure to serve with you on the County Board of Supervisors, Ryan. I really appreciate it and thank you for everything you've done for this company. Thank you. Thank you, Bruce. I'll add Ryan that you've taught me, it's been an honor to serve with you on this board for the last two years. And one of the main things you've taught me is not to let misinformation go unanswered whenever possible. We do a lot of sitting and listening to perspectives of all kind. Sometimes those perspectives can be fairly narrow though and I've always appreciated the way that you step in and provide more information to help really inform the debate. You know, you've also always been very direct about what your constituents want and need and a great role model on that. Whether it's on issues of homelessness or youth education, you're really good at always bringing the conversation back to what the community wants to see done and you've really been a role model in that. Finally, I look forward to continuing to watch your accomplishments and pursuits outside of the Board of Supervisors and it's clear that whatever you do, you'll be a vigorous champion for democracy. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. I'll just make a quick comment too. I didn't think there would be a supervisor better than Neil Coonerty, which I served with before. Still hasn't. But I have to say, Ryan, you are better than he was. C.O. Placios. Yes, Supervisor Coonerty on behalf of staff and myself, I'd like to thank you for the years we've worked together. A lot of respect for you and your diligence and the great ideas that you've brought to this Board and the deep policy knowledge as well. I really do appreciate, especially your work on our strategic planning efforts and your work with children in our counties. Thank you very much and we respect you because you've always respected us. Thank you very much. Thank you. Supervisor, I just want to add that I've had the pleasure of working with you for many years now and it's been a real privilege and I very much appreciate you and your commitment to your community and how deeply you care for your community and as a resident of Santa Cruz County, we're just really gonna miss you. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Coonerty? Yeah. So thank you everybody for the kind words and thank you to friends and family that showed up today and partners in the community. I have a few words to say just because I don't think I'll be able to torture people watching community television with my ideas and comments much more but so I just want to note, so when I was sworn in eight years ago today, my son, Kellen, who's right there, was only four days old. My daughter, Daisy, was three. So, sorry. So at this moment of transition, it's shocking to me how they've grown into full-fledged human beings like during these eight years. And now they're old enough and wise enough to roll their eyes with boredom and tears when their dad gives speeches like this one. Eight years is a lifetime to them but it's only a minute for me. As I say goodbye, I'm struck by how the crises and the celebrations, the wins and the losses are just a blur. Public life moves very quickly except during world communications. So 18 years ago this week, as Bruce mentioned, I was sworn into office for city council. My sister ran my campaign using her considerable will and intellect to elect her considerably less talented older brother. My dad gifted me, as everyone's mentioned up here, a legacy of service and commitment to the community. It's his gift is so great that I'm still called Neil at least a couple of times a week by people and it's an honor every time it happens. And 18 years ago this month, I'd gone out in a couple of dates with Emily Bernard. And she was funny and spirited and had no interest in politics. And I can report that one marriage, two kids and three campaigns later, she still doesn't care about what's midday's I'm on and serve on. So it's with this history and this being my hometown, you can imagine how personal all the decisions we've made up here are. I know my last speech, I should share some wisdom or a list of accomplishments, but that seems boring and self-serving and those are two things I aspire not to be after elected office. So I thought I'd tell you the one thing I got wrong up here. And anyone who's not satisfied with just the one thing I got wrong can ask my colleagues or my wife for a longer list after this meeting. But in my family's stories are everything my grandmothers told amazing, if not always truthful stories. They both vehemently believed in out letting facts get in the way of a good story. My parents and now my sister make their living in stories. They believe that a good novel can tell more about the human condition than any study or chart ever could. And they've been known to repeat the poet Muriel Ruckreiser's observation that the universe is made of stories, not atoms. That quote is beautiful. It's also factually wrong. The universe is made of atoms and explained by science and math. Stories are wonderful things, but they're just that, they're stories. They don't need to be based on gravity or the laws of economics or science or reality. And in recent years, we've seen stories hijack our politics with incredibly dangerous consequences. To counter what I saw as the ridiculous myths and storytelling in our community, often seen in letters to the editor year after year, that I believe were preventing us from finding solutions to our challenges, I decided to focus on data. So my time in office has been about gathering, analyzing and demanding data. I was relentless and I think at times I was obnoxious about it, but I found allies on the board here and in County staff and we began tracking everything. You can now see the results of that effort in the County's operational plan. The dashboard, which is tracking in real time 180 objectives. You can see it in the rebuilding and the COVID dashboards as well as the community program contracts. We can compare ourselves in key metrics to similar counties and see how we rank. I'm proud to say that Santa Cruz County is now a national leader in using data to make better decisions, get better outcomes and do continuous process improvement. During crises that data saved lives. In normal times, it meant better services and programs for the most vulnerable. Tax dollars were saved, public safety increased, our environment protected. Over the last few weeks, I've been pouring over that data to see what impact our policies may have had. And I'm happy to report that for the most part the trend lines are good. Wish we proud everyone up here of what we accomplished and everyone in the County staff who's doing the work day to day. But after eight years of haranguing County staff and community program managers and anyone who was forced to interact with the County for fewer stories and better data, the numbers stored in my brain have been replaced with stories in my heart. I moved by the time that I saw my colleagues up here taking hard unpopular votes because they believed it was best for the community. I'm inspired by the conversations I had with Carlos and his team about managing exhausted and scared human beings in an unparalleled series of crises and the dedicated workers who put aside all those fears to do their job when the community needed it. I remember talking to people who were crying after losing everything in a fire and then seeing hundreds of community members showing up to help and witnessing a magnificent response to COVID, to the Trump administration attacks on vulnerable populations and the murder of Sergeant Gutswiler. For all the hours we spent in staff meetings, crafting additional direction and report backs to get better outcomes, to agenda items. As I clean out my office, I can only remember the laughter and the passions of meetings with Allison and Rachel and Andy every week. And I give anything to hear Allison tell us a story about how she spent the weekend with her girls. I guess what I'm saying is that we have good data in this community, but we have a great story. We don't tell those stories enough. Stories about the way we help each other care about our environment, education and small business. And then stories about what we wish the world would be like for our kids. The Santa Cruz story is a unique and amazing one. I'm grateful to the voters for letting me be a character in their story for a little bit. I can't wait to hear the next chapter from our new leaders and our chief storytellers for my colleagues up here. And I just want to say thank you. As any member of the public wish to speak. It's hard to follow that excellent speech. I know. You're so glad you're dead. I'm Neil Coonerty, Ryan's dad. I really appreciate the kind words they're well-deserved and well-earned. And then the second item I wanted to talk to is after sitting through the last hour of your deliberations here, I really think that retirement is the way to go. Thank you, Neil. Good morning, supervisors and chair Koenig. My name is Laura Marcus and I'm a resident of the First District and also CEO of D&B's Community Dental Care. Now in its 30th year of serving Santa Cruz County residents. I'm here today to recognize the great work of Supervisor Ryan Coonerty, who as a city council member and mayor of the city of Santa Cruz and third district supervisor for the county of Santa Cruz has spent almost two decades being a servant of the people. Whether through support and recommendations for funding for local nonprofits like ours to establishing new programs like the nurse family partnership, which has supported hundreds of new families since its inception in 2016 and Semiitas, which funds college savings accounts as an incentive for healthy habits such as visiting the dentist. Ryan has always saw innovative ways to invest in the health of our community. Let Ryan's work be an example for all public servants. The last few years have been particularly challenging with COVID and the CZU fires. To you never stopped working. Whether they were homeowners trying to rebuild after the fire, low income seniors needing access to vaccines or kids needing internet so they could remote in for school. You've been a tireless supporter of your district and beyond and our community is so grateful for your commitment and dedication to making Santa Cruz County a wonderful place to live even when times are hard. You will be missed in this role but I know you will continue to support good work here. I wish you all the best in your new endeavors and thank you again from the ENTES, our board, our staff and our 16,000 patients. We appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you, Director Marcus. I'm gonna just ask you to hold here and public for one moment. We do have Justin Cummings, council member and supervisor-elect who I understand has stepped out of their city council meeting to be able to comment here and just wanna give them a chance to speak. Absolutely, Chair. Mr. Cummings, your microphone's now available. Can you all hear me? Yes, we can. Well, thank you all for having me. I have an appointment I gotta go to but really just wanted to take a moment to thank both Greg and in particular Ryan for their years of service and I really just wanted to speak to how appreciative I am for all Ryan's years of service but in particular during the pandemic as a newly coming mayor and only my second year into being an elected official, there's no playbook for how you react to a pandemic and then layer on top of that social unrest and fires and Ryan was always a great partner on the board and really it was through our ability to work together that we were able to really overcome a lot of the issues around the pandemic here in the city with keeping people safe and making sure that we were able to get our economy up and rolling again and it's through those kinds of partnerships that I hope we can just show to the people in the community how we should be working together to really helping to make sure that we're meeting the needs of the people of Santa Cruz that we all care about. And so I really just wanna thank you for all your guidance and for your years of leadership and I hope to carry a lot of what I've learned from you with me as I enter the position of third district county supervisor. So thank you and thank you all for your time and service. Thank you supervisor elect. And I'll come back to the chambers. Thank you and good morning board of supervisors. My name is Maria Cadenas. I'm the executive director for Ventures and a former resident of the city of Santa Cruz. I'm currently in Felton, actually Bruce. But I just wanted to take a moment to personally and professionally thank you, Ryan. The crying is the pages. I met Ryan seven years ago on the way we were talking about the VITA, the volunteer income tax evasion program. And it was such a refreshing meeting because all of you are wonderful, but we sat and it was maybe 10 minutes. Why is taxes important? How does it work? What's the data behind the money coming back to the community? And I loved it because it was an immediate connection around the focus of the wellbeing of our community and tying it to economic development, mobility and things that really drive who we become as a society. And those conversations continued to where we had a, quite frankly, the birth of semillas started because we had a meeting. I was like, you know, all of this is great. I have this great idea. Let's look at the data, look at the results that we have from evidence-based and say three times we're likely to go to college, five times we're likely to graduate. What it means for mobility, what it means for belonging, what it means for aspirations and seeding the next 18 years of our community. And Ryan got it right away. Allison was a great partner and to have that trust and dialogue, not always agreeing because agreement is not necessarily outcomes. What we wanna get to is informed, thoughtful decision-making and for that Ryan, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Benes. I wanna thank all of you for your work for the county but I am here today to specifically thank Ryan. My name is Julia Godinski. I'm a 20-year resident of Bonny Dune and I've had several interactions with Ryan over several issues over the year. I'm quite pleased to be here on a happy occasion, not with half of Bonny Dune with me with metaphorical pitchforks, but Ryan, you've been incredibly responsive to the needs of Bonny Dune for years, including cannabis legislation with the fires. And not only have you been reactive, you've been very proactive. I really appreciate your proactivity with helping us deal with a sexually violent predator who may be my direct neighbor. So I am just really appreciative of your responsiveness. You actually respond to my emails. You have great staff. Rachel has just been wonderful. So thank you. Thank you. Good morning. I'm delighted to be here too. Also here to basically show up for Ryan the way he showed up for Bonny Dune and for Santa Cruz. You had us all crying in the back there, Ryan. So my name's Kathy Toner. I'm also a resident of Bonny Dune. I think I'll rank Julia by a few years, 20-some years. And I'm speaking for many others who couldn't be here today just to express our deep, deep appreciation. And the word that I wrote down that I've heard, I code here, and I think you just exemplified it in your final words in this role, is public service and servant leadership. And that's what we've seen and come to expect from you and we're so grateful for it. And you've shown up for the community. You showed up during the fires. You were there. I'm told unloading hay for the horses, as people, you know, above and beyond. And not only to care of your constituents in your district and listen to us solve problems and brought that same ethical leadership that has been mentioned to our community or to your constituents, clearly you had impact countywide and beyond. So I feel very lucky that we've had your leadership and your service. I wanna thank your family for the sacrifices. I'm sure this has meant for them over the years. And just to express our appreciation, we had a very professionally made sign made for you as a memento. And so thank you, Ryan. I can't wait to see what comes next for you and we just wish you all the best. Hi, I'm Mike Rotkin, one of your constituents. And I wanna thank you for many things. You've been incredibly responsive to people in the third district, but I think more importantly, you've been a supervisor for the entire county. And I think that's important. We shouldn't just take it for granted. Often counties and other areas where have districts, people end up narrowly focused on their interests of their immediate constituents. And I think that has not been the case with you. Your work really has been county, had impact countywide. I also think that you served during a time when we had more crises than anybody could possibly imagine all at the same time. And I think you did a really good job of responding to those. You've always been really accessible, I think, to everybody throughout this county, in terms of your work. And I do wanna thank you for the work you did on metrics in the county. Often we have a sense of like, well, how are things going or how are we doing? And to be able to actually have some quantitative sense of when we're making progress and when we're falling short and need to do something, put more focus on a particular issue or try to address it. I think that's the lasting contribution that you've made that's gonna go on well beyond your years of service here. So thank you for everything that you've done. I think you've been really a model supervisor. Thanks for your service. Hi, my name is Carolyn Burke. I'm Assistant Director of Community Development and Infrastructure in the Planning Division. And I wanna say farewell to Greg and Ryan. Thank you so much for your leadership and I have a few words for Ryan. I want to celebrate your years of service, promoting civil discourse when we as a community disagree, building a progressive vision for how development and environment can coexist, being a leader in championing alternative energy and leading with heart. So evident as you advocated on behalf of your constituents rebuilding after the CZU lightning fire, you and your staff have always supported the planning department and now community development and infrastructure and we will miss you greatly. Thank you. All right, so you know what else here in chambers? Is anyone online? Yes, we do have speakers online. Tony, your microphone's now available. Thank you very much. I'm Tony Panetta, Government Affairs Manager for the National Office of Nurse Family Partnership and Child First. Our National Office contracts with local agencies such as County Health Departments in California to deliver the National Recognized Nurse Family Partnership Program to first-time moms who are pregnant and who are facing the greatest adversities to connect them to their own personal nurse during the first 1,000 days of their baby's life, which is a pivotal time in early childhood development. Thanks to Supervisor Coonerty's vision and commitment to families in the county, NFP has been delivered to nearly 300 moms and their babies since 2016. We appreciate being able to recognize and honor the work of both Supervisor Coonerty and Alice in the End Art to support moms and babies in the community by bringing NFP to Santa Cruz. Overall, our program's goals are to improve pregnancy outcomes, improve children's health and development, and improve families' economic mobility. We use a lot of data to speak to Supervisor Coonerty's points about being data-driven and data-informed, and I'd like to highlight one of Santa Cruz's successes with the program, premature birth. Santa Cruz's NFP has one of the lowest rates of premature birth among our program in the state. It has a lower rate than the average for NFP moms across the entire country. Why this matters? Because there are fewer moms in Santa Cruz County who are at risk of health complications associated with premature birth. There are also fewer children in the county who are at risk of experiencing long-term health conditions and developmental delays that are associated with premature birth. This is exactly why Supervisor Coonerty's commitment to sustaining NFP matters. Because the families who the statistics say are more likely to face greater obstacles for success are now having stronger foundations to thrive in their health, in their education, and in their families' economic stability. The decisions that you all make matter, and the difference on people's lives matter. We also appreciate Supervisor Coonerty's instrumental role in connecting community partners to refer into the NFP program and to identify revenues to deliver the program. When Santa Cruz wasn't eligible for federal funding to start NFP, his office got to work identifying MediCal and local dollars to start their family partnership and to sustain the program. And he has continued that commitment today, most recently by highlighting for federal officials why federal funding needs to be increased so that Santa Cruz and other communities can continue delivering these vial services. We're grateful for Supervisor Coonerty's long-standing commitment to the success of NFP in the county. And we agree with all of those who have come forward today to thank him for his advocacy on behalf of so many families. We also congratulate him on his tenure as Supervisor and wish him well in his next ventures. Thank you, Supervisor. Thank you. Call and user 3-3-2-5, your microphone's now available. Good morning. This is a Najeev Kamel, Senior Analyst with the Health Services Agency in the Public Health Division and the Children and Family Health Unit. Just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge all the support and important work that Supervisor Coonerty has done for our home visiting program in the county. The numbers speak for themselves and each of those individual numbers has a story behind them. It's a story of health access, equity. It's a story of avoiding becoming a system involved. It's getting the important resources needed to have not just a surviving family, but a thriving family. And so, just wanted to really take a moment to acknowledge this amazing work, also all the legislative and policy advocacy that you have helped us do with our federal representatives. And we appreciate you and hoping that we can keep you engaged with the home visiting program in other ways in the near future. Thank you. Thank you. And David, your microphone's now available. Good morning. I'm Dave Rubin, Chair of the Royal Bunny Dune Association. Thanks for giving me a chance to thank Ryan and his assistant, Rachel, for their great service. I think it's not exaggerating to say that Bunny Dune is a better place for their efforts and service. So thanks and best wishes for your future. Thank you. We have no further speakers, Chair. All right. Well, Ryan, I'll give you this proclamation now, but you're not allowed to walk off with it until we officially have a vote. All right, Supervisor Caput. Does anyone have, my colleagues want to lead off with comments, Supervisor Friend? Thank you. I'd like to start off because I think I've worked, I probably work closest with Supervisor Caput than any other supervisor on the board because of our districts being side by side. And I just want to, since Supervisor Coonerty is still stuck up here, I'm going to tell a story. And actually the story is when I was first elected, I contacted Supervisor Caput and I asked him if he'd be willing to take me on a tour of his district to talk about and to show me the things that were most important to him. And it really was exemplified, in my opinion, by three things, by family, faith, and community. And what struck me was that normally, when you would do a tour like that, somebody in elected would take you to places or issues that are of greatest importance. But for Supervisor Caput, it was about meeting the people. Everywhere that you took me was to make sure that I met key people, not just in your life, including your wife and your kids, less kids at that time, as you've had more sense. The church and meeting the church leadership, Salvation Army, going to Salvation Army leadership, going to the local schools to meet not just the school administration, but actually pick up your kids when they were done with school. And I think that that exemplifies the kind of elected official and leader that you really are, that you care about people, that people really are your connection to this role. And to me, it harkens to a time when this position was much more about face-to-face contact and retail. We've been so tied up in social media and these sort of false connection points. And you've maintained these real connection points in South County, Greg, in a way that I don't think anybody really has in a long time. And you are so well respected there. And I'll leave on this. If there was one laser-focused issue that you constantly wanted elevated, aside from redwood trees, or whether there's actually peanut butter at full within the agricultural waste every year, it was the river. I mean, you made it very clear to me on that first day when we took that tour. It wasn't the river from a structural standpoint. You took me to one of the migrant camps to show how people's lives are impacted by us not doing our job, by protecting them via the river, right? And you said to me, this is what happens when we don't invest. And it was something that I've carried, as you know, we've worked very closely together on making sure that that river would have the flood protection that people deserve for the next generation. But your entire lens on it was the inequity, the way that people are being mistreated as a result of our lack of investment. So Greg, I just admire your laser focus on community. Bruce made a comment about the way that Ryan approaches other people. And you are definitely one of the most gentle, open, welcoming county supervisors and elected officials I've ever met, even with people you don't agree with. And you bring a civility that is long, that is needed. And in some respects, I wish we didn't even have to mention because it should just be commonplace, but it isn't a true gentleman, Greg. You've brought a lot to this board and to this community. And that focus on people is something that I've carried with me from that first tour that we did together. So it's been an honor serving with you, Greg. Thank you, Supervisor Friend. Supervisor McPherson. Yeah, I think the way I would describe Supervisor Caput is the surprise supervisor. First of all, he defeats an established incumbent for his first win. Then he defeats a well-known police professional for his second. And then somebody that's very well-known in the agricultural community for his third. And I think that people probably said, no, he's got an uphill charge. And I said, no, he'll win it. Believe me, I know how to win the close ones myself, but you've won a couple of close ones yourself. But it's amazing, you just seem to come out of nowhere. But the reason is because of what Supervisor Friend said about family, faith, and community, that you knew your community so well. You've been a tireless advocate for the South County and you had your three terms on the board and his time on the Watsonville City Council as well. He's always reminded us of the importance of spreading our county reach more equitably, too, to reach the historically underserved populations. And especially you've been so effective in representing your Pajaro Valley so well. I've especially appreciated your focus on youth seniors and veterans and I know you were so excited about our veterans village that was in my district up in Ben Lohman, but you're always the veterans. You really wanted to say they should get their recognition and you've always really been right at the front of the line to make sure they receive that. And I just wish you all the best in your retirement. As mentioned with Supervisor Coonerty, I wanna thank you and Brian and your family and you have a growing, you think young family, that's for sure. And I wish you the best and I know that you're going to be able to appreciate them more one-on-one. And I'm just delighted to have served with such a grounded, community-oriented, professional supervisor. Thank you, Mr. Cabot. It's been a pleasure to serve with you. Thank you, Bruce. Supervisor Coonerty. Yeah, I wanna add. So the trick to being an effective supervisor is to get to three votes on any given issue. And so often you're strategizing sort of where people will land and whether they'll be in support or not support. And with you as a, when I'm looking for a third vote or I try to figure out where you are, it was remarkably easy because you just had to think about what would the average person in your district who just wants government to work for them think, right? And you brought that value and that community orientation to your decision-making. And I've seen it when you made decisions that are unpopular or hard. I think you landed exactly where your community wanted you to be. And at the end of the day, that's the best thing an elected official can often do is to represent those people and make sure they have a voice in the system. And I appreciate your consistency and willingness to step up for your community. Thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. Well, Greg, you really taught me the value of being personable. You always greet staff up here as people first and then as staff second. And that's made a big impression on me. And you've always brought the same attention to people speaking in public comment as well. And as Zach said, I think that you get that because you're so great at meeting people where they're at in general. I would love to have a tour of the fourth district with you sometime. I haven't gotten that yet, but I can tell you that your skills at walking and door knocking during campaigns are legend. And anyone running for public office in this county are gonna hear about it because you're just so good at that. And I'm sure we'll set an example for years to come on it. And finally, you've always, as Ryan just said, always approach the issues in terms that anyone can understand. For example, when it comes to climate change, the importance of just planting more trees. And I was pleased to see on the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan that was scheduled later for today that that is one of the suggested strategies. Of course, it's using fancy language like expanding the urban canopy. And I'm sure you'll help use more direct language about just planting more trees. But I'll remember that and try to practice it whenever possible. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. Thank you. If I could say a few words. Supervisor Caput, on behalf of staff and myself, I wanna thank you for years of service. Of course, you and I go back many, many years. I knew you and we're both Watsonville residents and I've known you before you became an elected official as a member of the community. And then later you became a city council member and you were my boss in Watsonville when I was city manager. And then we came here together in Santa Cruz. And I wanna thank you for your many years of dedication. I'll especially, you know, just to echo the comment about you knowing everybody in town. I think everybody in the whole community feels like they know you and you are always open to reaching out and to listening to people and treating them with kindness and with honesty. And if anything, that's what you've always stood out for is just your kindness and your honesty. And people know that they can always reach you. They know where to find you and they do. And I wanna thank you because you've been very kind to staff over the years. And we really do appreciate your service. Thank you. Supervisor, I'll just follow up on that. That is the word that comes to mind when I think about you is kindness and a quiet dignity that you served with for 12 years. And I very much appreciate having worked with you. And the way that you are able to disagree without being disagreeable is just a shining example to all of us who do this work and just appreciate you and I'll miss you. Supervisor Caput, did you wanna say a few words? Okay. With respect, everybody, I wanna thank Jesus Christ, my Lord and savior for blessing my family and friends with 12 wonderful years of representing District 4 in South County. And I also wanna say thank you to the Virgin of Guadalupe for your help. Anyway, my staff is here. I've got Melanie Martinez-Sullis back there, Ramon Gomez and then Tony Gregorio. Thank you for watching my back for the past many, many years. And I appreciate all of it. You know, I could sum up a lot of things. Before the pandemic, I'd have a lot of neighborhood meetings because Tip O'Neill, a former speaker of the House said all politics are local. And we would, before the pandemic, we'd have a neighborhood meeting maybe once a month or every other month. And I was coming back from one, my son, Robert was about 10 years old at the time. So this was a number of years, he's 17 now. And it was a heated conversation. People were kind of getting out of hand, yelling and all that. And when we were driving back, Robert said, dad, are you a politician or are you a public servant? And I had to think about it, actually. I wish I had an answer right away, but hopefully I told him a little later, I said, I hope that I'm a public servant because that's what we're supposed to do. And it's a term that really means a lot. Then also, there was another speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn. He said you can get a lot done in politics if you don't care who gets the credit. And so that's why I was always giving credit to Zach Friend for everything we did for District 4 and South Carolina. But anyway, it's been a real pleasure and I hope I've been an average supervisor up here and average is pretty good when I'm sitting next to the quality that representation that we have for all the Santa Cruz. So anyway, it's really been wonderful and I wanna, my wife and five kids, I'm looking forward to spending a little more time with them and also maybe help my wife out when we're doing all the dashing from the soccer to music, to football, better running back and forth. So anyway, it's gonna be, I'm looking forward to it, but I'm also gonna miss being up here. Thank you to everybody and I wanna wish you all a Merry Christmas. Thank you, Greg. Now, any member of the public like to share some comments? Greg, when you first ran for office, I didn't know you. I'd heard that you were a very religious person and frankly, that made me suspicious because there's an awful lot of hypocrisy that goes on within the big community. And I have to say, you have certainly turned my mind around on that question as far as yourself is concerned. You live your faith, it's really clear and your humility in office, but much more importantly, your commitment to people and serving the community, it knows no bounds. And I've just been so impressed with that, which is why I ended up supporting you for office the next two times that we ran. And I think, as I say, I didn't start off at that point. I was really nervous about who this person was and what kind of value, because we've seen at the national level with some people who claim to be religious, what the results are, that's not been the case with you. I think you're a real credit to the faith community and give people a reason to think that there's some real value there that gets contributed to the community. I also have to say on the Regional Transportation Commission where we serve together, there is nobody who is better at holding the feet of the state officials to the fire when it comes to delivering services to your constituents. And the way that people have spoke about this from the board, when you talk about what's happening on highway 152 or something, it's always with a story about some person that needs it, some accident that's gonna be averted that there's gonna be a public result from that that matters to people. And it's clear that your heart is in this, it's not just going through the motions or something. So I've been very impressed with your public service and I wanna appreciate everything you've done for the public. Again, not just in your district, but on issues that have to do with what people need throughout this county. So thanks for your years of service. My name is Jonathan Engelman with State Senator John Laird's office and I am here honored to be here on behalf of Senator Laird and outgoing Assemblymember Mark Stone to present both Supervisor Coonerty and Supervisor Caput with these resolutions from the California State Legislature. Not gonna read them all, but they go into detail about your many accomplishments over the years. So on behalf of Senator Laird and Assemblymember Mark Stone, thank you so much for your commitment to our county and good luck on your future endeavors. Thank you. All right, if there's no one else here in chamber, is there anyone on Zoom? We do not have any speakers left on Zoom. All right, I need a motion. Move the recommended actions for approving the proclamations for both Supervisor Coonerty and Supervisor Caput. Thank you. Motion by Supervisor Friend, second by Supervisor McPherson. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk roll call vote please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson and Koenig. Aye. This item passes unanimously. Thank you. All right, good afternoon, everyone. We'll now resume the regular meeting of the December 13th Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. We did meet for a closed session during the, interactions out of closed session. Not this afternoon, thank you. All right, thank you. Clerk, will you please call the roll? Supervisor Friend. Here. Coonerty. Here. Caput. Here. And Koenig. Here. Thank you, Chair. You have quorum. Thank you. We'll proceed with item 14, which is to consider the Santa Cruz County 2022 Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, or CAP, the greenhouse gas reduction targets for 2030 and 2045, the use of the 2022 CAP equity guardrails and the Trout Response Outreach Plan, direct the Office of Response Recovery and resilience to return on April 25th, 2023, with an update on plan promotion and implementation as outlined in the memorandum of the Director of the Office of Response Recovery and resilience. And for a report on the CAP here today, we have our Director of the Office of Response Recovery and resilience, David Reed, and Tatiana Brennan, Senior Analyst with the Office. Please take it away. Thank you, Chair Koenig and members of the Board. Carlos Palacios, County Administrative Officer, just wanted to start with a few introductory comments First of all, I want to thank David and Tatiana Brennan for their hard work on this. They've done a great job as you're going to see and as you've already seen their work today. I wanted to provide a bit of context and background to the work you're about to hear about. About five years ago, actually it's longer, seven or eight years ago we started, what's now known as Central Coast Community Energy in this county. This county is the founding jurisdiction for that group, 3CE. And Chair Koenig, I know that you're aware you've been following our work. Supervisor McPherson has also been very involved and was one of the founding members along with the staff person, Jenny Johnson. And wanted to let you know how important that work is as it's foundational to the work we're going to hear about today with regard to the Climate Action Adaptation Plan. If we are electrifying our vehicles, our residences and our commercial buildings, it does no good if we are using dirty electricity. It's just spinning our wheels. But the fact that we are already at 60% carbon-free, renewable energy through the efforts of 3CE and on track to be at 100% carbon-free renewable energy by 2030 is due to the efforts of that group. And it was that idea that was birthed at this county, Santa Cruz County is the one where that idea first came about. It is where all the work to put that group together came about through, especially through the work as I said of Jenny Johnson, but also through Dana McCray, myself and my staff and Supervisor McPherson. And that's where we have been able to arrive at this point where we are confident by 2030 we're gonna be 100% of renewable energy. And so as we continue forward with these efforts that you're gonna hear about, I wanna urge this board to continue to support Central Coast Community Energy. Supervisor McPherson has served on the board of the policy board and has been at the chair of that board. And then the chair of the operations board, we have devoted a tremendous amount of energy to helping that agency to thrive and prosper. Other agencies are members and we now have five counties and over 34 jurisdictions, but we continue to be one of the agencies that is most supportive of that group. And their efforts are foundational to the efforts that we're gonna talk about today. So I just wanted to provide that bit of context thank you for your support and your continued support in allowing me to serve on the operations board and encouraging Supervisor McPherson to serve on the policy board. And hopefully in the years to come we will continue to support them so that they are successful so that we are successful together. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'll now choose Jay Reed and Tatiana, Brandon. Thank you, CEO Palacios. I wanted to just make a couple opening comments before handing it off to Tatiana for today's presentation. And just to highlight and expand upon the theme that Carlos Palacios, our CAO just articulated, this notion that we can go fast alone or we can go far together is really critical in this endeavor. And the successes of 3CE is one example of that but I wanna highlight a couple others really quickly because I think what we recognize is that together we can accomplish a lot and if we're unified in that effort. So I've been with the county for 15 years and I remember being on the technical advisory committee of 3CE in conversations with Allison Villalante and others at the harbor. And to see that to come to fruition is amazing. I was also in conversations around what buckets, remember the buckets of measure D and what buckets we should use and how we should allocate those tax revenues from that tax measure. And now we can celebrate $105 million coming into our county through the California Transportation Commission. The Pajaro Levy, a $400 million project led by Supervisor's friend in Capit but a collaborative effort nonetheless and a huge, huge effort to bring those resources into the community are all demonstrations and most recently the Watsonville Hospital raising over $60 million in legislative actions and record time. Demonstrate that when we work together we can go far and this CAP process designed and implemented by Tatiana Brennan is an embodiment of that collaborative spirit and it's intentional and it's designed to be collaborative both in the development of the CAP but also in the implementation of the CAP. And so that's what's inspiring to me is that I know we can do and accomplish great things as the CAO articulated with 3CE and these other examples and to achieve what we need to achieve by 2030 and 2045 as Tatiana Brennan will articulate for you we need to go together, we need to work together and be unified and I have confidence that we can do that. So with that I'm gonna pass it off to Tatiana. Thank you. Hello Board of Supervisors. Let me turn my microphone. Can you hear me? Is that better? Okay. Hello Board of Supervisors. Thank you for this opportunity to present you and the public with the 2022 Climate Action and Adaptation Plan. We will start with an agenda of today's presentation. We begin with a brief introduction to global climate change, a look at how climate change is experienced locally and an exploration of our local greenhouse gas emissions. Then we move to our response to climate change, the 2022 CAP. We'll present how the CAP was developed, the content and our focus on equity. The 2022 CAP acknowledges the Amma Mutsun Tribal Band, the original stewards of this land we now call Santa Cruz County and we share with you a land acknowledgement prepared by them. The land on which we gather is the unceded territory of the Owasawa speaking UP tribe. Sadly, there are no known survivors of the Owasawa speaking peoples. We have an obligation to ensure they are honored and never forgotten. Today the Amma Mutsun Tribal Band, composed of the descendants of indigenous people taken to missions Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista during Spanish colonization of the Central Coast, is working hard to restore traditional stewardship practices on these lands and heal from historical trauma. We wish to express gratitude to the people that contributed to the development of this CAP. There are too many to name individually, but we have grouped them by their role in the CAP process. CAP development was on an accelerated timeline and we couldn't have achieved the goal if it weren't for the contributions of each of the following. The three work groups, the steering committee, project sponsors, interns, mentors, community organizations, Central Coast community energy and Rinkon consultants. I would like to take a moment to acknowledge members of the audience who worked on the CAP. If you contributed to the CAP, please stand. Thank you for your time, effort and contributions. They are acknowledged and appreciated. There is no planet B. We must act now. We would like to start with a brief introduction to climate change. The atmosphere is critical in trapping heat that keeps our planet warm. Burning fossil fuels puts more carbon dioxide into our atmosphere causing Earth's atmosphere to trap more and more heat. Over time, gases in the atmosphere from increased carbon dioxide emissions have been trapping more heat and changing Earth's natural greenhouse effect. One of the biggest sources of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the burning of fossil fuels for heat and electricity. Why is it happening? In this graph, we can see the connection between an increase in CO2 and an increase in temperatures. On the left of the chart are global temperatures and on the right is concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. The x-axis starting with 1880 and ending ends in 2020. This is often called the J-curve graph. What we see here is a rapid increase in human-caused CO2 emissions since the Industrial Revolution. What's powerful about this graph is that you can see the profound effect our emissions increase has had on global average temperatures. Initially, we used global warming to describe the effect of increased CO2, but now we know that it is the intensity and variation in extreme weather that is what we will experience and are currently experiencing. What are our options? We can address climate change through different options, reducing fossil fuel emissions and through carbon sequestration. This graph shows the burning of fossil fuels from building and vehicles going into the atmosphere. It also shows carbon being absorbed by plants and the soil. Carbon sequestration is the long-term storage of carbon in plants and soils and occurs naturally. An example is forest regrowth, which is a form of carbon sequestration. We are currently experiencing climate change in Santa Cruz County. The climate vulnerability assessment of our county found in Appendix C of the CAP identified several climate hazards we are subject to with the most impactful being extreme heat, drought, wildfire, air quality and flooding. What do climate change events look like in Santa Cruz County? We are starting to see the effects of climate change in our county, as you can see in these pictures. These events will only grow in frequency and intensity over time if we do not decrease our CO2 emissions and make other changes to our lifestyles. What do these changes impact? Climate change affects all the habitats in our county, from the redwood forests to the rivers and streams and to our beautiful coastline. Who do they impact? Humans are not the only species impacted by climate change. There are 2,579 animal species in Santa Cruz County and 122 of them are threatened. Climate change affects our ecosystems and as the temperature rise and the climate changes, more species will be at risk. And now we look at our local 2019 greenhouse gas emissions. Here we see a representation of the different sectors contributing to greenhouse gas emissions in the unincorporated area of the county. If we add up emissions from passenger vehicles, commercial vehicles, public transit, off-road equipment, we see that 70% of greenhouse gas emissions are coming from the transportation sector. If we add up the emissions from residential natural gas, non-residential natural gas, propane and electricity, we see that 25% of emissions are from the built environment. The 2022 cap includes strategies targeted at reducing emissions from these two sectors. In addition to emissions from waste. I want to point out that if we looked at this pie chart 10 years ago, we would see a much higher contribution of emissions from the built environment. Due to the successful efforts of central coast community energy, we have one of the lowest rates of emissions from residential and non-residential electricity usage in the state. We have looked at our greenhouse gas inventory. Now we would like to focus on state requirements to reduce emissions. We are required by the state to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. And in order to do so, we need to set goals. The state has set two primary goals, one for 2030 and another for 2045. In the next few slides, I will walk us through this complex but foundational piece of the 2022 cap. Let's start with our baseline. The state uses 1990 emissions levels as the baseline or comparison amount, when accounting for changes in successive years. In 1990, our greenhouse gas emissions were 763, 809 metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions. For the purpose of this presentation, I will not use the full terminology, which is metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions, but instead we'll just refer to the numerical amount. Here we can see our current 2019 greenhouse gas inventory amount, which is roughly 691, 262, and is 9% below our 1990 baseline amount. Existing state and federal legislation will decrease emissions across the state. The horizontal blue line shows where we expect our emissions to be in 2030 and 2045. When we factor the impact of state and federal legislation, we can see a steady decrease over time. And this is again for unincorporated county of Santa Cruz County. Now let us look at how much we are responsible for decreasing. We see the baseline, our current greenhouse gas inventory amount here, and the blue line indicating expected decreases as a result of state and federal legislation. The red line represents the additional amount we need to decrease locally through policy changes. Now I'm going to explain the state requirements that you see here. In 2030, SB32 requires us to have decreased our emissions 40% below our 1990 baseline amount. We can expect our greenhouse gas emissions to be 649,396 with just state and federal legislation. But that is not sufficient to meet the goal of 458,284,258,285. We will need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 191,111 to reach the 2030 target. For comparison, that amount, the 191, is similar to the entire city of Watsonville's 2017 greenhouse gas inventory. Where we see the most reduction required is the AB 1279 target for 2045, which requires net neutrality. This means no greenhouse gas emissions should go into the atmosphere. 85% of greenhouse gas emissions per AB 1279 need to be eliminated. The remaining 15% of emissions must be captured through carbon sequestration or other carbon storing strategies. To put this in context, this amount here, this is 15% of 2019 emissions. So if we consider that in 2019, we could only emit 15%. And now we would like to present you with the 2022 cap. 2022 cap, key components. All of the four components represent core philosophical elements of the cap. The key components are adaptation, mitigation, accountability and equity. They are all interconnected and represented in the goals, strategies and objectives. A representative process with broad engagement. County staff committed over 1,120 hours to the development of the cap. Coming together in person every other week and doing preparation work in between meetings. Five youth from high school, community college and four-year universities have contributed countless hours to developing the cap, engaging in local government and working on their capstone projects. The 2022 cap was designed in the spirit of collaboration and the goals, strategies and objectives were developed based on the existing climate action plans in Watsonville and Santa Cruz. Integration with local initiatives. The 2022 cap builds off of existing initiatives, both those that focus on process improvement and those that are more technically focused. Initial stakeholder outreach. Although the cap was on an accelerated timeline, we built in a month of stakeholder outreach to community organizations and government entities. The 2022 cap is founded upon seven goals. Affordable housing, healthy ecosystems, healthy communities, decarbonization, resilience, staff engagement and a programmatic approach. These goals address the transformational change required to reduce our emissions at the rate the state requires and to adapt our built and natural environment to be resilient to climate change. The 29 strategies are founded upon these seven goals. 2022 cap framework. The framework consists of seven goals, 29 strategies and 167 objectives. We aren't going to go through each strategy and objective, but we will present you with our priority strategies. Strategies will be evaluated every four years, objectives every two years. Five departments are leads on the 29 strategies. With OR3, the lead on 13, CDI lead on 10, GSD lead on four, HSA the lead on one and ISD the lead on one. The 29 strategies align with the seven goals and the 167 objectives provide action steps for achieving the strategies. Priority mitigation strategies. We have selected priority strategies that address the sectors with the highest greenhouse gas contributions and are expected to have the highest impact on decreasing greenhouse gas emissions. These strategies address clean energy, eliminating fossil fuel use in vehicles and buildings, promoting higher density zoning, reducing the carbon footprint of our landfill, optimizing remote work and internet connectivity. Engaging in state and federal legislation that addresses climate change is also a priority strategy. Priority adaptation strategies. Adaptation is a key component of the 2022 cap and these prioritize strategies promote resilience and incorporate a long view perspective of local climate change. By adapting our county infrastructure and building all hazard community centers, we are preparing for the impacts of climate change on our built environment and on the people experiencing the effects of climate hazards. Strategies that address forest health, water systems and carbon sequestration are all designed to maximize our natural resources and promote resiliency. Effective monitoring and evaluation of all these efforts is key to understanding our success and barriers. 2022 cap objectives. Each long-term strategy has objectives outlining two year incremental actions towards achieving the goal. Workgroups determine the actions necessary by using this table. This framework incorporates a holistic perspective on achieving the strategies by looking at several factors that result in the completion and success of a strategy. We started with a two year objective for the strategy and identified the engagement and education necessary to create movement on a large scale and engage with existing efforts. Then we included any code changes that need to be made and identified any partnerships with others in the community or county. And finally, we identified a plan for funding the strategy. The objectives for each strategy can be found on pages 34 to 56 of the 2022 cap. We are asking you to approve the seven goals, 29 strategies and 167 objectives in the 2022 cap, equity guardrails, the climate vulnerability analysis and social vulnerability index, both found in Appendix C, provide information on climate hazards and an identification of the groups most impacted by climate change. The 2022 cap recognizes that the burden of climate change is disproportionately distributed due to longstanding systemic inequities. The guardrails provide an equity informed structure for improving outcomes for vulnerable populations and under invested communities at risk. The equity guardrails can be found in Appendix D of the cap, equity criteria. There are a set of six criteria that address components necessary for a strategy to build resilient capacity within populations most at risk and under invested communities. In the 2022 cap, we assess to the strategies for improvements to health and safety, financial benefits, cultural alignment, the potential for displacement, increasing investment and providing for green job development, equity matrix. The equity matrix is an initial test of the guardrails on the strategies. Each strategy was assessed and if it did not align within the guardrails, it was adjusted based on the findings. Additional detail on the equity matrix can be found in Appendix E. We'd like to walk you through one of the strategies as an example. Strategy seven reduces vehicle miles traveled through higher density zoning and optimizing the use of remote work. This strategy can be found on page 39 and 40 of the cap. The strategy is long-term and will be assessed in four years for any adjustments needed. The lead department is CDI with support being provided by OR3. There are five objective categories and after two years, these will be evaluated for completion or barriers and adjusted as needed. The implementation objective includes three primary actions, updating land use and transportation planning, updating the housing element and developing a prioritization matrix for housing element rezone sites. The engagement objective involves educating and informing groups of the vehicle miles traveled mitigation bank and regularly updating the housing element project website. Code adoption includes approving the housing element and rezoning of properties to meet RENA requirements. Key partners developing the VMT mitigation bank program will be Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission and the city of Watsonville. And finally, a plan for funding the strategy is included. Work has already begun on this strategy. On December 6th, 2022, the board approved the sustainability update and the VMT mitigation bank and implementation work has begun. The update to the housing element has also begun and CDI will come before the board in early January 2023 seeking approval of the outreach strategies. Equity guardrails applied. This shows the result of the equity guardrails applied to the strategy. The matrix shows how a strategy when implemented with fidelity will align with the guardrails. However, it is through consistent and regular evaluation that we will assess whether these criteria were met in practice. Drought response outreach plan. The draw played a key role in informing the drought strategies and we would like to invite the plan's author, Sierra Ryan Water Resources Manager to say a few words at the podium. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Koenig and supervisors. Thank you for having me. I'm Sierra Ryan Water Resources Manager in environmental health. Frequent and intense drought is clearly one of the most concerning, anticipated and currently experienced outcomes of a changing climate. In September, 2021, Governor Newsom signed the Drought Planning for Small Water Suppliers and Rural Communities Bill referred to as SB 552. SB 552 places drought and water shortage planning responsibilities for water systems and well serving up to 14 households on counties. The required outcomes of SB 552 include a plan for examining vulnerabilities and coming up with solutions for those systems as well as a standing oversight body. In December, 2021, the Water Advisory Commission, which is the commission that advises your board on water related issues devoted to become the standing oversight body. In alignment with the requirements of SB 552 to use a comprehensive planning process, they created a working group known as the Drought Response Working Group, which included three members of the Water Advisory Commission, including the Small Water Systems Representative, as well as board members from each of the three groundwater sustainability agencies in the county, a representative for services or underserved communities and two out-large representatives. The County Water Resources staff worked with this working group who met four times to develop what became the Drought Response and Outreach Plan or DROP. And then we were lucky enough to get to work with Tatiana and Dave to incorporate it into the CAP. The DROP includes several sections, primarily including background information about SB 552 and how the county is complying with the law, an analysis of water resources and vulnerabilities, both social and physical within the county is particularly focused on residents relying on wells and small water systems. The county's plan to improve data collection and provide resources to well owners and customers of small water systems, a focus on emergency response. So examples include after a mudsider of wildfire ensuring that people have access to water as quickly as possible. And a summary of recommendations from the Drought Response working group which staff will be incorporating into our work plan to implement this over the next few years. I'm just really proud of the work that we've done over the last year it was a really heavy lift. There's a lot of work ahead of us but I think that with the support of the Water Advisory Commission and OR3 and their staff I think we're going to be able to move forward. Thank you. 2022 CAP website. The CAP can be found on the OR3 website with all the components covered in the document and appendices. The site is in story map form allowing visitors to interact with climate change components and even see how Live Oak has changed over the years. Next step implementation. The next step is implementation which will include developing community wide indicators for goals metrics for the strategies quantification of specific reductions necessary to achieve state greenhouse gas reduction targets a robust application of the equity guard rails and we will work on community engagement and messaging. This is not a one time thing. This is our future. Thank you. And this concludes our presentation. Thank you, Ms. Brennan. Thank you, Director Reed. Are there questions or comments from members of the board? Supervisor McPherson. Mr. Chair, I might have some long comment. In fact, this is really a remarkable report that you've put together and you're to be congratulated. I want to thank each and every one of you who are in this room and for everybody else who has had so much to do with getting us to this point where we are today which is really ahead of just about everybody else I know and just helping us move along farther as we go on the future of addressing the challenges of climate change. We are now and with Monterey Bay community power that just did become Central Coast community with the help so many people throughout the region just to let you know the triple C is it has over 400,000 customers. It is, we're on track to reach our goals very quickly much more quickly than the state in general. And it's something that has been a real satisfying issue to get 34 governing agencies from Santa Cruz County to Santa Barbara County engaged in this effort. It's truly remarkable and it's because of people like you who put us there and put Santa Cruz County in the lead. And I really want to thank you for everything that you have done to get us here. And I'm energized to see where we're going to go in the future as well. I want to thank the office of response recovery and resilience for its thorough report. This is a big one, a CAP, the Climate Action Adaption Plan or CAP. And the county commissions in general that have been mentioned, especially the commission on the environment for getting us here where we are today. The commission on the environment formed an ad hoc committee to review the details of CAP and had some meetings to get us where we are today. And it's important that the planning process was cross-departmental. As you can see from this report integrating county expertise at all levels. So ownership and implementation can also take place at all levels. I would like to highlight a few parts. You've been mentioning many and thank you for that presentation again, of the letter the board received from the commission on the environment which I think are worth mentioning. The CAP really effectively analyze a complexity of economic governance, communications, advocacy, infrastructure, transportation and land use issues that make a case that there is no one size fits all in us and our approach to mitigation and the adaptation measures that we still must face. And the commission also points out that to execute this plan, we are going to need much more funding than is currently available. But I think the mood, I know of this county and I think of this state is very much on our side to get us there. And I'm encouraged that the federal and state government has made more funding available, especially for resiliency projects at this time. And I hope that the office of OR3 will make its primary focus to lead the regional effort to garner some of that funding. And I think we have been very successful with that. So it's very encouraging to see that. And as much as I appreciate the work, I think the board and the public could have greatly benefited from more time with the documents presented here, given the complexity. But there's a sense of urgency. So we really need to get at this at this time. We can always make it better. And I think we will, but this is a great format for what we need to do. And I knew, I know that we have the sense of urgency to move forward, to meet our operational priorities with meaningful metrics that you've explained. So I expect to support the plan recommendations that are here. And I would like to request of staff, just what you need, another request, that prior to coming back to the board in April, I think it's the next time you'll be coming to us with this, with a proposed implementation plan. You provide the board offices and members of the public to review that at least two weeks in advance. And I know this is, you know, we've really stepped on it to get us here. And I think it's good. We are in a great spot and we're going to get better. And it's because of people like everybody in this room, and many, many more who've said, yeah, we want to be on board with this. And I might say that in the triple CE as well, that 95, 97% of our customers are in line with triple CE. So it's very encouraging and I can't thank enough. Thank you for your kind comments, Mr. CAO, but I want to just have him come back to you as sure of the operations board of triple CE. It's been really, really important. And as usual, Santa Cruz County is at the front of the line and making this happen. So I appreciate everybody's efforts. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson, Supervisor Coonerty. Or I'll just say, I mean, you outlined this in advance for us. So I may ask most of my questions then. I just want to appreciate the effort and the work that's gone into both having an inclusive process and embedded values, but then also to get to real numbers and outcomes that we can demonstrate to the community so that they can both change their behavior, make investments and see the reductions that we desperately need for future generations. So thank you very much. Thanks, Supervisor Coonerty. Supervisor Kedav. Thank you very much for the report. This is an awful lot that we're going to have to do, what you're going to have to do. It's your turn. So good luck. Anyway, I want to thank you for the report. Our environment is, if we destroy it, we're in big trouble. So we're at a critical point, I think. Can you imagine if all of this pollution and everything was taking place for the last 200 years and all that, we wouldn't be able to reverse it. But now, it's been about 100-something years. And I guess one of the big things is, of course, plastics. Plastics is everywhere. Like I said, what if we had plastics 200 years ago? Where's the tipping point on some of this stuff where we can't go back, we can't somehow clean it? Is there a tipping point? Do we know? I know it's a tough question. Yeah, I mean, I think in terms of the plastics production in our waste stream, the county has been a leader in trying to find as many places that we can eliminate that, right, from the start of the plastic bag ban to trying to eliminate single-use plastics in our commercial and restaurant industry. So I mean, I think it's still emerging. We still have to address agricultural plastics here at the local and regional level. And folks are certainly trying to find different ways of producing materials, not using petroleum, so they're biodegradable plastics. But we certainly need to get them out of our oceans and waste stream as much as we can. And then another question, maybe there's no answer for it. Let's say we didn't put any more plastic into the ocean, into the streams, into the water, into everything we're talking about. Is there a point where it actually gets so small and smaller, does it ever go away? Yeah, I mean, I think there are technologies that are being looked at for the microplastics filtration. So this board discussed at one time requiring a microplastics filtration system that could basically the back end of your washing machine so that wastewater would eliminate the microplastics, but that's still an evolving technology for sure. And where would that go? Let's say we would filter it out and then you would try and dispose of it in an appropriate manner so that it wouldn't go into the waste stream and possibly out of the ocean. Maybe burn it or something. Possibly, yes. We are looking at waste to energy technologies through CDI to try and find ways to utilize our waste in a more effective way through waste to energy technologies that are emerging. Yes, and some of the stuff we send it to where they make tools and stuff like that where they're forging in big fires and somehow they're able to use it. I don't know how far that's gone. Yeah, I'm not sure. I mean, I think there's always further exploration into how to reuse the products from our waste stream to optimize them. We can get rid of it, yeah. Okay, thanks a lot, thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Cabot. Supervisor Friend. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the presentation. And I just wanted to bring up a couple of things that I know that we've discussed previously. I mean, I think the report did touch on a couple of elements that I think we really should amplify and focus on and that includes the remote work element and broadband expansion. And the reason that I say that is because a lot of elements within the report are absolutely essential, but they're also intermediate to long-term transitionary things, including changes on new construction, for example. Which we know is not, is very important and the board recently in the building standards changed electrification within the urban services line. But these are kind of additive changes over the course of time that will, while making a difference, don't address the immediate element. One thing that we saw during the pandemic was those who are able and recognizing there's an entire sector that is not to expand into the remote work world. It did have a pretty significant impact on the environment. I may remember we had some of the best air and water quality that we've had in decades as a result of it. And so I do think that just the county is the second largest employer in the county behind the university. And I think that targeting major employers on policies like this would have a pretty significant and immediate impact on this, given the fact that, as you note, a significant, the highest percentage of GHGs is from the transportation sector. A lot of that are people commuting from where housing is available in our county to where jobs are. That job housing in balance, I believe, is one of the greatest contributors to regional GHG. And that's something that the board is working to address through changes in affordable housing. But those, again, are long-term situations because I mean, the reality is if you are, if you're domiciled in a location, you've developed community in a location, even as things change, you probably won't necessarily move from that location and even if it's a 20-mile commute. So we need to accommodate the reduction of those cars flat out. So I would like to see, as part of our process, that we take a much more strident advocacy role, not just within our own organization, but with other major employers to allow for this to happen, because I think that this would have a pretty immediate impact. But it also doesn't really cost anything in the same way as some of these major infrastructure changes. The work of Supervisor McPherson and Mr. Palacios and Jenny Johnson and Allison and you, Dave, on three CE is unmatched, quite frankly, on the changes. It's also a, I mean, a multi-billion dollar investment through multiple counties and takes a significant amount of time. And it's still the standard, it's still using standard infrastructures as a change of how we're purchasing power. My point is that there are shorter-term solutions that I think that we can emphasize, recognizing that in the short and intermediate term, when we're talking about service reductions on Metro, for example, I think electrification of fleets and the reality that people are still gonna be commuting distances, how do we either, A, afford that in a cleaner way through the electrification of vehicles, and or B, just change work patterns in such a way that allows people to do it from a carbon neutral way, which is something that's completely within our power as long as we can provide the back-end infrastructure through broadband expansion. I just don't think that these are that costly or technically complex, and I think that they would have a pretty significant impact. So I just wanted to highlight, these were bullet points that you had in the presentation. I recognize that they're longer than that in the entire document, but I think that they should be a priority. I mean, I think that they should be what we actually emphasize in the short-term in order to get to immediate results. And so I just wanted to share that. I mean, that comes with the fact that we can even have this conversation, the fact that we are having this conversation shows the values and ethos of this community and this county and the fact that the leadership of your team. So I wanted to appreciate that, but I did want to share those thoughts of what I think we should be prioritizing in the next, say 12 to 36 months. Thank you, Supervisor Friend. I'll start with just a few questions. The first is on transportation, which as you pointed out in the report, counts for 70% of all our emissions. How will we know if we're successful in terms of reducing vehicle miles traveled or having people shift to electric vehicles? What are we measuring as far as to determine our emissions there? And yeah, what are we tracking? So right now we haven't designed metrics for those specific strategies, but I can tell you that we will have them when we return in April. And just at the offset, we can definitely look at rebates and how many people have taken advantage of those, but there are also other ways that we can look at vehicle miles traveled and we will come back to the board with those. And not only will we come back to the board with those metrics, but also we'll come back with the targets for what we expect to see in terms of decreasing our greenhouse gas emissions to meet the 2030 and 2045 state targets. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I think in one of our conversations you mentioned one of the things we could measure is actually just a whole amount of gasoline sold in the county as well. I mean, and that struck me because we talk about climate change and emissions and these are all things that are largely invisible unless until one of these disaster events happen. But gallons of gasoline sold in the county is so tangible, right? We've got to get less people filling up with the pump. I mean, I can say, it's absolutely my least favorite thing to spend money on is gas, but we have to, there's still like that at some point that it feels like a necessity and we have to provide alternatives to people. I mean, the most natural thing of course to get people to buy less gas would be to increase the cost of gas and increase gas taxes. That's not within the authority of this board and of course it also has real political challenges as we've seen just with the response to the high gas prices in the last year. So I mean, really if we're gonna take action on that it's, as you said, it's gonna have to be in terms of providing alternatives in incentives and rebates for different types of transportation. My other question is, are all the neighboring counties and jurisdictions using exactly the same methodology? And the reason I ask that is, I mean, infill development as one of our leading strategies and it makes perfect sense. We need to get people living closer to where they work. As I've said before, I think we can all understand the carbon footprint associated with an Amazon package, something that product being produced in China and delivered to our doorstep with a fossil fuel using truck. But there's a carbon footprint associated with the people providing us services every day, whether it's cutting our hair or the bank teller or selling us a plant. A lot of those people have to commute in from other communities. And so yeah, it makes perfect sense that if we build housing locally and they can live locally, we'll reduce our net emissions. However, what if they don't live in the county, right? I mean, if we build all this housing here, I can see how maybe we just stay even because now someone who maybe was living in King City or Hollister is able to live in Santa Cruz. Are we gonna be able to go back and compare to surrounding counties and see, oh, hey, maybe you're counting on your balance sheet, some of the effects of what we did here. We can certainly, and to answer your first question, we do use the same methodology. It's standard to use the same methodology across jurisdictions. And that was definitely a value that we had going into this. That's why we partnered with City of Watsonville, City of Santa Cruz, and we hired the same consultant that they had used as well. So that's something that you'll see in this cap, but I also wanna point out that the counties and cities are coming together to address this issue. We see that the climate doesn't divide itself by jurisdictions, right? And so what you're bringing up is exactly what we would like to address. So how can we look at our region as a whole in terms of emissions, in terms of also rebates, in terms of funding and applying that across the region? And we really do use 3CE as an example of what we would hope to achieve in terms of this effort, in terms of it, the broad-based, what you were talking about, Supervisor McPherson, in terms of just the scale of engagement in 3CE, we're hoping to achieve that because we can't do it all alone, as Director Dave Reed said. Yeah, it's true, we can't do it all alone. I mean, I think Supervisor Friend was right to talk about how we've got to work with businesses as well as another note is getting out to all their employees and incentivizing them to either let employees work remotely or help find alternatives. Finally, the cap mentions to your objectives and how we're really gonna look at this in the two-year cycle. So I suppose if I was doing the math around where we'd have to be by 2025, right? Similar down around 575,000 metric tons, but I didn't see a explicit goal anywhere in, I mean, that was assuming a linear progression, right? And maybe we're gonna get a lot of the stuff in the works and then all of a sudden start to actually see the impact of it. So did I miss something as far as those objectives? Are they gonna come back to us? When are we actually gonna look at the incremental pieces here we can do to get where we need to go? Well, first, thank you for doing the math and looking ahead, really appreciate that. And yes, what you're asking about is what we will return to your board with in April. So we will include those projections and what we will do is we will quantify for each of the strategies what we expect them to contribute towards that decrease. And we will do that with sufficient time for the board and for the public to review that information. Great. Well, thank you. I think this is a great overview plan. Looking forward to getting more details and so we can really dig in in this coming year and start to make some progress. And again, thank you to our CAO and county staff for leading the way on the remote work policy because I think that has really taken making a big difference really quickly. Thank you. There's no other comments from the board. We'll open it now for public comment. Hi, my name is James Hewing Whitman. This is the public comments last item. You know, this conversation reminds me of degrees I got almost 30 years ago, a geology degree, a physical anthropology and a cultural anthropology degree. Laughable. Learned a lot since then. So let's just talk about some solutions. I'm not going to mention the first one. How about we reintroduce what was stopped in 1987 in this county? And that's where they took the exhaust from coal-fired power plants and pumped them into algae beds where they produced an oil, 60% of the weight of the algae that could be jet fuel, kerosene or diesel. At the time, that was 125 to 400 times more efficient than any other land product. And that's a vertical acre, except for hemp. We can thank William Randolph Hearst in 1937 for outlawing hemp. It's almost a complete replacement for all oil except high temperatures. We're talking about all this energy and how this infrastructure is actually going to be done. I think the only way it's really going to be done is by reducing the population. And unfortunately, that's happening for many reasons that I won't talk about. But there are some technologies. One can go back to patents in the 1870s, different magnetic technologies. And where do I think that's being used right now? Russia has a submarine that's 605 feet long and by its shape and by the fact that it can, it says it can travel at 125 knots. But there's information that it can travel at 175 knots underwater. That could only be magnetic drive. And that's a free energy source. So yes, you absolutely do need to shield it from it. But it's a lot easier than shielding from radiation. So I'd rather talk about solutions than kind of be funny than other stuff that's on my mind. So thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Whitman. And don't believe a word I say. Do your own research. And anyone who wants to make a comment, go ahead and form a queue. Hello, everyone. My name is Ian Nieves. And I am one of the interns who helped develop the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan to present it here today. And I could speak with these two minutes about how important this plan is or about all the effort and research that went into it. But I'm sure that you already know that. You've seen how much these people care and you've had the opportunity to meet all of the employees that have so much care and compassion for our community. And so instead, I'd like to send a message out to anyone who is willing to listen to me. And that is that change is possible and it could begin with anyone. And I've seen this happen myself. And it was during the creation of the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan. We banded together as a group with people from all sorts of different levels of power. We had the Agriculture Commissioner himself working alongside us interns and helped us create such a wonderful plan that's hopefully going to lead us into a much better future. And the success of this plan is going to be made possible from this cooperation. And so to anyone here who has any ideas, I would like to encourage you, let this be a call to action. Bring forth your ideas. And to those of you who are in positions of power, please empower these voices. Let them realize their visions so that they can help create a better community. Please become the change you want to see in the world and in our community. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Yadavis. Bring that down. Good afternoon. I just lower the mic. Thank you. I am Jennifer Hernandez, a climate policy intern who helped in the development of the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan. An experience I hold dearly due to the amount of inspiration it has brought me. Coming from a family of farm workers living in South County, it was difficult to fathom being a part of the government at my age and experience. But as I further went with the internship, I felt myself flourishing, being more open-minded and ready to use my passion for advocacy for the better. It brought me insight into the possibilities as well as hope. The CAP is a plan to take action as a group with the desired outcome to diminish a large number of greenhouse gas emissions. And as a member of the youth working on this plan has reassured me that while working together, there will be a potential to create a livable future for future generations. Now, the CAP surely holds great power to help diminish greenhouse gases for these upcoming years. But something I didn't see so prominent in the process was conversations of other perspectives in the county. There was a divide between North and South County, but that is due to the lack of diversity present within the county hierarchy. I understand there are others who were not present in the process, but it correlates with how the higher you are in power, the less of a diverse group there is. Something I see for the future is the decrease of the present rate barrier that limits how much we talk and understand other areas. And by saying other areas, I am not just meaning place, but rather reality in different parts of the communities overall. Having multiple members of different communities within the county work together can really present an idea and say it is equitable. Although at first, this understanding of the system within government brought fear to me, it has now been transformed into determination and passion. Environmentalism has always been an interest of mine, as well as being an advocate for my community. And so I will combine both as my passions in life. Now, I am not the representative of Watsonville, but I am one of many and more to come. Thank you, Ms. Hernandez. Good afternoon. My name is Kathleen McLaughlin, and I am a climate policy intern working with OR3. As a graduate student in environmental science, the task of tackling climate change can be daunting, but overall inspires urgency as the world, the action that we take today determines what world we pass on to future generations. Prior to graduate school, I was a wildlife biologist for seven years, working with various endangered species. I've had spotted owls flying close, looking for food as their old growth forest habitat shrinks. I've seen stretches of river dry up, preventing steelhead and salmon's return to their native spawning grounds. I encountered a distressed black bear with her cubs, displaced by severe wildfires in 2020. Through these experiences and many more, I was humbled and gained immense respect for the wild animals with whom we coexist. Seeing wildlife habitat disappear before our eyes has sparked a sense of purpose within me to protect these animals and their homes. In the CAHPS implementation, we must consider non-human species facing climate change. The equity guardrails highlight at-risk populations with no mention of animal populations. There are strategies on conservation and restoration of natural habitats, where we address the homes of the animals, but nothing on the protection of species themselves. These strategies could be enhanced by identifying federally protected species to conserve their habitat. From further degradation, animals are at-risk communities when considering wildfire prevention and mitigation and should be addressed as such. Wildlife provides a myriad of ecosystem services from cultural significance and education to economic benefits and food security. Though we live in a human-centered society, we can learn so much about the balance of life through stable ecosystems and biodiversity. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Hello, my name is Rowena and I am one of the climate policy in terms working on the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan. I began working on this project back in April and it has been wonderful to see how hard county staff have worked to put this plan together. I'm proud of the plan that OR3 presented today and believe that it will move the county in the right direction for responding to the climate crisis. However, it is important to note that while our greenhouse gas reduction targets are set for 2045, we do not have 23 years to act. We have just over six years left to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. When the board was updated on the CAPS progress in August, I came up here to give public comment about how the plan needs to make a significant impact that goes beyond the planning stages and into implementation. Now is the time for that to happen. On January 29th, 2019, the board declared a climate emergency. In the time since you have approved the formation of OR3, approved the sustainability update and now you have the updated CAP before you for approval. These initiatives are all proactive steps towards increasing the county's preparedness to face the impacts of climate change. The incoming board will need to step up during implementation for the CAP and sustainability update and fund these projects with a level of urgency that matches your previous declaration. You have declared an emergency, but must now follow through on that by staffing these initiatives as an emergency, promoting them as an emergency and allocating resources to them as an emergency. You as the board are representatives and members of our community and you have the power to make these amazing and necessary changes. And I urge you to no longer compromise on issues that affect our planet and our future. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Ramina. Hello, my name is Eloy Ortiz. I'm here on behalf of Rihanna and Aseon, our Parro Valley Climate Action. Our organization wanted to thank you and the county staff and your interns for their enthusiasm and preparing such a comprehensive report and keeping equity in mind when preparing the report. Our work focuses on informing residents about the impacts that climate change is having in their day-to-day lives and also being a leader in the community with public and other nonprofit agencies. I wanted to inform you, I've been a researcher in South County and I've worked with various nonprofits and we are already seeing the impact of climate change on the most vulnerable populations, that being with the farm workers. We are seeing the reduction in the hours that the farm workers are able to work. So you have already a low resource population whose hours are decreasing more on a yearly basis because of the drought. We're seeing with the heat waves, we're seeing people who, again, low resources, they're out in the fields because if they don't work, they're not feeding their kids. So they're out there and they're fainting, there's not enough, there are not enough guardrails when they're actually out in the fields working to help them when they have health issues. So I just wanted to thank you again for keeping that equity in mind and hopefully figuring out some possibilities, resources for these, for our most vulnerable populations here in Santa Cruz County. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ortiz. I'm Susan Worth, a senior living in Rodeo Mobile States, here for another measure on a different matter coming up by hope. But I'm concerned about the complacency of the American people. And I've heard that California and New York both have a no idling rule law. And I see people idling for over the weekend and I've tried to get the city hall to put a no idling sign or a couple of them up right next to city hall. Capitola Community Center. I've almost got arrested for trying to get a woman to turn her engine off. Capitola parking lot at the community center. But I'm telling you, I just, I don't understand why people are so complacent just that their engines blow. And I think we need a lot of no idling signs around. I think it might help. Just a quickie. Thank you. Hello, my name is Chris Damhorst. I sit on the commission on the environment representing the fifth district here in Santa Cruz County. I just want to take a little time to reiterate the commission on the environment support for the climate action and adaptation plan submitted here today. I wanted to thank to Tatiana, Brenna and David Reed and her entire staff. I had the honor of attending one of the meetings and they're a dedicated group, as you can see from the young people that have come up and really put a lot of work into this plan in such a compressed kind of timeframe. I'd also like to emphasize the urgency or re-emphasize the urgency regarding its implementation and execution. I ask that everyone take into consideration the climate action and adaptation plan when considering any and all decisions that anyone might make regarding county business. So please think about this document each and every day. Additionally, I know you all understand that funding will be critical to the success of this plan and I'm sure you all know as well that our investments now in actions and adaptations will be far cheaper than the consequences of our inactions later. So thank you all for your support. I'm very much appreciated. Thank you, Chris. Good afternoon. My name is Becky Steinbruner. I live in rural Santa Cruz County and I had the honor of being allowed to serve on the County Water Commissions Working Group or SB 552. It was a great honor and I really want to thank Ms. Ryan and those who worked on that together. Our county's efforts are leading the state. We are way ahead of where a lot of counties are with SB 552. I just want to note that I have not heard the city of Scotts Valley or the city of Capitola mentioned and this is a collaborative effort. So I'm wondering why they're not at the table and I hope they are and I hope they will be. I want to also say that the Native American tribes are still here. They're just silent. And I would like to ask this board to consider having a Native American ad hoc committee to vet all of this so that they are still here and their voices are heard. Regarding the drought response plan, I want to make it clear to you that the working group's concern was that SB 552 was a one size fits all effort by the state and does not necessarily fit here in its entirety. The committee was very concerned about forced consolidations especially on small water companies that may not have large financial reserves and on privately owned domestic well owners. So that was very clear and I believe that the commission is in agreement on that and that that spirit will carry through in whatever happens in the future. The well ordinance really needs to be reworked to limit large pumpers with junior water rights from extracting large amounts that cause small water companies and private wells to go dry in times of drought. We also need to honor the public trust as your board has been alerted to and I'm out of time to have a lot more but I'll try to write it to you and hope you'll listen. Thank you. Hi everybody, my name is Amy Chen Mills and I'm a climate activist here in Santa Cruz County and around the nation. I've been to DC to lobby for climate tax, spoken with many of our elected representatives and senators in DC. I really appreciate the work that's gone into this climate action plan and adaptation plan and I haven't been able to read the whole thing but I'm excited to do that. I wanted to express my appreciation for what Zach friend talked about and also Greg Caput in terms of the urgency and how quickly we can get things done. Greg Caput talked about tipping points and I think that the current scientific consensus is that we are either very near tipping points from which we will not be able to return or we are now in the midst of tipping points. Carbon dioxide parts per million is hovering around 417 in the atmosphere. At 420, that's when a lot of scientists say we will not be able to come back and that could happen within a year. So this is how urgent the matter is and I didn't think I would speak today but I thought, well, since I'm here and I came down here, I'll take the opportunity. The other piece that I haven't heard mentioned and I'm looking forward to reading the report is about what the agricultural community can do. We have so much ag land here that could go into organic and regenerative agriculture that would help to support species, speaking of species in wildlife and could also tremendously draw down carbon dioxide in the atmosphere too. So I'm excited to look at that. I really am feeling all the hard work that went into this. I know that we're an exemplary county. I think that at this point, we have to be actually better than exemplary. So thank you so much for listening to me. Thank you, Ms. Chen Mills. Good afternoon, Board of Supervisors. Afternoon, Elisa Benson, Assistant CAO. As one of the project sponsors for the CAP, I would be remiss not to do some specific acknowledgement of Dave and Tatiana. Yes, it took a county village to put this proposal before you today but there are two people who are really at the heart of it and to do it in less than a year is quite remarkable. I wanna thank Mr. Reed as our OR3 director and co-project sponsor. It was great to see Dave utilizing all the facets of his county career from DPW. His time as a board analyst supervisor and really the funnest part is watching him as a coastal geologist or a science guy help us bring a complex science into reasonable understandings for everyone. And I absolutely have to express my gratitude and appreciation for Ms. Brennan. We were so fortunate when Tatiana returned to the CAO OR3 family last October and signed on as our OR3 senior analyst for climate change and resilience. I am thankful for her openness to make a pivot from the crisis of homelessness to the crisis of climate change and accept the challenge to lead our CAP development. You've heard all about the plan and the engagement processes, our climate action internship program that she put together but it really is her professionalism, her dedication to excellence and all things and her continuing commitment to learn and improve in everything she does that informed our process along the way. We look forward to working with all of you to make this even better and make it be something we work on every day. So thank you, team. Thank you, Assistant CAO Benson. Chair Koenig, members of the board. My name is John Hunt. I currently serve as chair of your commission on the environment. And I want to thank you for receiving and listening and for Supervisor McPherson to reference our letter in support of the CAP and commending the OR3 staff for conducting a process that reached across 10 departments within the county and brought in dozens of experts and connected with both the community and neighboring entities that are doing similar work. This is very much in the spirit of what we were supporting in July of 2019 when we recommended to the board that the county hire a climate action manager to coordinate across departments. And we're very happy to see this level of coordination across the departments. I think it's gonna be very effective. I have a number of things to say, but I think what I'll just focus on is the state legislation, SB 32 and AB 1279 I think should not be looked at as mandates, but as opportunities and an open portal of conversation from local governments to the state. I think they are asking us for innovation. I think the innovation is gonna come from the local agencies and from the local communities in terms of neighborhood scale, micro grids and customer-based power development. And finally, I just wanna say that as we said in our letter, and I'll just read two sentences. The commission understands and hopes the board and the public will recognize that not every action envisioned in this plan will lead to success, nor does the plan yet contain all possible actions. It is far more important to be ambitious and lead bravely and collaboratively now than to get preoccupied with perfection. So I very much appreciate the flexible nature of this and hope that we will all take the steps forward and not worry about perfectionism. Let's get going and lead. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Hahn. All right, if there's no one else here in chambers or just to comment, is there anyone on Zoom? Yes, we do have some speakers online. Jean, your microphone is now available. Hello, Board of Supervisors. I have reviewed the cap and the hard work and the excellence in the presentation today. I'm very pleased to see the emphasis in the cap on the county's urban forest. This is especially important because the $105 million that David Reed mentioned earlier will be used to deforest 1.6 miles of segment nine of the rail corridor. We don't know how many trees are going to come down in segments 10, 11 and 12. The problem is that those 396 trees of segment nine currently act every day to sequester carbon and give us oxygen to breathe in exchange on ice. When those trees are filled and then shipped or decay, they will release their carbon, their sequestered carbon into the atmosphere. We will also bulldoze living soil throughout the corridor also releasing its carbon into the atmosphere. This proposed tree-filling deforestation of our urban forest, in my mind, contradicts the cap. Does it not? So I think it's time to rethink whether this is wise. It certainly can't be called green. And just one last comment about our so-called carbon-free electricity from the triple C, which I really support that program. I really do. But nothing is carbon-free. It takes fossil fuel to build windmills. It takes fossil fuel to build solar panels. It takes fossil fuel to establish them, to set them up and to build the road infrastructure from them. I just want everybody to remind there's no such thing as carbon-free. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Bronkelbank. Lonnie, your microphone's now available. Thank you, Chair and County Supervisors. Equity Transit thanks Tatiana Brennan and the numerous county planners, staff and analysts involved in creating this comprehensive cap. And for taking seriously the climate crisis that we are amidst, the cascade of extinctions and events generated by human activities on this planet has grown so severe, we have little time to shift our course away from what is being called the sixth great extinction. Our addiction to private automobiles and commercial trucks began at the greedy hands of industries that aggressively destroyed our once great world-class public transit systems, like the Key in the Bay Area and the Pacific Electric Railway Red Cars in Los Angeles, operating from 1901 to 1961. It covered over 1,100 miles of track with 900 electric trolley cars. These all-electric clean transportation systems formed once the world's most extensive inter-urban system right here in the United States. Our robust clean public transit systems were destroyed against the will of the public starting in the 1940s. This calculated decimation was segregation by design. Highways were built through the backyards and bedrooms of red-lined black and brown communities and systematized racism and classism across the United States, while reducing opportunities even today for elderly young people, people with disabilities, low-income people of color, essential workers and those who cannot or do not drive but must physically be at work. For example, our nurses. Robust public transportation benefits our economy, our equity and the environment. The natural resources to outfit every person in an e-car are extreme and electric cars have toxic tires and other toxic materials that contribute to greenhouse gases and leech toxins into our air, water and soils, leading to numerous health issues. We hope the county cap will support bus metro and clean passenger rail connecting with the state rail network. Thank you, Ms. Faulkner. Brian, your microphone's now available. Thank you very much. My name is Brian Lockwood. I am serving as Supervisor Capiz, a pointee and chairing the Santa Cruz County Water Advisory Commission. I appreciate you all taking the time to hear this important item today. I just wanted to chime in and apologize I can't be there in person but I have a TV water board meeting that starts at the top of the hour. But I want to take a moment to commend Santa Cruz County staff for the excellent work that they've done in preparing the climate action plan. I know PV Water, I'm the general manager of the Water Management Agency down here in South County as well. We've participated in some of the climate action planning effort and we've participated in the development of the Santa Cruz County throughout response and outreach plan, which I think was an excellent effort all around bringing in various members of the community to help with this important effort. As the drought continues on, there is a real risk of wells running out of water and we do need to find mechanisms to ensure that folks have the ability to access water at all times. So I think incorporating the drought response and outreach plan into the climate action plan made sense and I think that effort was very good and again, appreciate all of the hard work of County staff and I was enjoyed hearing from all the folks who have worked on it, supporting staff, all the interns that were in the queue, speaking to the board just moments ago. A great effort all around. Thank you again and have a good day. Thank you, Chair Lockwood. Maggie, your microphone's now available. Hi, my name's Maggie Oma and I worked on the CAP as a representative for the Santa Cruz Sierra Club group and I found the process to be very thorough. We worked with people throughout the county and in the two sessions that I participated and people were listened to and their input was taken to heart. I did call back with some more information every time I reached out. All of the things that I suggested were listened to and were well received. And most importantly, I feel that the fact that the climate CAAP is looking at a very short time span in terms of the turnaround, I feel that they are taking the climate emergency seriously because they look at it as a moving target rather than looking at it as something that they have to reach far into the distant future and that in my opinion is really the crux of all of the work that these amazing people have put into it and I highly recommend that you approve this plan. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Oma. Beverly, your microphone's now available. Hi, Beverly Day's show with the Electric Vehicle Association to Central Coast. So 70% of our emissions are from vehicles. I didn't hear much in the way of solutions. The building of new buildings to get people closer to where they work. No, most of Santa Cruz is, well, the county I guess is not already built out, but no, that's not going to do it. So to raise the price of gas to stop people from using cars. No, people who have money, they can pay that. People who don't, this is an equity issue here. They will be burdened to reduce parking to stop people from having cars. No, that just means people will be driving around or as in San Francisco, they will park and double park and leave their car running to Supervisor Caput. All plastics ever made still exist on the planet. There is no way for them to go away yet. Let's see, the ag industry could be doing regenerative agriculture, which has the benefit of sequestering carbon and has the benefit of up to 40%, excuse me, up to 50% holding of the water. So 50% reduction of water use. To measure how much we are traveling for vehicle miles traveled by gas sales. No, there are people, we have lots of visitors and people are going outside of the county with their vehicle. So that is not an accurate measure. I also didn't hear, but it may be in the plan, what the county is doing to electrify its grid. Excuse me, it's fleet. Thank you, Mr. Scho. Kathleen, your microphone is now available. Yes, I'm using Kathleen's tablet. This is Woody Rehanick of Safe Ag, Safe Schools and the Campaign for Organic and Regenerative Agriculture. In 2020, Santa Cruz County had 64,000 acres of ag and ranch land, an area twice the size of San Francisco, and about 7,000 acres were farmed or ranched organically with healthy living soil and microbial activity which stores carbon. I sent the supervisors an article that was in Sunday's Lookout Santa Cruz, an op-ed piece I wrote, which explains in more detail. But I think that it's really important to include in our inventories of carbon, zero carbon targets the potentials of healthy living soils. Now I asked a team of three blue ribbon soil scientists today in a workshop, my question was concurrent technology, measure soil organic matter content to determine the carbon storage in metric tons per acre with that precision. And their answer, the short answer was no, but the technology is being developed to do that. So we're working with estimates, but we do know from in the field, on hand experience that a great deal of tonnage of carbon can be sequestered in healthy living soils. So I urge the supervisors to take that into consideration among all the hard work that's already been done. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Rohanek. Colin user ending in 1416, your microphone is now available. Hi, this is Linda Marin. I'm with Citizens Climate Lobby Santa Cruz chapter. And I wanna just first appreciate what Supervisor Koenig said in his mention of taxing carbon. I would agree that that is the most useful and quickest way to bring emissions down, but to address your concern Beverly, I would only support such a thing if there were a robust dividend that covered about 60% of people from the lower end of the economic spectrum on, because that would of course be the only fair way to do it. But since we, as you mentioned, can Supervisor Koenig, we can't make a county wide carbon fee or a pollution fee. What we can do is some of the things that have been mentioned here. And I just wanna lift up the idea of resource conservation districts, whereby my understanding is that the notion of regenerative agriculture, or at least that title is not as welcome as the idea of healthy soils, which really is exactly the same thing in different language. And I'm just hoping that that notion of healthy soils runs deep in our work of creating a lot more healthy organic agriculture in our county. And I also wanna lift up something Amy Chen said and many of the interns about urgency because this is wonderful work that we're doing in Santa Cruz and I'm full of appreciation, but I think that probably we are from everything I understand in the middle of tipping points. So we can't hurry enough. And I'm appreciating all of you who are working hard and we need to do it faster. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Maureen. We have no further speakers, Chair. All right, then I'll return to the board for deliberation and action. Mr. Chair, I'd just like to summarize, really appreciate again, the comments that were made and especially for us addressing what we can do immediately right away. But in general, I think Santa Cruz County can be very pleased with where we are in addressing climate change today. And I think we will be equally excited and how more advanced we can be in the future. We need to keep our eye on the ball. We've done this in quick fashion and it's been and this County is excited about doing this and addressing issues more predominantly right away as soon as we can to make us, if not carbon-free, certainly carbon-reduced community and County. A lot of work has gone into this just much more to do we know that, we know that. We have a lot to catch up to correct. So there's a lot to do. But with that, I would like to move that we accept this CAP report and return on April 25th with an update on how we might plan and implement some of the charges that have been presented today. And we're especially wanna thank Mr. Reed, Ms. Brent for what they have done and how they've really organized this and capitalized it, capitalized it as well as you can. Thank you very much. I'll second that. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Just to clarify, your motion is for all the recommended actions. Yes, all right. We'll comment too. Sure, all right. We do have a motion by Supervisor McPherson, seconded by Supervisor Coonerty. Okay, yeah, maybe I'll make this quick. It's some good news. About five years ago, we went to my son's Little Lake baseball game in Watsonville. And then about halfway through the game, the pitcher looks up in the sky and then the shortstop and then all of a sudden the batter looks up and the umpire comes out and we're all now, I'm in the stands with my daughters and my wife and we're all looking up at two beautiful American bald eagles circling the field. The huge wingspans. I never saw anything quite like that. They are in the Watsonville area so I hope they're doing well. But it was quite a sight. They stopped the game for about five minutes. Everybody was just watching and then they flew off. So we can make things a little bit better. If we can bring back the American bald eagle, we can do this. We can make everything better. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. Do you have a motion? Any further discussion? Seeing none. Clerk will call the vote, please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Koenig. Aye. Item passes unanimously. Thank you everyone for coming out today. To comment on this item is very clear how important it is to our entire community. Thank you. All right, we do have one last item today, which is item 11, to consider approval and concept of ordinance amending Santa Cruz County Code, section 1332-030 and 1332-040-F and 1332-06 relating to general and special rent adjustments from mobile home parks. And schedule your ordinance for a second reading and final adoption on January 10th, 2023. And for a presentation on this item, this is actually submitted by Supervisor Friend and myself, so Supervisor Friend, if you'd like to introduce this. Sure, I don't have a presentation that'd be happy to introduce the item. As the board knows Santa Cruz County in particular our organization of Santa Cruz County has been a statewide leader in protecting mobile home residents and the value of an affordable housing stock that it provides in particular for seniors and low income families within our community. Some years back, Terry Hancock with working with local attorney, I believe he's here, Will Constantine, helped draft our ordinance, which has been used as a model across the state and some other communities that didn't have as robust of an ordinance, including two jurisdictions within our county haven't had as much success protecting residents. Over time, there have been some needs to make some changes. Supervisor Koenig and myself brought forward a change last year to clarify some language that was actually the intent of the original ordinance. And this time, we're bringing forward something that'll strengthen the protections in regards to how these increases are done by park owners, in particular tying it to the CPI as opposed to this 10% provision, which isn't really tied to anything. And secondly, working on a process that ensures that any challenges to these kinds of increases are done through a process that limits litigation possibilities. This has been a pretty extensive amount of work to make sure that what we did was the right draft. It's possible over the course of time we'll need to re-look at this again because it's an evolving situation. And as you can imagine in my district, and I know also in Supervisor Koenig's district, there have been a number of challenges and a number of pressure that's been put on park residents just in the last few years, including at Pinto Lakes, where we successfully defended those low income residents from unfair increases. So let me just also thank a couple of people that worked extensively on this. Suzanne Yang in County Council's office, an unbelievable amount of work, appreciation to Will Constantine, who's been a consistent and strong voice for mobile home residents throughout the state. And as a statewide leader, both Supervisor Koenig and my, our mobile home commissioners, Henry Cleveland and Jane Brocklebank have provided guidance over the course of just, not specifically on this ordinance, but over the course of the last year for the need. And unquestionably, Allison Vialante in my office, who did a significant amount of work over the last few months on this. This board is, what we're asking this board to do is to help with this cleanup language that we're providing today in order to ensure that these protections exist moving forward. I've got, if you got any specific questions, Supervisor Koenig or myself are happy to answer it. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Supervisor Friend. I'll just add that, you know, our mobile home park rent adjustment ordinance was clearly written at a different time when expectations around inflation were a little different. I mean, even with the high inflation we've experienced this past year, we've had an 8% range, but certainly not a 10% and certainly not 10% every year the way this ordinance, our ordinance currently plans for. So it's clear that it makes a lot more sense to tie operational increases to a consumer price index that we now expect to go up and down every year. Furthermore, I think this improved resolution process really just makes a lot more sense. It creates opportunities for park owners and residents to reach an agreement without costly litigation by bringing in an expert early who was a CPA. Both sides will have a chance to consider the facts regarding why special rent adjustment is necessary. And then there's even a second point where if they don't agree, they go to a hearing officer who will also assess those facts. So hopefully this will save everyone time and money. And, you know, last I do wanna acknowledge that the role the mobile home and mobile manufactured home commission has to play in this. You know, these amendments are coming straight to the board because time is of the essence. But that doesn't mean that we don't want the commission's input. And I hope that they will have a special meeting to provide us the recommendation before this is finalized at the second read on January 10th. And finally, I also would definitely like to second and to provide their friends, thanks for Suzanne Yang and County Council, Second District Analyst, Alison Violante and Will Constantine's work on this. Any other comments or questions? I think you've answered the question, but I am, is there a reason to have it specified that we have to have a CPA on it? I'm afraid we're gonna lose a member that's been associated with this for many years and it's really an expert at it. But you've answered it that you wanted that. I just, you know, if, I don't know if it could be recommended that we have somebody with CPA, but to require it, I'm just a little concerned about it. Supervisor Friend, do you wanna clarify? Yeah, so this isn't, I mean, just to make sure that we're on the same page, Supervisor McPherson, this isn't regarding the mobile home commission membership. This is just specific on what the expert, when we move into a period, if there's a dispute over the rent increase, this brings in an expert component and what the ordinance tries to do is define who an expert is. As I mentioned at the beginning, I think what's important here is that we get the ordinance approved, that we change the 10% component into the CPI and that we can clean up if, for example, the CPA element of an expert is too limiting, and I think that that's something that this board could continue, Supervisor Koenig, Chair Koenig and I could work on cleanup language in the new year to make that more broad. We do, we should define what an expert is. I mean, it helps define what it is, but this doesn't limit membership within anything that the county does. This is just specific to whether it goes to an expert should the rent challenges be, excuse me, should the rent increase be challenged? I mean, fully on board with what you're doing but I accept your comments can be discussed further in the future. It's a vital thing and I appreciate your efforts to update this and what's needed. So thank you. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. All right, there's no other comments from members of the board. Is there any member of the public who should comment on this item? I'm Will Constantine and I'm here on behalf of the Bay Federal Credit Union and we've been involved in this process as Supervisor Friend has stated. So I'd like to thank both his office and Supervisor Koenig's office for everything that you've done on this and everybody else on the board is supervisors for the great amount of support you've given to mobile home owners over the last 40 years now, which has been wonderful. Without your support with mobile home rent control and closure protection you would have lost thousands of homes already that are affordable to low and moderate income families that are here now. So I just wanted to say that this has been a long process. We may have to do a little bit of cleanup as he said later but we need this now and it's timely and thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Constantine. All right, seeing no one else here in chambers is there anyone on Zoom just to comment on this item? Yes, we do have speakers online. Casey, your microphone's now available. Can I, sorry, I just wanna interrupt briefly which is I have to leave in five minutes. I would love to support this. I think it has unanimous support. So for the speakers on Zoom, unless you have something substantive we have five members of the board who are ready to vote and unanimously move this forward I think. So I just wanna make that comment. Thank you. Okay. Casey, your microphone is still available. Okay, that being said, I will be very brief and I just want, I'm a mobile home owner in Rodale, Gulf of States and we're thrilled that you're taking this up and we appreciate it very much. Thank you. Thank you, Casey. Gene, your microphone's now available. Also very quickly, this is Gene Brocklebank and although I am the vice chair of the county's advisory body and mobile home commission, I'm speaking only for myself today as a 33 year resident of the mobile home park. First, I'd like to thank supervisor Koenig for mentioning the value of our mobile home commission. I really appreciate that. I also found the work by Suzanne Yang of county council exemplary, wonderful work needless to say, Will Constantine also and I'm glad that supervisor friend and Koenig brought this before you. I approve these amendments in general, absolutely. I have one little outstanding concern but I think it's something we can resolve next year so we can continue forward today with this current process. Well done all. Thank you, Graeme. Thank you, Gene. Lyle, your microphone's now available. It's star six to mute or unmute yourself Lyle if you'd like to go ahead and accept the unmute. The speaker's unmuted but doesn't appear to be making any noise. This is our final speaker. Last call for Lyle if you are able to speak. Okay, well, thank you for showing up anyway, Lyle. All right, I'll now return to the board for deliberation and action. I'll move the recommended actions. Second, pushing my supervisor friend, second by supervisor Coonerty. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk roll call vote please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty? Aye. Caput? No. Caput? Aye. Thank you, Ed McPherson and Koenig. Aye. Thank you, item passes unanimously. All right, thank you. That brings us to the end of our regular meeting today. Our last meeting of this year, the next meeting of the board will be January 10th, 2023. Happy holidays, everyone. I'm meeting adjourned. Thank you.