 for that face coverings are required at all times. Well in the County building. We'll call the August 13th, 2020 special meeting of the Board of Supervisors to order. Will the clerk please call the roll. Supervisor Leopold. Here. Friend. Here. Hoonerty. Here. McPherson. Here. And Chair Caput. Here. Please join me in a moment of silence or prayer followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. The United States of America. And the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God. Indivisible with liberty. And now we go to Mr. Palacios. Are there any late additions or changes for today's agenda? There are no changes for today's agenda. Okay. And next we'll have the same man. Give the, introduce the next item, an overview of land use and community services budget category. Yes, and I'll introduce Christina Mallory, the County budget manager who will be providing the overview of the land use and community services budget today. Good morning, Chair Caput, members of the Board. Christina Mallory, your County budget manager. So I'm going to give you an overview of the land use and community services budgets, which you'll be hearing today. And I'm going to go ahead and share the presentation. Okay. So today it's all about land use and community services. Here you can see that land use comprises about $218 million in financing of the County budget or just under 25% of the total. Provides funding for public works, ag commissioner, parks and cultural services, planning and housing, library and redevelopment funds and contributions to the ag extension, local agency, formation commission, known as LAFCO and the Monterey Bay Air Resources District. Here you'll see a breakdown of the financing by budget. Revenues includes revenues of approximately $189 million from charges and intergovernmental revenues and some other revenues at about $20.8 million in fund balance and $8.3 million in general fund contribution. Overall, the financing is reduced by 3.8% primarily from the reduction in intergovernmental revenues from the reduced gas tax and funds from completed road fund projects and some reduced charges for services. Here you'll see a breakdown of the general fund reduction by department. Which represents just under about 800,000 or 9% at the net county cost or general fund savings and from the proposed budget. The parks department here shows a zero. However, you should know the parks department did have expenditure reductions of over a million dollars which does represent 20% and that is offset by a loss of revenue in their department of about a million dollars due to the changes related to COVID-19. Here's the expenditure summary by department. You can see that the departments here cut like I said, close to just under $9 million or $8.6 million and it does include the elimination of 12.8 positions. Public Works makes up about 70% of the land use and community services section which is about 68% of the expenditures. And here you'll see a breakdown of the expenditures changes by category. So the majority of the changes were made in salaries and benefits of about 1.7 million dollars and it includes the 12.8 positions that are eliminated. Savings were also achieved via reductions in services and supplies for non-essential memberships, travel, training and other supplies. And here is a summary of the operational impacts for land use and community services. You'll see here, more information can be found in the department narratives and you're gonna hear from the majority of the departments today and they'll speak to their operational impacts. The majority of the departments did unfund some vacancies but we do have about three and a half filled positions all in the actually parks department. So you'll hear there's several parks planning and public works will present on the regular agenda and there's representatives from the other departments here today if you have any questions. And that concludes my presentation. Okay, we'll go to item number five. The opportunity for the members of the public to address the board on topics related to items on today's agenda, revives county budget for land use and community services. There will also be testimony during each regular item. If you cannot stay to wait for regular, you may address those at this time. However, you may only speak once on a topic and do we have anybody here that would like to speak? You have three minutes. Good morning everyone. My name is Veronica Velasquez. I am the SCIU chapter president for Santa Cruz County. I am here today in solidarity with members to express our disappointment at the way that the county has handled this economic hardship when it comes to the inequitable furloughs and layoffs of 30 county employees. In the last week, SCIU along with employees being directly affected by these layoffs and furloughs spoke to you all in depth about the impact that those layoffs will have in our community. In addition, we spoke in length about our concerns when it came to furloughing departments such as sanitation. During those meetings, we specifically asked that sanitation be excluded from furloughs as sanitation is an enterprise program. There are no savings from sanitation to the general fund. During this economic hardship, we should be looking at ways to avoid employees being affected by cuts trickling down from the state and the feds. With so many employees taking furloughs, we can certainly expect our local economy to take a huge hit because employees are not going to have that extra money in their pockets to go out and stimulate our local economy. It makes no sense that the county is furloughing employees and sanitation when it will not generate saving to the general fund. And yet we continue to hear the same message that you, Mr. Carlos Palacios, wants to ensure that furloughs are equitable. However, that message is inconsistent with the actions of this county. It really is. When you have mid management or amongst the highest paying earning employees take the same furlough as the working employees in this county, it makes absolutely no sense. When the working class in Santa Cruz County is one paycheck away from becoming homeless. Thank you. You're welcome. Hey, thanks members of the board. Me again, Kiernan from SCIU. I wanted to emphasize a point just like Veronica just said. Our intent when we as a union agree to furloughs is two things. It's to avoid layoffs and to help stimulate our local economy. And furloughing sanitation achieves neither of those things because enterprise fund and those savings can't be used in other departments. So I want you to really, you're gonna hear today from management that you can't do this, but we specifically agreed when we made an agreement on furloughs that we would revisit these furloughs in August and look at departments such as sanitation where there is no net savings in terms of jobs. There's no net savings to our community by furloughing and we shouldn't do something just for an arbitrary sense of being equitable when in fact, this is the opposite of being equitable. Thanks, y'all. Thank you. Anyone else in the chambers here would like to speak? I don't see anybody. Anybody downstairs or online? There's nobody in the community room and there are no web comments right now. That concludes item number five, public comment. Next is action on the consent agenda items 10 through 13. Do any board members have comments on the consent agenda? Supervisor Leopold. I have no comments. I wanna express my appreciation for the work of all these departments for what they do every day. We're not seeing huge cuts in these programs but they're a critical part of the county family. I agree with that, you bet. And I would move the consent agenda. Okay, and Supervisor Friend. I'll second that and I'll also just make a brief comment about the work of the Agricultural Commissioner and that office, Supervisor Caput and I represent the majority of the agricultural land and really it's an invaluable service as all these departments that are on here are but I just wanted to acknowledge Juan's work and his outreach to the ag community and other communities down in the South County to ensure that that is being represented well. And so I will second that motion. Thank you. Supervisor Coonerty. I have nothing to add. Thanks, thanks, Chair. Supervisor McPherson, Bruce, are you there? Chair, we lost his video. He shows that he's on but he might be having a connection problem. Okay. These are consent items. Can he raise his hand? Can't do that. Can he raise his hand on the, if he wants to speak? I don't think he's actually connected right now. I think he's having some issues. Okay. The roll call poll. There's a motion and a second. Yeah, we do. And there is consent which is obviously non-controversial items. Okay, fine. We have a motion by myself and There he is. He just popped on. Supervisor Friend. And will the clerk please conduct the roll call. Supervisor Leopold. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Chairman Caput. Aye. The motion passes unanimously. Yeah. Supervisor McPherson, did you have anything to say on the consent agenda? We had a little problem with the computer. Yeah, I just, no, I'm fine. That's fine. Thank you. Okay. We'll now go to the regular agenda item number seven, consider the 2020 and 2021 supplemental budget for parks, open space and cultural services department as outlined in the reference budget documents and the memorandum of the director of parks and open space and cultural services. Good to see you. Good to be seen. Good morning, Chairman Caput and fellow board members, staff, appreciate the opportunity to come before you today and talk about parks and open spaces. It's one of the happy places we like to think for people right now. So I'm going to quickly go over here to the agenda. Today we're going to go over our budget, our revisions to the proposed budget and our operational impacts and some of the uncertainties we're looking at. I wanted you to take a look at some of the headlines and media reports in the last couple of months. I think it's powerful and conveys kind of the feeling of our community and sort of the state and the world around us about places people go for refuge and respite and we like to be there for them. I also wanted to talk about some of the partnerships that we've had to develop over the last couple of months and solidify and or add to our partnerships. Partners that we didn't have before, which is always good, developing new strengths. I also wanted to take a moment and thank the leadership of the CAO's office and the staff of the CAO's office through this pandemic and the absolute support they've shown for us. And I also wanna thank our staff for their absolute commitment and integrity and tireless support they've shown for our community, for their jobs. They, from day one from the shelter in place, they didn't stop providing service. They kept coming to work and kept doing what they were supposed to do and providing these services for people and they allowed us to provide the benefit to our community and I can't thank them enough for being there for everybody, including myself and I feel honored to be able to serve with them as a public servant. So here's our team of two who handle our budget. I should have said, I'm sorry, I started, I'm here with my administrative service manager, Kim Namba and behind me is Superintendent Rebecca Hurley. So they've been instrumental in getting us through these tough times and I might as well dive into this budget. Ms. Mauri, who's also been instrumental in working with our team of two went over pretty much the overview for us, 21% reduction and we actually, we're actually unfunding and or deleting a total of 8.5 FTEs. We only, we were able to get it down to 3.5 FTEs that were actually deleting that are occupied. So overall, it's not as bad as we actually thought it would be and by some of your actions yesterday, you've helped us with our outlook. So I'll go into that a little bit later. Of course, our issue in parks is activities and events and receptions and ceremonies and concerts and all those kinds of fun things that people like to do in parks are no longer allowed. Well, I'm sure that you're aware that that was a large source of revenue, including our swim center. And so as you look at this chart in front of you, you can see the trend line for the last couple months is the red line that drops into June. And actually the typical trend line for us is the blue line, which would normally be rising and you're looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars that we're losing and have lost. However, through the innovation of our staff and our community, we've been able to reopen the swim center. We've been able to do youth camps. And so we are seeing a turnaround in revenue. Speaking of camps and innovation, I'm gonna go over some of our operational impacts now. So we were looking at pretty dire circumstances and eliminating senior and adult programs, art and cultural programs, Quail Hollow programs, special classes, paid internship programs, special events and reducing our social media. Deleting a halftime clerk position, deleting two FT REC coordinators and deleting a building maintenance supervisor. And you can see all the defunding of positions as well there. In addition, we did reclass one maintenance worker to a park maintenance supervisor so that we could assume some of the duties that were lost under the building maintenance supervisor and we're reducing extra help. Now, as I said, this actually is better than we first thought. And then as a result of some of your actions with the CARES Act yesterday and actually by the human services department action that we're working with them closely this week, it's going to look like we should be able to keep a programming going up at Quail. I know that was a comment on the web, a number of comments we saw so that that's going to be a really good thing. And we also are going to be able to keep some of these positions on the books probably until December as a result of the CARES Act. So we feel we have work for them and we can keep them on the books for that long. So I wanted you to be aware of that. And it's again, because your actions yesterday. Operational impacts. I think you've seen all of the different things. How difficult it is just to put, let people swim laps at the pool. You can see staff checking people in, staff sanitizing, staff taking care of reservations. They've never done that before. So just the added layers of time intensive activities. We have employees who are helping out with disaster service work, full-time employees still working at the, one of the shelters is Kathy DeWild who's been with us for a long time has taken that on and just run with it. And we thank her for her service over there. We were going to be an alternate CARES site and ended up being the transition age youth shelter and that was really beneficial for everybody. We found somewhat more stable homes for them than a swim center. So that's really good and we're happy for them and we were happy to help. Overall, hundreds of kids were actually able to go through summer camps or aquatic camps. We were really excited that we were able to partner with the health officer to be able to do that. We also partnered with the city of Watsonville and the Boulder Creek Recreation and Park District and County Park Friends to make that happen. And 50% of the kids, almost 50% that were in our summer camps actually qualified for Medi-Cal or CalFresh and our WIC. So that's something we're really striving to make even more a larger number, a more prevalent represented group. And we went from just lap swimming. Now we actually have the opportunity for families to be able to come out small, small family event type activities, I shouldn't say event, but four people can come out and spend a little time with their kids in the pool. So that's at least a little bit of opportunity for people. We also were able to do some ceremonies and we're doing fitness classes outdoors. We partnered with Gail, of course, always wonderful and she helped us do some weddings in the park ceremony only and we're gonna continue to do those. Again, finding ways to generate a little bit of revenue where we can and also give people a little bit of normalcy. Working with the Sheriff's office to regulate all of the groups that are coming in and out, having spontaneous sporting events and gatherings that are inappropriate. Working with other agencies to make sure we're consistent with our rules and regulations. And we're actually looking at events that we can do, virtual events. So as you can see, Parks and Rec actually is going to be the 24th through the 30th. I actually had an update on that today. Yeah, the 24th through the 30th of August. So again, an opportunity to get people to remind them that we're still here and we're still doing events. The covengers for those Marvel fans out there, we're gonna be doing a virtual 5K and 10K. And if you join that 5 to 10K virtual event, you'll get one of these snazzy masks that I'm wearing. Or you can pay us $5. And in the past, we gave the board members these for free, but we're charging this year. So every penny we can get. So, and we're also gonna be doing movies in the park. So a really innovative way of doing it with partnership with Animal Services. We're gonna have large circles drawn out in the parks. We're gonna work with some of the local restaurants who can have the people can pre-order their food and we'll have people socially distance in groups and circles out on the park. So really excited about that. Again, I've just been absolutely in awe of our staff who I put together teams of multidisciplinary groups who've come up with ideas and how we can generate revenue, how we can keep moving and the things we can do. So that's just one example. Some of the impacts to our operational plan. We were working on a youth recreation camp for pre-teens and teenage youth, specifically, as I said, trying to target those groups that are eligible for Medi-Cal and CalFresh. Work's been delayed a little bit as we adjusted and we're modifying the offerings we have now. But I feel confident, especially after your actions yesterday that we'll be able to move forward. And we did offer Aquatics Camp for your kids in pages seven to 13, which is one of the goals we're trying to get swim lessons to every kid in this county. Develop internships. We had paid internships. And you guys laughed at me yesterday, but we did have one of our interns come through on that paid internship that worked in Kamala Harris's office. So we have some claim to fame now, I think. And so I'm really proud of our internship program. And now we actually have four unpaid interns. So we did have to eliminate the paid portion. So we hope we get just as many quality people. Smart Park Maintenance. This was a way to make our maintenance work a little more efficient, a little more smarter. We have very smart maintenance workers, but just trying to help them not have to lose so much time driving and traveling and doing work in different places. So fortunately also as a result of yesterday's action, we're gonna be working with ISD and a work order software called Lucity. And that's going to help us move forward with that. And then as far as Simpkins Pool, we have deferred maintenance issues. They are going to be delayed a little bit. We have not been, but we feel that we'll be able to stay relatively on schedule. That's obviously a huge reduction in staff that we have. And we're doing the best we can there. Planning capital projects, just really again, proud of our staff and the work they've continued to do. Projects keep moving, keep being able to literally grind it out. Here we are at the heart of Soquel. As we open up a connecting trail, multi-use trail between basically Michael's on Maine and that portion of Soquel to the other side over by JJ's. And I know it sounds like I'm talking about bars, but it actually, during the daytime, it's a beautiful repairing corridor along the stream there. And we've done a lot of restoration work already out there. And it'll just be a lovely, lovely way to connect. And it also actually, believe it or not, it's gonna be give alternate routes for people to drop their kids off at the schools. And then we're getting the rest of a minute. Sea Cliff Village Park, that has just come along. It should be done by the end of the year. In Hidden Beach Playground, we're working on the design right now. Coastal encroachment program, we're making great progress with that and working closely with DPW and Coastal. And we have just about $14 million in grants that we're looking at. I expect that actually might go up given the Land Water Conservation Fund was approved. That's very exciting news for all parks departments. We'll find a way to get more money. Volunteers were on hold a little bit for a while, but we've started small volunteer projects. You can see the list of them here. Invasive Plant Removal Felton was a big one and something everybody's worried about. And so we're really happy we were able to move on that. Conservation Corps are down at the heart of Soquel. And then the Quail Hall Garden is beautiful. Our volunteers did a wonderful job there. And we got a huge donation of owl boxes and they were actually installed by the volunteers as well, including some of our staff that volunteered. Uncertainties, all of the above, everybody knows everything you can't imagine. Ambiguity around revenue, increased utility, partnerships, how are they gonna work, facility rentals, child care. We're working through those and I feel those are all opportunities for us. And in particular, we're really concentrating on the hubs for learning and distance learning and child care. And I think that's gonna be a huge benefit, especially to the underserved community that we've talked about. So in specifically, here's some areas that we really feel are great opportunities for us now, especially with the CARES Act funding that we'll be using and potentially funding that we'll be getting from HSD. And then just some of the things that everybody's aware of, park closures are always difficult and challenging and extra sanitation and but excited about the outdoor education programs and virtual recreation. So I do hope that someday we'll be able to get back to this. This was right before, a couple months before and first class of sponsored kids learning how to swim, swim lessons. And I think we can get back there in the coming months if not hopefully worst case in it within a year. So with that, I would ask that you approve the supplemental budget for Parks, Open Space and Cultural Services and the CSA 11 Fund and take related actions. Thank you. Tried to be quick. Thank you. I'll open it up for questions from board members. We'll go with Supervisor Friend. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Director Gaffney and for your entire team's work. As reflecting as you were giving your presentation about the unbelievable amount of progress that has been made in and with the parks department in just the last couple of years and how telling it should be to the community that when you have funding and there's the ability to do investment, you think about the new parks, the new facilities, the upgrades, the programmatic changes that have been pretty astronomical in the last couple of years. And also thinking about the fact that if you were to take any of what you had presented in isolation, it would be a pretty significant story. I mean, reduction of programs, inability to maintain parks, losing staff, you go sort of on and on and on, but the magnitude of what you're talking about, should there not be a federal infusion of funding, should we not be able to continue some of this at the end of the year, it's astronomical. It's really the change of the face of parks as we would know it within our community. And I think that we have to recognize the size and scope of what is being faced department by department. And it sort of presented in a quick way, but if you take a second at a 30,000 foot view to actually reflect on how astronomical it is, I mean, I just want you to know that the board is aware of it. And I hope that the community recognizes the need too to continue to invest in these elements because you've made a significant difference in my community and I know my colleagues feel the same way with those investments and opportunities for kids that just didn't have these parks and programs that they would have had, but for that work. So thank you to you and your team. And I do hope that we'll have a different view come the mid-year budget, hopefully through a federal infusion that will allow us to turn the shift around a bit. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Coonerty. Thank you, Director Gaffney and your whole team. You are providing a vital lifeline to just reconnect with community and with open space in this very, very challenging time. I wanted to, you and I briefly talked about it, did your parts commissioner, but with parents and kids being online and parents trying to figure out a way forward, I think if we can work to help support, especially low-income families with forming pods or after-school programs, places that kids can get some fulfillment as well as parents get a little relief, I think it would be a great service to the community. So I think, I know you're in initial discussions, but I think as additional direction, I'd like to ask you to work with HSD and community programs to see what we can do. And obviously the Friends Group to help support families with kids as they do online learning or from home. Thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. And thank you for your support in getting us that funding. Yeah. Supervisor McPherson. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Director Gaffney, Kim Nambi, Rebecca Hurley and the whole team that has taken on extra duties because they know the importance of parks and recreation for our community, especially in these times when kids aren't able to get together at school as they once did, parks are more important than ever for that. And I can't thank you enough for what you have done. You've been very innovative in what you've been able to put together under this crisis that we're facing. As many will remember, we lost our parks department put into another department, but parks was not an independent department after the recession. And this crisis is even worse than that one. And I think that speaks to the wonderful work of the department as well as the critical role of our parks and open spaces play now more than ever with the COVID-19 restrictions on our daily lives. I have received numerous emails and phone calls regarding the Coyle Hollow Park Program earmarked to be cut, but I was delighted, as you mentioned yesterday, to learn that we can fund that program through the CARES Act allocations approved by the Board on Wednesday in the community vitality programs category. But now it'll be incumbent on us to determine how to fund valuable programs such as these in the future if they cannot bring in revenue due to the COVID-19 restrictions. That was the case with Coyle Hollow at the moment, but for this coming year, I'm just glad that we will not see an interruption in the programming at Coyle Hollow. I can't overemphasize again how much I appreciate your innovation, your recognition of the value of parks to our community, and especially the children of our community in this really dire time when schools, they're not together, get together, they're not able to get together at school. You've done a phenomenal job, and I really wanted to say thank you. I mean, we did that just in the last few years at the Discovery Park, it felt in the library. New type, new ideas, new programs, and then you come through with flying colors. So thank you, each and every one of you in the parks department. Much appreciated. Thank you, Supervisor. Thank you. All right, bye. Supervisor Leopold. Thank you, Chair. I appreciate the presentation, Mr. Gaffney. Thank you for the work. I wanna especially recognize Rebecca Hurley and the work that she does. She gets lots of different calls for many different things in the first district. There's a lot of different needs, and I just appreciate her always can do attitude to get things done. It really makes a difference. And she's helped out not only with parks issues, but also helping out the local business community. And for that, they are very grateful, and I am very grateful, and the community is very grateful. I wanted to just talk about a couple of different things. First of all, it's hard to believe that we're in the same year that where we opened up the Chanticleer Park. You know, luckily we did that in January. 500 people came out just this past weekend. One of the leaders of that effort, Trisha Potts, dropped off at my house, maybe at your office, a photo album. So we could recall those days. It seemed not to be in the same year. It was heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time. No, it was a great day. And as I drive by that park on a regular basis, I think I look forward to the day when it's packed again as it was every day after the opening until this COVID crisis. And all those flowers came out and then they, after, I'm betting. It'll be fully filled. Yes, again. Some of those things. Kids and flowers. The trees will be taller. And I know that what's also very exciting to me is the support that you have offered and the support that we've received from county park friends who are really an amazing addition to the parks department and have really helped in terms of that outreach, that fundraising, that collaboration in the community. And I was happy that as part of our votes yesterday with the CARES Act funding to be able to support that innovation of programming to try to continue to do parks program during a difficult time. And some of that funding will also include staffing to do those innovative programs. And so I think that that's been a good way to ensure that people still work while we still have to meet the needs of our community. Absolutely. Very excited about doing it. Yeah. And the parks and recs program, which is always a great event. I try to attend every year. And I'll look to do it online this year. I was also interested to say, you're saying we're gonna do the movie in the park with the animal shelter. Yes. And we're gonna put circles on there. And that's been approved by the health department. Yes, we talked about it. Okay, well, maybe I'm gonna come out for that just cause it'd be good to be outside with people again. I'll have to borrow someone's dog though. Right. And to be clear, yes. And we are going under the governor's guidance. And so Dr. Newell has been amazing and she's been so helpful with guidance, but we're all trying to stick with what the governor's guidance is these days. But yes, I'm excited about it. Yeah. That's the second excited I am. Well, you know, and I was on the board when we had to make a difficult decision back in 2010 to merge the parks department in with public works. And we're working very hard to make sure that doesn't happen again. Since then in 2014, we did a parks measure that provided some funding to help recreate the independent parks department. And hopefully that's gonna be enough to get us through over this period. And hopefully by the end of the year, the federal government will accept their responsibility to help out state and local governments. So the effects won't be so severe here in Santa Cruz. And I look forward to that day and I look forward to when we can all be together on the swim deck in the parks and doing all the sorts of great programming that parks has done all the time. So I know these are very difficult choices. I think you found some creative ways to find some other funding to keep people employed. But it's tough and so I recognize that difficulty and I just want to acknowledge the leadership during these difficult times. Thank you, Supervisor Leopold. Thank you. Thank you. I think you're doing a great job considering the circumstances we're under. I find it something to look at and actually appreciate when I see county parks and actually city parks having some kind of programming and having playground area and open space for kids to go and run around. The biggest concern I have is not with our parks department but the schools, their response to all this is locking up and fencing off all of their playgrounds and all of their open space that kids could actually use are families. So instead of walking one block or a half a block to the local school that has the playground, these kids are all now walking a mile to get to the closest either city park or county park. And I'm noticing that they're getting a lot more, a lot more families and a lot more kids because they're the only place open, especially during weekends and whatever. So my complaints with really the school system by shutting off theirs, putting up walls, putting up barriers, sounds kind of familiar with our border and everything like that. But both sides seems to use that same argument. So I really wanna tell you, I appreciate the fact that even with the pandemic and how hard this is that we are having some programs and we're being very careful about it and we're providing the taxpayers who paid for everything a place to go and actually have some enjoyment outdoors, outside and whatever. Thank you, Supervisor. So anyway, keep it up and we'll be talking next week. I'll personally give you a call. Okay, thank you. Okay, if we have a motion or I'm sorry, I'll open it up for public comment. Anyone here in the chambers like to speak on this topic? No. Okay, downstairs. There's nobody in the community room and there are no web comments for this item. Okay. So I've moved the recommended actions with the additional direction that the parks department work with both county departments and community partners to develop support for low income families and online, during online learning. Second. We have a first and second and if they click could please call the roll call. Supervisor Leopold. Aye. Friend. Aye. Poonertie. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Chairman Caput. Aye. The motion passed unanimously. We'll now go to item number eight. Consider the 2020 and 2021 supplemental budget for the planning department as outlined in the reference budget documents and memorandum of the planning director. Okay, take your time. Relax. How you doing? I'm good. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning to your cabinet and members of the board, community staff. I'm Kathy Maloim, the planning director and I'm here to present the supplemental changes to the budget that we presented in June. Where's my, what's this different thing? Where do you want? Okay, yeah, this is different than what I need to do. Sorry about that. Yeah, the keyboard's better. All right, so the agenda will go through the changes since we last spoke in June with the supplemental budget. I'll review some of the operational impacts that occur as a result of the budget changes and of course a lot of that is stemming from the changes and uncertainties due to the COVID pandemic. The planning department is fortunate in to have been able to avoid layoffs. We do have some retirements, a total of three positions that have taken advantage of the retirement opportunity that will be this fall and additional one coming in at the end of December. So we will be going from 68 funded positions to 65 and then 64. And I just wanna take a moment to recognize some of those folks who are going to be retiring from the planning department that's David Carnegie and Barbara Ginsburg who are building permit counter technicians, Martin Benson who's a building inspector and Julie Conway who's our housing manager. And so all of those people have had storied careers and provided tremendous levels of public service and benefit to the community. And I want to acknowledge their contributions and wish them happy, healthy retirement as they move into their next chapters and hope that it's a really positive experience for them. I know it will be. With respect to the budget reductions, the next slide I'll go through a little bit. A total expenditure reduction of almost $800,000 reductions in salaries and benefits, service and deploys. We have some projected reduction in building and zoning permit revenue, but we're also increasing some charges to get to full cost recovery rate for our fee-based permit services. So the net reduction based on permit revenue is only just over about $200,000. We're fortunate to be receiving, that's why we're able to avoid layoffs, significant grants from the state, the local early action planning grant is half a million dollars. And that is allowing us to continue with our general plan update work and other work that is very important and going very well. Net result then is we are achieving the 20% decrease in general fund contribution. About, we will be receiving about $2.26 million in general fund contribution that results in an 82 cost recovery rate for the planning department, which is actually quite remarkable. In terms of the staffing then, I went through who and the types of positions that we will be leaving vacant, three out of the four are in the building section. And I just want to kind of emphasize that we are able to keep doing everything that we've done before. So there have been changes in the how, but not the what in terms of the services that we deliver to the public. Obviously, as long with everyone else, we've had significant shift in our service delivery model to all electronic remote staggered that's still a work in progress. You know, we're all continually adjusting. The Primo work in terms of continuous process improvement does continue. I think an emphasis in the coming year will be to work with our partners in public works and environmental health services, economic development to explore the consolidation into a community development services division to keep striving for improved streamlining and coordination on the development permit process. In terms of the impacts of the pandemic on our achievement of operational objectives, fortunate to be able to say that we've been successful in obtaining affordable housing funding. The remote work for the team that is preparing the general plan update and overseeing the EIR that's underway for that is working great remotely and we're very productive. So that's good news. We've held the EIR scoping meeting and we're on track with that effort. Also on track is the local hazard mitigation plan that's on schedule for adoption. A priority was to try to work to provide some farm worker housing with our nonprofit partners and that also is going well. In terms of the operational impacts then, we've talked about the adjustments to our service delivery model. In terms of a little bit of metrics, last time when I was here in June, you wondered, are we able to catch up, if you will? Have there been any reduction activities such that we're able to catch up or is the remote work changing things so that we're getting on top of any plan review, building permit plan reviews that are beyond our goal timing? And before COVID, we had 349 plan sets that were in review in the building permit review. And the oldest one, how late it was over our goal, was 70 days over the goal. So that was a pretty significant late plan check. As of October 3rd, we have not too many fewer, a little more than 10% fewer. We have 301 plan sets in review. The oldest over target is four days. So we're doing a lot better in terms of tackling ones that seem to be stuck and late that not mean our goal in terms of plan check turnarounds. Right now we have about 20% fewer plans in the system. We continue to try to gauge the longer term impact of the pandemic on development activity. We just don't really know. We're getting a lot of inquiries via email. So rather than people coming into the counter, we're getting emails. We're so far keeping up pretty well with those, but the volume is actually tripled. And so when you get the written email and do all the research and to answer it, it's been an impact on staff. We're providing great service, but I'm not sure that we're being, it depends on the level activity that may have a little bit of an effect. In terms of our Primo Continuous Process Improvement Goal, like I said, we've switched a little bit on emphasis, but one of the things that's gotten done ahead of schedule was structuring the system for electronic intake of discretionary permits. So that's still not 100%, but we're ahead of schedule on our ability to accept discretionary permit applications electronically. We've completed the transition to all E-Plan for building permit submittals. We were continuing to master the virtual public hearings and being fully remote on that. We've established a special email address for the records room so that there's remote access to people being able to obtain record, and that's been popular. In terms of the initial effects of COVID-19 on permit revenue, it's hard to really absorb what this chart is actually saying in detail, but basically, at the end of 2019, there had been a pulse of increased building permit activity because it was the three-year change in code cycle. So always at the end of every three-year code cycle, we get a push of new building permit activity trying to beat the changes of the next code. So before COVID, this year, we saw about 20% lower revenue than last year. We think mostly that was due to that last year, 2019, being really high because of that code cycle change. Now, after COVID, we're about 20% lower than that. So is that gonna continue? We're not really sure. They probably will, to some extent. So three out of the four positions that we'll be losing in our department are in permit services. So that's actually a commensurate, hopefully matches with the reduced level of demand to some degree. I also wanted to just point out and acknowledge that staff, as with everybody, is juggling a lot. And so we may end up also being able to match our demands for services. If we have less demand for services, we may have some staff that are willing to work less voluntarily as they juggle their own personal demands for childcare, educating their children, taking care of their elders, and so forth. So we're monitoring that. We'll obviously make sure that our business needs are covered, but that is another angle that may continue to allow us to adjust to appropriate level of staffing given our business needs. I've mentioned that some of the email remote services are somewhat more time-intensive at times. We've been doing one-day service, but we're not entirely sure that's gonna be able to continue. If it turns out that those emails are turning into special research projects in a lot more time than normal, then we might have to switch it up a little bit. But in short, I wanted to thank the board, the CEO's office, and obviously the planning department staff for their hard work and resilience. There's a lot of work getting done and done very well, and it's a great team. I thank them. I appreciate the work, and I know the community does. A regulatory agency is never gonna make anybody happy. People to get answers, they don't like to hear, but I think it's important to note that I have been getting positive feedback about COVID area services provided by the planning department staff, and I'm very proud of their capacity and abilities and the adjustments they've made to continue. So, with that, I'll close my remarks and be available for questions. Supervisor McPherson. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for that presentation, Director Malloy. And I wanna thank you and the planning department team for continuing work so diligently in this pandemic environment. I'm glad to hear about the grants that will make the required cuts less painful. The most important thing that I heard was the check turnaround. We get more calls on that than anything, and it's phenomenal. The reduction, well, there's not many applications, I know, but as normal, but it is really encouraging to see that you're able to let people know what they have to do to finalize their planning efforts. So, and I'm really glad to see that we're continuing our work toward establishing a community development services division. Many of the calls that I, and emails that my office gets have to do with more streamlined system, and that'll go a long way to serving our constituents well. And I can't help but think about the use mentioned to some retirements, but one person that I don't know how we're gonna do without is John Ricker. He is phenomenal, and especially in these times with these water management agencies, Mid County has completed our agents. It's the first part of this year. I'm a member of the Santa Margarita Water Management Agency along with Supervisor Leopold. We have to have ours done by January of 2022, but in that effort and in so many other efforts, John Ricker is invaluable. He is a saint. I don't know who the four or five people you're gonna hire to replace him in the future, but that's what it's probably gonna take. But I wanna just say overall to the planning department, thank you for improving the service areas that you give to our county residents. They just wanna know what they have to do to move on with their plans. And in these days of water uncertainty, fire resiliency and all that, it's more important than ever that they have a clear idea of what they have to do to complete their permit application. So thank you very much and for the entire planning department for what you've done and moving to be just more responsive, to respond more quickly to the residents of Santa Cruz County. Much appreciated, thank you. Okay, Supervisor Coonerty. Thank you and I appreciate your highlighting the way that your department has adapted to COVID. I guess my only question would be, I think these email and sort of digital applications are probably here to stay, even as the pandemic leaves. Is there anything, are there any lessons you can learn about automating some of this? So let's take some of the pressure off. Your planners as they get more and more digital applications. Yes, I think we talked in June about the fact that we have a contract with Camino. I mean, we continue to work on our website and web-based information about planning and zoning services. And so that's part of our effort that will continue. It had to go on pause for a while, but ultimately we want people to be able to get online with their own site, their own particular project that they're having in mind and be able to get site-specific, project-specific information from the web about what the requirements are, what kind of permits they need. And then ultimately be able to, through that same system, submit for that permit. So that's a great example of something that will be never done, continuous process improvement. There will always be ways that we can continue, but we do have a contract with Camino. We've got our partners and the other agencies and the Primo effort. And we continue to make it better along with getting the rest of the work done. Yeah. Well, thank you. I think sort of figuring out what the common questions and applications are. I have a hunch most people won't do the research. So just submit applications and expect us to give answers. And so the extent that we can automate that as much as possible, I think would take a significant burden off as this trend is likely here to stay. So thank you very much. Okay. Supervisor Leopold. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the presentation. It is unusual to think about making cuts and having no operational impact. I know that your staff has been very available and I just want to express my appreciation in particular to Jocelyn Drake, Martihini, Lizanne Jeffs, Annie Murphy and Bob Calciano, who have been available to help out with my staff and me and constituents when we've asked and that really makes a huge difference. I'm glad to hear that we're moving forward with the environmental document around the sustainable Santa Cruz County plan. I don't want to see that knocked off any more than it already has. And so a priority making sure that that process continues would be super helpful. And I think to the both the short-term because it's important to keep people working in long-term to the developmental needs of our community. So I'd really want to just see that move forward. Yeah, I'm happy to report that work is going very well. Good. The, I had a question about housing. I know I see Julie Conway here. We'll acknowledge her great work over the years, both here at the county and other housing venues. She's been a great affordable housing advocate. I'm wondering, Ms. Conway, if you could say yesterday we approved funding for rent and utility assistance. When do you think we will have the program dynamics of that to be able to share with the public? And thank you very much for, well, first the kind words. And also your advocacy for that program. We are working very hard and it's shifting somewhat the priorities for that money. We are working, as you know, with fit and cab. And we expect to have everything available next Tuesday when it's approved. In the meantime, we're having conversations with county council's office. And, you know, various people who are associated with it. The dynamics of course being, do we help fewer people and help them more or more people and help them a bit? Those some of the moving parts. It's one of the terrible Hobbesian choices that we have to make in times like this. I know that we've also applied for some other funding CDBG funding. When do we expect that we would hear on that funding? Yeah, and thank you. I was just going to say that some of our conversations and talking with fit and cab, one of the things we're talking about is which of these new pots of money can be employed? Because we still have our ongoing housing prevention and rapid rehousing funds that come from our former RDA funds. We have reprogrammed home grant and a new one that we're expecting to hear about soon. And also our CDBG CV funding. The state is, you know, even as we speak providing guidance, they had quite a long information session yesterday. And the dynamics of making those work together are something that we're really trying to do collaboratively to make sure we can get the CARES Act money out quickly, prevent evictions, and back it up with people who aren't able to access that assistance to provide housing stability. Yeah, well, I mean, I'm not sure if we're gonna be under some of this, the tight timelines that we have around the CARES Act funds about how quickly we have to spend them. But it's gonna, that'll probably in part define how much we help individuals because if we have to move quick, we can't move long. That's right. And the CDBG CV and the home do not have that same really rigid timeline. And so that'll be coming into play after we expend the CARES Act money. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you for your work. And good luck in your, whatever your next chapter is. Thank you. I would be very interested in when we get, it comes time to make the motion to add additional direction to have staff provide a report on either the last day or the first meeting in September of a typical planning metrics around permit issuance, code compliant, discretionary permits and such. You had talked about that a little bit in there and it would be great to have that and just have a dashboard of how long these things are taking because these are the questions that we get asked all the time. That's all chair. Maybe you wanna call in Supervisor Friend. Thank you. You've got Supervisor Friend. Thank you chair. And thank you, Ms. Malloy for answering a number of the questions that I had posed during the budget hearings in June in your presentation. So I thank you for following up on a lot of that. So I don't have any questions in particular and I am supportive of the comment that Supervisor Leopold made regarding the dashboard. But I did wanna take a minute to ensure that Ms. Conway received the recognition that she deserved because, not just because we are both originally from Minnesota, which alone deserves some sort of recognition for moving west, but Ms. Conway, you've dedicated your life to people that just don't have access to housing. And as we know with so much other things that we do in these positions, it's so foundational to ensure that we have affordable housing and safe housing options for people. And you are just such a strong advocate for those without a voice in the housing market locally and have been for so long. And there's so many people living in Measure J homes and other constructed projects as a result of your advocacy, your work in neighborhoods, your work with policymakers, your work with other jurisdictions, always quiet and always behind the scenes, but unrelenting in your vision to ensure that everybody has access to safe and affordable housing. And I will personally miss that advocacy in your work as you move on to your next chapter, but I just want you to know that many people may not know who you are in the work that you do, but it just, it can't be said enough about how that really changes the trajectory of people's lives. And so thank you for, it's the ultimate embodiment of public service. You deserve the love and respect of people within this community. And I just wanted to acknowledge you. Thank you. I just have to step up and say thank you very much for that, Supervisor Friend. That is extremely kind. And I really appreciate it. It has been a great honor working with the County. Yeah, I want to thank you also for all the hard work you're doing. Your planning department is a major office in the County. And have you noticed with the public, I know you probably have less people coming in and less permits, but how drastic is that as far as number of people that actually come in in person? We're trying to dissuade people from coming in in person. We do have people available if there is a need, a particular need that really is met best by coming and meeting in person. But that's actually not happening all that much sometimes, but that's I think why we're having the increased volume in our email contacts. That's up about, you know, it's triple because we're available. People can send an email and they are. And then the overall level of permit activity seems to be down about 20%, but we don't know, it's very difficult to project what's going to happen in the future. And I guess there's a number of papers and steps that people do have to go through. They, some of them have an expiration date or they have a time limit, right? I would call it shelf life, but... They do, but it's very common, especially in crisis, you know, disaster type context for people to be able to get extensions. So normally it lasts three years, but you can get, we have provisions in our code that allow for extensions. You try to give more time than they normally would get. Yes. Yeah, because it really is tough for everybody. We have, we all have plans and then we can't do them as fast as we want to. Yeah, thank you. Okay, thank you. And we'll bring it back. We'll open up the public for questions. Do we have anybody here in the chambers? We have nobody in the community room, but we do have two web comments. The first one is from Ken Davenport. Dear Board of Supervisors, the recommended budget for planning salaries and benefits is $10,291,332. The taxpayer expenditure of approximately 160,000 annually for each of the 65 planning department employees. In a county where the medium individual income is less than 50,000 a year, this is unacceptable. Deeper cuts are needed and there's plenty of opportunity in the planning budget. Thank you for your prudent review of these important issues. And the last comment is from Jim Heaney. Thank you to Kathy and her management team. The acceptance of early retirement helped to keep our recently hired new employees employed. He will all work together to provide the service to our customers. And that's it. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we'll bring it back to the board for action. Chair, I just want to ask one more question so I get the motion. If we want to ask for a dashboard report on permit issuance rates year over year for a number of different things, is it realistic to think that we'd get that by the last day report or our first meeting in September? First meeting in September, please. And so just to clarify, you said permit issuance rates for the various types of permits. Do you mean numbers or how long it takes or what are you looking for specifically? I think it would be by type aging reports, you know. Okay. So I would meet the recommended action and ask that the director, the department to come back at our first meeting in September with a dashboard report of permit issuance rates over year by type aging report for E-plans through the process, code compliance cases closed and duration, discretionary permit numbers and other applicable planning division metrics. Okay, we have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. Okay, we have a second. I believe that was. The roll call vote. Supervisor Leopold. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Chairman Caput. Aye. The motion passes unanimously and that will take us to item number nine, consider the 2020-2021 supplemental budget for the department of public works and take related actions as outlined in the reference budget documents from the memorandum of the deputy CAO and the director of public works. Hey, good to see you. Good morning. Thank you. Good to be seen. Thank you, chair. Thank you, supervisors. Thank you, CAO Palacios. Thank you, Mr. Heath. My name is Matt Machado and I'll be giving the presentation for our supplemental budget for the department of public works. I'd like to start by thanking the board of supervisors for their continual acknowledgement of the good work by public works. And I'd also like to thank all of our public work staff for doing that good work. It's really amazing that the type of work that they're able to pull off and do with limited resources. Furthermore, I'd like to thank our CAO, Mr. Palacios, for his continued support. So let me get going here. Whoops, that's not the right button. All right, let's just do this this way. I got it. I got, oh, I did it doubled, didn't I? Sorry. So this morning I will cover the revised budget numbers. I will cover how those numbers are going to impact our operations and I will cover the uncertainties of our budget in our economic times. I'd like to direct your attention to the right column. I'll start with that lower revenue of 5.3%. That's $7.9 million. That's primarily due to two changes, the largest change being early delivery of storm damage projects, which is impressive. And I'd like to thank a couple groups for that. We streamlined our contract award process. I'd like to thank CAO Palacios for his support and for our staff for being creative and efficient. And so we were able to deliver quite a bit early, which is nice. The second part of the change is due to a reduction in transportation funding. That's our fuel taxes and measure D. That amounts to about one and a half million dollars of reduced revenue. I'd like to take your attention to the next line, the reduction of 20% in our general fund area, which is really in our capital projects. And that's due to just a scaling back of some projects. And so it scales back their support for those projects. Moving down, there's actually an increase of 29%. This is due to funding through the RTC for projects that the department is taking on, which is great. And then finally, I'd like to direct your attention to the reduction of staff positions of 3.3, the very bottom line. This is due to two retirements being approved for the incentive program, one funding the vacant position of the climate action manager. And finally, a minor modification of two vacant partial positions that we put into one full-time equivalent position with a savings of 0.3. So that's our 3.3. Some additional detail of all of our funds, I'd like to direct your attention to the right column. That revenue reduction, sorry, of $542,000 is our measure D for local roads. That's a significant reduction in that program. Looking at the next line down, the revenue reduction of $5.5 million is again early project delivery. Further down, the reduction of $1.7 million is due to lower staff billing on projects due to furloughs. So that results in less revenue because we have less staff time. And then finally, I'll take your attention down to expenditure reductions of $2.5 million, the top line of expenditures. And that is due to furloughs and the 3.3 unfunded positions. So let's get into how this is going to affect our operations. Before getting into it, I do wanna start by thanking and complimenting public work staff for working hard, working smart, being so dedicated and maximizing efficiencies that get the most out of the minimal resources that we have. This slide shows that we are proposing no layoffs but we have a significant reduction in staffing due to retirements, vacancies and furloughs. We will be providing a lower level of service due to less staff time and furloughs. And sadly, we will strive to lower the public's expectations of what we can deliver in this very challenging environment. I direct your attention to that picture. I'm sure at least one of you knows where that picture is. That is Valencia, host mile 2.43. No one was injured in that. That's the 2017 storms and that project is currently under construction. But I do wanna point out a few things on this slide. First of all, a reduction in SB1 fuel tax revenues will mean less storm damage repair projects going to construction in 2021. And less fuel and less fuel tax in general will reduce the amount of maintenance to our roads, including us missing our objective of restriping 50% of our roads by 2021. Some additional operational impacts include some reduced general fund revenues for master planning, the government center here at 701 and the Freedom Campus, which is currently on hold. And a change, not necessarily a negative impact, but a change with regard to our rail trail project. We have worked more closely with RTC and on environmental and preliminary design so that we could pursue segments 10, 11 and 12. So the biggest pain of this environment, this economic environment and what you're gonna hear a lot about here in the next couple of slides is in our transportation area. The county owns and is responsible for roads, bridges and roadway culverts in the unincorporated area. Our system, as you know, is in poor condition. This bad economy will have a significant impact to our infrastructure that will cost our community. Transportation is a county service that every single person in the county uses daily. It is essential and critical. Our current PCI is 48, far below the state average of 65. Our system is failing us due to lack of investment. We are not meeting the minimum expected standards compared to the average level of service in the state. This lack of investment will cost individuals with excessive vehicle wear and damage and cost the taxpayers through claims and lawsuits. Emergency repairs may become more frequent having a significant and unavoidable costs. Just in the past 18 months, we've had four major emergency culvert repairs, some additional impacts, impacts to sanitation, recycling and solid waste, stormwater management, flood control and construction management is strictly due to furloughs and having less staff time to do the work. This will result in a lower level of service that we provide to the community. So uncertainties, I will say that the vast, vast majority of our uncertainties are with regard to our transportation division. It's clearly the most challenging of what public works does. And there's really no way to sugarcoat it, to be honest. Currently our transportation budget is razor thin. We have no reserves and we're going into winter. So that in itself is a large uncertainty. Additionally, our current revenue streams such as Measure D and the gas tax are seeing significant reductions due to the current economic situation. In addition to this uncertainty, I would like to share that state transportation funds amounting to more than $5 billion per year statewide of fuel taxes is being directed toward the reduction of VMT and an increase in bicycle and pedestrian facilities to further reduce vehicle emissions. This by design will further reduce fuel tax revenues creating even more uncertainty in our transportation system. Paying for a system we use daily is not optional. Currently the County dedicates zero discretionary funds toward annual maintenance needs of our transportation system, even though the County is 100% responsible for this system. We really do need to decide how important this infrastructure is to our community in these trying times and with the future forecast of revenues. Today I have two recommendations. The first is to consider approval of the 2021 supplemental budgets for the Department of Public Works as outlined on pages 159 to 172. And to schedule the revised changes to the continuing agreements list pages 245 to 247 for final approval on last day budget hearings on August 18th, 2020. I'll turn it to you for any questions or comments. Thank you. Chair, do you want to, should I start asking some questions? Okay, hold on, that'd be fun. Go ahead. Good morning. Thank you for the presentation. Thank for the ongoing work of you and your department. We give you praise because you guys do critical work. And I see that the Assistant Director, Mr. Wiesner is here and Mr. Edler is here from sanitation and I just, both of them do extraordinary work and have worked very hard to meet the community's needs. And sometimes that doesn't always match exactly what we're able to deliver. But the efforts to be able to meet what we can and work very hard to make that happen, both among your leadership, but also all the way down through the staff, whether it be Travis Rebar, whether it be the road crew, whether it be the folks who were mowing the roadways, it's all really incredibly important work. And the loss of or decline in Measure D funds really hurts because we were starting to make some progress. And if we had a functioning federal government, they would look at this time of great economic distress and look to do what we have done just 10 years ago, which is support shovel ready project, get money out there to keep people working to take this advantage of people not being on the road so we could actually do work on our infrastructure. And it's unfortunate that we have, that there hasn't been that awareness and seizing that opportunity to help out America in so many different ways. And I'm hopeful that that might change in the future. Hopefully this administration would recognize it, but if not, maybe a next administration. And being ready with some of these projects will be really incredibly important. I have appreciated also the way in which the department has worked to try to figure out how we can maximize and leverage the funds that we have, the collaboration with the regional transportation commission to think about how they use their funds differently, how we can work collectively to advance a multimodal transportation future, not just one. That will mean hopefully we get this money for our Soquel Drive buffered bike lanes. Hopefully that we get money for our local roads. Hopefully that means we get money for the rail trail. All those pieces sink so well together and hopefully the funders in Sacramento will recognize that a multimodal future is the future for transportation here. On the question of the sanitation district, I wanna acknowledge Mr. Edler for his work and your work, listening to the community about the changes at the Load Street facility and the thoughtfulness about how to use the Brummer Street facility and just telework for employees that I think in the end not only will make for a more successful workforce, but it'll also probably be less cost for us as we think about our infrastructure needs. And so I appreciate that. And I think the presentation that was made at the last sanitation meeting was well received by neighbors who are watching or got the information out there. So thank you for that. I do think when it comes to the sanitation employees, the case that has been made to me and it was made again this morning about not doing the cutbacks at sanitation to, because of things like dispatch and other things which are still need to go on 24 seven. To me, makes some sense. And I hope that when we make this motion that we make some changes for the sanitation department. And I look forward to doing that when it comes time for a motion. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, I wanna thank the Public Works Department. I found your team to be incredibly responsive and doing the best they can with, as you say, reduced resources. I don't have any questions. I do appreciate you sort of laying out the paradox of how our transportation funding doesn't necessarily align with our transportation goals and the challenges we face. And let's hope for a dry winter in terms of the required, the necessary responses from your, for your department in this already challenging time. But I wanna thank you all. Thank you and your team for your work. We've really, my office has really appreciated working with you to respond to community concerns. Thank you. Supervisor Friend. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Director Machado. And yes, I absolutely recognize that photo of Valencia. I don't think my constituents would let me forget that photo of Valencia. But I do wanna thank you and your team. And in particular, I wanna thank Steve Wiesner for his remarkable accessibility and willingness to get these things done with very limited resources, including the road in question there, both at the upper lower side. Some of the, I mean, you guys really have done a lot with very little. If you think about some of the recent work partnering with Supervisor Caput down in South County on Green Valley, some of the work that'll be done on Buena Vista that your crew said, look, we can do it for less. We're willing to do it on our own. We know that these are important community-based things. That is, I mean, it's a great attitude. It says a lot about the culture that's been created within public works. It also says a lot about the managerial culture that you and Steve and Kent are creating to ensure that people feel valued and empowered to do this kind of work. We were going down a road of excitement with finally getting some transportation funding and we still do have some funding coming in and some projects lined up and it's more than we've been able to do in a couple of decades, but it still won't meet the need. And it's unfortunate that this loss, this dramatic loss in revenue in regards to sales tax and other things will continue to add to our deferred maintenance log. But I do have a lot of confidence in the leadership within your department to do what you can with what you have and actually to do more than even with what you have. It's your very creative team and I just wanted to make sure that you were acknowledged on that. I do agree with serving along with Supervisor Leopold on the sanitation district. I mean, when I looked at the numbers and actually in completely understanding from a philosophical standpoint, the discussion about equity, but from an operational standpoint, if we're here to save money, I don't believe that the furloughs within sanitation makes sense. And I agree with Supervisor Leopold's point on that. But thank you again, Director Machado for your work. Thank you. Let's see what we got here. Supervisor McPherson. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Director Machado and Deputy Steve Wiesner, who we call on it seems like on a weekly, if not a daily basis at times. And he is always very responsive as are you. And their whole public works team is, you've done so much with what you have. I've been especially impressed this year with the amount of standard rural repair and storm damage work undertaken by the department in your streamlined project process. I'm especially pleased with the foresight that you had your department for storm damage, to fund storm damage into the fiscal year of 1920 that got so much work done. Little did we know that the pandemic would have this profound impact on our gas tax revenue. And so things are gonna slow down, as you've mentioned, through no fault of anybody in your department, that's for sure. I am disappointed that you're gonna be cutting the climate action manager, but I do understand it. And I believe working on climate change is an essential function, as does I know every one of my colleagues. But I can guarantee the Santa Cruz County public that this board will continue to be diligent and seeing the environmental protection is at the top of the list of our decision-making in Santa Cruz County. I just wanna say thank you again for everything you've done, for your responsiveness, for your, it's been great to cooperate with you and contacting and communicating with state and federal legislators and letting them know the importance of their participation in helping us. And I, as a member of the RTC, as there is on every board member slot, there's a member of the Regional Transportation Commission. I wanna say thank you again, also related to transportation on your cooperative effort with the Regional Transportation Commission. It really produces a lot of results more quickly than we could have anticipated. So thank you for a job well done and we'll do the best with what we have in this fiscal year. Thank you, Mr. Machado, Mr. Wiesner and the whole Public Works team. Thank you. Okay, thank you. And yeah, with the federal highway money, it was being held up for quite a while. How much did we finally get as far as, do you know, offhand? So with regard to federal highway storm damage monies, we got all the extensions we needed and a lot of those projects are under construction this year. We do have a large handful of projects that will need an additional extension this fall so that we can continue to build those. To be honest, some of our limiting factors with the federal highway monies is the match. So even though federal highways is funding the predominant amount, there still is a local match. And as I mentioned, one of our challenges is using local funds to match those federal funds. So that's been a challenge. But if we're able to secure a big handful of extensions this year, we'll continue to deliver those projects. And I really appreciate how you've been cooperating and working in South County. I know I used to get a lot of complaints that, you know, South County was not getting its fair share. We are, we're getting our fair share and I appreciate the interest and the money that we're putting there. Of course, probably the biggest complaint most of us get is with being supervisors is, hey, what are you gonna fix this road? It could be as small as potholes all the way to, you know, doing the entire road. But I see some projects, especially with a supervisor friend out there by, what is that, Lakeview and then also Pioneer and Green Valley. Things are happening. And I guess if we can now just get Murphy Road and the Hula Hand College and Highway 152 going, I think it'll be a big breakthrough, so. Yes, sir, thank you. Keep it up, we'll be talking and maybe, I guess specifically though with Hula Hand and the college and East Lake, it looks like the funding, we might just get it or maybe not. Well, we are pursuing the gap. There is a gap in funding, we're pursuing that now. We don't have it filled, but the good news is that the project is nearly shelf ready. We're wrapping up the right-of-way needs now and we'll have a shelf ready project which will allow us to compete for grant funds. So we'll keep you posted on that. We've got our fingers crossed. Yeah, it looked like at one time we were very close and of course the pandemic hits and everything kind of got slowed down. Correct. Okay. Hey, thanks a lot. We'll bring it, we'll open it up to the public now. If anybody has any questions or comments, feel free to come up and speak. I see somebody out there, you're not coming. Okay. Anybody down? We have nobody in the community room. However, we do have two web comments. The first comment is from Ken Davenport. He writes, good and thoughtful presentation. Roads and transportation are very important to our community. I'm not sure what the future holds for public transportation. Thank you for all you do. The second comment is from Kendall Henney, Dear Board of Supervisors. My name is Kendall Henney. I work in operations for the County of Santa Cruz Sanitation Department. My position is on the faculty crew, on the facility crew that staffs the dispatch area 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. I've been with the County of Santa Cruz public works department for 12 years. During that time, I have worked many different schedules including working on all holidays, countless swing and grave shifts to keep our dispatch area staffed. We have a small crew. However, the need to staff 24 seven is required. So we all work together to make sure someone is always scheduled and available to work the required shifts. Even without the furloughs, this can be a difficult at times. There are many instances where our day staff on facility crews will change their schedule to stay late into the evening to cover or to come in early around 4 a.m. to cover as needed. When a grave shift needs coverage, we often alter our schedules to staff for that grave shift midnight to 8 a.m. Rather than work a day shift with more staff is there to cover. This can be exhausting at times, but we always work together as a team to make the schedule work. Adding in furloughs have drastically affected our schedule and adds more shifts that need coverage. As an example, July furlough, I took the required July furlough day and did not work my normal day shift that day. In return, I did, however, cover other employees furlough shifts. The shifts I covered included a full grave shift and part of a swing shift. I still work the same number of hours during the pay period. Just had to work them during hours that are very difficult and outside my typical scheduled hours. In addition to these furloughs hours I covered, they were considered over time as the shifts, I'm sorry, they are considered over time as they are shifts other than my normal schedule. Therefore, I took eight furlough hours in that pay period, but worked eight overtime hours, resulting in higher pay than if we had not been required to furlough and cover other staff hours. All our crews are working extra hours to cover these furlough shifts and are making more earning and are making more earning overtime hours than they would be working their normal shifts rather than taking the furlough. We are now on the second month of furlough and crew is already tired from covering various shifts. Continuing this furlough for our department will cause our workers to be exhausted and overworked, resulting in lower quality of work. It is important that our sanitation department is properly staffed and running smoothly, especially going into the busier months ahead. Myself and many of our staff would be more than willing to furlough if it meant we were saving coworkers jobs. But furlough in our department does not save jobs. We rely on funds of taxpayers to run our operation. Tax rates that increased as furlough started. So our customers are now paying higher rates for less than lower quality work. A saving must, any saving must stay within our department and be in turn be spent on what? New trucks or equipment rather than paying our employees properly to keep our important sewer system running. These furloughs for sanitation make no sense and benefit no one. The issue, these issues need to be carefully reviewed with other options explored. And that is it, thank you. Chair, I'd like to just have a comments, a couple of comments and then a motion. I neglected to thank Mr. Wiesner and the crew for all the work putting in the traffic safety lights. That's been a great project. It's been very well received in the community and then the work on 9th Avenue to make that safer is also been incredibly important. The other thing that I forgot to mention in my earlier remarks, but seem important is that the legislative analyst office of the state of California came out with a report on sea level rise that really highlighted the dangers we face as a community due to sea level rise and that the rising oceans will have an impact on our county. The news out of the Arctic is not good. The largest ice shelf is now gonna be falling apart. So this isn't theoretical anymore. It's only a question of how much and when, not a question of if. And so I understand completely that we don't have the resources at this time to fund the climate action manager position. But I'd like us to look at that at the mid-year budget point to see if we could identify other sources. So I would like to make a motion to adopt the recommended actions in the, in the budget, but with a couple of changes. One is that the CAO's office come back last day with removing the furlough for the sanitation department and two, come back during our mid-year budget report to look at alternative funding sources for the climate action manager position. I'll make a little one comment too. It's a compliment. When we get a complaint, sometimes we have to call back and give them some bad news. Like, you know, we can't get this done or we can't. I appreciate the fact that your office calls people back and actually goes out there and talks to people. They don't feel ignored. They don't feel like, hey, nobody's listening. Nobody's trying to do anything. So if we're making that effort, people do see it. And especially that Hazeldale Road and Mount Madonna Road and, you know, washouts, they said they saw your crew out there and they saw somebody go out actually and talk to the residents out there. They feel kind of like they're lost out there in the country and nobody cares, but we do care about them. And I guess doing some of that minor, they're worried about the winter and then the rain comes down and washes out the road. The roads are already washed out somewhat, but they're worried about losing the entire road. But they did see a crew going out there and putting some plastic down and things like that. So thank you for doing that. We do have a motion. If we have a second. Supervisor Forensic. We got it. Okay, we'll call for the vote. Supervisor Leopold. Aye. Friend. Hunter T. McPherson. Aye. Chairman Caput. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. We will adjourn and our next meeting will be Tuesday, August 18th, 2020, right here on the Board of Supervisors Chambers, 9 a.m. And we will have a special meeting also on Tuesday August 18th, a revised budget hearings, last day reports and concluding action at 1.30. Thank you. Jason. Susan. I did great.