 We'll now resume the special meeting of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors Budget hearings. It is 1.46 p.m. on June 28, 2022, and we are going to take it from the top here, so we'll begin with a roll call. Supervisor Friend. Here. Coonerty. Here. Hapit. Here. McPherson. Here. And Koenig. Here. Thank you, Chair. You have a quorum. Consent irregular agendas. Thank you. We'll proceed with item 55, action on the consent agenda, and pursuant to government code section 54953. I'm announcing that the consent agenda includes item number 62, which is an amendment to resolution number 279-75 to increase the salary and amend the salary schedule for the County Administrative Officer job classification by 5% as recommended by the Personnel Director. Are there any comments or questions by board members on the consent agenda? Seeing none, I'll open it for public comment on the consent agenda. Good afternoon. Nicholas Whitehead. I've lived in the Santa Cruz County for 55 years, an immigrant from England. Item 65, evidence-based core investments, but there's no criteria. I would have appreciated if somewhere the criteria were available and the reference budget documents. Which if the public could see those in a convenient form prior to those decisions. Okay, that's that one. Number 62, I can remember when Susan Mariello was the County Administrative Officer and she was the most highly-paid CAO in the whole state of California. I found that very surprising for a little county like ours, we're not even as well fears Monterey County, so at the time, I wondered about that. I couldn't help wondering about that. But I do know that the current CAO has an excellent reputation and I feel he did a good job in Watsonville. I've told him that several times. I guess that's all I needed, just a little bit of history there. Maybe Mr. Balasioz is just going to do a fantastic job and be worth it, repenting. I hope so. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Whitehead. If you do have a public comment on our consent agenda, please line up so we can make your comments. Thank you. Go ahead, ma'am. Good afternoon, members of the Board of Supervisors and Chair Koenig. My name is Reverend Beth Love. I'm the Executive Director of Eat for the Earth. And I want to say, I want to speak to item number 65 on the consent agenda. I want to just say that I appreciate that the staff of the county and the city came together to try to resolve a fairly irresolvable situation in which a fair process resulted in one outcome, but also resulted in some unintended consequences of programs that are serving our community, receiving not being recommended for funding, and critical services and also the loss of matching funds from the state and federal government. So I just want to say, as one of the agencies that was initially recommended for funding and we are now losing an additional 7% from our request, so approximately $7,000 dollars for us and this small agency, that makes a difference. So we'll have to look at how do we adjust our budget to account for that. I just want to say that I appreciate that the process was in integrity and that there wasn't a recommendation to kind of rescramble the whole thing and go back to square one. And I also have many colleagues in the field that have agencies that are heads of agencies that are now going to get at least three months of transitional funding. And I haven't had a chance to check in with them to see how they feel about that, but that must feel a little better than the alternative. And so I just want to appreciate the staff, thank the Board of Supervisors for your vote and say for the earth hesitantly approves the recommendation. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Reverend Love. Anyone else here in chambers, there's still justice on the consent agenda. Seeing none, is there anyone on Zoom? We do have a speaker on Zoom. We have one more speaker here in chambers. Good afternoon. My name is Claudia Crenata and I'm here to ask that you continue to fund if MHCAN, our mental health facility, it's a really good asset to the community. And I myself volunteer there twice a week and it's really needed in our county. Thank you. Thank you, Claudia. My name is Ken Mangan. Can you just get a little closer to the mic, sir, so we can all hear you. My name is Ken Mangan. Born in Watsonville, I'm 69 years old. I still live upon MHCAN and I spend with my week there from nine o'clock till two o'clock. And it's open every weekday except Wednesday. And there's so many activities to do, so many volunteers, I'm a volunteer. There's so many things to do, keeps me active, you know, I'm doing things during the week, during the day, and I go home and I'm tired. And but I just hope you can continue to fund us because we need a place to go. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Magnum. Hello, I'm Drew Ferris and I'd like to ask you to help fund MHCAN. A lot of the people in the town that are mentally ill are also homeless. And it's one of the places where we can get a lot of the things, food, counseling, connection, drives, food, services, showers and stuff all at one area. And I don't think there are any places that have all the services that are there. And it's a form of community, gives people a little more hope. So I hope you keep that in mind. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ferris. Hello, I'm my name is Michael Helm. I was at Page Smith and I started going to MHCAN and I'm a custodian there. And later on, I thank you for supporting us. And I all the way through, I have an apartment now. I was the money I get at the work. I pay my part with the housing. So I do appreciate to all of at least supporting when I first got there, got laid off from the budgeting. And I just hope it keeps up, you know, and and and thank you all too. Thank you for supporting Mr. Helm. I'm also here to speak on behalf of MHCAN. There are only three places in this town I enter. There's a grocery store, thrift store and MHCAN. It's the only kitchen we got. They provide us with food. It's a place where we can charge our phones and everything. Keeps a lot of people from causing you problems. They cause me problems too. But it is a place for them to be during the day so that they're not out causing problems, spreading trash and needles. That's what you need to think about is your county programs supplying them with cases of needles to throw all over the street. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Good afternoon. My name is Michael Hawken. I also came down to ask for your help with MHCAN. We go on there for years. It's a great, great place for mental wellness. And I'm really appreciated by me and lots of others in the community. Your support would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hawken. I see no one else here in chambers. Is there anyone on Zoom? Yes, chair, we do have a speaker on Zoom. Nora, that your microphone is now available. Hi, Derek, can you hear me? Yes. My name is Nora Caruso. I am the program director at the Santa Cruz Toddler Care Center. We have been recommended for a cut of our $75,000 per year funding for a three year funding cycle. And a friend of mine was asking me, you know, how I'm doing with all of this. And I told her I was really sad that a decades long partnership with the county and the city is ending. And I'm sad that the realization during the pandemic of the deep importance of childcare for functioning communities and economies has already been forgotten. And I'm sad that our low income families will no longer have access to our high quality childcare program. And I'm sad that my highly qualified teachers will not be eligible for wage increases despite the high cost of inflation that we're all facing. The irony wasn't lost on me regarding that consent item 62 the agenda to increase salaries for county administrators and analysts. And I'm grateful for the potential of three months more funding but I'm dreading having to tell our currently enrolled families that are receiving subsidies that will no longer be able to serve them in three months time. I guess they won't be able to continue working. And incidentally, one last thing on that three months funding equates to eight percent of our grant previously consisting of 36 months of funding with a three year funding cycle. So three months of funding is actually a 92 cut or a loss of 33 months of our funding. And we're not the only childcare center that's been overlooked. In fact, 90 percent of childcare in general is being cut. This is a really big mistake. Please reconsider. Thanks so much. Thank you, Miss Caruso. Sandy, your microphone is now available. You know, I've spoken to you so many times about childcare. There's so much unbelievable amount of data from every perspective, scientific studies, sociological studies, economic studies of the level of return you get when you invest in childcare, you know, raises run ranges from like invest a dollar and you get seven dollars of benefit to the society or 13 dollars benefit. There's no ambiguity about it in terms of all the different forces that childcare is a part of. And, you know, there's the economic one that's so damn obvious or should be. It's what we saw with COVID, the impacts of not having childcare on an economic level. And there's such a huge impact that even beyond that, in terms of what happens to children who get the kind of emotional and social training that make them into good people. When you look around you and you see people in the streets yelling or shooting each other or misbehaving, you're seeing people or essentially toddlers who never learned how to be a person that can be part of a community. And that's what happens at the toddler center. And we had a child recently who came in from a chaos world. Their world was chaos and the child manifested chaos in our realm that we see in the adult version everywhere around us. Six months after being at the toddler center, he's sitting at a table next to other toddlers next to him. He's sitting down. He reaches out his right hand and holds the toddler's hand. His left hand holds that toddler's hand. Each of those other toddlers reach out and hold the hands next to them. And there's such a sense of calm and connection and community. That's what happens when you do good childcare and don't we all need this and doesn't the world need this? You need to think about this. It's a huge impact by the decision you're making to defund childcare. Thank you, Sandy. We have no additional speakers for this item, chair. All right, then I will return to the to the board for action. Supervisor McPherson. Motion by Supervisor McPherson. Second, second by Supervisor Friend. Any further discussion? Just to clarify for members who are still left in the audience, we did finalize the list of awards for CORE this morning, which is why we're not discussing it more extensively now. This is largely just approving its incorporation into this year's budget. So we have again, motion by Supervisor McPherson, second by Supervisor Friend, signal for the discussion. Clerk roll call vote, please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Koenig. Aye. Sign passes unanimously. Thank you. The consent agenda being approved will proceed with item 56 on the regular agenda the public hearing to consider resolution approving amendments to the unified fee schedule for fiscal year 22-23, including the addendum as provided in the reference budget documents and as recommended by the County Administrative Officer. Presentation on this item. We have our County Budget Manager, Marcus Pimentel. Thank you, Chair Koenig. Members of the board, I'm your County Budget Manager and I'm joined today by our CAO analyst, Rita Sanchez, who will be leading the next public hearing. Welcome to day four. This is the last day of our proposed 22-23 budget hearings. Today's regular agenda items will include the last day budget amendments that were just approved on consent and the concluding actions to the proposed 22-23 budget. Following this next unified fee schedule hearing, we will continue with the final two budget hearings, one to approve our redevelopment agency, successor agency budget, and to consider approval of the county's budget and then we'll conclude with closing remarks. But moving into the public hearing on the unified fee schedule, today's hearing is for you to consider adopting the resolution to amend the 22-23 unified fee schedule, as included in the supplemental recommendations to the proposed 22-23 budget. Those were on pages 115 to 184 in the supplemental budget document that is linked to within our county budget. Following this brief presentation, we will then ask the board to open the public hearing, take testimony and public comments, close the public hearing and adopt the resolution to amend the unified fee schedule. I'll now pass this presentation along to our CAO senior and administrative analyst, Rita Sanchez. Good afternoon, board. Today's UFS amendments include revisions from the Agricultural Commission's Office, Animal Services, Clerk of the Board, Health Services, Human Services, Community Development and Infrastructure, Parks and the Sheriff's Office, which I will speak to briefly in the next slides. The Agricultural Commissioners Office is recommending adjustments to fees related to various inspection services and registration of weights and measuring devices to recover costs of providing these services. Animal Services is recommending a new animal facility license fee for male game birds. The Clerk of the Board is recommending new fees for notary services for county business and a new hearing jurisdictional filing fee. They are also recommending updates to certification of documents and assessment appeals processing fees. The Health Services Agency is recommending updates to community mental health fees to recover increases in administrative and clinical costs necessary to support the programs. Vital statistics fees are also being updated to align with California Department of Public Health mandated fee increases. Public Guardian Services are moving to the Human Services Department and related fees to that program are being removed from the Health Services Departmental Fees Listing. And finally, the Environmental Health Division conducted a time study of their fees and are recommending updates to their consumer protection, food program, hazardous materials program, environmental cleanup program, and water resource program fees to align to the results of that study. The Human Services Department is recommending updates to the Child Care Developer fee schedule and adding the Public Guardian Services Fees to their departmental schedule since that program is transferring them from the Health Services Agency. The Parks Department is adding a smart television rental fee in order to add that as an equipment rental option. The Department is also recommending updates to pool rental fees and updates to coastal employment permit fees. The Community Development Infrastructure Department recommends updating language to the fee titles for significant tree removal permits and deletion of one fee category to reflect current practices more accurately, though there is no change to the fees for these permits. CDI also recommends an adjustment to the evaluation, building valuation data square foot construction cost table. That table is used to calculate building plan check, inspection, and processing fees associated with building permit applications. The fee increase applies only to projects that add or modify the square footage of a building. Fees for over-the-counter permits are not based on square footage and will remain the same. The Sheriff's Office is recommending updates to overnight parking, a mobile and recreational vehicle fee to recover the current cost of issuing and processing the citation. And finally, the Public Works Division of the Community Development and Infrastructure Department recommends updates to CSA 9C recycling and solid waste disposal facilities fees collected at the Buena Vista landfill and then Lowman Transportation Station to recover costs for processing and diverting materials at these sites, along with updates to encroachment permit fees to recoup the increase in construction and labor costs. Public Works also recommends updates to storm drainage improvement and flood control fees to recoup the increase in construction and labor costs of drainage improvements, along with updates to the construction inspection minimum deposit charge that would not increase the net cost of the inspection but only reduce the frequency of invoicing. Fees listed under Exhibit B are development-related fees and have a 60-day waiting period required by state law and will become effective 60 days following board approval. All other fees for other departments and those under Exhibit A for Public Works are general fees and shall become effective July 1st. That concludes my presentation. Representatives from the departments are available to answer any questions from the board. After any questions, it is recommended that the board open the public hearing for comment, close the public hearing and then adopt the resolution amending the unified fee schedule. Thank you, Annalisa Sanchez. Are there questions from members of the board? None. I'll open the public hearing. Does any member of the public wish to address this on this item? Seeing none here in chambers, is there anyone on Zoom? We have no speakers on Zoom, Chair. All right, then I'll close the public hearing and return to the board for action. Move the recommended action. Motion by Supervisor Coonerty. We did have a second by Supervisor McPherson. Supervisor McPherson, you might want to check your mic. I think maybe that's why... Yeah, second. All right, great, thanks. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk roll call vote please. Supervisor Friend. Coonerty. Caput. McPherson. Aye. And Koenig. Aye. This item passes unanimously. Thank you. The unified fee schedule being adopted will proceed with item 57, which says... Yes, as the Board of Supervisors of the Santa Cruz County Redevelopment Successor Agency to authorize the Auditor-Controller with the concurrence of the County Administrative Officer to make necessary year and adjustments and adjustments for 22-23 due to increases and decreases in available financing and to approve the proposed 22-23 Redevelopment Successor Agency budget as recommended by the County Administrative Officer. Budget Manager Pimentel. Chair Koenig, you almost did my entire job for me. Fortunately, in this case, the Redevelopment Successor Agency, there are no changes to this budget. The administrative budget and the recognized obligation payment schedule referred to as ROPs were approved in January, early this year in January. The entire budget was included in the proposed budget released on April 29th and there's been no changes to it. The funding and the financing is restricted and related to available resources. So we present this to you here today with no changes and ask for your board's consideration of approval. All right, thank you. Are there any questions from members of the board? Seeing none, we'll open for public comment. Is any member of the public wish to address this on this item? Seeing none in the chambers. Is there anyone on Zoom? We have no speakers for this item on Zoom, Chair. All right, I'll return it to the board for action. I'll move for approval. Second. Motion by Supervisor Caput. Second by Supervisor McPherson. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk roll call vote, please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Koenig. Aye. The item passes unanimously. Thank you. Then we'll consider or continue to item 58, which is to consider approval of the 2223 County of Santa Cruz proposed budget concluding actions, authorize the auditor, controller, treasurer, tax collector with the concurrence of the County Administrative Officer to make necessary year-end adjustments and adjustments for 2122 due to increases and decreases in available financing and approve the 2223 County of Santa Cruz proposed budget, including concluding remarks or including concluding report items and take related actions as recommended by the County Administrative Officer. Budget Manager Primital. Yes, thank you. Once again, you've done a wonderful job with that. This is the final concluding actions to approve the 2223 budget and send it into its process to bring it back to you to the sports September 20th for final adoption annually. This particular item includes a summary of all the changes from the release of the proposed budget on April 29th includes the supplemental changes, last-day changes, and any concluding actions that we've identified today. Also included in this report are cosmetic changes. We've had some cosmetic, two cosmetic changes to the documents that were produced and a realignment request based on year-end trends for Human Services Department. This is a reallocation of resources of their budget within the Department of Human Resources. It does not impact the human resources nor the general fund, it's just a realignment of appropriations. In summary, the last day and concluding changes impact on the general fund is a reduction of the general fund contingency by 913,160. This does not increase the budget, it just moves money from contingency to appropriate funding for core investments, Animal Control Services, Willowbrook, and several other projects, including the $50,000 towards acquisition of South County Park, $32,500 for the downtown streets, $30,000 for Fire Safety Council, $25,000 to match a existing $25,000 commitment to the Resource Conservation District, and several other last-day items. The concluding corrective measures, different from last-day budget items, are more house cleaning cleanup items that are required per state federal regulations to convert into an adopted budget. Big examples of that include the realignment of salary within today's agenda item 62, whereas we're referenced to concluding negotiation with some of our units. With that conclusion of our units, we realigned planned salary from contingencies into the appropriate line items, and some other realignment of resources from overhead charges for county overhead and fleet to meet federal and state overhead claiming processes. We had to do a true up towards the end of the year, and so we have some concluding actions to reflect those true up charges. The concluding actions are just really administrative in nature, and will bring us towards the adopted budget. There will be some continued concluding actions as the Archer Controller closes out the 21-22 fiscal year over these coming months that will trigger some additional concluding action to amend the 22-23 budget, and we'll bring that back to the board on September 20th for both the report on the last, on the end of the year report on 21-22, and the adopted 22-23 budget. So any changes that we haven't told you about or haven't identified yet that the Auditor-Controller will identify, will be brought to you back in September. They're all cosmetic administrative and routine in nature. They're not funding changes. So with that, before I, in my remarks, I do want to acknowledge that this was my first run in the county in this process, and I was deeply impressed with the organization and the quality of this entire county organization. I want to extend my thanks to our county departments and all their staff who put in a lot of extra hours to meet some additional requirements we asked them to do this year. We wanted to produce the budget a little bit earlier than before, and of course, we produced a new way of presenting the budget with an online interactive budget that all created some additional work for all the departments and their team, and I appreciate all their work. I do want to also acknowledge the continued legacy of excellence that your former county budget manager, Christina Mallory, has provided to you. She created a fantastic foundation for us to build off of, and she's still been around, helping guide us through various things from FEMA, ARPA, as well as some guidance within the budget process. I need to also thank our talented team in the CEO's office, and of course, the team that created an online budget that I've been able to monitor changes online on my phone without having big binders and resources everywhere. That begins with our entire office, the county office, the crook of the board, and in particular, some of the staff we've already mentioned before, Sven Stafford, our principal administrative analyst who led the development of our online budget. Eric Friedrich, who led the Kappa Project System, Lana Martinez-Davis, Rita Sanchez, who you met here today, who led various components of that online budget process, and concluding with, thanks to all of you, thanks to CAO Palacios for his vision and to our county leadership team, including Lisa Benson, Nicole Coburn, and Melody Serino. So with that, I conclude my comments, my presentation, the recommended actions to conclude the county budgets process are in front of you, and I'm happy to have any questions or conclude this process and end it with the CAO's remarks. Thank you, Budget Manager Pimentel. Mr. Chair, I just want to thank Mr. Pimentel for the most transparent, understandable budget that I think I've ever seen in my 10 years on the County Board of Supervisors. I think we just, with those changes you mentioned, I still think this is the first time we get over the billion dollar threshold for the total budget probably, or it's surely in that range. And with what we've had to deal with this last year with COVID in particular and the response to the fires, I hope we never have to deal with it to that degree or if at all. And also the homeless issue really continues to plague us and every other community in California. I also want to just, there's been a warning about if a recession hits, it could really result in a an adjustment to our budget that we have just passed. But I just want to thank, again, Mr. Pimentel, Carlos Palacios, the whole administrative team who put this budget together. It has been, as I said, the most understandable and transparent budget that I've ever experienced. So thank you for all of that. And I think the County is on a good plane and we just hope that no emergencies come up in 2022-23. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Any other comments or questions? Sure. Supervisor Kennedy. Yeah, I just want to say, this is my 16th budget between the city and the county, my last budget. And I got to tell you how proud I am to be part of an organization that put together a budget that as Supervisor McPherson said, is transparent and accessible. It's also making real significant generational investments in different parts of our county that will serve underserved communities, help reduce economic shockwaves, make us more resilient, and just generally make Santa Cruz a better place to live for everybody who's here. And we should all be very proud of the staff, very proud of my colleagues, because we're also investing in our reserves so that our successors have a cushion when those inevitable bad times hit in all the different ways that we've seen in the last couple of years. But this is an amazing budget and everyone should be very proud of the, not just the document, not just the allocations, but the real impact this is going to have not only for years, but decades to come. Thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. Supervisor Friend, did you want to make some comments? I'll just add that the new online budget, seeing it used, took some getting used to, but really, as you said, being able to go to it quickly and easily throughout these budget hearings, seeing all the folks in the CAO analysts walking through it really gave me a deeper understanding of it and just what a powerful tool it is. So it's really has proven to be a pleasure to use and I do, as you said, makes our budget a lot more transparent, easy to see the trends, easy to understand exactly where the money's going and of course, also tie those back to the operational plan as well. So really want to commend everyone in the CAO's office for making that transition for us this year. I think we've saved a stack of paper that could get someone to the moon. There's better uses for that, better to keep it in the trees or keep that carbon in the ground. So thank you very much and to all the county departments who have put forward really, I'd say, consciously optimistic budgets. I'm excited to see where we go this year. Thank you. CAO Palacios, did you want to make some? I wanted to thank Budget Manager Pimentel for his incredible work and his staff, as well as our staff in the CAO's office, Auditor Controller's Office, Treasure Tax Collector. All the departments, this county team really does view itself as a team. People are very reasonable in their budget requests. They work with us. I'm just very impressed with the sense of family in our department heads. They really do work with us and believe in our vision. And I want to especially thank the board for your support. You set the tone in your civility and your professionalism and in your generosity to the community. And I really do appreciate your willingness to go with us when we take risks like this budget document. Believe me, it was a risk to do an online budget this quickly. And we were worried whether it was going to work and to do this radical change in such a short time was risky. But we did that because we knew that we had your support and you've always supported us to reach for the stars and to really try and take this organization to the next level. And we did. That budget document is an amazing piece of work. We're going to continue to improve it. But already we're leading the way with other local governments in terms of a completely online document. So I appreciate the board and your support for staff and for this community. Thank you very much. Thank you, CAO Palacio. So I think that's well said that the entire county team has operated like family and it's pretty remarkable that this budget has actually I feel brought us closer together rather than driven us apart which says a lot when it comes to money. Seeing no other comments from board members. Is there any member of the public that wishes to address us on this item? Seeing no one here in chambers. Is there anyone on Zoom? We have no speakers on Zoom for this item, Chair. All right. Thank you. Then I will return to the board for action. Move for approval. Second. Motion by Supervisor Caput. Second by Supervisor McPherson. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk roll call vote please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Koenig. Aye. Item passes unanimously. Thank you. And the budget for 22-23 being passed. Thank you, Budget Manager Pimentel. And that brings us to the end of our special hearing. Meeting adjourned. Thank you.