 I'll now call the April 28th, 2020 regular meeting of the Board of Supervisors to order. Will the clerk please call the roll. Supervisor. Here. Supervisor. Here. Supervisor McPherson. Here. And Chair Caput. Here. We'll have a moment of silence and a moment of prayer and that we'll follow that with the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join me. Through the flag of the United States of America. Yes, there are some revisions to the agenda on the regular agenda item number nine. There's additional materials, a revised attachment J. Packet pages 286 and 287. There's also an item number 10, additional materials, a revised attachment J, packet pages 459 and 460. On the consent agenda on number 16, the item should read, accept COVID-19 grant funds in the amount of 388,535 dollars from the State of California Bureau of Consumer Services and Housing Adopters Resolution, accepting 1,850,904 dollars in an unanticipated revenue into the homeless services coordination office budget from the following sources. 1,810,844 from the County of Santa Cruz and CA-508 continuum of care COVID-19 grants from the State of California Business Consumer Services and Housing Agency and to 1,040,060 dollars from HEAP, trust fund 76650 and authorized to audit or control or treasure tax collector to make necessary budget reclassifications, as recommended by the County Administrative Officer. And item number 19, there's additional materials, escrow agreement. And then staff is requesting item number 23 and item number 33 be deleted at this time until we have more time to work on the funding sources. So that's items 23 and 33. And we will hopefully bring back at a later date once we've worked out some more of the issues on the funding. Also on item number 16, I forgot to mention that there's additional materials, revised memo, packet page 481. And that concludes the changes to the agenda. And then at now, at this time, I'd like to give an update to the board. This is number 3B on your agenda, 3B, report of the County Administrative Officer on COVID-19. So I'd like to start off by asking Mimi Hall, the Health Services Agency Director and Gail Newell, our Medical Officer Director to give an update on the public health emergency we are now experiencing. I'm gonna give you a brief overview, beginning with the data, most recent data about COVID-19 in our community and in the state, along with some modeling. And Mimi Hall will follow with some of our latest operational information. Next slide. So this is a screenshot of our data dashboard. I hope that you're all familiar with this at this point. The current case count this morning is 126 with 124 reported on our data dashboard. The discrepancy is that we're required to go through a series of steps to confirm the cases, both locally and at the state level. And that takes about a day's worth of work. And so sometimes our numbers lag a little bit behind the actual reported cases to us. 18 of the 124 have ever been hospitalized during their COVID illness. 75 have recovered. You're aware of the two previously reported deaths. We have no increased deaths since that time or additional deaths. And we've received 3,397 negative test results and a reminder that this does not include any tests that are pending in the commercial lab testing system of which we don't have any record. So the data dashboard breaks down by gender and you can see that breakdown there. And also by age and also by underlying chronic medical conditions that may make a person more likely to become hospitalized or die. Continuation from our data dashboard. We have a daily accumulated case count both in bar graph form and in a cumulative case graph form. We also show the acquisition of the disease and how various folks got it. And you can see that our number you may not remember but last week our number of person to person spread which means we know who the case got their disease from from a close contact. That's jumped up quite a bit and that's as a result of the cluster at New Leaf Aptos Market which you've all heard about I think. Next. So we have deployed everyone in public health essentially and additional health services agency employees for a total of 105 to respond to COVID-19 in our public health department operations center response. We coordinate this response of course with the EOC and other department operations centers with three hospitals in our county, seven clinic organizations, many with multiple sites, seven skilled nursing facilities and our communicable disease unit has paid in-person visits to each of these skilled nursing facilities to help ready them for potential COVID outbreaks or even single cases in their facilities. We've also worked with over 35 different congregate living facilities including our adult detention facilities to plan for potential outbreaks and outbreak prevention. We work with community-based organizations and with various county agencies to coordinate our response. And we have a cross-jurisdictional response in progress as well through our agriculture branch of our DOC where we're working with Monterey County to have a unified response across the border at the south. I'm gonna show you a few disease modeling projections. These are also available on our website for the public to see. Continued very good news, our doubling time, the higher the doubling time the better and our doubling time is one of the best in the state. And so we've gone from an initial six days doubling time to after shelter in place, the very first shelter in place was put in place on May 17. And since then we went to an eight day doubling time then at 11 day doubling time. And if you look just at the last three weeks we're at a 24 day doubling time. So we continue with very good news at this point. And you've seen this model before again on the website but there's our doubling time in comparison to other California counties. And you can see that we're among the best in doubling time in the state of California. This is modeling about potential surge in our county. And as you know, this has been a moving target for us. We're happy that to date we have not experienced a surge. The blue dots are our actual bed count. So we've averaged about four hospitalizations for COVID-19 in our county since we had our first. And if you follow this out through worst case and best case scenarios you actually see a slight downward trend in the median of that graph, which is the dark blue line. Worst case scenario would have us starting to surge at the end of this month. Best case scenario is that the curve resolves altogether. I think we're gonna land somewhere in the middle. There should be one more slide in there I thought with modeling. I guess it was added later or taken out. But it does, our modeling does show a potential surge where we might reach 100 bed capacity in August. And I'm gonna turn it over to Mimi at this point. As Dr. Newell just reported, there is really good news in Santa Cruz County. The sacrifices and the challenges that our community has taken on have done a great deal in terms of positively impacting the increase of our cases to the point where our hospitalizations have flatlined and our new cases also have stagnated in terms of the numbers of new cases each day over the last two weeks or so. These are the numbers that we're really looking at in terms of how do we start coexisting with COVID-19? So many of you have heard and I've talked about the governor's six indicators for California and we knew that at the local level, I often say all public health is at the end of the day local. And so we have our own plan to align with both the federal and the state indicators for reopening our society during COVID-19. And I don't say after, I say during because we will, we're just in the very beginning of a long haul. Our effort is called Save Lives Santa Cruz County and it's our way of navigating California's COVID-19 resiliency roadmap, which the governor released last week. So California six indicators for modifying our state stay at home orders are to monitor and protect through testing, contact tracing, isolation and quarantine and supporting those who have been tested positive or exposed. Prevent infection in people who are at risk for more severe disease, making sure our healthcare system is prepared, having treatments or even a vaccination and having them widely available to meet demand, having our society, businesses, schools, government, childcare facilities ready with plans to support continued social distancing. And also the ability to determine when we might have to go back and forth with different levels of social distancing and shelter in place orders. So the way that we have decided to capture this is to align the work that we do in the county in four phases to reach elements of the state's indicators. And we call our effort, save lives, Santa Cruz County. The S is for phase one, phase one is slowing the spread. A stands for adapting to a new normal for a length of time, which we think will be about 18 to 24 months. Phase three is when we have a vaccine and therapeutics widely available so that we don't have to rely on shelter in place orders and testing and contact tracing. And then phase four is elevating our readiness. Whenever we have an emergency, we should learn from the lessons rather than move on and then think that this is over and prepare ourselves for the next emergency. So in phase one, we're strongly set in that phase right now. We've put in place physical distancing measures and we're working really, really hard to expand public health testing, case investigation, contact tracing, isolation and quarantine. And supporting that. We're also expanding our healthcare bed capacity and personal preparedness equipment availability. One of the things that we've done is our public health department operation center, they have several branches and the biggest branches are operations branch. So that branch recently added another section to it called community recovery. And that community recovery branch will be wholly responsible for save lives Santa Cruz. One of the things that we did is we recently acquired Margaret Lapis who's a very well respected innovator and advocate for health equity. And she will be helping us develop this in partnership with our local community stakeholders, government as well as neighbor counties such as Monterey County. So we're very excited to have her with us and she's on loan to us from the Santa Cruz Community Foundation. And we believe that having someone directing this effort is going to help us be successful and also help implement these phases very quickly. The next phase is adapting to a new normal. So phase two, adapting means that because we have done a good job of increasing testing, ability to contact trace on our healthcare capacity, we're finally able to modify some physical distancing measures for businesses, schools and childcare communities. I know that there are a lot of letters that were provided to the board in the last couple of weeks about reopening our economy. And I have empathy for every facet of our community from our businesses to the families and the individuals affected. I do wanna say that these modifications that we're entertaining when we get to, are based on data, data about the disease progress in our community, data about our ability to control and address the spread of disease. And so when we're in this long phase of adapting to a new normal until we have treatments or a vaccine, we're going to maintain and possibly expand if needed our testing and contact tracing abilities. And then also our public health and healthcare capacities and infrastructure. So phase three, it's not something that we have any control over as a county, developing a vaccine or therapeutics, but the public health and the local jurisdiction role when we do have those is to be able to know that while we're in phase two, we're working on a way and a plan across our community to work with our clinic partners and our hospital partners to make sure that we have a plan to quickly disseminate vaccine first and foremost to those most at risk. We also need to have a plan in place for mass dispensing of any medications that are developed and make sure that we continue to have these public and private partnerships so that we can respond in this new phase of the event. And then finally, phase four is elevating our readiness for the next public health emergency. And again, not forgetting the lessons learned from addressing COVID. There are three data driven criteria to modifying the shelter in place orders across these phases. And I think it's important for your board as well as those we serve to understand that modifying orders is not based on how long we've been sheltering in place or on a certain date. It's based on our capacity to keep our community safe. And the three buckets of those data that we're looking at are epidemiology and surveillance, healthcare and public health. So in terms of epi and surveillance, we're looking at these broad things and we do have internal indicators to tell us when we're gonna get there. We're looking in general at continued decreasing cases, continued ability to increase our testing capacity, which is actually happening right now. I can't recall if Dr. Newell talked about it, but in terms of testing capacity, the state has sponsored a community testing site for us that is hoped to be operational as soon as next week. And it will be located in South County so that we can better serve the Pajaro Valley. On top of that, we have access to a new testing site at UC San Francisco and we're also working with some local academic partners on another new lab in the county. Decreased death rate. We have held still at two deaths for quite some time in Santa Cruz County and I think that's a testament to the good work of the entire community. And we're also looking at a decrease in influenza-like illness. So all of those symptoms that come along with colds and flus and COVID. In terms of healthcare, we're looking at having more dischargers than we have admissions for COVID-19, making sure that we have the staff capacity to address any increases. What we do know and what we expect is when we start modifying aspects of shelter in place, we will have more cases. And it's not cause for alarm, but it's cause for preparedness. We're also working on sufficient PPE, personal protective equipment for our healthcare workers and that situation continues to improve weekly and it gives us great insight and we feel like we're on the road towards modifying elements of these orders. And as Dr. Newell said and as our governor said, the modification will take place over a series of weeks and months. It's not gonna be flipping a switch and opening the economy, but we are looking at what we can open in a phase style while we're still managing control of the disease. In terms of public health, we wanna make sure that our public health system has enough contact tracing capacity for all positive cases. That's one of the biggest charges of our community recovery branch and our on loan consultant Margaret Lapiz. We're working on increasing isolation options for those people who are positive. One of the things that has already launched is that California has sponsored something called Hotel for Healthcare. So we have let every provider in our community know that if they're working as a healthcare provider in Santa Cruz County, there are local hotel options available to them at very low or no cost coordinated through the state. And the only requirements are that you're currently working as a healthcare provider and that you either are exposed to or have potential exposure or known exposure to COVID patients. And it's just our way of working with the state to ensure that those on the front lines working in healthcare are able to keep their family safe without incurring extra costs. Finally, on the public health side, we need partnerships to support physical distancing recommendations. Those are the things we're preparing right now and also a regional approach to our shelter and place strategies. And we are working on that right now. I think it's clear when you look at Santa Cruz County, we don't live in a bubble. There are folks who come here from the North, from the South, from the Central Valley. And what happens around us impacts our communities as well. So we're working really hard with our regional and state partners to ensure that what we implement here in the county is well supported by those around us. And so I'm pleased to talk about the work, the planning work that we're doing and that we've put a lot of effort and time and thought into how we coexist with COVID for the next several months rather than being a continual state of what feels like a battle for the last several weeks. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Neola and Mimi Hall. That's a wonderful update and wonderful news about Save Santa Cruz County New Initiative. I'll now ask Sheriff Hart to give a short update as well. Good morning. This is Jim Hart, County Sheriff, good morning board. I just wanna first talk about real briefly that my job and local law enforcement job during this health emergency is to really just to support the public health officer during this crisis and then do our normal activity of keeping the peace and forcing the law and make sure that all law enforcement in the county are working together. And then as the Sheriff in running a corrections bureau, my job is also to make sure that the people in our jails are safe. And then also keeping our staff healthy as a top priority so that we can keep our jails open and answer our calls for service. So far, countywide with all local law enforcement, we only have about 2% of our staff out with some kind of illness, which is really typical for this time of year. So we're doing pretty good in that area. I have received a number of inquiries from community members about our county jail system. I'm sure that many of you have read that jails and prisons across the country are reporting high rates of virus spread. And some of the largest outbreaks in the country have been in jails and prisons. The good news locally is that as of this morning, we do not have a single confirmed case of the virus in our jail system. And the reason why this is so important to our community at large is that if this virus gets into our jail system, we could easily exhaust our local hospital resources. And so we're doing everything we can to make sure that doesn't happen. We've taken many precautionary measures to keep our jails safe. And so far, what we're doing is working. On the law enforcement side, I think I mentioned last time that we've established a county-wide law enforcement operations center to ensure that all local law enforcement agencies are communicating daily. The chiefs of police, state parks and the highway patrol, myself all meet daily. And this allows us to monitor county-wide crime trends, move resources where they're needed and also make sure that all local law enforcement has adequate level of PPE to keep our staff members safe. And having a county-wide coordinated effort by all local law enforcement has been very helpful. Last weekend, the beaches were crowded. And a lot of people called, a lot of people emailed county officials, including myself, to voice their displeasure with the number of visitors that we had from outside our area. The Sheriff's Office and other agencies wrote hundreds of citations over the weekend and still people kept coming to the beaches. And so we're working on a plan with our county attorneys as well as our public health officer to try to reduce the volume of people who are coming to Santa Cruz from outside of the area. And this is a challenging issue to try to find a middle ground that keeps our community safe and also provides our residents with the opportunity to get outside and get some fresh air. And I just wanna finish with the, that we all know we're asking our people, our community members, to do some very difficult things. But what we're doing as a county is working and that's evident by our low rate of spread that Mimi Hall and Gail Nielton spoke about. And I wanna encourage our community members to remain vigilant and listen and trust to our health experts. They know what they're doing. They're doing a great job and they're gonna help us get through this. Thank you. Thank you so much, Sheriff Hart. I'll now go and ask to Elisa Benson our assistant county administrative officer to give an update on our response to protect the individual suffering from homelessness. Good morning, everyone. Apologize for being a few minutes late. It's the beauty of the new environment. This morning I'll be providing our, what's now apparently a bi-weekly briefing on our work to address issues of COVID and the people experiencing homelessness here in the county of Santa Cruz. This is part of the human services department operational center and I'll be speaking to the, as I mentioned, shelter and care for homelessness and Randy will cover the continuity of operations in that department. We really wanna just quickly walk through the objectives for this work because it's always important to keep those in mind. We are working to provide shelter and care infrastructure for the highest risk groups and general population of people experiencing homelessness in our community. Key to that is expanding 24 seven shelter for in our existing shelter system so we can help people experiencing homelessness comply with the shelter in place order. We need to increase services to people experiencing homelessness who live outside or an outside of our system of care. And then Randy will be, as I mentioned, be talking about the continuity of operations. We have four operational strategies to realize these objectives and really all of these focus on highest risk as a function of how well folks can practice physical distancing and the hygiene protocols we are all getting more and more accustomed to and then really addressing the vulnerability sort of vulnerability structure of people who are experiencing homelessness. So onto the four different strategies which we've talked about week by week. The first one is really around supporting and stabilizing our existing shelter service or shelter service providers and folks who are in those systems. And that's really about helping them to implement safe shelter in place practices. What we've done since our last briefing is we've continued to do regular visits from our environmental health, public health and our doc team going on site to shelters to make sure they are able to actually implement the new operational models for shelter in place. What that's led to is we're able to bring down the census counts in the shelters so they are able to do the physical distancing. And that's led us to open expanding shelter to address that congestion as we've had to move people out. Currently we're working with the Association of Faith communities to expand their safe parking sites. As we've learned from the CDC, people who are living outside and able to shelter in place in vehicles is actually a safer practice than being in congregate care. So we're gonna be meeting with our Association of Faith community partners who already have a safe parking program and determine how we can expand that capacity. We've also since we last spoke been able to stabilize day services at the armory and make it so folks in shelter and other programs who didn't have access to day services are able to realize those at that site. We're also working to expand our overnight sheltering capacity at that site. So as I mentioned, to stabilize our existing shelter system, that meant we had to bring the census down so we could actually allow for physical distancing. And that led us to expand through what we're now sort of calling pop-up shelters, expand our capacity at a number of sites. We have now opened three additional sites that are congregate in care. That's a new word for me now, the fact that it's a group living situation at the vets halls in Santa Cruz and Watsonville. And we've opened a third site at the Simkins Community Center focusing on transition aged youth. We continue to work on a Mid County site for the trailers that we're receiving from the state. And that's under consideration. We're talking with Seventh Day Adventist Church about potentially using that site. And if we are able to move forward with that, we will be doing a digital community meeting to let neighbors around that site as a non-county site understand the program. We continue to evaluate how to utilize the fairgrounds in this epidemic and we're working on that in conjunction with HSA around the issue of farm worker protection. From there, I wanna move to one of our most at-risk populations within the homeless community. And that's our elders who are 65 and older or medically vulnerable. For that purpose, we've been initiating our IQV, isolation, quarantine and vulnerability shelter using the project room key model that the state and FEMA have set forward. This is really taking use of hotel capacity to provide non-congregate, so individual sheltering in place opportunities, both for folks who are either COVID exposed, COVID positive or that vulnerable population. We've been extremely fortunate to date. We have not had any referrals to our isolation or quarantine from the homeless population. And what that's meant is we've been able to provide those rooms to people who are highly vulnerable in terms of age or medical conditions. So at our first site that opened in early April, it's a 28 bed site. Two thirds of that site is full with folks who fit into that vulnerable category. We plan to be opening our second site, well, 36 beds tomorrow. And so we'll be making a decision whether to now put more folks who are in that vulnerable category into the remaining beds at the first site. And then what proportion of beds to make available to vulnerable PEH, people experiencing homelessness at the second site. We're on the cusp of signing up our third site, master lease that. And again, that will provide additional capacity for folks in those high risk categories. We'll be moving from there to a fourth site in South County in Watsonville to again, continue to expand that non-congregate shelter capacity and really focusing on vulnerable populations within the homeless community. The fourth component of our strategy is really around increasing and making our outreach to folks who live outside, who are not part of our shelter system, more robust through active engagement and outreach. We have two parts to that strategy. We have what we're calling Haas, homeless outreach support services that we are opening up as pop-up outreach in a variety of locations. Those are places where we're not encouraging a lot of people to come, but because we obviously don't want folks to congregate, but in places where we understand homeless people are already living outside. Those sites are at the Emmeline, at Depot Park and Santa Cruz. We've also done a third one at the Pajaro Levy. And we're looking at conversations with our South County partners at another one in South or Mid County. The second aspect of that strategy is expanding on that Haas, that's what we call that model, to call Haas Plus to really focus on some of our largest encampment sites. And those are gonna be focused at Coral Street in the city of Santa Cruz and here at the Benchlands right behind this building. The intention there is to provide more specific support and guidance and materials to folks who are in an encampment situation to practice safe distancing and hygiene. And our intention is to have a more active monitoring and safety approach at those sites. The last element I wanna share is in the opportunity of this crisis, we have been able to stand up a single point of contact shelter referral line. So that is for folks who are providers who might be referring some of their clients who are homeless to get quicker access to shelter capacity, as well as people in community who are dealing with the issue of homelessness. That new feature of our system is a seven day a week service from eight to 7 p.m. And we have that information around how to access that service on our website. I just again wanna appreciate and be so thankful for all the partnership we've had from our jurisdictional partners and our community partners to stand up this system in a very short time. We continue to work on refining it as you do things quickly. Sometimes you have to continue to work on improvement and really try and make for safer spaces for people experiencing homelessness to shelter in place. Happy to answer any questions. Well actually, we won't take questions during the report but thank you for your, thank you Elisa. And now I'd like to ask Randy Morris to he's our director of the human services department to give an update about human services programs. Good morning supervisors. Make sure I can toggle correctly here. As Elisa just mentioned of the three responsibilities the human service department has in a disaster one of them is working closely with Elisa and her staff in doing all we can to shelter those who are experiencing homelessness. And we have a few dozen managers dedicated to working with Elisa in partnership doing the work that was just described. And the two updates I will give as a follow up. Let me see if this is working. Should I come up here to move the, what's that? You're welcome to. Okay, I just want, I have a couple of slides that I just wanna share real quick. Is this on? Okay, so thank you. I just have two quick slides as a follow up from the presentation given to you two weeks ago which speak to the continuity of operations. All three of our divisions are still functioning and the balance of our staff not working on the shelter activities are continuing to provide critical safety net services to the community. And then I'll end with an update on some of our food security work and some recent FEMA state funding opportunities. So in our three divisions and our continuity of operations some updates are in the adult and long-term care services division our adult protective services hotline continues to actually get an uptick in calls. This is actually good news that the community is paying attention and calling us asking for help. And our new normal in COVID-19 is that the primary calls that we're receiving have to actually do with food insecurity and getting meals to vulnerable older adults and people with this ability who are sheltering in place and not a surprise concerns about housing assistance and people who are precariously housed. In our in-home supportive services program because this was public information shared by Governor Newsom in a one of his press announcements a few weeks back I wanna share with this board and the public what has happened since that announcement which is the governor had announced that despite the health crisis and the need for PPE and the N95 masks to be prioritized to health workers there was decision made at the state that the IHSS caregivers were also a priority population and the governor committed to deploying PPE masks and gloves to local IHSS caregiver workforce. We actually did just receive that deployment yesterday. We are in consultation specifically with the health department under Mimi and Dr. Newell's leadership around a couple of things. One is these masks that just arrived yesterday are one time only use and they are in large packages so they're not individually packaged so we need to be very careful not to contaminate and we're also working with the union SEIU 2015 who advocated at the state to make sure these were deployed to the IHSS workforce we were working on deployment as we speak and then the last is two weeks ago I had mentioned the challenge of IHSS clients who by definition are age blind and disabled and quite vulnerable in a COVID environment and concerns about allowing their caregivers to come in to provide care and the caregivers who are concerned about going into the homes to provide care. We're pleased to report that over the last two weeks there's been a tremendous amount of work that's been done that has led to basically no significant disruption in care. We wanna thank the state and the feds behind the state who eased overtime restrictions which actually allowed caregivers to work above the overtime threshold so they could continue to provide care which helped quite a bit and then the state also implemented an emergency provision to allow for a $2 pay differential to those caregivers under emergency situations. So put together we actually are pleased to report that IHSS clients are continuing to get care and we're in active communication. The next division I wanna speak to is our Family and Children's Services Division or the Child Welfare Department. We had reported two weeks ago that this was a statewide trend that there was a dramatic decrease in the number of reports to our hotline. That's a statewide trend. The number two weeks ago was that it was almost 50% reduction. That has dropped a little bit. It's closer to 40% in the last couple of weeks which is well below average and what we have done which is the only thing we really have ability to manage is we immediately started working with school districts and the community to make sure people are aware the hotline was still active. We're still able to respond by phone where appropriate and in-person carefully when necessary. So that activity continues over the last couple of weeks. And then the last of our divisions, Employment and Benefit Services, I had provided some trend charts to the public last week and just wanna briefly say that the applications for public assistance, CalFresh, MediCal, CalWorks, those continue to be significantly up from last year. CalFresh being the most notable, it continues to be up on a weekly average about 135% above average. I want to take a minute to recognize the very impressive and inspiring work of the EBSD staff that's our clerks and our benefit reps and our supervisors behind them who remarkably continue to process these new applications timely. So as of today to knock on wood, we continue to be on time and processing these new applications. We had also talked two weeks ago and since then with some board offices about the concerns about making sure that those who are newly eligible for our benefits were aware that they were. A lot of people who are dropping into poverty and unemployment for the first time might not be aware of eligibility criteria. So we have increased our outreach to the community and school districts as well to make sure that there's awareness of the benefits to which people might be eligible. And then the final update, I had mentioned and it's worth repeating. Unemployment claims are not processed by a local County Human Services Department. They are by the state Edd office, but we work closely with that process. And particularly in our Watsonville office where people are allowed to come into the office and make a direct call to the Edd office. Two weeks ago I had reported there was a high of 8,300 plus applications in Santa Cruz County. It has gone down, but it's still disturbing. It went from 8,400 a couple of weeks ago, 5,500 the week after and then 3,700 last week. So it's still a disturbing number given the averages had been in the 150 range, but it did not continue to climb. So there's perhaps some silver lining there. We are getting reports that despite Edd expanding their hours, we're not sure if their workforce is any larger because there continue to be challenges getting through and long wait times. So the last piece I wanna speak to is I had mentioned a couple of weeks ago that part of the mission of human services is just to work on issues of those who are most vulnerable in our community. And we had worked quickly with our local food bank and others providing food services that were aware that there's more and more people in desperate need for food. A lot of activity happening there both in the COVID environment and those who are experiencing homelessness were sheltering but beyond that we have been initiating some work to partner with the community. And I'd mentioned a survey that survey came back and we're in the process of analyzing that with our community partners, but the highlights are that vast majority of the food providers in the community are working with newly unemployed. The second harvest food bank had shared some startling statistics with us that on average a year ago they get about 100 calls a week for help. And at the highlight of late March, they got 1,500 plus calls. That's a dramatic increase and it's leveled to about 350 calls a week, which is still 350% increase, which is quite overwhelming. And then not a surprise and in our wheelhouse and human services that survey also prompted that anything we can do in human services to raise awareness about CalFresh eligibility because the food bank is the safety net behind CalFresh as a federally funded program. My final comment is I wanna speak to emergency feeding program. This has gotten media attention. There's been a number of calls to our office. I'm imagining board offices have gotten calls. We've already heard from city electeds that they've been getting calls. This has a number of names to it, but this is part of the congressional care acts that have been put forward. One of them is FEMA has put out some money and then California implemented it and enabled it in a way that probably marries two issues. One is it's an economic stimulus package for restaurants and it's specifically for local restaurants. It's not for national chains to bring some resources to local restaurants so that through this money, they can actually hire and maintain people to deliver food. And then that partners with the second issue, which is sort of our wheelhouse and that is getting meals to vulnerable older adults who are sheltering in place. I wanna let people know this just came out on Friday. Governor Newsom announced it in his press conference. The document came out from the Cal OES on Friday. We immediately scrambled, got together over the weekend and pulled together a meeting yesterday with a number of community partners. It allows for a local administrator to be determined at the local level. It can be county government. It can be city government. It can be the local nonprofit triple A. So we got all those entities on a call. There are some challenges with the funding and the time frames. There is a 6% local match required, which we are trying to sort through how we can do that. And if we can do that in kind, there is also a limit of $66 per day, which is three meals and administrative overhead, which includes delivery. So the money is complicated, but the biggest challenge, and I just wanna share this because this is the public information that's quite a challenge, is the money is only approved by the feds to be spent by May 10th. So to lift up something that's complicated, get it out the door and deliver foods by May 10th, and then the money stops is something that is a concern and a challenge, but we're waiting to see as the state is to see if this will be extended. So we are having another call tomorrow. Everybody's invited. A number of people have already RSVP that they'll be on this call and we'll do all we can to make this work if possible and can talk, answer any questions outside of this meeting as we work on this to try to make it work. So that's the end of my presentation. Thank you. Thank you very much. That concludes staff's update on our progress with the COVID-19 emergency. Chair Caput, now you're ready to move on to item four. Okay. There will be public comment after item four. It's on item five. Okay. Do any board members wish to pull consent items from the regular agenda? And we'll do the comments after public comments. If they're not going to pull something, but would like to. That's correct. Okay. Mr. Chair. Yes. Supervisor McPherson, I would like to pull item number 16, which is relative to what we've been talking about now. There's a delay in my talking to you and then we should go into that immediately rather than put it at the end of the agenda. But there's a couple of questions I had on that. We'll let you comment on that. We'll pull it. So item 15, which is an accepted file, the Treasurer's Investment Transaction. No, it's the order 16. Item 16. Item 16. 16 is the item. 16. 16. 16. That you'd like to move. So we'll put it on the regular agenda then. It'll be the first. Except COVID-19, 19 grant funds of the amount of 388,000. Yes. It'll be item 6.1. Thank you. It'll be what? 6.1. 6.1. Yes. And do we have members of the public who would like to? No, this is still number five. This is number four. Is there any other items? Is that what the only one from the board? Okay, so now you're going on to number five. Item number five, which is public comment. And Marilyn, you've got the floor right now. You can come up and speak. This is item number five, public comment. Public comment. Public comment. Item 27, please. Would you kindly do that? Supervisor Gacapa. Supervisor, we've already- Excuse me. Item four, which is the board members wanting to remove items from the consent agenda. So we've already gone past that. We've had one item pulled by board members. We're now moving to item five, which is public comment. So this is public comment. So if you could start the timer for public comment. I think I requested item 27, please. It's regarding a very important separate manner from public comment. Did you get the message from your aid from this morning to pull item 27, please? You're requesting to pull an item. Yes. And what number is that item? 27, I know it's hard to hear through this. 27? 27. But Supervisor Chair Caput, the time for board items to pull- Excuse me. Members to pull items has already passed. Excuse me. So this is oral communication. She has three minutes to speak about that item. For item 27, and I'm sorry, nobody answered the phone this morning. I was calling every five minutes from 8 to 830 when somebody was supposed to answer the phone. Jillian said she'd give you the message when I finally got through at 830. So kindly pull item 27. Okay. This is public comment. So nobody on the board is pulling the items? That's correct. So now you're on item five, which is public comment. That's fine. Sorry, Marilyn. Anybody else would like to speak either here or in another room or by email? We do have web comments. Before we have web comments, we do have publics down here that would like to speak to the board. Susan? Susan, are you ready for the community room? Followed. That is the only thing left to the public at this point that they can ask a board member. Marilyn asked you via phone call this morning. And now you've used up her public comment time, which this is really disturbing. That's not the way it's supposed to work. Like so many things have happened at these meetings. Please don't do this to the public. Public has a right to ask for items to be pulled. We no longer have the right to ask for it ourselves and have that matter. And that's not right either. But the fact that she was asking you to pull it, Mr. Caput, was specific to you because she knew that you had the right to pull item 27. And it matters to her deeply. I don't think it's right that anyone would say that it was past time because we were asking number one to be able to speak to the first item, which we were ignored. And now she was ignored for asking for that. And that's really a matter of policy that makes no sense. Especially during a time where we have so many bigger items to be talking about right now. So I'm quite determined to make the requests for that to be honored and answered. Because Marilyn still has many things she wanted to say about several items here. And she takes her time to come. And I know you care and that you look to the public as important members to be able to speak here. I hope that you will pull that item as you should still be able. I wanted to be able to speak directly to the parts about the COVID-19 because it's still very, very concerning that there isn't more coming out of the many requests that this county count, how many people are actually being less infected because we have so many immune-boosting common knowledge aspects to this county like we do in most of California. I would like to comment that it's incredibly unhealthy for all of us to rebreathe our carbon dioxide this way. And to be forced to wear masks is not healthy and actually reducing our immunity. That doesn't make any sense. There are several things that we can do if we're worried about possibly being around a microphone and such. But when we aren't less than six feet from someone, it is terribly unhealthy to wear a mask. So I just ask that you talk about these things the way that most complementary and alternative care practitioners know and are practicing and have many available therapies for people which they can assist because viruses are very addressable by complementary and alternative care. These things should be talked about in our county more than others. I'm asking that somebody begin to do that and to reach out to all of the doctors and practitioners here who know all of that. But please still address Marilyn's request, Mr. Caput. Thank you. I'm looking at number 27. And that's a proof, revives list of personnel authorized to initiate and evaluate 5150. I don't see anything controversial about it. Nobody wants to pull it. Supervisor, I wanna make sure that we're remaining I wanna make sure that we're remaining in compliance with the Brown Act. And we are no longer on that item. We are no longer on item four. So the board members at this point arguably don't have an ability to pull anything from the consent agenda. Because we've moved to a different part of the agenda. We're now in item five, public comment. So I understand there was some confusion, but I would recommend in order to be in compliance with the Brown Act that we continue with public comment at this point. So it would have had to have been pulled by one of us before we moved to public comment. That's right. And I would have been something requested prior. That's right. All right. Thank you. Next person, please. Yeah. I had a comment about the Santa Cruz nature band. And I feel pretty strongly about this. My name is Ken Pearl. I'm a high school math teacher. I taught at Harbor High School for a couple of years. And I do help UCSC and Cabrera College kids with statistics. So I definitely appreciated all of the stats that Ms. Newell and Mimi presented. And I think that all the steps that we've taken have been very important. And we've like really made a lot of progress as a community and it's really done a lot to help public health. And as a small business owner, I also don't think that we should open up the economy yet. I don't think it's that time. I think we need to beat this, right? But I've agreed with every single thing that's come out of the county public health officers statement except for one. And that's this band on residents being able to go outside and do solo nature activities. I don't think that there's any way at all that a solo exercising person in nature could contract COVID-19. I think that we need to be able to go out and do that for our own personal, physical and mental health. I can tell you just as a citizen in Santa Cruz that during that week where it was banned, I was invited to a number of like say barbecues, dinner parties, things like this which were kind of productive, right? People kind of just hit the breaking point and they said, I can't handle this anymore. I'm against what the government's doing. I'm not able to kind of maintain my own mental health at this point. So I think that it ended up having the reverse effect of what we wanted it to have which is to help public mental and physical health. So thank you. I think that a great opportunity would be to do some sort of like risk band for county residents if the goal is to prevent people from coming out from outside the county some kind of parks pass. Also you could do a some sort of DUI style checkpoint on freeways coming in if the goal is to prevent these outside people from coming in. Mayor Lengarage, I will comment on item 27 at this time. And I feel it's quite anti-democratic the way you move the agenda so that procedure could not be followed. I want this item to be removed from the agenda due to serious associated problems illustrated by the following. On Thursday, the 16th, I received a call about 6.30 p.m. from my friend Melinda McComb who owns property in Supervisor Leopold's district. This location she selected not only for the bucolic gorgeous setting by the creek but because of the low EMF electromagnetic field readings she had measured prior to purchase because she is made ill by these exposures. However, the call came not from this beautiful landscape home which she had worked on to improve for three years. No, the call was made from the mental health unit in Santa Cruz. When I asked her where she was, she asked the woman there and was given the address of 2250 SoCal Avenue. She was told, it looks like they're gonna keep me here overnight and she asked the employee, can they keep me here forever? I clearly hear the yes response. Here's Melinda's account of what happened that morning approximately 7.30 a.m. This is from my phone notes. Two police or sheriff cards with two uniformed men in each came to the door saying they were doing a welfare check. She was in her pajamas with no camisole underneath hadn't even had coffee and they got her into the police vehicle. She was roughed up taken from her house. Oh, it's hard to read my own handwriting. They grabbed her, bruised her, twisted her arm, handcuffed her and she was given no reason. She told me she was thrown down on the ground, injected with medication. And I called you about this, Greg Kappett, I was so sad. Now had this, I'm gonna submit this but this is abusive, torturous behavior on the part of the sheriff department. We called you back. Instead of what? I didn't hear you. Thank you, thank you. We did call you back. Okay. Okay, it looks like there's, now we're ready for the community room. Gentlemen, down the stairs. Community room, public comment. Go ahead. Hi, good morning. This is an appeal to stop self-destruction and medical fascism. This is a letter from a working nurse in Oregon but I've heard this a lot from other medical people in the systems around Santa Cruz. It says, it has so disturbed me that I feel this type of information needs to be known. Quote, a very highly respected member of our local medical community called me this morning and the conversation turned to our current situation which he told me was extremely upsetting. Our hospital, St. Charles Medical Center currently has three COVID-19 patients and is 80% empty. This past week, this individual was called to the ER to see a patient. In the ER at the time were nine patients, all of whom had attempted suicide and the majority of them were under 20 years of age. In all the years in medicine in central Oregon, this individual has never seen so many such cases as St. Charles. Additionally, the local medical community has seen huge increases in alcohol consumption, smoking and drug use. Currently there are 1.6 billion children, school-aged children worldwide who are not in school and should be. Also since this shutdown began, 66 million children have fallen into poverty. To stop a health crisis, we are creating a health crisis that could last for generations instead of months. We can quarantine those who are 65 years of age or older and those medically vulnerable which amounts to 25 to 30% of the population while the rest of us get back to work. Yes, some may get sick, but the mortality rate in such a case would be extremely low and we would develop a herd immunity in months instead of years. Fear is a powerful motivator and hard to throw up. Leaders are clinging to their original decisions when the situation has clearly changed. Instead of changing with the situation, they are doubling down on the original data. I'm afraid we have reached a point where we are hurting more than helping, especially in areas with little or no virus activity. It's time to reevaluate our situation, unquote. And as Fossi said, COVID-19 may turn out to be comparable to a seasonal flu. The data is now showing that. Sweden and Denmark, which had different approaches, have the same outcome. Denmark locked everybody down in Sweden dinner and they had the same curve. And face masks, the Dr. Pervenicic said, he's an infection specialist at the University of Iowa, College of Medicine. He says, the average healthy person does not need to wear a mask and they shouldn't be wearing masks. There's no evidence of wearing masks and healthy people will protect them. They wear them incorrectly and they increase the risk of infection because they're touching their face more often. The use of face masks is only necessary and useful for immune suppressed and those with symptoms to wear. Having the general population wear them is neither necessary effective nor useful except to make people more fearful and doubtful. Thank you, Becky Steinbrenner. Thank you, Drew Lewis. Well said, and I heartily agree with everything you said. I am upset as is Marilyn and Monica McGuire with how these meetings are being run in terms of public censorship. A member of the board was asked to pull that consent agenda item 27 but apparently didn't get the message. This is public censorship. This is not the first time this has happened. And I suggest that for the benefit of the public who takes time to come and reads and is concerned about these things that you alter your process. If you're going to make us beg permission and get approval from a supervisor, put it so that after public comment, after the public has commented on consent that then a member of the board has the ability to pull an item. That is fair and that's what needs to be changed here. I want to say regarding the updates on the counties COVID restrictions with Sheriff Hart saying that just broadly that all those people on the beaches were from somewhere else. How do you know that? How can you point the finger at out of town people? We have people here that love the beaches. That's why we're here. And I heard reports that there was very good practice of social distancing at those beaches. So please don't shut them down. Please don't restrict the people any more than you already have. In fact, we need to open it up just as Mr. Lewis said and get us all going again for mental and spiritual and economic health. I listened with interest to the plan to bring our trailers, FEMA trailers in to house those homeless. I want to remind this county again that there is a space already set up for that in Watsonville behind the county. Go ahead and check behind that. I'm sorry, there's talk going on. All right. That was set up and accomplished that during after the 1989 earthquake, those areas on Crestview and Freedom are already set up, plumbed in everything. Let's use that. It's open. It hasn't been built upon yet and is still there and available. I'm not hearing any talk about providing the Haas up in the San Lorenzo Valley. There are significant homeless populations in the San Lorenzo Valley. And if we're going to accommodate the homeless in the county, we need to be addressing the homeless in San Lorenzo Valley as well. And finally, I want to say that, well, it sounded like it was an appalling bit of news that the drop in reports of child abuse, child welfare problems was a negative thing. I think that's quite a good thing. And we should look at that that maybe that is part of the families being reunited and spending time together. I don't think the answer is to increase. Okay, hello. My name is Marcada Bokova. I'm an acupuncturist in the community and a professor at Five Wrenches University. And I would like to speak up against 5G rollout. It is a technology that is new and there's very little independent, there's no independent research essentially indicating that it is safe. And we are, there's been accelerated requests by the cell phone companies in recent weeks and months associated with the COVID crisis to unroll 5G, especially unroll it in schools. They are installing it in public schools around the country as these schools are shut down currently. And I would like the board to be aware that this technology has essentially no independent research as to its health safety. And so we're, and it requires a significant jump in electromagnetic exposures. If you install 5G in residential neighborhoods, you're going to require an antenna for anywhere between two and 15 houses. This means people will have cell towers right in front of their houses, essentially most of us. There has been requests by literally thousands of scientists into more research delaying the technology until such research is done. There are cities in Europe, such as Geneva and Brussels, that have decided to wait with their 5G rollout to see what's going to happen with the rest of us. There are countries like Croatia that have completely halted their 5G rollout because of what's happened with the COVID-19 crisis. There's been no definitive research, but if you look at the areas that have high levels of 5G and the areas that have high infection rates and high death rates from COVID-19, there is a significant overlap, right? We know about Wuhan, we know about Northern Italy. So it is a big question mark that I believe is being not reported adequately in the media and we should be thinking about it and you should be thinking about it as the local government protecting your people. Thank you. We have two comments that came through the web. The first one is from Stephanie Weingarden. She posted, I appreciate the update from the County Health Officer. However, it would be helpful to have more discussion around dates for the shelter in place order. The comments given by the officer are ambiguous regarding the lifting or extension of the order. It seems we have been closely aligned with other Bay Area orders that are given minimal notice to what our County is considering. The second email that we received is from Daphna Brown and she writes, Board of Supervisors, we write hoping to bring some perspective to this evening's discussion of a possible reclosure of our beaches. In short, such a measure is entirely misguided and we urge you not such an unwarranted action. The novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is no longer so novel. We now know much more than we did even just a few months ago. One, we know that the large portions of California, Florida and New York residents have already had the virus. Most with no or minimal symptoms. Two, we also know that if ever there was a chance to contain the virus, it is passed. Three, the available data also provides good solid information about how deadly the virus is. In California, the death rate from COVID-19 is four per 100,000. Similar death rates where we have data pulled across the country. Pennsylvania is 13 per 100,000. Utah is one per 100,000. Wisconsin is four per 100,000. Georgia is eight per 100,000. Texas is two per 100,000. Florida is four per 100,000. For perspective, the national death rate from flu and pneumonia in 2018 was 14.4 per 100,000. Even these death rates from across the country and our state, all of which are significantly lower than the death rate from the seasonal flu can seal an important fact. COVID-19 is not an equal opportunity taker of life. COVID-19 deaths have heavily concentrated among the elderly, 80% of all COVID-19 deaths and those with underlining conditions. Together, the elderly and those with underlining health conditions account for 98% of the COVID-19 deaths. Shelter in place has been a policy blender that has massively disrupted the lives and destroyed the businesses of many Santa Cruz residents. Please do not follow the lead of Mass, of please do not follow the lead of San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa and Marin counties in extending shelter in place. And please do not shut down our beaches. From all available evidence, risk of outdoor transmission is virtually zero. Inside instead, consider how effectively, how to effectively protect our elderly and then firm residents while the rest of us get back to our lives. With so much at stake, the facts matter. During the period of initial uncertainty with COVID-19 shelter in place, enclosure of our parks, beaches and schools may have made sense to flatten the curve. However, we now know these efforts are no longer necessary. Please set aside the hysteria that seems to be gripping our nation and county and in same policy for Santa Cruz. The facts always come out. And while democracy grinds even more slowly than justice, your voters are watching and will eventually judge the reasonableness. I'm gonna stop there because it's stopped at three minutes. While I was reading, we did receive one more email. If you give me one second, I will pull it up. Okay, if you will give me one minute, I need to reset my timer because this is also a long email. Okay, this email comes from Douglas Dyche. Please read this aloud. It was as it was last night to monitor a one water board and email to you. May I please respectfully preface my statement here by saying and demonstrating in 2011 at DouglasDychec.com that I have resource control board for the first time. Chairman Eskival brought up the subject and held a brief discussion on the possibility of coronavirus being present in our sewage and other wastewater system. A very prudent and persistent concern, I would say. He tried to assure us that we were all safe, apparently and not surprisingly, there has not yet been investigation of this very new matter. Reasonable and scientific minds seem to defer. And further conclusive investigation is what is prudently now required. We must listen to the scientist and the, as a scientist, Lou and Nadia, caution use themselves, caution us themselves. Fortunately, most water treatment routines are thought to kill or remove coronavirus effectively in both drinking and wastewater. Oxygen de-dation of the hyperchlorous acid and parasitic acid and inactivation by ultraviolet erudation as well as chlorine are thought to kill coronavirus and wastewater treatment plans, the use membrane plants that use membrane bioreactors and synergetic effects of beneficial microorganisms and the physical separation of suspended solids filter out various viruses concentrated in the sewage sludge. Lou and Nadia caution, however, that most of these methods have not been studied for effectiveness, specifically on SARS COVID-19 and other coronaviruses. They have called for additional research. And additionally at the 421-2020 SWRCB release tells us, despite SWRCB claims of absolute safety, it appears reasonable minds are differing. To wit, please see attached SWRCB fact sheet attached to this email. It will be impossible to clean our groundwater once they have been contaminated with coronavirus, recharged and injected deep into them. These mistakes can be fixed. Consequently, I'm requesting that both the common interest and just plain common sense demand that all current groundwater injection be immediately halted pending conclusive resolution of the possible contamination issues posed by the new coronavirus and that consideration of item 7C be pulled from your agenda this evening and be considered at a later date with the board and the public can and will be more fully informed and competent to make proper decisions of this matter. And those are the end of the web comments. Do we have any comments from board members on? Do we have any comments from board members? Mr. Chair, this is Supervisor McPherson. I might just go in. So there's a couple of items that I wanted to address. Item number 20, increasing the purchasing authority. I understand and appreciate the need for the county purchasing authority to be flexible and move quickly in this crisis that we're in. But I would like to add a support, a recommendation that the contracts that are executed since they're going to be able to increase their authority from $100,000 to up to a million dollars that the executed or revised contracts under the new policy be reported to the board at the first regular meeting, immediately following the execution of the contract. I think the reports should include a brief description of the contract's purpose and the amount and any outcome measures that anticipated associated services being provided. I think this will give us added transparency for us and the general public. And I don't disagree that it's necessary, but I do think that we should allow this to have public eyes on it as well. Secondly, so I would like to have that be added to that item. On item number 31, deferring the Syringe Services Study Session. And again, I understand why we are delaying this again, but I do think we must continually address the concern about our Syringe Services Program operations and policies. The amount of syringe services or syringes still exists. The great amount that we have and with people continuing to recreate and outdoors or wanting to and during our shelter in place, I think it's more important that we have our streets, parks and beaches clean. We had a last meeting. We hired the downtown streets team to pick up litter, but their teams are not working while sheltering in place is literally in place. So I would just ask the Health Services Agency to bring the item back sooner than October if possible. Possibly just bring up the subject again in June and if for some reason, you know, there's swamp continually, we can delay it, but I'd just like to see if we can address and make a date sometime in June if that would be, well, I'd like to just have us do that if we could. So that's the only two items that I'd like to address on the consent agenda. One other thing, but I'd like to thank the Public Works Department for continuing this road approved. Supervisor McPherson, can we lose him? Okay. Do you have any comment? Yeah. So just a couple of comments. Oops, it's supervisor. So one is I support Supervisor McPherson's additional direction on the purchase requirements. I think I understand the need for flexibility and expanded purchasing power. I just think the board needs to be notified after and be able to ratify it going forward with some explanation, especially as to the outcomes of the contracts on item number 21, which is FEMA reimbursement. I'd like just subsequent reports because it's such a critical threat to our budget whether we are reimbursed and at what rate and matching funds that on our second meeting in May, we get a report back on how those reimbursements are looking. Finally, on item number 29 and 30, first on 29, I wanna thank the Health Services Agency for expanding medication assisted treatment. Janice, this is a major effort to help people struggling with addiction. And that expansion of that contract makes a big difference in people's lives and their family's lives. And also on item number 30, we know that this crisis has put a lot of pressure on all organizations. It's put a lot of pressure on specifically on health clinics as well. And I wanna appreciate the Health Services Agency's efforts to find funding to continue so that our health clinics which provide essential healthcare to the most vulnerable are able to continue to operate. Thank you. Chair, this is John Leopold. I just wanna make a couple of comments. On item number 17, which is an update about the public defenders program, I understand completely that we are pushing the dates back a little bit. This is a very important program. And given everything that's going on, if we need to take more time than this, I would encourage our staff to do that because be able to provide legal services for those who can't afford it is incredibly important in the criminal justice system. And I wanna make sure we have a good transition to whatever the new model's gonna be rather than just trying to get done by an arbitrary deadline. On item number 30, I also wanted to share my appreciation to HSA for using the portion of the money that they're receiving to help out the dental clinic. Dientes is trying to stay open for emergency services, but it's a very expensive operation. They're a critical county partner. And I appreciate that we're using some of our funds to help them out. And lastly on item number 37, which is the climate action strategy report. I appreciate this list of the things that we're doing and the hopes that we're gonna have a climate action manager. My understanding was that we had put that on hold. So if that information is different, I'd be interested in hearing that. But I think that we need to continue to do it whatever we can to address, especially the adaptation strategies that we're gonna need to protect us for the changing nature of the climate in our community. That's it. Mr. Chair, this is Zach. I'll just add a couple of briefings. On item 34, just wanted to thank the parks department for their continued work on the Sequa Village Park and also getting a great cost for that permanent restroom and also the public works department on the Cox Road storm damage repair too, and also going back out to bid and actually getting a bid that was below the estimate so that we could get something done there quicker and for less money. I appreciate both of those two departments continuing to work even under a lot of these circumstances of showing that county government is still doing a lot of things beyond just the COVID response, which is significant, but that normal operations are still continuing. And I appreciate the work of those field departments, parks and public works for those two things. Thank you. Mr. Park, I'll do this quick. It's, I think it needs to be said. And it's considering all the hardship and I want to thank the public for everything that you're going through right now for your cooperation and also for all the frontline county workers that have been asked to step out of their job classification and work at homeless shelters in different places that are trying to slow down this epidemic that we're facing. I think everything that we're doing right now is in response to maybe New York, what's going on there. And we don't want that to happen in California or any other state for that matter. Some people say it's all because New York is a big city. Well, California has big cities like San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego and I can name more. But anyway, we don't want that to get out of hand here. So what I'm getting at is better, it's better why I'm all for what we're doing is it's better to be a little, hold off a little later on removing restrictions rather than removing them too early. So I am gonna, we're talking about health issues I don't want to make and I don't think any of us want to make things worse by everything we're trying to do. And what I mean by that is of course, exercising, getting out, the public being active and everything like that, opening up school playgrounds that are locked up right now. And so if the kids and everybody can't go to a school playground, they're gonna go to the city playground and then there's more of them in one location rather than spreading it out. I would like to see the schools open up their playground areas for especially kids to be able to use them. I don't like walls, I don't like locked gates and I think that's something that needs to be looked at. So I'm gonna end this up by saying this is a very important question. We need to ask ourselves as board members, would we make the same decisions if we personally faced losing our paychecks like many of the taxpayers that we have affected? And I propose to put on the next agenda in May to have the board of supervisors to consider and talk about taking a two weeks without a salary to feel what we have. And I'm also including department heads on that for the discussion. In order to feel what we have put the people through the past two months and notice I said two weeks without a salary. I didn't say two months or three months. There are people that are facing long-term economic hardship and there's a point where we have to look at all the health benefits to what we're doing and also the health detriment what we're doing by restricting people to be able to go out and also people losing their paychecks for two to three months. And there are many long-term economic hardships that face families and individual hard-working individuals. This is at least worth the discussion and that's it. I think we're doing what we have to do and I'm really proud of everybody getting together and trying to do the best we can. And one way to do this is to show some leadership by example and considering what I propose. Thank you. This is an action on the consent agenda. Is there a motion? I'll move the consent agenda as amended. John Leopold seconds. Thank you, John. Okay. I'll take a roll call vote. Supervisor Leopold. Aye. Friend. Coonerty. Aye. McPherson. McPherson. Chair Caput. Aye. Is Supervisor McPherson on? Aye. There you go. Good job. Okay. I was wondering if we could take item 6.1 which is the former item 16 very quickly and then take a short break before we start. Yes. Supervisor McPherson, we got it. Okay. It was office and I'll be reporting on item 6.1. This is the original item 6.1. Can everyone hear me? I think we're all used to that from conference calls at this point. So I'll be doing a brief overview of item 6.1 which was previously item 16. This is a companion piece to item 21 from the Consent Agenda which basically set up our FEMA response budgeting actions to allow us to expend funds and start addressing reimbursement. So as a companion item, as we anticipate a large proportion of our expenditures around COVID-19 are related to the shelter and care work that I described in the report earlier today. We have identified, we have to wanna identify our local match for that body of work and we are relying on our funds from the homeless services coordination budget to address those funds. So the items in number 6.1 really speak to that need. So there are a number of specific actions related to accepting grants that we have received specifically from the state for COVID-19 work around homeless services. And then a resolution to accept these funds and make them available for expenditure for this purpose. So I wanna just briefly talk about where this $1.8 million of what we're identifying as match at this point. Again, as Supervisor Coonerty acknowledged, these things are working estimates at this point and absolutely we will be reporting back to you on that on those points. That $1.8 million is really about comes from a number of funding sources. It reflects the COVID-19 funds that we did receive from the state to both the county at an amount of $388,000 and approximately $422,000 to the county's homeless action partnership, our COC. The remainder of that is we are identifying from currently un-spent, un-awarded or unallocated, un-contracted HEAP funds. And I'll break that into its constituent parts. About $131,000 is from interest income that we've accrued on those funds. About $500,000 is from an award that we had made to encompass around a youth services program that had not actually been under contract yet. And after discussions with our county provider, they had anticipated they would not be able to actually utilize those funds given delays in their project. So we are pulling those back to make those available as match funds as part of our COVID response. And then the remainder of that is about 410,000 from an award that we had provided to the city of Santa Cruz for a navigation center land acquisition. But that project has also been stalled. So that's where those funds are coming from. And this is consistent with basically direction from the state about utilization of homeless related funds that jurisdictions have already been awarded to round out the financial response to COVID. So with that, I'd be happy to take any specific questions around the item before you. I think Supervisor McPherson pulled the item. So maybe he should go first. I'll let him speak first, yeah. Okay. Mr. Chair. Yes. Mr. Chair. Can you hear me? Yes, yes, I can. Yes, I can. Okay, some of this has been, okay, some of this addressed already. And I just, believe me, I want to thank the staff for what it's doing. There's a lot of moving parts. There's new acronyms every week, IT, V, H, O, S, S. So I want to get right to the point about where they were explaining about some of the HAP and HEAP funds that we have. But what's the current status of the navigation site proposed for the Seaboard site? If we're not going to assign HEAP funds to the navigation center at the site, what's the future plan for the site? I just want to get it. Happy to give you an update on the North County Navigation Center site plans. We are still working with City of Santa Cruz to identify a location and that location and see if that is actually something that we will be able to realize in making this redeployment of funds given the COVID emergency. We worked with the City of Santa Cruz to let them know that this funding would be redirected for this purpose. And they participated in their roles on the board of the Homeless Action Partnership and supported this action. And that was partially with the understanding that we all still absolutely have a commitment to our best ability to move forward with a navigation center project. I think this emergency has demonstrated all the more reason why we need modern approaches to addressing the issue of homelessness in our community. And in moving forward with this recommendation, it was with the discussion that the County would continue to be a hand in hand partner with the city to identify a property and go move forward with the Navigation Center site. There are still additional local funds that we are anticipating from the state that we have actually agreements for including our HEP funds and then remaining HEP funds that we can redeploy as needed towards that high top priority within our system. Our challenge of course right now is given the overall uncertainty around our budget reality moving forward, how that strategy is gonna be able to be put into place. So this wallet, it does address the initial funding proposal we had towards advancing our North County Navigation Center proposal. We're still absolutely committed to that. I am hopeful that we would be able to utilize some of the funding we anticipate, unprecedented funding we anticipate from the federal government around a response to homelessness among the COVID-19 epidemic. Just as a small tidbit, to the extent we understand it at this point, the Federal Care Act provided substantially more funding to the Housing and Urban Development Department, or Housing and Urban Development Department HUD. Usually they spend about 300 million a year on homeless related services. The Care Act included $2 billion in that act. We don't yet know what that means in terms of an increase in the funding available to this County to support this kind of work. So while we may be redeploying funds that we had hoped to invest in our Navigation Center strategy, I am hopeful that we will have additional funds that will be able to not just close that gap, but it closed the pre-existing gap to actually make that vision a reality. Does that answer your question, Supervisor McPherson? Can I ask one follow-up to that, which is, I think it makes sense. I think it makes sense that there's different pots of money coming in and out in different needs. My one question was, we had allocated, we had ratified the HAP allocations for the Navigation Center. And my understanding was there was a certain time limit on those. That's correct. And so what happens if we aren't moving forward to Navigation Center time? What happens to those funds? What is the timeline? And then what will the role of the HAP and the Board be in reallocating those funds? Great question. So we actually, that pre-COVID, I will say, that has been a concern of ours. Will we be able to meet the expectation to expend 50% of our HEP award by June 30th, 2020? That was a concern of ours. And particularly given the delay in this particular project and the Encompass project, this was a concern. We have gotten broad guidance from the state that many of the program regulations and expectations have been relaxed. And exactly how that 2020 50% expenditure requirement has shifted, we're looking into. As you can imagine, given the nature of the event we're in, a lot of things have gone from black and white to gray. So that is something we are looking at. So we will absolutely, as we understand better what our financing environment looks like and what our opportunities to redeploy are, we will bring that information back to the Board. Okay. Mr. Supervisor McPherson. I just wanna say thank you, I appreciate your update. And the recognition of the uncertainty of all of this under the circumstances that we're experiencing today, but the continued recognition of the long-term value of a Navigation Center can't be overstated in addressing our homeless problem. And I know everyone understands that. And as you said, with this updated HUD funding, the possible flexibility of the timeline, it's things are up in the air. But I just wanna really commend our staff for trying to keep on this, but I wanna make sure we just keep our eye on the ball because the Navigation Center is going to be critical in our long-term plan to address the homeless issue in Santa Cruz County. Okay. It appears there's no more comments, Chair Caput. So there would be, you would take public comments on this item now. Do we have any public comment on item 6.1, which is item 16 on the consent agenda? Here's, there's no public comments on that. Okay. So you're ready for a motion? All right. Do we have another approval? Oh, here comes somebody, here comes somebody. There's about it, excuse me, I'm sorry. There's about a 30-second lag, I'm told. And so it takes a little bit for people to come up. Go ahead. We do have somebody down here. Yes. Go ahead. Thank you, Becky Steinbruner. Supervisor McPherson, thank you very much for pulling this off the consent agenda. It's amazing that it was there. So thank you for doing that. And thank you Ms. Benson for your report. It is concerning to me as well that in this emergency, money just seems to be flying everywhere from here to there. And I also share the concern that the navigation center has seemed to have dropped off. And how will that in the long-term effect, this county's plan to truly address the homeless situation? I have been concerned that so much money is being spent to temporarily house the homeless in expensive hotel rooms. And I think that it would be much better long-term money spent if we were aggressively looking at tiny homes or mobile homes, tough shed, something that can really give our county relief in a long-term picture with this money that was the intention in the first place. So I appreciate that everyone is in crisis mode, but please take a deep breath and really step back and take a look at what in the long-term will be the ramifications of this. We don't know if we're going to get that federal funding to replace this money. We don't know what the state will give us to reimburse for anything. So while it seems an emergency now, next year the problem of the homeless will still be there. And I would like to see that our county has taken thoughtful leadership without the fear of an emergency guiding them and to instead focus these resources on a long-term solution for the homeless. Thank you. Thank you. Homelessness is a part of a systemic problem of capitalism. There's always a permanent rate of unemployment and homeless people. And I don't think, I don't see that what's being proposed is doing in the long-term or structural solutions to remedy the problems. The current COVID crisis impacts by these measures that are constricting people's movement and support system makes matters worse. Closing libraries where homeless people could go and use the restroom facilities or read, people are told to wash their hands all the time, but there aren't facilities to do that. Food Not Bombs head Keith McHenry, I've heard him interviewed on radio talking about how the police and the sheriff are actually interfering with Food Not Bombs getting food to homeless people. He described once on the Flashpoints KPFA radio program how they had to move from the post office to the area behind this county building at time when it was raining and they got flooded out. We're hearing a lot of words. What reality is taking place to actually structurally help people and Food Not Bombs is a great title because over half our taxpayer money is going to the military budget and it should be going to help people and not being squandered that way. Is there any talk of taking money from the military budget to fund housing? And if so, why not? And I've spoken here before about my trip to the former Soviet Union in 1966 and visiting a relative who was in apartment housing paying about 5% of her income for rent. And there weren't homeless people on the streets. I could walk in the evening as a 24 year old woman and not be fearful of being attacked. This is a structural problem. Thank you. Hi there, Monica McGuire again. I am wanting to bring up as well the good points add to those good points made by other members of the public that of course we have a much larger portion of the population now facing homeless possibilities and that we are very likely to see a sharp rise in homelessness and that hasn't been talked about how again as Becky said and so many people have said using funds to create longer term housing would be far at the high, much higher on the list from anything we've heard talked about so far. So please address that so that we do have, I know dozens of ideas have come to you for better homeless rehousing at this point. Thank you. Thank you. Is there any other public comment? Now I'll move approval. Okay. And we have a first and a second. Do we need it? I moved approval. John Leopold seconds. All those in favor say aye. I'll go ahead and do a roll call vote. Okay. Supervisor Leopold. Aye. And Coonerty. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Chair Caput. Aye. Chair Caput. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. We'll go to number seven. So I was, what I'd suggest is that we go take a, we need a 10 minute break. Okay, that'll be. And then we could come back to item nine, which is a 1045 scheduled item. Okay. And then we'll go back to seven after that. Okay. We'll take about a 10 minute break. We'll come back at about a little bit, five or six after 11. Thank you. Just testing to see if you guys can hear me. Okay. Thank you. It's Zach. I'm still on. I can hear you. This isn't, can we do a quick audio test with our, is this one muted still? Is this one muted still? Is this one? Hello. Mike. Mike. I know it's hot, but we're doing an audio test. We have two presenters who are remote. Who will be, is it Scott and Suzanne or Christina? Scott, would you mind saying a few words, unmute yourself and say a few things? Just to test the audio. Scott, are you still muted? Hi, Scott. Can you hear me? We heard Christina already before. So we know we have audio from her. So we just want to confirm that we have audio from Scott. So Scott, you're still muted. He's on teams, right? He's not on a phone. He's on. Scott's not muted? All right. So Scott, we can mute you, but we can't unmute you. You need to unmute yourself. This is Suzanne. Hear me? Yay. We hear you Suzanne. Thank you for confirming. So I just emailed Scott to come that, yes, done, which you please. He knows he's muted. Hey, Scott, we're still, we're still hoping to hear from you. I said. I want to go to the chat window. Yeah. If you're stuck, you can go to the chat window and type in a comment. Scott, another possibility, if you're having a difficult time unmuting as you could leave the meeting and rejoin and make sure when you rejoin, you are not muted. Yes, Scott. One other option is if you want to stay muted, you can actually call in from your phone. In the teams invite, there should be a phone number and a conference code that you can use to call in from your phone. Okay, this is Scott. Hey, Scott, we hear you now. Let me know if you can hear me. We can hear you now, Scott. Can you hear us? Scott, can you hear us now? Scott, we heard you, but can you hear us? Scott, can you hear us? We hear a pen now, making some sound. It sounds like a pen. Can you hear us? This is Scott. We hear you, Scott, can you hear us? Yes. Okay, great. So be aware you're unmuted now and any sound you make, I heard a sound of a pen tapping just a moment ago. Is it easy for you to mute and unmute yourself? Yes, I just used the little controls and it worked. Okay, so maybe go ahead and mute yourself right now until we actually start the item. Great, thanks. All right, so we're gonna bring down the audio here in the board chambers. It should be on. We are ready for item number nine, which is the 1045 scheduled item. Right, make that clear to the public. If you're gonna speak, we're on item nine. We're gonna do nine first and then we're gonna go back to seven, okay? That's correct. So we have staff here to present item number nine. Okay, how are you doing, Matt? Right here, it's actually. This is John Leopold. Shouldn't we read the item to introduce the item? Right, okay, public hearing to consider resolution authorizing the issuance of Santa Cruz County Capital Finance Authority lease revenue bonds, 2020 series A, 2020 series B and amount not to exceed 10 million for 2020 series A and not to exceed 5 million for 2020 series B. Approve the preliminary official statement and take related action as outlined in the memorandum of the county administrative officer. Okay, we'll go ahead and you'll explain the whole bond thing. I think this is a close relationship to number 10 also, right? Okay. Thank you. Good morning, Chair Caput, members of the board. This is Christina Mallory, the County Budget Manager. Can you hear me okay? Okay. I'm here this morning with the county's finance team, Edith Driscoll, the Auditor-Controller Treasurer Tax Collector, Jason Heath of County Council, Elisa Benson, our Assistant County Administrative Officer, Peter Detliff, our Economic Development Coordinator. Suzanne Harrell is on the line. She's from Harrell and Company Advisor. She's our County Financial Advisor. Scott Ferguson is on the line. He's from Jones Hall. He's our outside bond council. And part of the team and not on the call today is Russ Trice and Don Hunt from Norton Rose Fulbright, our Disclosure Council. And Sarah Brown and Eileen Gallagher of Stifle, Nicholas, our underwriter. So we have two related items before you today. We're gonna take item nine first. I'm gonna give you a brief summary. And then Suzanne Harrell will give you a market update and then we'll answer any of your questions and then we'll open up the public hearing. So first, earlier this year, the county identified the need for additional funding for critical capital projects. And since the rates were at all-time lows, we began the process of a possible capital financing. We identified about 19.6 million on the March 10th agenda item. And then of course COVID hit on March 16th and we were authorized to present additional financing documents on March 24th, which we continue to today. The Board approved a request was delayed due to the pandemic effect on the county operations and the bond market. We're now ready to recommend a revised financing plan for your Board's consideration. We've reduced it by about half due to financial constraints. The lease revenue bonds are recommended for two purposes. One, we are financing about $10 million as match funding for some of our critical capital projects that we believe still need to move forward. We are also refinancing about $5 million of the 2011 certificates of participation, which will generate about 30,000 in savings. So on the next slide, you'll see here a summary of our critical capital projects. It's about approximately 31 million. We have funding available from various grants and under other funding sources in about 10 and a half million, and we still need about 10.8 million to move some of these projects along if we decide that they're in our best interests, which left us with about $10 million that we're recommending to finance at this time. These projects include our upgrading our generators to be more prepared for the public safety power shutdowns, replacing some matching funds from the 2015 certs, which was previously approved for our juvenile hall projects, the gym project and the seat to table project. These projects had been delayed and did not move forward as quickly as we would have liked after the financing in 2015. And normally bond funds should be spent within five years. So we recommended earlier this year to reallocate some of those funds to some of our emergency repair projects which your board took action on. And we have major repairs that we're undergoing at Roundtree and some of our County facilities. So we need to replace some of those grant funds that we have already obligated for those juvenile hall projects. The County has millions of dollars still in deferred maintenance on our aging County facilities. And the County needs to have funding in order to make necessary health and safety repairs that can no longer wait. The Bain Jail Control and Surveillance System is over 20 years old and has failed recently and needs to be replaced. This year the County has had several culverts failed that need replacement like Capitola Road. And so it's important to invest some funds in our aging infrastructure. For lack of other funding, these infrastructure emergencies have become the responsibility of the general fund. Public Works has not been able to identify and secure enough funding for these culverts and other failing infrastructure. The majority of funding available has been prioritized for road repairs and match for our storm damaged roads. These priorities may need to be reconsidered since the general fund does not have the capacity to finance and or fund the County's failing infrastructure due to financial constraints. So projects will be financed over their useful life 20 or 30 years. The debt service on the existing 2016 bonds decreases by about 600,000 in fiscal year 21-22. And the new debt service since we're capitalizing the first year's costs will occur during that 21-22 and will be offset by that savings. So there's no new net County cost for the $10 million. The refinancing, as I mentioned earlier for 2011 will produce about $30,000 of annual savings. And also we are happy and pleased even during this climate, we met with standard and pours for a rating for these bonds and we were able to receive the same rating we were not downgraded. We're maintaining the rating of AA plus for our lease revenue debt and we received a stable outlook. This has a lot to do with the amount that we have in our reserves. So now I'd like to turn it over to Suzanne Harrell, our County Financial Advisor, and she's gonna provide a summary of the bond market conditions and answer any technical questions about the capital financing. So good morning to the chair and members of the board. A quick update on bond market conditions, you'll remember in about mid-March, the market crash had a significant impact on investing and investors. Investors wanted to protect their cash position by kind of not hoarding their cash, but holding onto their cash. And so most of the municipal bond trading in the country actually was halted for over two weeks. More recently though, over the last two weeks, bond trading has returned a little bit to more normal activity, more and more issues are being sold. The interest rate environment for bonds and the market conditions are still a little bit fragile. So we're hoping that giving another few weeks before these bonds are actually sold and go to market, we'll give the bond market a little bit of time to continue improving and be a little bit more stable. Under the current conditions, the estimated interest rate for the critical capital projects component is about 3.4%. That's the average over the 30 year life of that bond issue. As was mentioned, the savings from the refunding of the 2011 certs is about 9.7% reduction in the annual payments and that's $30,000 a year. And that itself will fund about for a little over 400,000 of your 10 million in critical capital projects. So at this time, we'd like to see if you have any questions before we proceed with the public hearing. So this is the time for questions from the board on this item. Okay. I don't have any questions. I wanna thank everybody for this effort to save taxpayer dollars and find resources for really critical projects. It's a smart financial strategy for the county right now. I agree. Any comments from Supervisor Leopold, McPherson, or friend? Okay. I'll bring it up for a vote. Public hearing. We'll open the public hearing. So we'd like to... I'd like to go to the public hearing if there's no further questions. So Chair Caputin, you could open the public hearing. Right. We'll open it up to the public now. Does anybody wanna speak on item number nine? I don't hear any. I don't see anyone. We'll... So you can close the public hearing. I wanna cut anybody off. Okay. I'll bring it up for a vote. Move approval. We have a motion. Second. We have a second. Who was the second? McPherson, was that you for a second? All those in favor. I pick y'all. And I'll do a roll call vote. Supervisor Leopold? Aye. Friend? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. McPherson? Aye. Chair Caput? Aye. Passes unanimously. We'll do 10 right now. Yes. Item number 10 is the Board of Directors of Santa Cruz County Capital Financing Authority, public hearing to consider a resolution, authorizing the issuance of Santa Cruz County Capital Financing Authority lease revenue bonds, 2020 Series A and 2020 Series B, in the amount not to exceed 10 million for the 2020 Series A and 5 million for the 2020 Series B. Approve the preliminary official statement and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the County Administrative Office. So we're talking about a total of 15 million. Okay. Yes, this is the same item as item nine. You're just taking action as the Capital Financing Authority. And I would request, we're happy to answer any questions, but I would request the Board adopt the resolution and take the actions outlined. So you just need to open the public hearing at this point if the Board does not have any comments or questions. Right. Okay. If we have no comments from the Board, then we'll go to opening it up to the public. I don't see anybody in the room here. Do we have anybody downstairs? Christine, is there anyone downstairs who would like to comment on this item? There is nobody in the community room. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Do we have a motion? The approval. We have a motion. We have a second. John Leopold seconds. Okay. We have Coonerty with the motion and then the second by Leopold. All those in favor say aye. I mean, I'm so right. Oh, it's okay. I'll do the roll call vote on item number 10. Supervisor Leopold? Aye. Friend? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. McPherson? Aye. Chair Caput? Aye. And we'll now go to item number seven. And that is, I know it has to deal with the cell tower. Public hearing to consider proposed 2020-21, benefit assessment rates for area number 51 Hopkins Gulch requests the middle of all balance and continue public hearing to May 19th, 2020 to allow for tabulation and certification of balances outlined in the memorandum of the CAO and director of public works. Yeah, I got that a little confused with the next item. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning. Yeah, I'm number seven. Yes. Good morning, Chairman. I snuck in on you, didn't I? No, I'm saying hello to a lot of people and we all look like we're in the old West. Yes, that's true. That's true. So good morning, Chairman and Board of Supervisors. My name is Matt Machado. I'm one of the Deputy CAOs and Director of Public Works. The item before you is a public hearing for benefit assessment rate increase, CSA 51. Just a little background, Public Works received notification from CSA 51 that they wish to increase their benefit assessment rate for fiscal year 2021. The proposed levy increase was established by the CSA representatives after holding a community meeting and ranges between $192 to $5,807 per parcel. And FY 2526, the fee will revert to the 1920 rate plus any annual CPI increases approved by the Hopkins Gulch Road representatives during the five-year special assessment levy. The increase is necessary to fund the CSA residents local share of the storm damage repairs and for road maintenance and operation services within the CSA. In order to complete the proposed benefit assessments, it is necessary for the Board to open the public hearing, take testimonies and consider any objections or protests to the proposed benefit assessments. I believe you've read the recommended actions. I can answer any questions you may have. And I do ask that you open the public hearing after any questions or comments by the Board. Do we have comments from the questions from the Board members? Chair Caput. Yes. This is Supervisor McPherson. I want to thank the Public Works Department and the CSA number 51 neighbors for identifying what's needed in this election. I really appreciate the progress because apparently maintaining these roads, especially like Hopkins Gulch and all our rural roads is critical to ensuring access. And we know how critical that could be in something like a fire or something of that nature. So this is really critical. And I'm glad that we are coming to see this election come about. Thank you for your comment. If I don't hear any others, I'll open up to the public for discussion. Anybody in the public on item number seven, no one downstairs? There's nobody downstairs. Okay. All those in favor will call roll call. We have a motion. I'll move. I'll make the motion. Second. Okay. We have a first, we have a second. I'll do the roll call vote. Supervisor Leopold. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Chair Caput. Aye. Thank you. That's as you know it, that takes us to item number eight. And that's a public hearing to consider whether to take jurisdiction of appeal of the planning commission denial of application 171365, a proposal for a wireless communication facility on property located at 1931 Soquel San Jose Road, San Jose Road Assessors Parcel number 102-081-95 and take related action as outlined in the memorandum of the planning director. Okay. Good morning. I'm Sheila McDaniel. I'm with the planning department representing the item this morning. The purpose of this meeting is for your board to consider whether to take jurisdiction of the appeal of the planning commission's February 26, 2020 denial of the proposed wireless communication facility application 171365. Your board must determine whether to accept jurisdiction, allow the planning commission denial, determination to stand or remand the application back to the planning commission without taking jurisdiction. To summarize the administrative record, the zoning administrator approved application on November 1st, 2019 for a Verizon wireless communication facility. Facilities proposed at the Seventh Day Adventist property located at 1931 Soquel San Jose Road. The project includes a proposed 44 foot tall wireless communication facility camouflaged as a pine tree. On February 26th, I'm sorry, the zoning administrator approved the project and then on February 26th, the planning commission considered an appeal by a group of neighbors located to the west of the property represented by Leslie Baxter, a buddy law group. Following public testimony, the planning commission denied the project with a three to vote based on four factors, non-compliance or non-conformance with the county code with respect to facility height, a lack of a variance approval for additional height beyond the district allowance, three insufficient alternatives analysis and then aesthetic incompatibility with the surrounding neighborhood. On March 9th, the planning commission action to deny the project was appealed to the Board of Supervisors by Paul Albrighton on behalf of Verizon Wireless. Your board packet contains the appeal letter from Verizon and the administrative record. So pursuant to county code section 1810340C, your board must evaluate the information provided by the appellant and be convinced that there was an error or abuse of discretion on the part of the planning commission's zoning administrator or other officer or that or and or there was a lack of a fair and partial hearing and or that the planning commission decision to deny the project is not supported by the facts presented and consider at the time of the decision or that there's significant new evidence relevant to the decision that could have been presented at the time and or there's an error or abuse of discretion or some other factor that renders the act done or determination made unjustified or inappropriate to the extent that further hearing by the board is necessary. Based on the review of the appellant's letter, staff is in agreement that there is an adequate cause to accept jurisdiction of the appeal for the following reasons that the planning commission considered the height exception regulations in the planning department wireless height interpretation in their motion to deny the project which was not part of the zoning administrator's appeal which did not allow the applicant an opportunity to respond to the height regulations applied to the project and did not allow the applicant adequate due process or fair and impartial hearing. Secondly, the planning commission denying the project for a lack of a height variance the planning commission misinterpreted the height exception provisions of County Code section 1310 510 D2 the general height exceptions and 1310 663 B6 the wireless height facility height requirements and acted in consistently with regard to the planning director's administrative practice guideline for wireless height which has been used as the basis to evaluate height for the last 16 years. And then three, the planning commission denied the project for generalized aesthetic impacts without providing substantial and specific evidence pursuant to the wireless design standards regulating wireless aesthetics under 1310 663 which would prohibit the wireless service in conflict with the Federal Communications Act. These design standards lay out specific design criteria for an aesthetic determination. And then lastly, the planning commission denied the project with generalized comments that the alternative analysis was insufficient rather than providing substantial and specific evidence supporting the determination that the alternatives analysis is insufficient which would prohibit wireless service in conflict with the Federal Telecommunications Act. And I did want to make a point that the planning commissioners although it did not include in their motion the implied alternative sites suggested in the motion although not included were not either not viable or technically feasible in a staff's position that the planning commission would have to identify an alternative site that wasn't identified that wasn't evaluated. So in conclusion, the jurisdictional hearing process places the burden of proof on the appellants to convince the board that jurisdiction should be taken with respect to more and more of the jurisdictional criteria identified. Based on the appellants letter and administrative record staff believes there's adequate cause to support the board to take. Jurisdictions schedule a de novo meeting and thus it's recommended that your board take the following actions conduct a jurisdictional hearing to consider application 171365 regarding proposed wireless communication facility. Take jurisdiction regarding the appeal of the application 171365 schedule a de novo public hearing for June 16th, 2020 and direct the clerk of the board to provide written and published noticed as required by County Code section 1810340E1 once and at least 10 days in advance of the public hearing. And with that, that concludes my presentation unless you have any questions before you open the public hearing. This is John Leopold, I do have a question or two. Yes, sir. I'm wondering Ms. McDaniels, if you could just let me know and my conversation with my planning commissioner, he talked about that this issue about height standards on properties for a cell facilities has brought up has been brought up numerous times at the planning commission and there was a request that it be cleared up not through administrative practice guidelines but through changing our code. Did we act on that or did the planning department act on that anyway? Did you submit anything to them? Did you ask us to do anything? Okay, well, so that came up a period of years ago on another wireless appeal where the combining commission had a question regarding the policy interpretation in terms of alignment with regard to how height is calculated to ensure that it's based on the height allowed by the district, which is the habitable height of the structures in the district. So that was updated in the policy interpretation. That wasn't to commissioner Guth satisfaction. He did later direct the planning department to update the regulations. And as you're well aware, the board is responsible for directing the planning department's work program to update the county code to do such. So if your board felt appropriate, you could provide direction to the planning department to update the code to clarify this at a future date. But as to your point, no, this has not been modified, the code has not been modified to resolve his concerns. And on the question of alternative sites, was the extent of these other site locations just a letter being sent out to the other perspective landowners? Do we have any other evidence of any other follow up? So at the public hearing, at the planning commission, the applicant provided the letters and notification return receipt notification to all properties that were considered for the facility. I believe it's 15 or 16 sites. Not sure if that's fully answers your question, but. So beyond just the notification that they were actually sent, there was no other communication with those property owners. Well, they did make multiple attempts in the two years this application has been ongoing. And more recently, as a result of the zoning administrator approval and appeal, they then re-sent notifications out and updated the alternative analysis to provide a more up-to-date determination regarding whether the sites were viable. So there were a number of sites that landlords had previously shown interest potentially and then confirmed no interest. And that would have been two of the, one of the sites that was taken up by one of the commissioners where the property owner definitively did not have interest in that was a technically feasible site. Okay. Thank you very much. Those are my questions. We have any others? I'll make a comment. I think when we get to the aesthetic part of it, we're also talking about 900 square feet at the base of the 44 foot tower. And it has an additional number of smaller towers out there at the bottom. Not sure what you're asking. Okay. At the base of the 44 foot tower, it also calls for 900 square feet of that area around the tower. That is correct. There's a 900 square foot lease area proposed for the facility, which would include the tower and equipment cabinets. That includes the tower and what? The tower and the equipment cabinets. Right. Okay. Well, I guess what bothered me a little bit too is they hired lawyers, of course we have, and they wrote a letter and they're actually pointing out the name of one of the planning commissioners. And there were three that voted no. They're picking on one here. And they're questioning his motive for voting no because if he said something about the height. And what I'm saying is that's assuming he had no other reason to vote no other than the height. He may have had other ideas. I look at this as we have a planning commission. They're made up of volunteers. And I don't like the fact that individuals are pointed out and that they're voting yes or no is questioned by a big conglomerate like Verizon that seems to try to intimidate people in whether they should vote yes or no. So it does bother me. Okay. And other than that, so now you would open the public hearing. Yeah, we'll open it up. And Chair Caput, Sheriff Hart would like to comment under public comments. So if you could call on him. Okay, usually the appellant is first for 10 minutes. I'm sorry. So this is the appellant. Pretty much for being here under these circumstances and listening to our appeal on a personal note, I've conversed with Commissioner Gooth on many occasions over the last 15 years as our wireless applications has come up. He's an intelligent and brilliant lawyer in the same practice area as my father. And so we don't mean any ill or disgraceful comment towards him. We do have a disagreement regarding the height, but I have always appreciated the professionalism of Commissioner Gooth when he was the chair of the Planning Commission and subsequently. But in this particular case, I think that everybody was surprised. The staff, the appellant, us, the applicants, when there was this proposal to look beyond the 16 year old policy regarding the height of wireless facilities and come up with a completely new interpretation from behind the dais and say that no longer was a 78 foot pole allowed, but a 28 foot pole was allowed. And this came up after the close of public comment. It came up after the zoning administrator had already approved our facility and was during an appeal on completely different issues. And I think that that, unfortunately, and I respect his thoughtfulness and he's correct. The code can be interpreted in different ways. And that's why an interpretation was released by the staff and updated in 2018. But that is an error of law and it's an abusive discretion to announce a new law and policy at the last minute and to deny our facility based on that. It meant that we didn't have a fair hearing. We weren't able to even speak to his interpretation. And it meant that we lacked due process. We were being denied for a reason that had never come up throughout our entire application process, never raised that we could possibly require a variance. And the staff still disagrees that a variance could be required. I've been a planning commissioner. I've been a mayor and a council member. And I understand that there are situations when policies can be a problem and they do need to be clarified in the ordinance. But the policy that stands today is the one that should be applied and has been applied to other wireless facilities throughout the county for the last 16 years. So for that reason, we think it is an abusive discretion, a error of law, a lack of fair hearing. And we want you to look at all of these substantive questions about alternatives, about aesthetics and all of those things at a full hearing next June as proposed by staff. And we support the staff's recommendation. In addition, it was added to the motion at the last minute that there were generalized aesthetic objections. Generalized aesthetic objections under federal case law do not stand up to deny a wireless facility. In fact, we had met the design criteria. We're over 300 feet from the nearest property line. We're almost half the allowed height at 44 feet. The pole's actually 39 feet with a five foot conical tree top on top of it. We're 1,000 feet from the closest to pellet, 1,000 feet. This is an 88 acre parcel. And so it's the equivalent. There are 40 foot utility poles on the property. And this is equivalent of a telephone pole, three football fields away. There is a base, 30 by 30, 900 square feet, wood fence. The zoning administrator required landscaping in front of the wood fence. The equipment cabinets are about, I think these ones are maybe eight feet tall behind the wooden fence, but again, 1,000 feet from the closest to pellet. And the zoning administrator recommended moving the facility a few feet to the north in order to put it behind some more trees. And we're perfectly happy with that. But there's no hard evidence to show any aesthetic impact from this facility, which again, is three football fields away from the nearest to pellet. In addition, with respect to the alternatives analysis, when an appeal comes to our office, we insist that they really scrub. So they went back out of the 15 alternatives, they resenced after the zoning administrator approval and appeal, resent certified mail letters to all of the proposed locations where this might go. They phone called, they emailed, we got an email back from one of the two locations where the commission was suggesting we might go, there's an email in our analysis where the owner of that property says they will not sign the lease with Verizon Wireless. So we went out of our way really to make sure that this was the least intrusive location. And once we've done that, and there's no evidence to suggest, the burden would actually shift to the county to identify another feasible alternative that would work for us and that was available. This leads me to the federal law and simply that where we've shown a significant gap. And in this case, we were very proud that the sheriff's department came and supported the facility and indicated that there was a gap in service in this area. Your own county technology officers came and said there's a gap in service in this area. And this will provide improved service for a five square mile area in the Soquel Creek Valley as well as the Soquel San Jose Road and the Rodeo Gulch area. There's definitely a gap. We've shown this as the least intrusive alternative. And once we've shown those two things, denial of the facility would be a prohibition of service under federal law unless the county is able to show us another alternative location to provide service. I was impressed to hear that the seventh day Adventist location may be used for trailers, for those in need in the county, but right now there's no cell service there. And we think it's important to provide service to that particular area, not only for the seventh day Adventist, for all the residents who came and spoke in support of the site. So we would ask you to support the county staff recommendation, take jurisdiction, let us come in and show you our coverage maps and our alternatives analysis and all the substantive information that you need to make an intelligent decision on this application in June. And I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. A question I have, we could, as an alternative, we could send it back to the planning commission to review it again and then bring it back to us. Is that correct? That's correct. Yes, that's correct. Okay. This is just to clarify with County Council is opposing council get it 10 minutes now? Okay. Yes. Okay. Now it's a, this is public. Now this is opposing council. Still a report. This is opposing council. Go ahead. Okay. I don't recognize you. I'm sorry. I can't imagine why. I know. I'm Leslie Baxter from the Buddy Law Group. I represent the neighbors in the area around the proposed site, in particular Avi Benaroya, the Hott family and Brianna and Susie are here today and Lois and Dan Dickman, as well as in spirit, the other neighbors in this area. I spoke with the clerk today. I did submit a letter dated April 20th. In opposition to the jurisdictional question and I have assurance that that will be a part of the record. The planning commission got this one right. The United States Supreme Court has said that localities like Santa Cruz County must provide reasons when they deny cell tower citing applications. They say we stress, however, that these reasons need not be elaborate or even sophisticated, but rather simply clear enough to enable judicial review. That's T-Mobile South, 2015 case, 35 Supreme Court 808. And the planning commission here was clear. They, in the minutes of the meeting, the grounds for denial included and quote insufficient alternative analysis and quote aesthetic incompatibility with the surrounding neighborhood, close quote. So the planning commission denial was based on county code. County code required Verizon to show a diligent search for alternative sites. County code requires Verizon to show that its project will harmonize and compliment the existing neighborhood. It's Verizon's burden to prove that these criteria are met. The minutes from the hearing are clear that the planning commission decided to deny the application based on these two requirements. And this follows the Supreme Court's rule, which requires clarity, but not necessarily elaboration about the basis for denial. The detail, the elaboration behind the planning commission decision is found in the public record. The written record is full of evidence that the proposed project is incompatible with this lovely rural neighborhood. Susie and Brianna Hart wrote letters describing how their beautiful view will be destroyed, their peace, quiet, and the aesthetics of the neighborhood degraded. And you can find that in the staff report from November 14th, 2019 on page 82 and 83. Ben Strock, a realtor, states that the hot ocean views from at least six rooms in their house and from the deck and patio will be dominated and marred by the tower, resulting in a 10 to 20% drop in market value. You don't get more specific than that. That's on page 76 of the staff report from November. At least six other letters from local realtors are part of the record, stating property values will be diminished in this neighborhood by up to 30%, and that it will be hard to market these properties if the cell tower is dominating the landscape. You can find those letters at pages 75, 77, 78, 79, 366 and 375 of the record. Again, specific basis for the denial of this application. These are real concerns that affect real people. The Planning Commission also has letters from the Magranet family whose front yard consists of a beautiful unspoiled rural meadow with wildlife wandering through it. You can find their letters at page 85 and 367 of the staff report. The views of the tower from the Magranet property are included in the staff report at pages 371 to 374. Again, there's no way for them to evade the domination of such a large structure in their lives if this were to be approved. The Planning Commission in digesting this information from the neighbors who would be affected read how the serenity of their home life would be disrupted by the incongruous tower and the noise and the disruption. The disruption would occur when it's constructed, repaired, when more cells are added. Other residents of this neighborhood also wrote to oppose this application, citing similar concerns. And this is all part of the public record upon which the Planning Commission based its denial. This is specific information, not general information that shows that the aesthetics of this proposal are incongruous with the proposed area. The Planning Commission also denied this application based on Verizon's lackluster search for alternative sites. The Planning Commission had our January 21st, 2020 letter outlining the many deficiencies in Verizon's analysis. Our letter can be found at pages 400 and 401 of the staff report from November. The truth is that Verizon provided the county with no factual records of its attempt to contact property owners, what it said or how diligently it sought to procure leases or negotiate lease terms. Verizon provides no evidence that it offered, quote, reasonable terms commensurate with the market in Santa Cruz County, close quote, as required by code section 1310, 660 D. Take a look at the blank letter of intent addressed to a property on Glenhaven Road. Verizon submitted it to the county as evidence of diligence. But if you look at it, all it has is the property address at the top. There are no deal terms listed and there's no indication that the property owner ever received it, which makes our point. This is utter lack of diligence on the part of Verizon. And yet they submit this as a reason why they've met their burden and an appeal and jurisdiction should be granted. There's no real evidence that Verizon engaged in a vigorous search for alternative sites and nothing to show how hard it tried with the mere handful of property owners that it identified. It hasn't, Verizon hasn't given any reason why it hasn't gone up more vigorously into the timber property zone, where a tower like this would be much more appropriate than the RA zone in which it's trying to place the tower. Verizon had a full opportunity at the Public Planning Commission hearing to explain its process for searching for these sites, but it didn't. So when the public hearing closed, it was no surprise that the Planning Commission denied the application, based on the lack of diligence in the searching for alternative sites and on the aesthetic grounds, both of which are based in county code. So the Planning Commission denial of this application is based on substantial evidence and the Board of Supervisors should decline to take jurisdiction. Thank you. Chair Caput, I know now you're gonna open up the public hearing on this item. You're welcome. And Sheriff Hart would like to comment first under public comment. Public comment right now. Yes, so Sheriff Hart will comment under public comment. So if we could call on him now and then we'll take the rest of the public comment. We'll call for a public comment. So here's Sheriff Hart for public comment. Good morning, Board. Go ahead, Marilyn, it's your time. This is Sheriff Hart. He's gonna do public comment. Oh, Sheriff Hart, okay, good. Okay. Hey, how are you doing? Okay. Good morning. Jim Hart, Sheriff Warner. And I hear a lot of feedback in it. Yeah, we do too. I would like to encourage the Board to take jurisdiction of appeal of the Planning Commission's denial for this project. The practical use of this tower is very important for public safety. The Soquel San Jose Road corridor has historically been a dead spot for first responder communications. When Sheriff's deputies, FIRE and EMS respond to this area, they often do so without any or at the very best, very limited communications. Sheriff's deputies respond to rapidly evolving incidents where information updates are critical to get our deputy sheriffs where they are needed. This project will vastly improve our cellular and radio capabilities, allowing us to respond much more quickly and safely to emergencies in the Soquel San Jose Road area. I can speak for all first responder agencies when I ask you to please take jurisdiction. Thank you. Thank you to the public. Do we have anybody? Come on down. Okay. My name is Breonna Hout and my family lives at 181 Los Robles Road. Our property borders the north side of the Seventh-day Adventist campgrounds. The proposed cell tower will be 1,000 feet from our house. I'm here today to urge the Board of Supervisors to not take jurisdiction over the proposed cell tower after it has already been denied by the Planning Commission. There is no basis for the Board to take jurisdiction at this time. There were no errors, omissions, or negligence on the part of the Planning Commission. In fact, the hearing lasted almost five hours. This application has been plagued with errors from the very start. The burden of proof lies with Verizon to prove that the location of this cell tower would protect adjoining property owners and residential communities from potential adverse impacts associated with indiscriminate placement of cell towers. This includes decreased property values and detrimental negative buyer appeal due to aesthetic and nuisance problems defined in California Civil Code 3479. We had letters from many seasoned real estate brokers and agents directly stating that this tower would not only reduce our property values by up to 30%, but also would force us to disclose this tower as a public nuisance if we were to sell. They stated before that the aesthetics were fine. I invite each of you to visit our house and look from every single window that we have onto a bare hilltop except for the cell tower. And I guarantee you, it is all you would see if you looked outside. Verizon is a bully and is trying to use the telecommunications act as a threat for a potential lawsuit. The Planning Commission was correct when they decided that Verizon did not show due diligence in determining whether other sites exist and would be suitable. There are other sites, but Verizon chose to not pursue them because this property was the cheapest and fastest option available. Verizon also did not analyze the possibility of small cell facilities going up the old San Jose Row corridor. Verizon says that a denial of this tower would violate the telecommunications act. This is not true. Verizon has not met their obligations to prove that the proposed cell tower is the least obtrusive and they have definitely not proven that the project is compatible with the neighborhood. I am begging you to not take jurisdiction over the Verizon appeal and let the sound decision of the Planning Commission stand as final. Thank you. Thank you. Before you start the clock, I have two points of order. My name is Becky Steinbruner. There were two appeals that were filed before the Planning Commission and I am one of those two. So I respectfully request that I get 10 minutes. My second point of order is that there are two supervisors that serve on this board that should recuse themselves. Supervisor Coonerty has stock in a company that relies upon reliable cell phone communication, Predpole. He will profit by this. Also, Supervisor Zach Friend will profit from this because he owns stock in a company called Yard Arm and serves as a director on that. That company relies on cell phone technology for law enforcement. He also owns stock in Predpole. So before this hearing goes any further, I want County Council to issue an opinion as to whether Supervisor Coonerty and Supervisor Friend are qualified to serve on this jurisdictional board. They should recuse themselves because they stand to profit by Verizon's increased service. This is part of your public comment. You may continue. This is all part of your public comment. You may continue with your public comment. All right, I get 10 minutes then. You have not clarified that. In your three minutes, your clock has started. You may continue. I am an appellant. I am inquietal to equal time of 10 minutes. I am an appellant. You have three minutes and you may continue with your public comment. The clock is running. All right, thank you so much. You're welcome. I want to point out that the proof of service that Verizon sent was false. The certified letter receipts have no postmark. They have no amount. I sent certified mail. They look like this. There is a postmark. The certified mail receipts that Verizon submitted have nothing except the address of the person that they supposedly sent it to. It's false information. The 29 letters that they sent of people supporting it were false. They were all dated February 2019. This application did not come before the zoning administrator until November of 2019. They submitted false proof of community support. Those letters were all from the people on the summit who will not have to look at this. They will not be affected by decreased property values. They submitted false information to show community support for this project by people that don't even live there and it wasn't even for that project. They were all for the Wilson tire project in SoCal Village. The Planning Commission did an excellent job. They denied this application for many reasons. One of the first was by Chairman Schaefer Freitas who said, this is just too confusing. Forgive me, but it has been sloppy work all along. And that is brought in here by Miss Baxter's letters not even part of the record. She submitted it April 20th. She's the counsel for the people. They didn't include her letter. Mine was not included in the website last night and I wrote you about it last night. She provides a carpet and also Miss Galloway. This is sloppy and it has been all along. There are two different dates for recommendation of hearing before you're bored. It's just sloppy work and that's why Commissioner Freitas said no. She couldn't rubber stamp this one. It's too confusing. It's too sloppy and even that morning the planner was trying to correct things. Director Lazenby's, Commissioner Lazenby did an excellent job. The analysis of the appeal said in general a passing comment about alternatives analysis. That is not true. Commissioner Lazenby did an excellent job pointing out the Webster property was dismissed because of lack of access. It's not lack of access. They have the easement and they showed Verizon that deed but Verizon didn't like it because they would have had to spend more money making an access road. The Webster property is in a timber preserve. It would have been a better place because this stupid 44 foot tower disguised to look at a pine tree in the middle of an open clearing visible from the properties all around and from San Jose road clearly a scenic corridor is like a sore thumb. It shouldn't be there. If it's gonna be anywhere it should be among a forested area in a timber preserve. Well, they backed out of any agreement with the Websters because it would have cost them money. They also backed out of the equestrian center because they claimed the equestrian center had too many code violations. They didn't go into those code violations. They didn't try to even verify that those code violations would have preempted their commercial development permit approval. They just didn't want it. They want this one because it's easiest. It's cheapest. That's no substantial evidence to prove that there is no alternative. This is a restricted use area. The burden is on them and they have shirked it. They have submitted false information. And as Commissioner Lazenby said they have made no aggressive effort to try to find a reasonable alternative. One of those being the small cells along Soquel Drive Soquel San Jose Road. That would surgically address any of the communication gaps that Sheriff Hart claims, but for which the IT department cannot provide me with the information. I submitted a public records act in a request and they gave me something that was so old the information had expired on the cloud. So instead Mr. Boling said he realized on anecdotal evidence by the law enforcement. That's not proof. That's not defining a need. That's not defining a gap in service that this tower can they can prove would address. Why not surgically address the communication problems along Old San Jose Road? Which is the objective that they stated over and over in their own documents. Do that with a small cells along the road in the precise areas where there are problems. The height issue was excellent and I commend Commissioner Gooth for his thorough analysis. It wasn't that it hadn't been brought up in appeal. I brought it up in mine. Please do not take jurisdiction. Your planning commission did a good job and you need to let their decision stand and deny this application. Thank you. Monica McGuire as another person who was present at the planning commission when we saw that they did an excellent job in every possible way and that there is no reason for this board to take jurisdiction when we have a perfectly good planning commission who did their job as expected. They also commented which hasn't been said yet that this was an incredibly sloppy application in several regards besides just items being turned in that were blank. There were so many places that they didn't do their due diligence Verizon didn't in order to substantiate the reasons all as brought up. I also strongly want to say it is so wrong to charge people these exorbitant amounts extortion-like amounts to be appealing anything and then not give them time to speak. Becky Steinbrunner has proven herself over and over as a brilliant researcher, a brilliant thinker who comes up with great ideas and yet you limit her time to speak over and over. This not only doesn't make sense but is terrifying to those of us paying attention which too many people know is too few. When you ask the general public what they know and if they've ever attended a meeting 99% say no, I probably should, I know I should. They have no idea how many ways the public is being not just muzzled but absolutely disempowered from doing anything that we should be able to do even if we pay thousands of dollars in fees and take time out of our schedules to come and care. This makes no sense and we have tremendous reasons to ask that you care especially in this time that any moving forward with something that too many of the people in the public are wishing you would look at with a mindset for public good and absolute care is the fact that it's being disregarded and that we heard that there was a pre-pull that you all had decided. You were going to make sure you gave the appeal away. It's like all the other unanimous decisions that we see out of you. Why do you decide ahead of time what you're going to do? Why do you not even bother to listen to the appellants? Why do you not bother to listen to the lawyers who come? It is wrong that you continue to do things against the public good without the public even being honored. I also attended the planning commission meeting as I have also attended meetings over a 20-year period of cell tower applications. Welcome to the United States of Verizon. Welcome to the United States of corporate dictatorship. The planning commission did a good job. They did what they were supposed to. I have some comments here. I've seen some contracts of Verizon contract language that isn't often understood by property owners. There's a phrase in there that says unilateral modification of this contract shall be on the part of Verizon, not the property owner. So you sign an agreement or specifications are approved here and Verizon by that language can change it however they want. More antennas, taller, whatever they want. And these are emitting microwave radiation that are quite deadly and there are 17 surveys around cell towers in different countries and they all show adverse health effects such as increased cancer incidents, people experiencing diabetes, insomnia, heart irregularities, memory loss, depression, and the list goes on and on. Look at Dr. Martin Paul's presentation very in the last few days on the 5G health, 5G crisis summit on Josh Del Sol's website of take back your power.net and you'll see the biological effects. The claims of safety of these exposures are have no scientific merit whatsoever. And you can listen to him for that as you've received information over the years. I've heard the terms misinformation, lack of disclosure, and concealment fraud. I think all these terms, so I'm not a lawyer, apply to Verizon. Yes, bullying. In fact, my sister lives in Nevada City and I was watching a Verizon hearing there where the property owner who signed with Verizon didn't realize that the neighbors were opposed to it and the implications he wanted to get out. He couldn't come to the hearing as property owner does speak because Verizon said we'll sue you for everything you got. Thank you. Thank you, Marilyn. And, okay. Very, very disturbing. Thank you. My name is Susie Howe. I don't even think I could get through this. Our property borders seventh day at Venice. We've owned it for 44 years. There's so much wrong with this. First, the height. We get a postcard 44 feet, but in the contract on page whatever 157, it's a 74 feet. Then when they get it, then they're allowed to add another 20, so that's 94 feet. I don't know, you know, that's all I know. The other thing is, the other thing is the view, the aesthetics. Verizon said, you know, there's trees and a fence. He's talking about old San Jose road where people are going by 60 miles an hour. They don't care about the view. From the side where it's going to be, every house on our block, except for one that I didn't reach him, every single house, full shot of this beautiful ridge line with this tower, every single house. Ours especially because the whole back of the house, the deck, the living room, the dining room, the breakfast room, both bedrooms, you know, this isn't what we've been working for, for the past 44 years. I think the commissioners did a great job. They, I just think they did a good job and I don't think you should take jurisdiction over this. So that's it. You're welcome. Thank you. Chairman Caput, we do have some web comments. Okay. And Christine will read those into the record. Hello. First comment is from Martin Burr. The comment starts. I'm a resident in the area of this proposed project at on Cold Brook Lane, Soquel. My resident is 2,600 feet from the proposed project site. I'm strongly in favor of this project because it will address the pressing public safety issue of cell phone and wireless data coverage along Olsen-Azay, Soquel Road. The increase in traffic and the risk of accidents along this road has continued to grow and the inability of public safety personally to get self coverage here are for people who have need of this service continues to be an issue. This particular acute, this particularly acute at the mountain school where my children attend. During power outages this spring, there was no phone service at the school requiring teachers to drive down to Soquel to call parents. Denying this permit seems to run a violet to run in violet state and federal regulations governing such projects and is grounded on no scientifically validated evidence. The proposed site is well off old Soquel San Jose Road and is barely visible from the road. It also conforms to the relevant setback and regulations from other private property. The alternative sites and sites considered by Verizon would not provide sufficient coverage given the topology of the area nor would they satisfy access and setback guidelines. While there is a vocal component of the community who opposes this project, their objects have no valid regulatory or scientific foundation. Therefore, I would ask that you take a purely objective view of this project taking into consideration the considerable portion of the community who favor it end of comment. And that's the only web comment we received. So that's our last comment. If we can just close the public hearing at this point. And then you can, the board can ask questions or we'll ask the board if they have any questions. And I think we have three alternatives. One, we can take jurisdiction. Two, we can vote not to take jurisdiction and would three be send it back to the board, the planning commission? The third option you just mentioned would involve your board not taking jurisdiction over it, but sending it back to the planning commission with specific directions on what you would want the planning commission to do. That is a third alternative, not what staff's recommending. We have any other comments? If not, I'll make a quick comment, I don't want to anybody else. I'll wait for a little bit to hear from other commission, other board members. Okay, I don't hear anybody. I'll make a comment. I think what bothered me, one is questioning one specific commissioner who part of the public record is Michael Guth. And when you have a big company like Verizon, they step in and then they have all kinds of money. We're listening to people here who do not like the application the way it is. And they're not necessarily rich people or whatever. They're people that live in the community. That's who we represent. We represent people who live in our areas. We see them in our grocery stores. We see them in our churches. We run into them all the time because they live here like we do. And I don't like people being intimidated by a big bully in the room, but it's somehow by pointing out on a volunteer commissioner, it's almost an intimidation of a volunteer commissioner's free speech rights. And I don't like to see that. That's an interpretation I came up with, but anyway, I have a problem with this. And I would vote to not take jurisdiction. Is that correct? If I vote to not take jurisdiction, does it go back to the planning commission? Only if the board instructs it to go back to the planning commission. The other option. I would not instruct it. And if I'm not mistaken, I can't make a motion, but I can second a motion on our order the way it is. That's correct. Okay, so my recommendation is to not take jurisdiction and end it. And then we'll see how Verizon reacts to this and comes after us with a lawsuit or whatever. And I'm curious to see if they would try to intimidate our right to free speech. Okay. If there's somebody who makes a first on the motion, I would second it. Well, Mr. Chair, this is Zach. I didn't reach the same conclusion that you did on the preponderance of information that was presented to us. I do have a motion to make and we'll see whether or not there's a second for this motion. But I think that based on the information that was set forth both in the staff report and during the presentation, as well as the appellant's letter and presentation, I'll move to adopt the staff's recommendation to accept jurisdiction of the appeal and schedule a de novo hearing based on the grounds that there was an error of use of discretion on part of the planning commission in handling the appeal such that a further hearing before the board is necessary. That's outlined under, it was cited in the report but County Code section 18.10.340C. That's my motion. Supervisor, who? Supervisor Friend. Friend, okay. This is Supervisor. Thank you. So that's, you had your time, you had your time. That's a motion, now you'd ask for a second after a second. We have a second on that one. If not, mine fails for a lack of a first, right? Yeah, you didn't make a motion. So you were waiting for a motion. So there's a second by Supervisor McPherson. So will you please clarify the reason? Okay, well, we're, it's not settled. It's not settled. Okay. You need to, okay, you need to be quiet. You need to be quiet or we're going to ask you to be removed. You need to be quiet or you're going to be asked to be removed. It's not doing your job. We're going to ask you to be removed if you don't be quiet. We would look at it in the future the way it is. Supervisor, there's a motion and a second on the floor. And I would like to say once we have it in our hands on the appeal that as supervisors and chairman of the board, I don't want anybody to try to intimidate my freedom of speech and my vote. And I think that's true for all of the supervisors. Whatever way they do vote once it comes to the appeal. Okay, thank you. So there's, Chair Caput, I'd like to ask them to be removed. Clarify the reading. Just clarify with first and second. Can we take the vote or we're going to need to, we're going to need to take the vote now or you're going to have to clear the room if they don't stop calling out. I know, we have a first and second and we're not deciding whether or not it's okay. We're deciding to look at it. So anyway, it's up to you to call for the vote. This is John Leopold. I just wanted to make a comment. This is a very difficult issue. I share the concerns of the chair about the way in which planning commissioners have been referred to. Not as much by Verizon, although I understand the concerns there. I think that staff has also failed to listen to concerns raised by planning commissioners about the interpretation of this ordinance. And we could have avoided this situation almost completely if the staff had listened to the commissioners saying that they wanted a better clarification than an administrative guideline documents. And in addition, our board has looked at changes both according to state and federal regulations on the new laws around cell facilities. And we've still been waiting for that to come back. So I'm hoping that the maker of the motion and the second would include an additional amendment that said that the staff should consider the issues that were brought here today and the past discussions we've had about our cell facility ordinance and bring that to us by October of this year. So we can actually have a strong cell ordinance and not be left to these kind of interpretations that have created lots of problems at the planning commission and in the community. Yeah, this is a supervisor friend. Yeah, I support that as a friendly amendment. I just want to check with council, given that this is a jurisdictional hearing that that's an acceptable that we can add that kind of additional direction on in this situation. If so, then I absolutely would support that as a friendly amendment. Thank you. Yes, that's a reasonable amendment to make. If we vote for the amendment, are we voting to look at the appeal to take jurisdiction on the appeal? Yes, but before us, the motion on the floor. I agree with the motion, but I... Is to accept jurisdiction of the appeal to do a de novo hearing based on the ground that there was an error of use of discretion. Supervisor Leopold has provided additional direction that I consider a friendly amendment, which is that the board has previously directed planning staff to come back with updates to this ordinance that would provide some clarification. There were some concerns raised by the planning commissioners that he felt should also be included in that discussion. He's requesting that that separately and above and beyond the jurisdictional hearing come back to us in October. And I consider that a friendly amendment. The second year is Supervisor McPherson and he can say whether he supports that as it's second as well. I have the recusal need. Okay. It's time for a vote. Can I just make one comment, which is... So I try not to spend my whole time responding to Ms. Steinbrenner's false claims and misrepresentations. She knows this, but we'll keep repeating it over and over again. I donated that stock two years ago to the community foundation. Don't own the stock. It wouldn't even be relevant if I did own the stock, but just because we face a crisis of confidence in public leadership because these allegations are thrown around because it just makes political, you can try to score a political point or sort of make the whole conversation in doubt. But just for the record, that is not a reality. I support the makers of the motion. I think the people who have brought this appeal are really good people and they have legitimate concerns, but I also think we are limited by federal law in what we can do and in the action of the planning commission and we need to take jurisdiction and do a de novo hearing. And I'll just make a general statement. I agree with that. I don't like board members to feel like their free speech is being infringed upon also by being questioned. I mean, we can say that about every issue on everybody on a commission or board, but anyway, I'll be probably voting no because otherwise I'd be voting yes on taking jurisdiction. I don't wanna take jurisdiction, so anyway. Are we ready for the roll call vote? Yes. Okay, Supervisor Leopold. Hi. Friend. Hi. Coonerty. Hi. McPherson. Supervisor McPherson. Hi. Okay, thank you. That was I and Chairman Caput. No. All right. Hi. Thank you. Okay, the motion is approved four to one. Okay. Yes, it was approved four to one to take jurisdiction with the amendment. Yes, with the amendment. So they were going to know. We'll follow up with you in just a moment. We're closing the meeting out at this time. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So now that's it, right? So now we're going to close session. We're gonna adjourn to closed session. Yes, and is there anything to report out of closed session? Nothing to report out of closed session. Okay, that will adjourn the meeting and we'll reconvene in the conference room.