 at all times that it's occurred purely over your nose and mouth while in the county building. And if you are not wearing a face covering you will be asked to leave. Thank you. I will now call the August 12th, 2020 special meeting of the Board of Supervisors to order. Will the clerk please call the roll. Supervisor Leopold. Here. Friend. Here. Coonerty. Here. Mr. Fersen. Here. Chairman Caput. Here. Thank you. If we can now have a moment of silence and prayer and then followed by the Pledge of Allegiance and please join us. United States of America and the Republic for which stands one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Revisions, Mr. Palacios, do we have any late additions or changes for today's agenda? Yes, we do. On the regular agenda, item number seven, there's additional materials. There's a revised memo packet pages seven and 10. There's a revised attachment C, which is an insert after packet page 28. There's a revised attachment D, which replaces packet page 29. And then there's attachment E, which is an insert after packet page 29. That concludes our revisions. We will now if- We'll just go right into the next one, which is your overview of the general government budget category. Thank you, Chair Caput. We will now introduce Christina Mowry, who will be presenting our overview of the general government category. Good morning, Chair Caput, members of the board. Good morning. Good morning, I'm a Chair of the presentation. So today, as you was just going to hear, you can see a breakdown of general government. It's approximately $99 million in financing or about 11% of the county budget, provides funding for risk management, information services, general services, the auditor, controller, treasure, tax collector, the assessor recorder, county clerk elections, personnel, the board of supervisors, county council, county administrative office, cannabis licensing, and a contribution to AMBAG. The county is self-assured and risk management maintains reserves for claims for workers comp, unemployment, and property and liability insurance, which is why risk management makes up 47% of the general government financing. Here you'll see a breakdown of the general government financing by department. Revenues are primarily charges for services and other revenues totaling $54.8 million. $23.4 million is in the risk fund balances, which I mentioned earlier, as for our claims reserves. And $20.6 million is provided from the general fund contribution. Overall, the financing is reduced by 3.3%, primarily from the reduction of the available general funds. Here you'll see a breakdown of the net county cost or general fund contribution to the various departments, which reduced overall by $2.5 million or 11% of the net county cost from the proposed budget to the revised budget. The general fund expenditures shown here by department represent changes of over $3.4 million and include the elimination of funding for 21 and three-quarter positions. Risk management, of course, as mentioned, comprises over 50% of the expenditures, which includes primarily the claims reserves for the risk management funds, as mentioned earlier. And here you'll see a breakdown of the general government expenditure changes by category, the majority of the changes included were, of course, in salaries and benefits because these are primarily, general governor are primarily the functions within the county that support the other departments. So that's where they were able to make the majority of their changes. They do have some services and supply savings, reductions of just under $400,000, memberships, training, travel and some services and a little bit in other charges. This is a summary of the operational impacts for general government that shows the reductions by department of net county cost and the funded staffing. More information can be found in the department narratives included in the revised budget. The majority of departments unfunded some vacancies and there will be some minor impacts on services and include the elimination of 12 filled positions in order to achieve cost savings and operational efficiencies. The county administrative office is consolidating services with the offices of economic development and emergency services. And you're gonna hear more about that today on the regular agenda item. I need to mention that the auditor controller has a last day report coming before you that has identified some additional revenue that will restore a part-time account clerk which is scheduled for elimination. So the three departments presenting today will include the county administrative office, cannabis licensing and general services. And we have representatives from the departments available to answer any questions that you may have on the other departments. And that concludes my presentation. Jens, chair. Thank you. That concludes our report. So you're ready to move on to item five. Sure. Public comment. This is an opportunity for members of the public to address the board on topics related to items on today's agenda. Revised county budgets for public safety and justice. There will also be an opportunity for testimony during each regular agenda item. If you cannot stay to wait for a regular agenda item, you may address those at this time. I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, can I just- However, you can only speak once. And it is on general government. Okay, pardon me. Sorry, that was a mistake. It is on general government, not public safety and justice were on general government today. Sorry about that. Okay. And each person will have three minutes. Thank you. Hi, Becky. Good morning. Good morning. So I've been told that this is okay to do. I have a lot of trouble breathing when I'm under stress. I want, my name is Becky Steinbruner and I want to speak right now about consent agenda item 13, the Board of Supervisors proposed budget. In June, your board said you would take an optional 10% cut in salary to in solidarity with all of those in county government that you're asking to do the same. And in solidarity with the thousands of people in Santa Cruz County who've lost their jobs and their businesses under the severe COVID-19 restrictions and shutdowns. In looking at the information for this item, I don't see any salary cuts that you're taking. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see anything that's harming that is causing you suffering economically. And I want to know why, if it's true, your board is taking no salary cuts at all. Please confirm. Please confirm. But as I see it, I don't see any cuts in the Board of Supervisors salary. Can you answer that question for me now? I can't hear you. I'm sorry. Sorry, I had the microphone off. Thank you. I'm sorry. The Board of Supervisors and department heads took a 10% salary cut beginning July the 11th. It's already in place. It's already been taken out of our paycheck. So it's 10% that we've cut our salary and that's already taken place. And that's actually 2.5% more than most of every other employee in the county. So why is that not reflected in the information that is before your board today and that the public is seeing now? Well, any answer. President Caput, if I may. Please. If they may offer some information. The reason you don't see the reductions there is the furlough savings for all the departments, including the Board of Supervisors will be included in the last day report. We're carrying the furlough savings and the general revenues budget as a placeholder, as a part of the revised budget and we'll transfer all of that into the department budgets on the last day item. I assure you the Board and all of the department heads took a 10% cut and the other employees took anywhere from five to 7.5% and that will be reflected in the last day item. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good morning. Trevor Luxon with Rice Luxon and Bolster Grant. I don't have the agenda line items in front of me, but I would like to speak to the issue of the cannabis licensing office budget reductions and specifically the removal of the cannabis compliance inspector for position. This position is currently held by Vasant Sharma and it's a really important position. I strongly encourage you to reconsider removing it. You know, this department's already struggling to keep up with its workload. One of the biggest issues with unpermitted cannabis is unpermitted construction and specifically unpermitted electrical work. Mr. Sharma is by far the most knowledgeable person in the department about electrical work, electrical safety and he's really been crucial in determining health and safety issues around code compliance. Also, I have a letter here that I'd like to enter in. It's from my partner, Robin Bolster Grant, who was involved in his hiring. It lays out his qualifications, you know, his background, he worked for the city for a long time. He's got really knowledgeable about code compliance and I think it would be a big loss to that department for that position to be eliminated. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chair, this is Supervisor McPherson. I don't know if that gentleman is going to be here but I do think it's probably proper to let know that yesterday we took some actions to restore two positions in the Sheriff's Department related to the code investigation and compliance and we are set to address that issue for the code compliance officer today. Just so he knows, in case he was going to leave early, I think he should know that action on that item has already begun yesterday with the Sheriff's Office and it's scheduled to be continued today. Okay, thanks Bruce. Okay, do we have anybody else that would like to make a comment now here or downstairs or online? Okay. That concludes that. Next is our action on the consent agenda. Do board members have any comments or questions on the consent agenda? Supervisor Leopold. Thank you, Chair. Although we're going to take these all as one item, I want to acknowledge the hard work of everyone in each of these departments. And in some of the cases, the increased workload that it will mean by cutting these unfunded positions. Most of the positions are vacant but there are some places where real people are going to be faced with difficult job decisions. And I just want to acknowledge the hard work of all of our staff in meeting the needs of our community every day and that these cuts will affect our service to the public. We've tried to do them in a way that caused the least amount of pain, the least amount of lack of service. But when you start winnowing down the services of county government that will ultimately affect people in the community. So I just want to acknowledge the work of our staff. I'm with the auditor controller's office and I hustled up here. I don't know if I'm too late to make a comment. Mayor? Okay. Board, thank you for accepting, allowing me to speak here, virtual and otherwise. I'm in the auditor controller's office. My position I feel is an important one and worth making a comment to support. I'm an administrative aid. I do a lot of support for multiple staff in the auditor controller's office. I was initially hired to help out with a statewide conference that was supposed to happen in 2021. Obviously we don't know if that's going to happen. But even aside from that, I was able to learn so much about the workings of such a complex and important environment. One of the things I'm worried about is claiming unemployment benefits and having no insurance, no health insurance. So this concern is a very real one for me. I didn't know this was coming. If it was someone else who was on the chopping block, I don't know that I would have stood up for them. But at least I want you to hear my story and hear my voice and know that this really is affecting my life and the many others whose positions you're cutting. I've been here since 2016 with the general election and the primary election. And since then I've worked for the clerk of the board. I've worked in general services for over a year and nine months. I've delivered excellent customer service. I've made amazing relationships with people here and I've seen nothing but integrity and hard work and passion from the people of Santa Cruz. And I want to be part of that team. So I'm hoping you guys, even if you cut my particular position, you're doing everything you can to encourage personnel to reassign us and use us in the best way you can. Thank you for taking the time to listen. Thank you. Thank you for your service. Thank you. Hi, how are you doing? Hello, good morning, everyone. I didn't want to come here, but I feel compelled that I have to. I'm bewildered at how the clerk of the board will lose two senior clerks and stand and not be crippled. I'm also here fighting for my position. I know there's many options available to me, but it's a crapshoot. It really is. With that said, when we're trying to follow the policy, the vision Santa Cruz, the strategic plan, I'm ammift at how operational excellence is going to actually stand. It flies in the face of that when you're taking away, when you're eliminating, sorry, when you're eliminating, those of us who've been here for many, many decades, and we know the county, we know where the skeletons lie, we know the county in and out, and you're gonna replace us with someone who has been here for five years, two years, a year and a half. We do excellent, and I mean excellent customer service. I would like to know who's gonna do that, especially my baby. The thing that I work with the most is the assessment appeals board and the taxpayers. I deliver excellent customer service. I help people in such a way that they don't even know what's available to them, but thanks to me, I do the education for them. And I have lots of accolades that just come to me. And so on, and I'm pleased to know that. And I handle the public well. I work with lots of different departments, all of them actually, and I've been here for 33 years. If I were ready to retire, I would. I'm a vital thinking person. I'm not ready to retire, and I feel like these layoffs that cost savings is taking away my choice, and I want you to see my humanity today. I want to be able to connect to you today because as you sit here and you talk numbers, we're people, and we're also community members. And I'm really surprised that we have a strategic plan that talks about workforce diversity, talks about excellence in operations, and it's not followed because, so I say, let me say this, it's not lost on me the fiduciary responsibilities you have and what you have to do in fire season is coming up. That's not lost on me at all. And I'm done. I'm sorry. Go ahead and wrap it up. You can wrap it up real quick if you want. All I want to say is that I would hope that you're, when you're thinking about these things, you would take, do the least harm, and please rethink this and do not cut, do not lay off anyone, actually, but you've done it already. Yes. And personally, I think you've done a great job, you and your coworkers, I want to thank you. Okay, anybody else, so we're on the consent agenda. Right, okay, so nobody else want to speak? I would move the consent agenda. Anybody else want to comment on it? Supervisor Friend, Coonerty, McPherson. No, but if it is a motion, I'll second the motion. I'll vote. Supervisor Leopold. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Chairman Caput. Aye. The motion passes unanimously. We'll now go to our regular agenda, item number seven. Consider the 2020-2021 supplemental budget for the county administrative officer office and take related actions as outlined in the referenced budget documents and the memorandum of the county administrative officer. Go ahead. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Caput. Carlos Palacios, county administrative officer here to present my budget before you today. As you can see, these are very difficult times we are living through and very difficult decisions we've had to make. No one wants to make any of these decisions. We don't take them lightly at all. We know the seriousness of what's before you and before us. And so with that, we'll present to you our budget. This is the agenda for today. We'll be going over the revisions to the proposed budget as well as the operational impacts. There's a number of department reductions and as well as consolidations in the budget presented before you today. And then we'll also talk about the coronavirus relief funds. This is approximately $28 million that we presented to you on Monday. And we're gonna ask you to take action on that today on the allocation of those funds. So this is the revised budget and you can see that we cut 20% out of our budget. That is the goal that we set before every county department based on the loss of our revenues that we are experiencing in the current recession which is very deep and very uncertain. It's difficult to meet that goal and these are very hard decisions but we've come up with a plan that will allow us to continue to perform our mandated services. With that, I'm gonna turn it over to Nicole Coburn to talk about the first part of our budget who's the Assistant County Administrative Officer. Good morning, Chair Caput and members of the board. As Carlos said, to develop the budget that's before you today we've had to make some very difficult decisions. We've based these decisions on five general principles. First, we focused on mandated county services. We've absorbed additional functions and responsibilities. We've leveraged skills that we've gained while responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. We'll be improving service delivery through cross training and we're going to be remaining adaptable and flexible as we implement these changes. I think it's important to note that our entire department has been impacted by this budget. It contains the seven and a half percent to 10% furlough, position eliminations and added responsibilities from the reorganization of the clerk at the board, economic development and emergency services. These reorganizations will be discussed in more detail in just a moment. Our office across all functions will be managing significant change in how and what we do while wearing multiple hats as we continue to be deeply involved in the ongoing response to the pandemic. With the position eliminations in the clerk at the board, economic development and emergency services, the need to figure out how to perform essential work with a different staff complement, the transition of homeless services to the human services department and the introduction of emergency services management as a core function to our office, our team will be experiencing a lot of change. We wanna acknowledge this reality as we move forward and our deep appreciation for and recognition of our team, their dedication and their sacrifices, public servants during this challenging time. To help support this change, the budget does recommend the addition of one analyst position. And as I mentioned, all of our administrative aides and analysts will be cross trained. So I'm going to turn it over to Melody Serino who's gonna discuss the clerk of the board reorganization. Good morning board members. The clerk of the board section is being reorganized to respond to overall county reduced revenues and the changes in the CAO office. Staffing changes are shown here on the slide in front of you. In the proposed budget, there was an administrative aid position housed in the board of supervisors budget. We have been sharing that position between the clerk of the board and the board of supervisors for the past year. In the revised budget, we are transferring this position from the board of supervisors to the clerk of the board's office. Due to the overall reorganization and the acquisition of responsibilities from emergency services, we will also be gaining an additional administrative aid position. In terms of program train changes, the focus for the clerk of the board will be to provide mandated services and reassign some work to others as well as eliminate duplicative work. For example, the bail schedule can be reassigned to an analyst while coordination of public records request currently is a duplication of effort between the clerk of the board and the public information officer. In addition, continued automation such as the use of e-signature and docusign have reduced some workloads. We intend to cross train all of our administrative aid positions to support not just the CAO but emergency services, cannabis and the clerk of the board needs, allowing for more flexibility in workloads and assignments as needs ebb and flow throughout the year. And I'm gonna turn it back over to Nicole. So Christina Marie is going to discuss the economic development consolidation. Thank you, Nicole. The consolidation of economic development with the county administrative office results in the deletion and reduction of the position shown here. We'll be deleting the economic development manager by the end of December. The economic development coordinators the beginning of November and a reduction of one of the economic development coordinators by a quarter. The transfer of the remaining economic development corridor is will be part of the process and preparing for the community development services division. And we'll eventually be transferring that position to that new division. The budget also recognizes some additional program changes. The budget eliminates all local and regional memberships and delays the micro business summit due to the COVID-19 impacts. A CO analyst will assume the oversight of the implementation of the property management plan and economic vitality plan and the continued support for the census and redistricting. The workforce development board will continue to oversee the comprehensive economic development strategy and support other economic development efforts. Let's send it back to Nicole. Thank you, Christina. The consolidation of emergency services with the county administrative office places the function directly under the county administrative officer who serves as the director of emergency services according to our county code. This structure is consistent with other counties where emergency services is housed within the county administrative office and results in the elimination of one filled position at mid-year. The budget transfers oversight of the administrative aid from emergency services to the county administrative office. As we've mentioned already, we plan to cross train all administrative aides and analysts in the emergency services function. We'll also be identifying a point of contact for community questions and requests. This will allow us to improve communication, coordination, and redundancy. We'll also leverage our experience working on the COVID-19 emergency response. Over the past many months, six staff from the county administrative office, including both assistant CAOs the county PIO and three analysts have been assigned full time to the county emergency operations center or the EOC and department operations centers or docs. They've been working on planning logistics and operations for both the health response and shelter and care. I just want to give you a sense of what this work has included. We've served in key command and management roles. We've set up and staff the call center. We've recruited and onboarded and trained disaster service workers, including county employees and extra help. We've continued to strategize with health and human services on meeting their staffing needs and serving as liaisons to their docs. We've set up systems for ordering, distributing food to the county shelters. We've provided logistical and operational support for supporting for setting up the county shelters. This has included site selection, procuring essential supplies, site cleaning and preparation services and other vital tasks to open each shelter. We've managed media relations, coordinated social media, arranged press conferences and wrote press releases. And we've coordinated the tracking of emergency related finances, including state and federal funding opportunities. As part of the consolidation we'll continue to partner with the general services department, which retains oversight of county fire and fire coordination. Together we're planning to collaborate on emergency preparedness management response and we'll ensure vital services and supplies continue to be procured in a timely manner. So this slides gives you an overview of what our office will be involved in during times of activation and non-activation. As I've just described, CAO staff have been fully engaged with the EOC and the DOCs during the COVID-19 emergency response, while we've served in key command positions as EOC section chiefs and deputy chiefs. We've been working on the incident action plan documentation and web EOC management, the county communications manager in our office, as you know serves as the county PIO or public information officer. He's also responsible for the joint information center. Staff in our office have completed training on the incident command system ICS, standardized emergency management system or SIMS and the national incident management system or NIMS. And we have hands-on experience. We'll be able to build on this experience going forward, making sure CAO staff are cross-trained in the emergency services function to ensure there's redundancy. During times of non-activation, CAO staff will oversee community outreach and preparedness, regional coordination at the local, state, and federal levels. The emergency management council will also be involved in developing our emergency response evacuation and other plans. Staff training and preparedness in ICS, SIMS, and NIMS, as I mentioned, as well as DSW and Red Cross Shelter Training. Our on-call duty officers will be responsible for coordinating the radio team, grants administration for three state homeland security grants in the emergency management performance grant, the fire safe council, and of course, interns and volunteers who support all of these operations through both the community emergency response team and the volunteer initiative program. During the transition through the end of December, we'll be detailing and assigning all responsibilities and tasks. CAO and emergency services staff are committed to a successful transition. So I'd like to turn now to the operational plan impacts within our department. The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted the CAO's objectives in the county operational plan. 10 of our 14 objectives have been delayed or postponed and I will highlight them for you this morning. While not shown here on this slide, we've had to modify our staff development objectives scaling back our professional development programs. Fortunately, training on process improvement and results paced accountability performance measurement will take place this fiscal year and the third cohort of the county's leadership academy will conclude in December. In terms of our capital policy and financing objectives, number 16 and 17, the long range facilities plan is scheduled to be complete by this next June, June of 2021, a delay of six months. Campus master plans are currently on hold due to economic uncertainty, however. The development of a methodology for prioritizing and financing capital projects has also been delayed six months due to the pandemic and will be completed by this December. While work on performance measurement was delayed six months, work on public dashboards recently restarted and staff will be resuming training in the fall. Full integration of performance measurement with program budgeting is delayed to 2223. In terms of our process improvement objective number 19, work has been put on hold due to the pandemic, but many process improvement tools were utilized by staff in responding to COVID-19. While work will resume, the county will not achieve its target of 50 projects by the deadline. Program budgeting objective number 21, I wanna note that the county administrative office has begun working with departments to create a structure for budgeting at the program level. We plan to further implement this structure and hopefully we'll be bringing some of that back and that was part of our one year budget for 2122. Our public defender objective number 22 was also impacted by the pandemic. While the organizational review of the public defender's office has been delayed, it will be completed and presented to the board of supervisors with findings and recommendations this September. Our website of degree design objective number 23, our county communications manager, as I've mentioned, has been dedicated entirely to the emergency response. And so he has been unable to have time to convene the multi-departmental committee to study the website redesign. It's important to note though, we have been involved in website improvements during this time. We've been involved in the updates to the COVID-19 website through the health services agency and have been working with them on those dashboards. It is anticipated that we're gonna restart the website redesign work sometime this fiscal year and continue it in 2122. The 2020 census has also been impacted. The US Census Bureau extended field operations through this September. The new deadline to complete the count is September 30th. Over the next two months, staff are engaged in completing outreach efforts and preparing the final report due to the California Census Office this fall. Finally, our livable community objective number 173. The county administrative office in partnership with the human services department has begun work and has been working to identify best practices, resources and stakeholders necessary for the exploratory activities to become an age-friendly community. Staff anticipate conducting additional preparedness work this fiscal year, but convening the multi-departmental work group and conducting assessments will need to be postponed until after the pandemic. And with that, I would like to turn it back over to Christina who's going to discuss our coronavirus relief fund plan. Thank you, Nicole. So as your board will recall, we gave you a preview of this on Monday during the county budget presentation. So just to remind you, in June, Governor Newsom signed into law on the Budget Act to include an additional $1.3 billion of the original CARES Act funding received in March to the state to include allocations to cities and counties, smaller cities and counties that didn't receive initial funding. So we are scheduled to receive and I've already received our first installment of those funds and we're scheduled to receive $27.6 million that's been allocated to the county. We've had to attest and certify that we'll use the funds according to the requirements. And the funding is required to be used only for those costs, necessary expenditures incurred during the public health emergency with respect to COVID-19. And we're not accounted for in the recently approved budget that had to do with our 1920 budget. Obviously all of these expenses aren't included in our budget yet. And the idea is that we would use these for costs incurred from March through December, although the state has made known to us that they're hoping that we're substantially complete with these funds through October, which is a bit of a challenge for us. It's also required as a condition of receipt of these funds that we adhere to all the federal and state health guidance and orders and the use of the funds. There's six categories and I'm gonna go through them and provide some additional highlights for you, but the six categories include the medical expenses, public health expenses, payroll expenses, social distancing expenses and economic support. And then there's a course and other for catch all. Our office has worked with the county departments to recommend the expenditure plan that you'll see on the next few slides. The expenditures we believe are necessary and mitigate the response to the COVID-19 pandemic by providing rapid and targeted assistance to vulnerable residents and communities. The CRF funds will also provide economic support to small businesses and nonprofits and rental relief to residents whose income has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Each of the proposals are discussed in further detail and attachment A. And the county may use the funds to reimburse for expenditures related to the response for fiscal year 1920. And so as we identified for you on Monday, as a result of our year-end review, we identified costs through June 30th that were eligible under these categories of $6.7 million for the COVID related costs. The summary of the plan, we're gonna go through the slide now, is included in attachment B and that includes the remaining funds of $20.9 million. Okay, so here we'll go through, oh, go back one slide. There we are. So here you'll see the medical expenses. So we're recommending to use almost $5 million in total for the medical expenses, which represents about 19% of the plan. The 4.4 million for the 2021 year is for health services for COVID-19, lab testing and tracing. The public health expenses in total represent 37% of the plan. The costs associated for 2021 are about $7 million. And there you'll see the list of the departments and the various costs, which does include about $5 million for the matching funds for the shelter in care, shelter in care costs of $5.2 million, which is our local match for all the FEMA related costs. There's also some costs in there for building readiness, additional cleaning, communications, county-wide PPE, and other public health-related costs that are unreimbursed from other grants or other federal or state sources. So you can go to the next slide. Here you'll see a summary of the payroll expenses, which represents about 13% of the total. Most of this was costs that we reimbursed ourselves in the prior year for our disaster service workers. The program for 2021 is about $1.4 million. It includes some additional reimbursement and then also some additional costs for personnel, parks, general services, and ad commissioner. The social distancing summary is about 16% of the costs are about $4 million. It includes the majority of the costs there for the current year 2021 is almost $4 million. There's funding in there for increasing our capacity for remote work by purchasing additional equipment for our staff that are continuing to work part-time or full-time remotely. That's about $1.5 million. There's community vitality programs which are described in detail in the attachments. Those are various parks programs for essential childcare and distance learning. And then we have our paid sick leave program reimbursement and some other minor costs there. On the next slide, you'll see we're recommending a total of 15% of the funding be used for economic support. And this is one of the changes we provided your board since Monday. Initially, we had identified a certain amount of funding for our nonprofits. After additional review, we recommend that we increase this amount to a half a million dollars to account for all of the nonprofits within the county that we do business with that have suffered a reduction in services. So what we will be doing is allowing them an opportunity to submit a very simple process to submit an attestation form and application for some additional COVID relief related to the costs in the various categories. And we hope to provide direct immediate payment to them quickly. And then we have, of course, our small business program. Businesses will have the opportunity to do the same thing. We have a million dollars set aside there. We have a reimbursement for our unemployment costs and some costs for our reentry and support program for probation. And then the rental assistance program, of course, of $1.1 million. And Health has some community partnership grants with some of their, with our partners in the health field and they have allocated and recommended at $1.1 million there. And then our other category, there's not much in that category, but we do have some costs associated with increased fingerprinting costs associated with our disaster service workers. So the cost and summary for the 2021 year that we're recommending is almost $21 million of the $27.6 million. So all of these funds have to be expended by December, but as mentioned, the state would like us to be substantially complete by the end of October. So there may be additional information where we'll have to work with the particular program providers where they're providing programs through December, that they are substantially complete through October and that we go month to month thereafter in case the state decides that we have to be complete by the end of October. So we're gonna have to be flexible. We have received, I will mention, we've received an additional request from Community Bridges for some additional COVID related programs that would help with telehealth counseling, increased counseling services and some equipment needs for our seniors and some increased meals, expanded meals on wheels program. And we believe those are in compliance. And if you're bored, we choose to make some changes to any of the program. One of the areas that we could adjust is the County Administrative or Disaster Service Worker reimbursement. So I offer this to you and I'm happy to take any of your recommendations for any changes when the time comes. So with that, we ask the board to approve the 2021 supplemental budget for the County Administrative Office, including any additional materials and take related actions as recommended by the County Administrative Officer. Okay, thank you very much for the report. There's a lot of stuff in here. And it answers a lot of questions that have been brought up before by people in the public and we'll now bring you, let's see, do board members have any questions on this item? Supervisor Friend. I don't have any questions at this exact moment, but I may in a second chair, I'd like to hear what some of my colleagues have to say on this as well. Okay, thank you. Supervisor Coonerty. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think there are a lot of competing needs for this money. I commend the staff for trying to balance all the different imperatives that we're trying to address right now. Like Supervisor Friend, I look forward to hearing if my colleagues have any additional direction or thoughts. Okay, Supervisor McPherson. Thank you, Chair. Many of the questions have been answered. I want to say as my colleagues would say too, how much we're grateful for the conscientious effort for the CEO's office to bring this forward and I appreciate its efforts to identify the proportional cuts to bargaining units, which includes those proposed consolidations of economic development and emergency services. I know we've certainly appreciate the work of all those whose positions are affected by this consolidation. And I know that we're doing our best to see as many people as possible, can maintain work with the County of Santa Cruz. The bad news of a couple of months ago is that we may have been looking at eliminating 200 to 250 positions, but with the CARES Act and federal and state support that's down to less than 40, which is still not great news, but that sure is better than what could have been. I do have a couple of questions. One has been answered on the CARES Act funding and I want to know, we had a request from the city of Santa Cruz related to their Coral Street Improvement Project, which is in the early phases of design and the city council has not even approved this idea yet, but I think I just want to say at the outset, it's going to be difficult to get that together by October, if that's what we want to do to make sure we spend the money by the end of the year, but we really need a more concrete plan from the city of Santa Cruz and I am very happy to work with them in addressing this issue, specifically on our homeless population. So that's just to recognize we've received that point of interest from the city of Santa Cruz, but certainly we have to have a plan that they have developed before we commit any funding to it and it's going to have to be done very quickly. The other question I had, we are proposing cutting associations and local chambers and business organizations. How are we going to support our business community outside of those memberships? I mean, I guess it'll be just individual members of our board and the Economic Development Consolidated Department, if that's what you want to call it, keeping in good contact with them. I just concerned, I really want to make sure that we keep in good contact with the interests of the business associations that employees, hundreds of thousands of people or thousands of people in our community. Just your thoughts on how we might best communicate and keep that communication going that we committed to, oh, four or five years ago. I can answer that. We have a couple of strategies to keep in touch with the business community. One is the Workforce Development Board staff. There is the director and they have an economic coordinator there. They will be doing some of that work and they already do some of that work. And in addition, we are retaining 0.75 of one of the economic development coordinators who will be retained and eventually transferred to this new community development division which we are developing that will consolidate functions from planning, public works and environmental health. That position, that's going to be its main job, is maintaining coordination and with our business community and helping them not only through the planning process but through the other grant opportunities we may have to work for as a community. So we have a few options that we have retaining and we will continue to do that important role of maintaining relationships with our business community. Very good, I think it's very important as we move along and try to get past this pandemic as quickly as possible. Thank you for your presentation. Okay, thank you. We'll go to Supervisor Leopold. Thank you, Chair. You know, this is a difficult day at the Board of Supervisors because these are major changes. I just want to talk about some of those and I want to ask some questions. On the Economic Development Office, you know, when I came as a member of the Board of Supervisors, there was not one person in the county government of 2,500 plus employees that spent all day thinking about the economic health of our community. And I think it's been good for us to build up this program and the work of Andy Constable, Peter Deflas and Barbara Mason have made a difference in the lives of many businesses, especially small businesses. I applaud their work. They helped us draft the economic vitality strategy. They were the creators of the small business summit that has gone on each year. And I know in my district, they have worked very closely with a number of small businesses to help them think and rethink their own businesses. And for that, they made a great contribution. It is very difficult to think about cutting this program because I believe there's real value in it. And I know we're gonna keep one person on, that person's gonna be going down to planning and we'll still be there to be able to support some of our small business needs. But I just wanna recognize the work of Andy Constable for his hard work as our director and Peter, who I think will be moving to another position for their work, because they've been a great resource for our office and great resource for the businesses in the district. On the question of the cannabis licensing office, I think we are faced with some of the same issues that we talked about just yesterday, which is you have to spend money to make money. And the work of the CLL office, they're a small but sort of mighty office in terms of helping us corral this formerly illegal industry into a legal industry. And so I think we really wanna take a look at whether it makes sense to cut something when we're just on the verge of being able to effectively license a lot more businesses. Supervisor Leopold, that's actually the next cycle. Sorry about that. I apologize. The other thing that I just wanna mention is the office of emergency services. You know, the office of emergency services is not something that we think about on a regular basis until we need the office of emergency services. And the hard work of our current director of Rosemary Anderson has been, I know that she works hard, but it's about developing relationships. It's about engaging in training. It's about ensuring that there's a strong network in place so when the crisis comes that we are prepared. And we are now in the midst of an unusual disaster in the COVID crisis, but we know that we live in a community where we have earthquakes, fires, floods, tsunamis. And so we need a strong office of emergency services and I'm concerned about this setup going to people who have jobs in addition. And I think we need to look maybe at new ways to fund the program. And maybe when it comes time to a motion, it'll be interesting to think about ways in which we can take a look at that over the long term. If we make a mistake in the way we do this, we will feel it at those times where people are in greatest need. Lastly, I just want to talk about the CARES Act funding. The CARES Act funding provides great opportunity and I am grateful of the work that we did to create a rental assistance program. The small business assistance program wondering who's going to be administering that? How will we be letting the public know about it and what will be the process? So we have economic development staff that are stained to the end of the calendar year through the December. So they will continue to administer it in conjunction with staff from the workforce development board. So they will do the administration. We have to have spent this money again by the end of this calendar. So staff, we have proposed that they stay on through the end of the calendar year. Yeah, well, I think it's going to be very important to be able to help out. We're already seeing that with the end of the PPP money that this money could come and really help keep our small businesses intact. The question about, Ms. Marry mentioned about this additional request we got from Community Bridges. It is part of it, their requests, I believe is taken care of through our rent assistance program. But there's other parts of it that involve both food and technology. And I'm not sure if, what the highest priority is there, but it would be good to set aside some money to address that because as I look at it, we have the Great Plates program. I think right now we have it through September 30th, but once that program runs out, not having food for people is a critical need and to set aside some money. So in the event that this Great Plates program ends that we have resources to help out the nearly 600 people who are now accessing the Great Plates program will make a big difference. And I'd like to figure out if we can carve out some money from the CARES Act to be used for that food support as well. I realize these are difficult decisions. We are lucky to have funding through the CARES Act, but as we look at these cuts, these will have an impact. There are real people in these jobs and they've made great contributions to the county and to the community as a whole. Thank you. I'll just make a brief comment. Yeah, the County Administrative Office, you look at all these numbers, it's all going through the County Administrative Office and coming to us and looking at it. We're looking at an amazing amount in all the departments we have where the cuts are gonna take place and have already taken place. Something real quick, about five years ago when we had the Great Storm and it looked like there was flooding throughout the County Administrative Office, emergency services, the CAO becomes the kind of director of emergency services and then it comes to the board for making and taking action. On Coward Road and Thompson Road off of Riverside in South County, it looked like the Pajaro River was having trouble. We went out there, we looked at it and the dyke had these little holes where water was coming through. If you looked at it, it didn't look like that big a deal at the time but it's kind of like the story, I've told this before, the story of the boy at the dyke and there's a hole in the dyke and he puts his thumb in there to plug the hole because the hole gets bigger if you don't plug it up and then the whole dyke can break down. So anyway, we're talking about now in the morning of the cresting of the river and the rain is coming down and so anyway, called up public works, public works came on within an hour or two and had engineers out there and they were saying that this was a big deal. It was an emergency and so a call was made and the board within five or six hours we had to vote on it by teleconference to actually go ahead and spend almost $2 million to get a thousands of tons of rock, thousands of tons, not pounds, but tons of rock that was within a 14 hour period was rolling from the granite rock and putting all that rock there to bolster up the dyke. So emergency services is in this category and you don't realize how important it is until it happens and we're in an emergency right now but again, it's all one time funding. It's not for paying back bills that are going backwards but it's for money going forwards. So that's why the reserve we had was so important and it was also the money we were able to spend on bolstering the dykes of the Pahoa River at the time. Did we, we ended up getting that money back eventually, right? We did get a FEMA claim for that for most of those funds and then some of it came out as zone seven. Yeah, it took a few years though. Oh yeah, it takes time to get the claim through. Yeah, absolutely. It was great work though. I'm very proud of the board and how they reacted and how the CAO reacted at the time and prevented really a disaster because if the dyke broke, all the water would have headed for senior village in South County where a lot of senior citizens live because they actually look up at the dyke rather than looking down on it. Their homes are below the cresting level of the river. Anyway, thank you very much and we have open air for public comment. Anybody would like to comment on this category? I believe there's a supervisor on line that would like to speak. Sorry, Mr. Chair, this is Ryan Coonerty. I just had a quick question, which is, I know Ms. Mauri mentioned that the money for the disaster service workers from the CARE Act would be if there were other needs. I'm wondering if we get to September and end of September or October and we have some unspent funds in some of these categories, will the board be able to reallocate them or the county be able to reallocate them across different categories? What does that process look like? Yeah, so the last day report, including the plan and any changes you suggest today, we are gonna include some flexibility and ask for your board's authority to make changes as we go within the plan because we do need to be flexible and adapt to the reaction the state may have to the plan, changes that may occur within each of the program categories. We need to be able to spend that money and we don't wanna lose any of it. So, for example, it could be that a certain program we thought costs were gonna come in, don't come in, then we would have the flexibility to make sure we spend that money elsewhere within the plan. We also have set aside some, we don't know what's gonna happen at the federal level. They are still discussing possible additional stimulus plans and one of the plans that's before through the Senate is suggesting that some of this money could be used to offset our revenue losses up to 25%. So as a backup plan, if any of these funds don't get spent, worst case we could use some of it to reimburse some of our revenue losses. There is something I forgot to mention that I should mention is that we are using a large portion of these funds, well, $5 million as are the local match for the shelter and care costs. But we're still counting on FEMA and Cal OES to provide funding through December to the tune of over $20 million. At any time FEMA could decide to pull out of the emergency and decide they don't have enough funding. So we hope they will continue to be funded at the federal level to address those costs. Otherwise we do have a hole in our plan which we may need to address some additional CRF funds for that purpose. So we will keep you informed and as we move through the emergency and as we move through the feedback we receive from the state. Great, thank you. Yeah, it just seems each week or almost every day new needs are emerging or changes in federal state policy and we need to be able to adapt. And so it gives me more comfort to know that there's flexibility built into this. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Did I skip anybody else? Okay. We'll open it up to the public. How you doing? Good morning, Chair Caput. Excuse me, I heard the public comment from my workstation and ran up here because I thought other board members were going to speak but we will reserve our comments about the cannabis licensing until the next item but I want to speak directly to the senior board clerks that are on position elimination. I don't get it. I really don't. Both his employees are 20 year plus employees at the county. I challenge Carlos and his administration to actually know how to do the work they do. These are folks who deal with the public daily and engage with them and direct them to multiple county services to resolve their issues. Their manager came from public works. Their manager doesn't know their work. I've heard this from board members in the past. Oh, well, managers know how to do everything. No, they don't. You know, this is a bad move. This is a wrong move. You know, these people make $70,000 a year. Many of the executives above them make $100,000, $200, $300,000 a year. One of those people could pay for both these people's salaries and I don't have any will towards them but, you know, if you've been hired in the last two or three, four years, why do you have seniority over somebody who's worked here for 20 years? It's a bad move. It's a wrong move. So, you know, I don't expect necessarily the board to like drill down and tell the administrator, you know, you can't do this but I would expect the board to pay attention to when these decisions get made. You know, if you've been here for 20 years, which by the way, I failed to introduce myself, Jim Heaney, Chief Steward for the County of Santa Cruz Employees, Member of the Planning Department for 21 years. I'd be pretty shocked if my position was on that list because after 20 years of commitment and the case of one of the senior board clerks, 33 years, by the way, for the county, she only been with the CEO for 20 years, being told to figure it out and move on. So, we're highly disappointed and we do not expect with all the blah, blah, blah about Primo and North Star and that kind of literally crap at this point to the workers that we end up telling somebody who's been here for 33 years, they gotta move on. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Heaney. I support everything he said, it makes no sense and I challenge the CAO to find other more effective ways that will not eliminate these people that have dedicated so much of their lives to serving the county and do it very well. My name is Becky Steinbruner. I'm here to ask you to figure out another way to save money rather than eliminate Rosemary Anderson's position of director of county emergency services. This is ludicrous. To expect a CAO staff person to figure it out when Ms. Anderson has spent so much time doing such an excellent job developing these relationships throughout the emergency response agencies and throughout the communities. She understands and respects that when emergencies come it will be the people who pull together and have to know how to take care of ourselves for a certain time. She has gotten grants to support that for training for equipment. And you're going to eliminate her? This is ludicrous. I can't believe that you would even consider this and feel that someone moving into the CAO's office who has been there during COVID can figure it out during an emergency. A supervisor, Leopold said, we don't think about what has to happen until it happens, but Rosemary Anderson does. Full time, very dedicated, very organized, very thoughtful and respectful. Do not eliminate her position. This will harm the county at the time that we need it the most. Do not eliminate her position or her personal position in this job. I'm sorry, I'm just flabbergasted that you would even consider this. So I also wanna say that we are a small and isolated county just because other counties combine things with the CAO does not fit our county. And Rosemary Anderson understands that. She's been in this business for a long time and done it well. I wanna say that you, Supervisor McPherson said, you managed to come up with money to reinstate two sheriff's positions yesterday. I think you can do the same today for Rosemary Anderson and the Office of Emergency Services. You cannot rely on agencies such as the FireSafe Council that you have not funded. Those people are scrambling. They don't know how they're gonna be able to do what you have asked them to do already. And to ask them to step in and fill in for Rosemary Anderson on policy things is ludicrous. I also just wanna say about the CARES Act funding. I have seen four people at the call center on the third floor sitting, reading books all the time. That is a waste of money. One person can do it. There's a lot of waste here, including the $10,000 for signs that were put out throughout the county saying we enforce shelter in place. They're all gone, except for one in Real Del Mar. Anyone else, no one in the chambers here? Anyone else for? There's nobody in the chambers and we have no web comments on this item. Thank you. I'll bring it back to the board. Mr. Barrett, a friend. I do have a brief question for the CAO in regards to the emergency manager's position and part of what Supervisor Leopold had said. I'm supportive of the current actions and understand what's going on. However, I do feel like that position because it's sort of an inter-jurisdictional position. Would it be possible since there's about half left on it if direction were given to work with a JPA such as the Santa Cruz Regional 9-1-1 Center to see if some of the other jurisdictions would be willing to share this position financially? Because ostently, it isn't a county position per se. It's a county from a broader perspective position that interfaces with the local fire districts and the local cities. And I also feel like we have other models where in that case those positions are shared financially. Would that be something that you think that you'd be able to have a conversation with the other jurisdictions maybe through the JPA to be able to do? Yes, that would be possible. We could definitely have discussions with the other regional agencies and JPAs about contributing funding to this position. Also, I wanna make clear that the function will not be going away. We will be consolidating it with my office and there will be staff who will be doing this both when we're activated and not activated doing the function. So the functions are not proposed to go away. They will be done. But we certainly can enter into discussions with the regional county organizations about contributing funding towards a position like this. Thank you. I believe Ms. Colburn did a very good job explaining how the position would be shared with other staff. And by the way, I don't consider them mutually exclusive. I think that CAO staff should be trained on these emergency functions irrespective of whether there's a manager position for it or not. I still think though at the end of the day having a point person makes a lot of sense and it makes a lot of sense to have all the staff trained because when you have an emergency it's tough to fall on one person anyway. But I also think that that entire cost share shouldn't fall in the county's responsibility and I recognize that the other jurisdictions may not want to do this but I'd be prepared to move the recommended actions with additional direction that the CAO come back in the mid-year budget with this discussion having had the discussion with regional entities and other local jurisdictions about a cost share for that position. I would second that motion. I appreciate the thoughtfulness and thinking about ways in which we might be able to fund this position. And when we say regional entities I would think not only just the cities but the fire districts as well who obviously use an interface with the Office of Emergency Services on a regular basis. It's a critical function and you're always judged by how you do in times of crisis and it worries me about potentially not having a dedicated staff person who thinks about that every day all day. Okay, Ryan or Bruce? Yeah, this is Supervisor McPherson. I will be supporting the motion but I would like to give additional direction. As I mentioned in an issue before for the CAO and the Housing and Health Office to continue working with the city of Santa Cruz on the Coral Street plan to identify the possible funding opportunities as the plan progressives. And I know we're on a short time timeline but I'd like to include that in the motion as an additional direction. That's acceptable to the maker of the motion. And the second. I just wanna ask a question. It's about the question of the community bridges request especially around food. And as I say, we know that that program is gonna be in place through September 30th but I wanna make sure that if there is money being moved around and that program goes away that we have some priority on making sure that people have something to eat. And I don't know that we need to take action today or whether we're gonna get a regular report back about these resources so we know if there is gonna be money to put into this. Yes, Supervisor Leopold, we plan to report back at every meeting about the progress of the spending of these funds and that way we will be able to adjust because we're gonna have to move quickly on this. And so we want to keep you fully informed and engaged. And I guess the other last question is the nonprofit funds. What's our plan for letting them know about this resource? Yes, we'll be working with both the Human Services Department and the Parks and Community Cultural Services Department to get the word out to these agencies as well as our office to coordinate an application period and get the money out. Yeah, and I appreciate it with, I think it was Ms. Mowry, maybe it was Ms. Colburn that said that about a simple process so it's not an administrative burden. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, the difficult situation is whatever money we try to spend in one department, if we don't cut in the one department it puts more pressure on the other departments on making cuts. But every job has a human face to it. And part of the, some of the cuts are very close to us right here in the chambers, right? We're talking about Board of Supervisor Clerks. And I know we need them. So I want to thank both of you for all your hard work and some of the super, all the other supervisors are very comfortable being the chairman up here. I'm not, without you I'd be kind of lost. So thank you very much. And we'll do all we can to save your job or whatever. Okay. We have a motion, we have a second. I'm willing to go along with it. I think we're, I think we're okay. Including the additional directions. And I'll take the roll call vote. Supervisor Leopold. Aye. Friend. Aye. Boonerty. Aye. Person. Aye. Chairman Caput. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. And that takes us to item number eight. Consider the 2020 and 2021 supplemental budget for the Cannabis Licensing Office. And take related action as outlined in the reference budget documents and the memorandum of the County Administrative Officer. Thank you. Either. Good morning board members. I'm Melody Serino, Deputy County Administrative Office. And I'm going to present the revised budget for the Cannabis Licensing Office. So this is our agenda for today. We'll go over the revisions. We'll talk about the operational impacts and we'll talk about some uncertainties. So I'm going to move now to the revised budget. So in order to meet the impacts of the pandemic on county finances, departments were asked to make a 20% reduction to their net county cost. The revised budget includes total reductions of $353,497 which represents $305,000 cut in revenues and a $48,000 approximately cut in general fund contribution. We are also proposing the deletion of one field staff position, a code compliance investigator. This division runs very lean with salaries and benefits constituting 84% of the costs. Unfortunately, in order to meet our budget reduction target, the staff needed to be reduced. Given these financial changes, let's move to how this impacts our operations. Staff has been focused on licensing applications and compliance checks on licensed operations during the COVID pandemic. We have 30 licenses issued now and 34 applications in process. As noted, in order to meet our budget reduction target, we deleted one filled code compliance inspector position. Program changes included the changes made by the sheriffs to the cannabis compliance unit and the deletion of cannabis revenues to support a DA position. The operational impacts from the budget changes will impact cannabis operations in different ways. The loss of our code compliance investigator impacts our ability to make timely and frequent inspections of our licensed operators. We have found these inspections to be useful tools for both educating our operators and reducing the type and frequency of violations. Our code compliance officer also compliments the work of the sheriff's office by following through with notices of violation and citations. While the sheriff's staff were redeployed during the pandemic, the illegal marketplace proliferated. This was true not just in our county but in others as well based on our conversations with our regional cannabis group. However, once the sheriff's staff were redeployed back to cannabis operations in July, the combined work of the sheriffs and the code compliance investigator has resulted in over 13,000 plants being abated in the month of July alone. This is peak outdoor growing season and the sheriffs are concentrating on a number of illegal grows, many of which were also abated last year. We appreciate your work yesterday to restore the cannabis compliance unit in the sheriff's budget. And we will be presenting a last day report for both the sheriffs and our office to accomplish this. It is anticipated that we will pay for our 50% of the cost through increased civil penalties. This is possible because of the new ordinance you passed in June, which changed the fine structure for illegal operators who are now fined on a per-plant basis rather than based on the time that they were operating illegally. As a comparison, in fiscal year 1920, we issued $1.3 million in citations and received about a third of that back in actual payments. The rest is either tied up in the appeals process or people who have not paid yet. In the month of July, under the new ordinance, the staff was able to write over $800,000 in citations for illegal plants at sites. While it is unclear whether or not all of that money will be received, it is a good indication of the value of the teamwork inherent between the sheriffs and the licensing office staff. In terms of the DA, they are responsible for prosecuting the criminal cases that result from illegal operations. About 10 criminal cases have been submitted to the DA's office, and these include charges for things like illegal water discharge or diversion or they involve firearms violations. These cases take time to put together and staff are working closely with other agencies such as Fish and Wildlife in order to ensure that these cases are prosecuted. In terms of uncertainties, the state is consolidating licensing agencies and it is unclear how that could impact operations both in the form of new state regulations as well as whether communication and availability of state data will become more readily available to us. Our cannabis business taxes and citation revenues are also uncertain. While last year our CBT was not heavily impacted by the pandemic, it is unclear if sustained unemployment or the impacts of potential loss of other small businesses in our community will affect the cannabis industry to a significant amount, thus lowering tax collection. Retail collection was down by only about 1.4% last fiscal year, but non-retail collection was up by almost 130%. This is partly due to non-retailers needing to stay in compliance in order to maintain their state license, which is very important to them. Citation revenue could also be impacted both by the loss of staff and changes in the larger economy affecting people's ability to pay. However, the new ordinance could prove to be of significant help in retaining citation revenues to support the program. That concludes our presentation. Before we answer any questions you have, I wanna express my gratitude to the cannabis licensing staff who continue to practice adaptive leadership by taking small risks, opening, being open to learning and continuing process improvement and working to shape changes in response to changing circumstances at both the state and local level. They work tirelessly to implement this program in a way that honors your original vision. At this time, staff recommends approval of the supplemental budget for the Cannabis Licensing Office. Okay, any questions from board members, Supervisor Coonerty? Sorry, no, I have no questions. Yeah, I'm hopeful that we can ensure that there's compliance to encourage the good actors to continue to be compliant and the bad actors to leave our market. Thank you. Supervisor McPherson. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. This cannabis division's work is complicated in many ways and very challenging. We have state and local regulations and they're meant to provide public safety, but also support cannabis as a viable commercial operation as well. Our board through the years, and I mean several now, has outlined numerous expectations about the program. And we've made some changes along the way to our ordinances to support meeting those goals. And I think they've been good changes. And as Supervisor Friend mentioned yesterday, one of the biggest goals is to maintain compliance with our regulations for the benefit of public safety. In that vein yesterday, and I want to repeat this in response to a public comment earlier, that board unanimously supported restoring the sheriff's office positions associated with the cannabis compliance. I would likewise support restoring the code enforcement investigator position identified for elimination in the revised budget. This position is directly related to compliance and licensing. And as I understand it, cutting that would cost us more than if we preserved it. So I can't support the cut in the licensing officer. And I will be ready to make a motion after the public comment to that effect. This is not only a public safety, fire protection and environmental issue, but directly a reasonable and common sense budget moved as well to restore this position in this operation of enforcement of our cannabis operations in Santa Cruz County. But I'll wait till after the public comment. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay, thank you. Supervisor Leopold. Well, I made some comments already because I got confused earlier. So I apologize for that. There's a lot going on this week. But I share the comments of my colleague, Supervisor McPherson, we shouldn't be penny wise and pound foolish. Okay, Supervisor Friend. Thank you, Chair. And I agree with those comments. I mean, the reason that we restored those positions, yes, well, we moved and restore those positions yesterday was twofold. One, there was a commitment made to the voters that that enforcement would exist. And two, the positions actually don't have an impact on the general fund at the end of the day and neither does the code enforcement officer. So since the goal here is to focus on the budget, I think it makes sense to maintain positions that also are net budget positive. So I would be supportive of such emotion. Well, I'll make a quick comment that, you know, we need somebody looking over this very closely. And if we make too many cuts, we're gonna have problems down the line. My big thing is the environment and the energy use. And as I said before, you know, like most people, we watch how much energy we're burning and wasting and using. I tell my kids, turn the lights off when you leave a room if nobody else is in there. And it bothers me to see cannabis facilities in a room about this size or a little bit bigger, burning up $25,000 a month in electrical costs. We're cutting back everything we can do. And at the same time, somebody else is burning up as much energy as they can. So we do have a friendly language that was included in the past that we've got to encourage the cannabis industry to use solar power, convert to wind power and to reduce that using up of all the energy. So anyway, I'm okay with the motion also. Thank you. I'll open it up to the public for public comment. Good morning, Board and Chair Caput. Once again, thank you for your time. I'm Vasant Sharma. I'm the lead code compliance investigator for the CLO. And I'm very optimistic that you see the value in funding my position and the value it brings to the county. As you know, I was hired just before the state legalized the commercial sale distribution and production of adult use cannabis. This created an obligation for the county to address the rampant black market as well as ensure the new legal industry did not endanger the public or negatively impact our environment. Since then I've directly handled the most difficult and sensitive investigations, cannabis investigations and enforcing titles one, seven, 12, 13 and 16 of our county code. And I've assumed specific operational responsibility for the abatement of numerous dangerous sites. After my unit received your board's recognition for outstanding effort, innovation and continuous improvement in February. Very proud of this. I did not expect to be standing here today, but I am because I was handed a tentative layoff notice citing pandemic related revenues. I am at a loss considering my team generated over a million dollars last fiscal year and that I've personally issued over a half million in the first two weeks of this fiscal year and administrative penalties to the black market. Also, I directly regulate our licensees who contributed over $4 million in taxes last fiscal year to our general fund. Please recognize not only the revenue potential of my position, but also its role in fire prevention. We all remember the Loma fire the year before I started with the county caused by a sparking portable generator used for a black market site that took 16 days, almost 2000 firefighters, 16 helicopters and 179 engines with an estimated hit of $30 million. I request that you weigh the value of preventing another disastrous incident against the line item cost of my position and recognize the key role that code compliance plays in public safety. In the same spirit, I ask you to take a deeper look into every colleague whose position has been proposed for elimination and please compare their value to the county when assessing the cost of their position. This will allow us to all continue to provide for our families and together participate in our county's economic recovery. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, sir, for your good work. I appreciate it as a member of the community. My name is Becky Steinbrenner and I want to also speak to the issue of public safety. In my community in the Abcast Hills in 2013, two homes burned to the ground because of an electrical, illegal electrical problem going on within the illegal cannabis grow. In 2018, another fire amazingly did not take off but it was at also an illegal processing center that had volatile chemicals had they caught on fire. The entire nice marks in my community would have burned. It's this kind of activity that the gentleman that just came and spoke before you helps the community continue our public safety without a good set of eyes out there and with the authority to cite them. These problems will continue to plague our county with the illegal gangs which is going on out in our community. I also think that you really have to look at supporting in the good faith effort those who have gone through the legal process to become licensed operators to simply cut now code compliance tells those people that you really don't care and that all of their hard work and effort and money that the county has taken in good faith those people would be left out to dry. So I wanna really urge you to keep this man's position funded in the interest of general public safety in the interest of supporting those who have taken the time and the good faith efforts to do the right thing because that's important too. And I know having seen this county's budget over the past few years, we are relying on the income from the cannabis industry to bail us out and that is no different now whether it's through citations or the business taxes or the sales taxes that are very, very high for this industry. Thank you. Please preserve this man's position. Thank you. You're welcome. Hey, how are you doing? Good morning, Chair Caput, members of the board. This is actually a great opportunity once again to discuss cannabis. I'm sure you're all happy to revisit our program. We certainly do our best to keep you informed. My name is Michael Sapanor. I'm a original staff with the cannabis licensing office starting over three and a half years ago. I'm a resource planner for the senior planner and my job exists at the intersection of policy and operations. So I've had a lot of experience with crafting our regulations, taking in applications, starting with temporary licenses and site reviews all the way through development permits and now licensing applications. And Melody's presentation just nailed it in terms of laying out the financial picture and importance of our co-compliance staff, both on the civil side and the criminal side. And yesterday's actions were encouraging to restore the sheriff's positions. And I believe our co-compliance officer, senior officer, as well as his colleague are essential, essential to ensuring that the three legs of our program stool, ordinances and regulations, applications and project review and compliance and enforcement remain intact because they all support what is coming to be a vital and emergent industry in our county that is also going through its own growing campaigns and needs the benefit of oversight and guidance from county staff, professional staff. And I am pleased to report lots of activity in recent weeks in my inbox with people seeking licenses and project review who are serious about becoming compliant contributing members of the business community and agricultural community. And I believe our regulations and our programs in a place today to really take off and provide the benefits and to the public that we've been talking about for three years and that Melody alluded to in her presentation. So close thank you for your good work. Please keep our program thriving and intact. We will deliver the results. I believe that you wish to see with this program. Thank you. Thank you. Morning again, Chair Caput, members of the board, Carlos, Jim Heaney, I am the Chief Steward of the County Workers, but I also am a Building Plans Examiner and Building Inspector. So my road crosses with the road of the two gentlemen, Passant and Michael, you've just heard from on a regular basis. You know, when I have questions about what is electrically safe, et cetera, if there's a, you know, the proper use in a building, they come to the planning department, they work with us. So I think they've represented the issue completely and clearly. I was listening earlier during the presentation and Melody, I'd like to ask you a direct question. Did I understand you to clearly say that you want to refund this position and you're looking for a commitment from the general fund for 50% of the position? No, the 50% of the costs were the agreement that was made by the board yesterday when we reinstated the sheriffs that the cannabis licensing office would pick up 50% of the costs of reinstating that unit. Thank you for the clarification. So I would directly ask the board then for the same commitment to this position. A few months back when we talked about the CEO's general situation and the loss of the board clerks I asked you to look deeply at that because honestly, there's no one else that does the work they do in this county. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Anyone else? We have one web comment. It is from Matt Groves. Please do not cut funding for the code compliance investigator. The Santa Cruz Cannabis Licensing Office is doing a great job supporting the growing legal cannabis industry in Santa Cruz County and is already stretched then. The additional tax revenue increased jobs and economic benefits stemming from the flourishing legal cannabis industry will far offset the cost of cannabis licensing officer. That's it. Okay, thank you. Anyone else? No one downstairs. Okay, bring it back to the board. We can't hear you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would move to support the recommended actions with additional direction to restore the one full-time position of a code enforcement investigator position. We have a sec. Was that Zach? No, that was Supervisor Leopold. Okay, I'm sorry. Okay, we have first and second if we can call the roll. Supervisor Leopold. Aye. Friend. Aye. Chairwoman C? Aye. McPherson? Aye. Chairman Caput? Aye. The motion passes unanimously. Do you want to take a 10-minute break and then we'll come back or do you want to go into the next session? I say we roll on through. We have just one more thing to do. Okay. Let's do it. Let's go ahead. How you doing? Good, sir, thank you. Good to see you. See you. Both of you. Aye. We good? Whenever you're ready. Sure. Thank you, Board. Board of Advisors Chair Caput. Michael Beaton, Director of General Services. Today I'm accompanied with Deputy Director Carol Johnson and on Microsoft Teams we have Deputy Director Thomas Fakner. As I enter into my third budget year on behalf of the Department of General Services I would like to acknowledge the leadership of Carlos Palacios, Elisa Benson, Nicole Coburn for their support and guidance throughout these years. We are heading into some trying times ahead of us with the economic effects of COVID-19 on the county. I would like to mimic the words of my colleague, Randy Morris from the Human Services Department Director that this county has something special in its leadership. Not just with the Board of Supervisors the County CAO Office and the Analyst but it's evident within the department heads and the management staff of this county. This is truly an organization that cares about its community and county family. For General Services I'm honored to be part of the GSD family and would like to acknowledge each and every one of our family members for the service not just in this time of COVID but their normal dedication they provide to our service departments and community. Attached as a picture from our 2019 holiday party that we had in December 2019 with the majority of the General Services family present. When I look at this picture now all I can think of is for this coming year we're going to have the social distance wear masks, no potluck and maybe have to do this event on Microsoft Teams. The times are definitely changing. For today's agenda and presentation I will specifically be presenting the revisions to the proposed budget of General Services and highlighting the operational impacts related to the revised budget. We will also be highlighting some of the operational metrics from the General Services Department to acknowledge the great work that our staff have done. As identified on the chart in front of you and on page 63 of the revised budget document reflects the budget summary of GSD's General Fund Operations. Please note that this does not include the fleet services as that budget is identified as an internal service fund. Of no on this chart over 40% of the General Services Department funding comes from the General Fund Department. A 20% reduction in that General Fund support is significant to a small department like General Services. And we've had to make some very difficult decisions and cuts. We explore potential alternative revenue options and through the great work of Deputy Director Carl Johnson we were able to identify $23,290 in additional revenue which left us short by a significant amount where we had to start looking at reductions in the department level of services. Going into the board's current adopted budget which is the orange column on the chart GSD had to unfund two FTE custodians in order to meet our net county cost reductions at that time. Now to the revised we've had to reduce another $387,000 in net county costs for a General Fund dollar which resulted in the reduction of four additional positions identified on the chart. I hear somebody on Microsoft Teams. People on the teams watching the board meeting on teams please mute your microphones and telephones. Thank you. Thank you. Now we will segue into the operational impacts of those reductions and the program changes we are recommending. As identified on the previous two slides we do have the additional reduction of four positions within the General Services Department with one identified as filled. I will quickly go through the positions and what those impacts will be on the Department of General Services. The Court three position which oversaw the reception duties of the General Services Department has recently been vacated with the resignation during the COVID-19 period. We have recommended unfunding this position which will cause some administrative support reductions on behalf of General Services. The next two positions are the Building Construction Project Manager and the maintenance custodian positions which have an impact around our strategy in place to address the deferred maintenance throughout the county's infrastructure. The fourth position and the last position on the list is the parking attendant which will cause a reduction in the parking enforcement of the government center parking area. Next is the reasons we kind of came up with these recommendations are identified on the chart above and they kind of relate to the impacts that we are seeing with the related to COVID-19. The number of visitors to the government center have decreased dramatically and this is for the administrative support and the parking enforcement two positions. We had an increase in telecommute and remote workforce and online services. The county's jury trial schedules are delayed and have been modified plus having a decrease in demand for our parking services. And over 50, we've been doing a parking study over the last few months and actually the last couple of years. And the study identified recently that 54% of our parking lot has vacant at any given point in time. That is dramatic. That's a significant decrease from what it was before when the juries are running full time. Our plan moving forward to address those impacts will be for the reception position we identified that with the current administrative team that we have an analyst we'll be covering the reception duties and sharing the workload. Parking enforcement will continue at a reduced level at no additional cost to the county to be completed by our onsite security daily with significant violations only. This is a change from our current in that we strictly monitor the visitor section on an hourly basis. Currently, we'll be moving away from that. We'll be moving away from that on a day to day basis when the parking lot is not at capacity. However, when the parking lot is at capacity we'll look at soliciting some additional support for our parking enforcement such as we'll be coordinating with the courts to identify days when they might have jury assemblies where we will have a higher need and higher demand for our parking enforcement. We will, however, be enforcing the lot daily based on significant violations such as parking in handicapped spaces, parking in employee section without a placard, significant time violations of the visitor section and unauthorized employees parking in the visitor section. We are working with the court to coordinate additional parking attendant services on those heavy jury duty days and to acquire schedules from the jury duties, jury ahead of time to properly plan and schedule additional support needed. For the facilities operations, the unfunding of the two positions identified on the chart above will affect our two operational objectives identified. The building construction project manager would have had critical involvement with developing policy guidance for the campus and facilities master plans, performing building and facility assessments, reviewing, analyzing, prioritizing and investigating funding opportunities for capital projects. In addition, with working along DPW to analyze and determine costs for facility improvements, research and development and budget plan to implement these improvements. This position either delayed or assumed by existing staff. Even with the elimination of this position, general services will strive to maintain county infrastructure and prioritize life safety projects and continue to look for various funding opportunities to potentially restore the position. The maintenance custodian identified is a bridge position between the custodian classification and the building maintenance workers. This position was crafted to aid in the lower level maintenance work that we are asked to do such as hang whiteboards, partitions, move furniture, change light bulbs, unclog toilets. This position would have been included, would have been able to allow us to have our skilled craftsmen to focus on the trades such as plumbing, electrician, electrical work, HVAC mechanic, carpentry and general construction work that is solely needed throughout our county facilities. To talk a bit more about our facility operations and just for everybody to get an understanding of the different levels of work that we have, attached on the chart here, we have a picture of our Bill Kirsten on the far left who oversees our facility maintenance team. We have a team of 15 positions with the one unfunded building the building maintenance custodian. We, over the last 12 months, we've received 2,667 maintenance requests. We've completed 2,173 of them. And as of a few days ago, we had 494 current open work orders for different maintenance needs from the different departments throughout the county. Now one advancement I'd like to point out is two years ago, it took us 80 days on average to complete a work order depending on what the issue was within the county. Current year, we are down to 56.7 days. So we are absolutely making strides to improve our responsiveness to our county departments as well as we maintain above 35 different buildings. During COVID, our facilities team has been asked to step up and beyond and now we maintain and help support the different shelters throughout our community related to COVID-19. For our projects, which is the area that we've been working on to enhance, we only have one funded FTE and the one unfunded position identified as the building construction project manager. That group, or should I say one, with the assistance of the facilities team currently oversees and has 33 capital projects identified over 200,000, 63 capital projects identified under 200,000. We're currently working on 24 different tenant improvement projects and two building warranty items. For our custodial staff, identified in the picture are two custodial leads, Selvazquez and Alex. We have 23 FTE funded positions in our custodial positions. We have two unfunded positions. They currently maintain 473,000 square feet of building space, which equates to about 21,000 square feet per custodian. And during COVID-19, I have to say they have stepped up huge to support our county in our time to make sure that our facilities are disinfected, cleaned, and safe, if you would say. So my hat is off to this team for the great work they've done, especially during COVID-19. For our non-operational side of the house or non-facilities side of the house, under Carol Johnson, our fleet services consist of four FTE positions. Identified in the picture there are our two mechanics and our aid up front. We are down a mechanic right now due to medical issue. But to identify, they've repaired a little over 1,000 vehicles in the last 12 months. We service 432 vehicles. We've performed 103 smog checks. They're responsible for the vehicle pull program for the county, as well as the fueling station on the government center campus. For our safety and security component, we have a position of one. However, that current position right now is currently vacant due to a early retirement, actually not early retirement, just due to a retirement. We are currently working with personnel on a recruitment and we plan on looking at revamping our county-wide safety program and incorporating security a little bit more involvement. For our purchasing services, for the whole county, we have a staff of two. They're identified in the picture, both Phil and Shauna. They've done over 4,882 purchase orders and contracts over the last 12 months. They've completed eight solicitations and they support every single department in the county. I would like to point out that this team, which is a solid two for this county, have had a process and do every single emergency purchase order and contract that we've had for this county related to COVID-19. Every single one of them flows through their desk. Now for, again, going into staying with Carol's group, in our parking program, our parking program consisted of one position, which we're recommending that it be deleted at this time. They oversaw the transportation reduction initiative program management, parking enforcement, employee parking program, and navigation assistance. And the reason we put navigation assistance, I can't tell you how many times when somebody walks into the building and they don't know where to go and who do they ask, they ask our parking attendant. For our warehouse services, we have our warehouse manager, Mauricio. I think everybody knows identified in there. We currently have two positions identified for the warehouse. And in the CRF funding that you just heard from the board, from the CAO's office, we're adding additional two staff to support, two to three staff to support the warehouse operations related to COVID. The picture on the middle right, it happens to be a picture of what our warehouse looks like right now. That is one aisle, and as you can see, we have four different rows of bays, and each bay location is full. Our warehouse is absolutely busting at the seams at this current time. So much so, we have about 70 pallets that we've had a store over at the Emeline campus, in the Emeline, 1080 Emeline building. The warehouse facilities, they oversee the records retention management, inventory control within the warehouse, the food delivery over to the jail and services. One thing I would like to point out is our surplus sales. One of the efforts in order to save some money and in our budget reductions and actually enhancements in funding is the implementation of our county-wide surplus sales. This has been a program that we've actually had closed about four years ago, I believe, maybe five. We plan on going live within the next two weeks, and we plan on sending out a communication to the county-wide departments, letting all employees know that surplus items that they might be able to buy using govdeals.com. Couldn't waste this opportunity to plug that new initiative from the Department of General Services. And again, during COVID-19 has been crucial in the items that are coming into us. For the Administrative Support Division services, we have two identified in the picture on the far right. They process $2 million in utility bills for every single building we have. Every single building we have, the utility bills come through our General Services Department staff for allocation and payment and processing. They've handled $2.5 million in claims process, completed over 330 journals. They are the team that you come in, you need an ID badge, they'll help you set it up, and as well as now handling reception for the department's public. With that there, that concludes the presentation on behalf of the General Services, and we recommend recommendations are to approve the supplemental budget for the Department of General Services, including any additional materials and take related actions as recommended by me, the Director of General Services. And I kind of done this presentation or the great work that General Services has been doing without the people identified on this chart right here. So I specifically want to acknowledge the great work of Carol Johnson, Thomas Fackner, who's on Microsoft Teams right now. And one of the logos are, one of the monikers that I like to use for GSD instead of it being General Services Department is we are small, we are mighty, and we get stuff done. So I like to use our monikern of getting stuff done for GSD. So thank you for your time. We're available for any questions you may have. Well, thank you. Chair, I just have a comment that I'd like to make. Sure. First of all, thank you very much for the presentation. You know, one of the things that has been lost over the years is we've changed our budget process is being able to hear from every department each year. And you've just provided a great overview of the important work that General Services does every year. And I wanna acknowledge the staff who we completely depend on and the leadership of both you and Carol for helping us through, if you think this a year ago, we were here thinking about expanding our parking. And now we're making a decision to eliminate a parking assistant because our parking needs have changed so much and don't expect it to be changed anytime soon. So I appreciate that the flexibility and just the hard work that people put in every day to keep our buildings nice to make sure that disinfected during the COVID crisis and are organized in a way that we can get supplies when we need them. It's really critical. And I know it's difficult to lose any positions in a small department, but I appreciate the work that you put in every day. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Supervisor Puneaty? I also wanna share my appreciation to Michael and the whole department for their work, especially during these very, very challenging times. Supervisor McPherson. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I too wanted to thank Director Beaton, Deputy Carol Johnson and Thomas for their work and their whole team of getting things done, especially in this very difficult time. I just was, we need to hope we can continue our facilities master planning in future years. We all know that the longer we wait, the worse it's gonna get. So, but I think that COVID-19 has taught us that successful remote working is widely possible and save us in some parking concerns as well as environmental protection people having to traveling to and from the County Center. But thank you for everything that you have done for us and our 35 buildings and the numerous thousands of requests you get weekend and week out throughout the year. Much appreciated and keep up the good work. Thank you. Supervisor Friend? Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Mr. Beaton for your presentation. And more importantly, thank you to your team. I know the board, I personally especially was looking forward to the restoration of some of those positions over the last couple of years that have been lost, especially within the maintenance world because your team is doing so much with very little resources with buildings and facilities that are really aging and struggling. We recognize that, but yet they always, anytime they're needed, I mean, not only do they show up but they do a great job, they offer remarkable attitudes and very positive, just a great example of the County family and a reflection of their talents and skills and the culture within that department. And it's really a world that has had under investment historically. I mean, it's always hard to invest in the infrastructure and the buildings and then consequently, generally the people that help maintain them in the world of competing interests, but I don't want people to feel that that's, I've had a number of conversations with your staff over my few terms in office and just always just appreciate their attitude and their ability to do it. And it's just unfortunate that as we started to do the build back that we hit this wall again, but hopefully, as Supervisor McPherson noted, hopefully it will be able to turn the page on that again soon, but I have a lot of admiration for your team. I really think that they just do an outstanding job. So thank you. Thank you. Did I leave anybody out? Was it Coonerty? I already did. No, you did him. You did him. Now we wanted to ask the public. Yeah. I'll make a quick comment. And I'm sorry to keep you waiting there. Who made up the visual presentation that you had? It's really outstanding. Oh, thank you. It was actually a tag team between myself, Jacqueline Church, who I know is watching on TV right now and Carol Johnson. So between the three of us, as well as our admin support staff, we were able to put together a presentation following the CAO's template. I think it worked out pretty well. What I liked about it is it had faces of people that were affecting all their lives. And it wasn't just numbers and words on a board. Yeah. So for that item, you can actually specifically thank Trish Daniels out of the CAO's office. She thought it'd be a little bit more personable to add the picture. So thank you, Trish. And so each custodial worker is responsible for what, something like 20,000 square feet. It's about 20,500 square feet of building space throughout our different buildings that we have. Wow. Okay. And then a personal thing, are we talking with the parking lot enforcement? Are we talking about Ann? Is Ann gonna be affected? We are talking about Ann. That's sad. I mean, are we gonna find a job for her? I know through the county's position reassignment process or layoff process, I know that's absolutely on the foremost point. I know it's something that we were gonna be working through personnel and personnel has actually already contacted her. Maybe you can answer that if we can. Yeah. We're gonna, we're trying to, yeah. We're working with all of our employees, through personnel to try and find other positions within the county. Okay. Great. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I'm gonna make a statement. Yes. This is Thomas Bapener, the other deputy director. And I apologize, I cannot be there personally, but I wanted to kind of resonate a couple of things that I've heard some of the board members mentioned and a key identifier that director Michael Beaton mentioned. We are definitely in general services department, a very tight knit group. We meld well together. We support each other. We unite in, I would say, higher level of communication. We do our best to meet county operational needs and community needs at every turn to address some of your comments relative to the facilities and the future of those facilities. What we've instituted within the department is every two weeks we survey through facility condition assessment format the existing buildings within the county structure to identify some of the critical needs operationally within the building systems and to address some of the aesthetics and then we prioritize our goal is to eventually put out a report for the board to review and to identify what we anticipate to be current capital needs and future capital needs. And then the final comment that I wanted to make is that we in the department appreciate your support and your leadership on the board and every department within the county structure. I've been with the county now almost one year and I've been extremely impressed and I just wanted to thank you personally. Thank you, Thomas. Thank you. Okay, we'll open up to the public for comment. Sorry to keep you waiting. Thank you, Chair Caput, members of the board, Director Beaton. Just to clearly say, we were completely disappointed with the selection of the position to be lost. Right now in COVID, it's a different world as we all know but it's a different world in the parking world. You know, honestly at SEIU, oh, by the way, sorry, Jim Heaney, Chief Steward for SEIU, Member of the Planning Department. Honestly for SEIU, parking has been our kryptonite. We have so many employees who are constantly hassled day after day, year after year, trying to find appropriate parking around this building. We just don't have enough. Now, you know, you can list the benefits on one or two fingers maybe. One of the benefits of COVID is many of us are working remotely, I gave up a parking space out in front of here that I paid for in a bi-weekly basis because I usually only come here once a week. I work remotely and I am completely appreciative of that but this will change and this will pass. And just like the conversations we've been having already today, disemployee more than pays their salary. Just because the citations they write goes to the general fund, doesn't mean they don't have an input. So thank you for knowing Ann, I know Ann very well. Ann was on one of our bargaining teams 10 years ago as an extra help employee. Ann has been an extra help employee literally over a decade or more and finally, when the previous director of GSD, not you Michael, wanted to contract out her job, we fought against that. Cause as we spoke to you the other day about the sheriff, contracting out is not acceptable. You're downgrading a worker's position and you're not respecting what they do. And right now there are extra help employees filling that position because Ann is out of the office right now and when she's not out in the parking lot, she's working in the house. And we just want to say that this is a wrong move. This does not recognize the revenues that workers bring to the county. So Michael, I asked you and Carol to work hard to figure out a different approach here. Don't cut a revenue generating position. Don't subcontract, track it out to first alarm, which was intended previously. These are important positions that people who strike a relationship with the public do and continue to allow them to do that, to be effective liaisons. You pull in this parking lot, you don't know where to park as a member of the public and you have to fight to figure out where you're supposed to be, jurors to hate it, people who come to the planning department hate it, people come public works hate it, people who come to see the board hate it. You need somebody out there on the front line. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, we're talking about people that we all know and love. It's not just numbers and we take that very seriously. Thank you, Mr. Heaney. Well said. My name is Becky Steinbruner. I'm a resident of rural Aptos, but I spend a lot of time here because I care about what goes on here. And I spent a lot of time in the law library. I have, I want to support what Mr. Heaney said, please keep the parking attendant position in funding. I happen to know that a considerable amount of money collected from county employees goes to the parking lot, but most of that money, according to Mr. Beaton, gets used to fund free bus passes for employees. Well, we don't have employees coming here. They're not using those bus passes. So why don't we use that money instead to keep the parking attendance position funded until, as Mr. Heaney said, this COVID thing passes and it will, don't be short-sighted here. I ask you, please keep the parking attendant position funded. As Mr. Heaney said, and as I have experienced many times, it is the parking attendant who is the first face that people many times for the first time coming to the county government center that they meet. And it can make a huge difference in how they feel about coming to participate in local government or just get the services that they need. Depending on security to write citations is not going to work. Those people have their hands full already with security issues. And I may also add that the parking attendant is an extra set of eyes and ears out there for security because she's out there in the cars and she sees what goes on and they are able to communicate. So don't eliminate this position. Anne is out on injury and I have asked many times that the general services department provide her with a cart. There are many during COVID that are unused with the department that she could have and that would enable her to do her job very well and without the injuries that she has sustained. Do not take her position away and Jessica in the afternoon does a great job. They're friendly people. They make the difference in the experience for the public coming to this place. And I've got to go or I'm going to get a ticket. How much money does the tickets generate? They're about $28 a piece. How much does the general fund get from the tickets? And I really want to speak in support of the custodians. They do a fabulous job. They make all the difference in the safety for not only the public coming here but also the people who work here. And it must have been an amazing job to remove that big wooden water tank that was here. And I can really question why that had to be done. But I really appreciate the work of all of general services especially these good people who are keeping things together for everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? No, no comment. Yeah. Just a quick question on I could have asked this with any department that we're talking about but let's say if there's a few employees that they can't transfer to another job, they somehow we can't find them a position or whatever. When right now we don't have the money for the position. Would they be first in line if we got the money, let's say six months or a year from now, they came back and they said, hey, can I have my old job back? We got some money. Would they be first in line or it becomes an open field again? Yes, we do have re-employment lists for employees who have been laid off and they are given a priority in the selection for new positions. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Now I'll bring it back to the board for action. I would move the recommended action for the general services department. Second. Okay. We have first and second, right? Supervisor Leopold, Supervisor McPherson. Okay. Supervisor Leopold. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Chairman Caput. Aye. The motion passes unanimously. Now we will, the next special meeting for the revised budget hearings will continue tomorrow at 9 a.m. Thursday, August 13th, 2020, right here in the board chambers and community room. Thank you everybody out and we'll see you later.