 I will now call November 17th to 30th. Your microphone, Chair. Now your microphone needs to be on. Your microphone needs to be on. There you go. Okay. Will the clerk please call the roll? Yes, thank you, Chair. Supervisor Leopold. Here. Friend. Here. Coonerty. Here. McPherson. Here. And Chair Caput. Here. And first we have something from Supervisor Zach Friend. Thank you, Chair, for the moment of silence today. I wanted to honor the passing of Mark Fulcom yesterday. Mark, as many of you know, was instrumental in not just the creation of Seascape and so much in our county, but I remember him just as a remarkable father, husband and grandfather. We had both a personal and professional relationship. He was somebody who loved his family and loved this community, especially the Aptos area, really almost more than anybody else that I know. Not only will he be missed, but the community itself lost a real great yesterday. So please do keep his family in your thoughts and prayers today. Okay, thank you. Please join me in a moment of silence or prayer followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. Do we have any revisions or late items? Yes, we do, Chair. We have an agenda to the regular agenda. This is item, will be item 17.1. It's to consider approval and concept of ordinance amending Santa Cruz County Code section 4.06070C relating to cannabis business tax rates and making CEQA findings as outlined in the memorandum of Supervisor Leopold and Supervisor Coonerty. There's a board memo printout and ordinance amending Santa Cruz County Code section 4.060 4.06.070 and amendments to section 4.06070. 4.0670. There's a strike out an underlying copy. In addition, there's a consent agenda, some additions on item 34. There's additional materials, attachment B. And then on item 37, staff requests that this item be deleted. That concludes all the revisions and corrections to the agenda. Okay, thank you. Do any board members wish to pull items from the consent agenda or make any comments to the regular agenda? Okay. Now is the public comment, the opportunity for members of the public to address the board regarding topics on today's agenda, consent items, closed session agenda, and on topics not on the agenda, but are within our jurisdiction of the board. If you cannot stay later to speak on a regular agenda item, you may address those items at this time, but you may only speak once on a topic. Each person will have, how many would you like to speak? 17 minutes. Yeah, we'll give you three. Okay, go ahead. Good morning, it's great to be here. It is, it's November 17th. It's a five year anniversary of something that really affects me a lot. So today's agenda is over 1,100 pages. I looked through some stuff yesterday. I'm really glad that it's posted. I'm really glad that I can be here. I don't know really know what, where to begin about what to talk about. So I just wrote something while I was sitting here waiting here, so I might as well read that. Rights of passage. If I had the opportunity to go back in time to establish a career that I had more than three decades ago, what would I be doing now? And how many youth could I have affected by the physical, mental, physiological, and by physical observations to inspire joy, self-respect, integrity, trust, friendship, stewardship, self-confidence, physical fitness, leadership, and integrity, intelligence, problem solving, self-confidence, et cetera. What could I have been doing three decades ago to now? I was using many skills to develop from my active role in showing up at least once a week, but often twice a week for two and a half hours from the age of 11 to 19. And once a month go on an overnight camping trip to play in the outdoors. Back to the summer job I had, influencing youth with the excellent assistance of many adult volunteer leaderships in the wilderness. The program I was told was like outward bound or a military boot camp with the exception only positive reinforcement. We took these youth and played with their minds through tangible, logical, and fantasy of progressive games where the most simple of instructions were given based upon safety, trust, integrity, intuitiveness about knots, rigging, first aid, rigging, and belay. What we did was create, what we did was to create through play and observations a way to bring out the best in these young men by deliberately isolating the natural bullies and leaders. We did this by using props and stories. This was by deliberate designs for when these bullies and leaders were made temporary deaf, blind, or unconscious or injured. Doing this allowed those shy, frail, soft-spoken to lead, nurture, and gain skills that unless we intervened would be squashed by these natural or loud youth. These programs greatly helped inspire self-confidence in many, et cetera. So you know, it's just great to still be here. There's a lot of problems going on in the world and I'm very inspired by all the things that I'm learning and I'm just glad that I'm able to show up here and try to make a difference. So thank you very much. Thank you. Hi. Well, good morning. Here we are again. Good morning. So looking at what's going on coming down the road towards us, I'm just wondering how our elected officials and associated colleagues are going to be supporting our community together in the face of further lockdowns as we already have multiple local businesses going under and livelihoods lost, lives lost from things other than a virus when piles and piles and piles of evidence has been presented here and I'm sure has not been able to escape all of you as to questioning the actual veracity of the danger of this virus, supposed virus. So I'm just wondering if you guys are actually gonna do anything to help our county survive this because we have people I just found out a few minutes ago are paying $900 a month to live in the campground or the Watsonville fairgrounds, that's appalling. And I don't know if that's something that you guys have anything to do with but I sure as heck hope not, that's just terrible. And if you don't, I hope you can do something to remedy that situation and not be charging these people to live in a muddy campground. And also I'm wondering what you guys are doing. You've done a lot to help renters in this county. I'm wondering what you guys are doing to help landlords in this county because right now it's a situation for landlords where if they rent to somebody, they may not get paid and they may end up not being able to pay their mortgage and having done work with property management for over 15 years, I know that for some people that's it, that's their livelihood, that's their retirement. A lot of people in this county seem to think that landlords are these evil rich people who own a bunch of homes and just take money from poor renters, that's not the case. Owning property, owning a rental is a tremendous pain, I can tell you. I've been the person who has to get the midnight plumbing calls. I've been the person who has to deal with finding bids for tremendously expensive damages to properties that there's no way the owners can be able to collect from the tenant. So I'm wondering what you guys are gonna be doing to help the owners of the properties and not just the renters, but every person in our community with their investments that they've worked long and hard for. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning, I'm David Van Brink. I live in Santa Cruz City. I just wanted to very briefly express support for agenda item 48, authorizing the purchase of various slippers of land along the Northwest Rail Trail. This is a various popular project for all the reasons that have been discussed for a very long time. And each step forward is just terrific, so support. Thanks. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. My name is Becky Steinbruner. I live in rural Aptos in Santa Cruz Mountains. I want to follow up on what the gentleman was just talking about, consent item agenda 48, where the board will be approving taking imminent domain action to take some land up for the new rail trail. I support the rail trail, but I protest taking any agricultural land out of production. This violates the county's measure J to preserve agricultural land. And in general, I'm against eminent domain. I would much rather have the property owners come along willingly. And I think it's, I don't like to say agricultural land come out of production. I also want to talk about item number 24, extending the CZU Lightning Emergency Declaration. I did go visit some of those fiery evacuees that are still living at the fairgrounds. The shelter has officially been shut down, but there are many people that have nowhere to go. Their homes have been burned and they are staying at the fairgrounds, but they are being charged $900 a month to stay there. That's wrong. The county has a contract with the county fairgrounds to provide shelter for people during an emergency. You are extending that state of emergency today, yet these people are being charged $900 to stay there. That's wrong. And I ask you to change it. I also want to talk about item number 45. Oh, let me go back to that. Why do these people have to pay $900 a month to stay in shelter? The Crescetti building is still under contract with the county. It is closed and full of empty setup tents for COVID in case we need it for COVID. And yet these people have to pay $900 because their homes have been burned and they have nowhere to go. Do they have to go out on the streets? That's what they were told. If they don't pay the $900, they have to go out on the streets. I suppose that would then qualify them for free housing for the homeless in maybe some of the six hotels that the county is renting and the empty Crescetti building filled with tents. I want to now go on to item number 45, Rincon getting extra money to do an EIR for the large Kaiser medical facility and the 700 car parking garage. This piece of land was an affordable housing or combining zone for 102 affordable housing units. Here the county is saying we need more affordable housing and yet Kaiser comes along and waves a dollar under the county's nose and the affordable housing is swept off the table. That's wrong. In closing item 17.1, I support you reducing the tax on cannabis to zero. I think it's amazing that no cannabis. I'd like to say a couple of things on the masked and the lockdowns. Okay, the average person lives for 75, approximately 75 years. This is 1.3% of year, 1.3% people die per year naturally. Santa Cruz County has approximately 275,000 people. This means on an average year, there's 3,575 deaths. Daily that would come down to 9.79 deaths. From March 20th to October 20th, we had 10 cases of COVID in six months as opposed to 10 natural deaths per day of natural causes. I've lived in the same address for 15 years, a little cul-de-sac and there are approximately 50 people there and 15 years, three people died. All three were heavy smokers. Now about this PCR test, the PCR test which stands for Polymer Chain Reaction Test is used to determine COVID. It was not meant for this. The test is, excuse me, Dr. Kerry Mullis got a Nobel Prize for this test. He himself stated that this test cannot be used to determine COVID. Is an analogy to the PCR test being used to confirm COVID. It's like trying to determine what kind of fire would you use near fireplace by looking at the ashes. You know there was a chemical reaction fire, but determining the type of wood cannot be determined. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, such a low death rate doesn't justify a lockdown. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning, Chair Caput. Good morning, members of the board. Jim Heaney, I'm the Chief Steward for SCIU, the county chapter. And I've come this morning just to remind you that we were here last week. A number of our members spoke about our experience through the whole COVID situation and our need for our contract to be settled. You know, so I'm here to ask you today to accept our offer in closed session. It's been indicated to us that the board, he was asking for more of a cost sharing, more of a buy-in for members. We're making that offer. You'll get the details when you go to closed session. But I simply wanna say that, you know, after this experience of 2020, folks really need some stability in their life. So I appreciate your time and I ask for your support. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Good morning. Good morning. Hello again, Monica McGuire from Coralitos. Just wanting to make several more notes that are so important. It's horrifying to know that this county has chosen to further harm small businesses while we have a .009, practically zero death rate, like all the other 75% of the counties in this country. And that this is absolutely against any moral or legal obligation by any of you who keep voting for these insane markers that are clearly harming far more people than they are helping. The collateral damage that you refuse to tell us all these months about the number of attempted suicides, the number of successful suicides, the number of people dying of all of the immune suppressing factors, such as forced to wear masks, youngers who should have nothing wrong with their health, who are showing acne, gingivitis, and other gastrointestinal problems from wearing masks six plus hours a day. You know, by our testimony to you and many others that you can read about, that you are needlessly harming countless more people than who could possibly be at risk with this. Not to mention, of course, not doing the most important thing that this county could do with its eyes closed, which is just count on people to use their immense amount of information on boosting immunity. There is no reason this county ignored and still ignores the good people coming to you, asking you to do the most obvious thing, which is to say immune system boosting and building is the only thing to really affect any form of cold virus or anything. And you continue to pretend that we aren't speaking to you all these months. That's just horrifying. And I found out very common. It turns out that many other counties are doing the same thing. So you clearly are following the same protocol that the state is falsely using to say that California is a terribly bothered state. This is insane. As you know, and you can look, about 15 to 30 counties actually show numbers that look like there could be a problem here. And those numbers have been created by the false tests anyway and the incredible numbers of false positives that can be controlled anytime anybody wants and not choosing to show us any of this is the problem. Having the gall to harm small businesses and wipe out their family savings so that they go homeless, again, completely inexcusable. And hopefully the small businesses are catching on further this time and coming together in better numbers to make sure that they can't be further harmed by you for no reason, not listening to them. Of course, we also have the lack of town hall meetings where you actually ask us for what we need and want, your primary jobs. And you have over and over, shut us down for the most obvious health exemptions, making Becky Steinbrenner almost faint when she had the obvious medical health exemption. We're just gonna. Marilyn Garrett, I'm gonna read an English poem from about 1764, an English poem. They hang the man and flog the woman that steal the goose from off the common, but let the greater villain loose that steals the common from the goose. The law demands that we atone when we take things we do not own, but leaves the lords and ladies fine who take things that are yours and mine. The law locks up the man or woman who steals the goose from off the common, and geese will steal a common whack till they go and steal it back. Translated into modern times here, my estimation here, is that the lords and ladies fine to take things that are yours and mine are modern day corporations that they own. And they, we have seen a great additional taking of the commons in the closure of the schools, hardly any governments meet, libraries are closed, restaurants closed, concerts, public events. This is a theft of the commons by the corporate interests. And sometimes I listen to Ralph Nader show and he has Russell Munchiver of the Corporate Crimes Reporter. These are the real crimes. And I thought of a partial list of crimes against nature and the planet by big oil, big pharma, big telecom industry. And these are a few of them. These are the real crimes and the real threat to our health that we need to address, not viruses. SpaceX, Elon Musk, Verizon, Monsanto, Bayer, the CDC, vaccine manufacturers, Moderna, Pfizer, et cetera. And I wanna refer you to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s website Children'sHealthDefense.org. Children'sHealthDefense.org. He's been doing a series on truth. And there was quite a shocking one about Fauci that I saw last night. Check that out, please, thank you. Thanks, thank you very much. Good morning. I sent an email to Board of Supervisors and you should get it, the email. I'm asking you all to read it, please. And Kapi was sent also to District Attorney and to the grand jury. And this is an ongoing problem that I cannot resolve and never heard anything from Board of Supervisor. A mental health advisory board, I contacted also, no response from them. And it never was a response from them in five years. So it's kind of for people live on a different planet. Like, you know, we leave some down there and you guys leave some up there. So it's very difficult to get anything. Difficult to be heard and difficult to get an answer. And so I sent the email like a month ago also to the Mr. Greg Kaput. I haven't heard also anything about it. So I'm asking to respond to my last email that I sent on 17, it was sent at nighttime. So I'm asking to respond on that because I requested the investigation of mental health department. And this is very serious. And I'm waiting for the answer. Thank you. You're welcome. Do we have any other comments? Do we have any? We have one web comment from Jessica Peters, Dear Board of Supervisors, while I appreciate the Town Hall meeting held last week for district five, I'm very concerned that the response to potential debris flows in the CZU burn area is multiple evacuations. We are given two reasons for evacuations, danger of debris flow and danger that access roads will be inaccessible. There are two very different types of evacuations that should be separated. Has there been any consideration at the use of dams and barriers along the debris flow paths to prevent the flow from reaching homes and other areas? Thank you. And that's the end of public comment. Okay, thank you. If there's no other public comment, we'll have action on the consent agenda item number six. Do any board members have comments? Chair, I just have a couple of comments on item number 33. Item number 33, I'd like to thank the probation department and the fact of the passage of Prop 47, which gave us resources to support the goodwill in helping folks in the collaborative court system. This is a great program, our collaborative court system is something that really helps out and ensures that we have good criminal justice actions here that don't rely on incarceration, but look to connect people with programs if possible. On item number 41, this report on the collective of results and evidence-based investments, our core investments. This is a fascinating report, which I encourage everyone to read. It details what's been going on with our multimillion dollar investment in community programs and the difference it's making. And I found it to be very interesting and I think it's worthwhile for everybody to check out. And that's it. Thank you. Any other board members? Yes, Chair, Supervisor Friend. I don't have any comments on an item, but I do need to recuse from item 48. Again, I live, my principal residence is within 500 feet of the rail line. And even though I'm not near the North Coast, just out of an abundance of caution, I'm going to recuse myself out of item 48 because I have a personal financial conflict living within 500 feet of the rail line. Any other Supervisor Coonerty or Supervisor? Sure, Mr. Chair. Yeah, just a couple of brief comments. First on item number 34, which is funding for UCSC to continue their testing program. I just want to take a moment and appreciate that partnership in our community during this difficult time. We're lucky to have an institution like UC Santa Cruz here and ready and willing to partner both with the scientific underpinnings, but then also the real commitment to public service and our community. Item number 36, it's really important. We have some funding for mental health support for youth. This continues to be an area of a lot of challenge. And I appreciate the health department for identifying these resources and getting them to kids in South County who can use them and their families. And then finally on item 47, I want to thank the planning department for finding some CDBG funding to do a feasibility study for water projects in Davenport. As many know, we had the water line wash out a couple of years ago and the water line then burned in the fire and we're trucking water to Davenport as we speak. And so to come up with a more reliable and resilient water supply will be important going forward and this funding will help. Thank you. You're welcome. Supervisor McPherson, you're okay. Yeah, I wanted to comment on a couple of items. Number 39, the medically assisted treatment. I want to thank behavioral health for bringing this item forward and for the work on the grant. I'm glad we can offer this service and hope it will prove the treatment outcomes and reduce recidivism. On item 40 regarding expanded association of faith shelters. I thank the Human Services Department for coordinating this AFC low barrier sheltering. I look forward to hearing about an expansion of services by this group in the future. And I know that there's been some interest from some folks in the Santa Rosa Valley to be added to this. I too would like to just make a brief comment on item 41, the core report. I want to thank again the Human Services Department for this. It's important to understand how services and outcomes have been affected by the COVID-19 and how our partner agencies have adapted to these challenges. We have a lot of work to do with staff retention on behalf of our providers. This is another reason why building more low to moderate income housing for our local workforce is really critical at this point. On item 48, which was briefly referred to as well, it's important that we keep moving forward on this project, especially this North Coast component. We need to support a safe alternative transportation options between Santa Cruz and Davenport. I'm not a fan of eminent domain, but I think this is something that we have to work through. And I also want to, on a related note, many of you may have seen that the Regional Transportation Commission was granted or will be granted with final California Transportation Commission approval in December 2nd or 3rd, granted $107 million to do some work on Highway 1. And I believe this is gonna be the largest transportation grant award in our county's history if it should be approved early in December. And lastly, items 50 to 52 as well as 54 about the CZU fire updates. There's a lot going on on infrastructure repairs and tree removal and culvert and guard rail repairs. I wanna thank our Public Works Department for all its hard work in making this progress quickly and on behalf of our community members impacted by the fires. It's important that we have these guard rail repairs and culverts be cleared. We're not gonna have the time or effort to build any dams and it would take forever, but we have done some work on some, what we call choke points on the Harmon Gulch area up in Santa Rosa Valley above Boulder Creek. We're doing the best we can, I think, and hope that there's no sudden downpours that we have in our county and particularly in Santa Rosa Valley. Thank you, Mr. Chair. That's all. You're welcome. Is there a motion and a second or any board discussion on the motion? I would move approval to consent agenda. Okay. Second. We have a motion if the clerk will call the roll. Supervisor Leopold. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Chair Caput. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. We'll now move on to the regular agenda with item number seven, presentation by the Central Coast Community Energy, 3CE on the annual member agency update as outlined in the memorandum of myself. Hey, good morning. Good to see you, Chair Caput. Good to see you. Good morning, Board of Supervisors and the Green Community. You might want to check to see if your microphone is on. You have to press the button to see if there's a green light that comes on. How about now? Yeah, yeah. Okay, excellent. Supervisor Leopold. Good morning. My name is Jared Kilger. I'm the Director of Communications and Outreach here at Central Coast Community Energy. I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you all in person to provide the annual member agency update to the County of Santa Cruz, which you'll find out is now one of 33 cities and counties that are part of this agency now. There's been an incredible amount of expansion that's been going on, but we do make a commitment to come out to each one of our communities each year to provide an annual update. So the first step in this process today, we wanted to acknowledge that we have changed our name. Many of you got to know us as Monterey Bay Community Power. The County of Santa Cruz was the leader, especially with Supervisor McPherson and Ginny Johnson to kind of get the troops together to think about how to bring community choice energy to the County of Santa Cruz. But that ended up leading to the counties of San Benito as well as Monterey to join forces to create what was once called Monterey Bay Community Power. But after a couple of years of operation and the pretty significant amount of expansion down to San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara, the board collectively decided that it was time to change our name formally. So as of September 4th, 2020, we are now Central Coast Community Energy, but please rest assured that everyone, we were once Monterey Bay Community Power, we are still the same agency. We just have a different name now to represent the incredible service area that we now serve. We've updated our website to 3Cenergy.org. So our agency, as I mentioned, I really can't speak enough to the leadership of Santa Cruz County and leading the charge to formalize this agency back in basically 2013 with the Project Development Advisory Committee, which had a group of stakeholders across the region to look at community choice energy for the region. Fast forward to 2017, that's when our Joint Powers Authority was formed with the three counties of Monterey, Santa Cruz, and San Benito, as well as 16 cities there within. It was the first time in California's history that a tri-county effort for community choice energy had started. And that model is right now proven across the state of California. There are 21 community choice energy agencies across the state that serve 10 million Californians. So I'd like to sometimes acknowledge the fact that a public sector has seen that type of growth in 10 years to basically go from serving maybe 10,000 people to 10 million in 10 years. That's pretty incredible growth in terms of the public sector. We are not a private entity. We are beholden to our community and our stakeholders. And it really goes to show you that all of these agencies are built for the community and served for the community. This model did pique the interest of the cities of San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay. They actually sought membership in late 2018. And that actually jump-started an expansion effort over the course of 2019. And I just wanna acknowledge Supervisor McPherson's great work in helping to speak to a lot of the supervisors down south as well as mayors. And that actually led to 11 communities requesting membership in our agency in 2019. So we went from 21 to 32. And actually last but certainly not least, the city of Bulton in Santa Barbara County joined us late this year. So we are 33 strong, comprising of four counties and 29 cities there within. Our governance structure, this is really what separates us drastically from the investor-owned utility. As a public agency, we are governed by our policy and operations board. The policy board is of elected officials and as you're probably well aware, Supervisor McPherson is the chair of our policy board. And it's great to actually have a ton of representation on the operations board with County Administrative Officer Palacios, our chair, and actually vice chair of Tina Friend, the city manager of Scots Valley representing in the two leadership positions on the operations board. We also have a community advisory council that has great representation from the County of Santa Cruz. And basically we have 21 public meetings every year. So that's an opportunity for the community to come out either virtually or in person to learn what we are doing as an agency to really drive change around energy and electricity in the central coast. Some of the accomplishments, I say this with a kind of a, respectfully in light of the pandemic and the fact there are a lot of people struggling right now. I did wanna mention that we actually just received the first A credit rating from standard and pours. Right now there are only four community choice energy agencies that have credit ratings. We actually have reached, we gained the highest and actually the hardest rating to get in history to date. And what that allows us to do is to get lower power prices, be able to negotiate better contracts. And ultimately that translates into better, more competitive rates for our customers. It also gets us access to probably more advanced and sophisticated products that we can build for our customers as well. So that really goes to show you that the financial stewardship of this agency under the leadership of all the great elected officials and city and county administrators to really help make sure that this agency could stand up on its own feet financially and getting that A rating is a pretty significant deal. And that's really gonna help us continue to deliver on our promises. I know COVID-19 is on everybody's mind. I did wanna remind folks that our agency actually unanimously got support from our boards to enact a COVID-19 financial relief response where we reduced all of our customers' electric rates, the generation rates by 50% for two months. That equated to, this number's a little out of date, we actually got updated numbers, about $24 million of financial rate to our customers in May and June. Every single customer got a 50% discount off their electric bill, not their bill, their generation rates in May and June. That equalled about six and a half million dollars for all our residential customers, $11 million to small to medium businesses as well as large businesses, and then a little over 5 million for the ag industry. Now moving on to a quick snapshot about the County of Santa Cruz, again, this is just the account numbers are for the unincorporated region, but we did wanna highlight the savings for the community in its entirety, so all the incorporated cities in the county. So the county has about 54,000 accounts, 95% participation rates are very strong, and the county consumes almost 500 million kilowatt hours a year, to think about the size of that, it's pretty significant. But in the greater community of the County of Santa Cruz, that includes the cities there within, since we started back in early 2018, all the consumers in your county have saved over $2.4 million. And the county itself, through its just municipal operations, has saved over $63,000 with our service. Moving on to energy procurement, because this is really how in which we can deliver the promises that we can do to our community. We've right now contracted for a series of new and some existing renewable energy projects in and around California, and these actually meet 35% of our annual demand at the moment. But the most exciting project I wanna highlight is the fact that we are building a utility scale battery storage project in South Monterey County. It's our first local project that we've built to date. And then moving towards a really wonderful evolution of this agency, and this really just goes to show the impact and the leadership of community choice energy agencies compared to the investor on utilities. We now have a pathway that's been approved by our board to get to 100% clean and renewable energy by 2030 by new projects. Right now we've actually contracted for a little over a billion dollars to build new renewable contracts to get to 100% clean and renewable energy by 2030. We're gonna increase that to $4 billion with a B. So in the next 10 years, we're gonna be tripling our investment in clean technologies to help reduce emissions and make sure that rates are stable. Additionally on the flip side, when you look at how do we reduce emissions locally, that's really through electrification and fuel switching as well as evaluating distributed energy resources. So how do we kind of optimize, reduce market barriers and really accelerate the adoption of local energy resources that both customers can monetize and central cost community energy can monetize. Speaking of our energy programs and I would like to do a quick shout out today. We actually have two virtual public forums today, one at 12 o'clock to discuss about community priorities of how we're investing in our energy programs. We actually have one today in English at 12 p.m. and then one tomorrow in Spanish at 6 p.m. So I'll be certainly circulating that with the county board of supervisors to share with your networks. But 3% of our gross revenue gets set aside for electrification and fuel switching projects. To date, we've allocated a little over $12 million for local energy programs. And I did wanna highlight the fact that we had a very innovative new construction electrification grant program. That was to help both market rate and affordable housing developers build all electric housing. And actually a couple of housing developers that work in Santa Cruz County have been recipients of this grant and are going to be helping to electrify 112 affordable housing units in Watsonville and the city of Santa Cruz. So that's just another great opportunity that we wanted to highlight about the type of innovative programs that we're trying to accelerate change for customers in the county of Santa Cruz. I did also wanna mention that the county of Santa Cruz is right now submitted a couple applications for this great fund. This is providing backup power supply for critical facilities for the public sector. So looking at cities and county facilities, public schools, public hospitals, public water and wastewater management districts. We're providing low cost financial support to build that redundant backup supply in case of public safety power shutoffs or wildfires to make sure you can have those operations up and running during that time. And then pivoting towards the last segment of the presentation today, we're re-envisioning our energy programs in terms of how we invest in the community by this multi-phase process to reach out to the community to learn about what are your priorities? How do you wanna evaluate programs? What type of program concepts do you wanna see a three CE investing in? And then finally, making that selection of programs and then presenting with our community advisory council to our joint annual meeting in September of 2021. So every year we'd be going through this iterative process to engage with the community from all sectors of our economy to make sure we get their input. And here's our survey. So again, we still would love to hear from the community about what type of priorities folks are looking for. So we have a survey in English and Spanish. I'll certainly circulate this with the Board of Supervisors. And then just wrapping up right now, you know, we went on a pretty incredible run last year to unify the central coast. Some of the key updates, as I mentioned, is we've changed our name. We've actually opened up a satellite office in San Luis Obispo where actually we have, we will have three staff members there. The updating to our procurement strategy to get to 100% clean and renewable by 2030 is a pretty monumental task as well as achieving the credit rating. And just over the next 14 months, we're gonna be enrolling another 140,000 customers across 12 communities. So by early 2022, we will be serving probably close to 440,000 customers across the central coast. That concludes my presentation. And before I wrap up, I just wanna acknowledge the great County of Santa Cruz for all its work in launching this program, especially Chair Palacios on our board, as well as Supervisor McPherson for his leadership. So here's the way you can connect with us via our phone, our call center. Feel free to give us an email. And I'd be happy to take any questions from the board. Should you have any? Do, well, I could go down the line or we can just say, do any board members have any questions or comments at this time? Mr. Chair, Supervisor McPherson. I just wanna thank Santa Cruz County and all the staff that started this and got it going. And for the ongoing staff at 3CE that we have now, we're really putting this in this tremendous leadership position. Who would have thought, you know, we were thinking Santa Cruz County and it's four cities for five years ago and then it was got tri-county area. Now we have the five counties and 33 agencies. I can't thank the staff of 3CE enough and for Santa Cruz County taking the leadership. I mean, our 100% renewable commitment is well ahead of the state's goals. And I think that's tremendous. This credit rating of A is one, I think of only four of the, what are they, 30 some CCEs in California. This battery storage issue that we're viewing in Monterey County is big. That's the biggest challenge we have, I believe right now to have the battery storage so we can, when we have these blackouts and so forth, we can respond to them. And I just think that providing this service, this environmentally friendly service of electric power to over 400,000 customers now at a reduced rate is really significant. There's been many, many people in this whole region who have committed, made a commitment to this. And I have to say, I'm on my own staff. Jenny Johnson was phenomenal and pushing this forward at the start. It was a long haul in the way we did it with the Project Development Advisory Committee. We said, let's figure out the best way to do this. We didn't say this is what we're gonna do and how do we get there. For that PDAC committee that started this, boy, you should really feel good today. I think this is a tremendous success story and I wanna thank everybody who was involved in it. It's ongoing and it's gonna get better. We're gonna have cleaner energy at less cost and local governing agency to oversee it. So it's been a real thrill to be part of this. So thank you, Santa Cruz County for taking the lead in this. I appreciate it very much. Not sure. Good. Any other board members? Chair, I'll just, I just had a couple of questions. Thank you for the presentation. Thanks to you for the ongoing work of now Central Coast Energy. Just a quick question. Is this the largest CCE in California? Thank you, Supervisor Leopold. By geography it is, but the city of San Diego is launching a effort down south. So that will be, I think the largest by number of customers. And then there's one that covers most of LA County. They have almost a million customers. And then there's one that covers most of Alameda County. So by the number of customers will probably be about four fourth place. All right. Well, we certainly have the most beautiful region out of all the state of California. There's been a number of efforts in local jurisdictions about moving to all electric ordinances for new construction. Do you, does 3CE have model ordinances that they would recommend to jurisdictions? Yes, Supervisor Leopold. We actually, two of the communities within the Central Coast have already adopted reach codes for either all electric or some version. So of course the city of Santa Cruz you're hopefully aware of did adopt a reach code. So that's one that we could share with you as well as the city of San Luis Obispo. And there are other communities outside of the Central Coast that actually have model ordinances for you to emulate like Menlo Parks, another really good example. Or then the city of Berkeley actually has a gas ban where they're not allowed to put in any natural gas lines anymore into new buildings. So there's a whole tranche of different options that the County of Santa Cruz could explore. And then we still have an incentive program available to our member agencies. Should you go through the process of adopting a reach code? We basically provide $15,000 to kind of offset the staff time and effort it takes to do so. Yeah, it would be a really worthwhile endeavor for us to adopt some of these new codes. And in some ways support this community choice energy company and also improve the environment. The other question I had is the governor recently announced a very ambitious goal about getting rid of gas powered cars over the next couple of decades. What is 3CE doing about promoting charging stations for electric cars? Yes, that's a great question, Supervisor Leopold. So we actually were, we were able to win over, I guess you could call it the California Energy Commission through their Cal EVIP. That's a California Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Project. So the CEC awarded the Monterey Bay region $6 million worth of both fast chargers and level twos. The fast chargers are those kind of big machines that you see at Target or others or whole food stuff like that. And so that program went live in late 2019. And actually within the first couple hours, all of the fast charger funds for the County of Santa Cruz were absorbed. So a lot of that infrastructure is going through the process of completion right now. So there should be infrastructure being built out sometime in the middle of 2021. I will have to get back to you, the number of charging stations that are going to be coming to Santa Cruz County off of that program. But right now moving forward, we're looking at reevaluating how we can invest our funds in further infrastructure, public infrastructure, especially at workplaces, areas where people stay two to four to six hours. That's kind of the real, the hotbed for this opportunity. Yeah, it really makes a difference for people who are thinking about buying one of these EVs to know that there's a place that they can get charged up. And if the state is moving to getting rid of gas powered car, we're gonna, we need a certain amount of chargers, especially the highest capacity to level three chargers. Because that really changes the dynamic of how the cars are powered and where they get powered around the state. So thank you for the work. And thank you to Supervisor McPherson and his staff for their leadership and helping us get to this day. Right from the start of his tenure, he worked very hard, he and his staff worked very hard to help flesh this out with our general services department, but really put a lot of time into it made a lot of commitment and we're all benefit from that. So thank you Supervisor McPherson. Thank you. Any other board members? Mr. Chair, this is Ryan Coonerty. I just want to thank Supervisor McPherson and his staff and the whole team that's really built this amazing entity that's responsive to the community, that's with our values and helps the environment and the economy at the same time. I do see a lot of opportunity with our newly formed office of recovery and resilience to really start thinking about how do we build a more resilient, not only grid, but give people the tools to deal with this uncertain future where we're going to have bigger storms and power outages and other impacts to basically not only reduce their carbon footprint but also help in their lives and businesses to be able to and institutions to be able to be more resilient. And I also want to just appreciate whether it's the electrification for affordable housing or the other grants giving out the real commitment to equity and making sure that when we talk about green it's not just for those who can afford it but it's actually for everyone in our community. And I look forward to the partnership going forward with this organization that is really giving us opportunities and resources to think about things in a new and better way. And Mr. Chair, this is Supervisor Friend to just dovetail on Supervisor Coonerty's excellent points. I think that one way that there could be leadership here would be within the resiliency efforts. This is clearly something that has not been done by PG&E by any sort of stretch, especially at the consumer level. As you know, there's both state and federal legislation trying to assuming that it's passed that would help provide financial incentives for homeowners and businesses to do this kind of resiliency work but to the degree by which we're encouraging individual homeowners to be self-sufficient during these times that would be helpful. And I think it also become both the state and national model which already through the work again, the leadership of Supervisor McPherson and the county staff. This organization has become a statewide model for community choice energy but I think on the resiliency side that would be what I would like to see would be the next step where you can also become that exact model to show either in a pilot process that could then become state legislation to show how it could work or if nothing else to just allow us within this region because one of the things that really helped with the formation was this element of local control and fitting in our local values and the local needs here are such that the resiliency work could be a great leadership role. So thank you for the presentation and I appreciate your leadership on that. I want to thank you also. Thank you for the presentation and on behalf of the board, I want to... Your microphone, they can't hear you. You might just need to get closer. I don't. So anyway, do we have public comments? Okay. Good morning. I enjoyed the presentation. I wasn't, I was distracted by looking up the information to see what was written down there and in the 1,100 pages of what's being passed today. Only thing written in number seven is these two lines. So it was a great presentation. I think I'm all for having efficiency and cleanliness but let's look in this county. Where do the buses get their natural gas? It's shipped in. You know, I drove, I still drive a truck that's been in 23 states. You can see the coal-fired power plants from hundreds of miles away. Some states get very cheap energy from these coal-fired power plants. The pollution is hundreds of miles away from there. So I'm wondering what we're remembering and what we're forgetting, you know? So I'm just gonna say something. You know, during prohibition at the county fairs, how did the men and women who work for the Bureau of Alcohol and Tobacco and Firearms determine which farmers were making moonshine? Now, alcohol is a way to produce energy. You can no longer buy this alcohol in California and in Nevada and in Oregon. But the way they found out is people would take their garbage, like their old fruit, their extra fruit, and they would simply add yeast to it, wait a few days, and then they would distill this into alcohol. So my point is natural gas is pretty amazing and some members in this room have talked about self-sufficiency is depending upon the electrical company, really self-sufficiency. How many people have practiced an hour, two hour, a day, five days without electricity? You know, the gas is being removed and without indoor plumbing. So I think that there's a lot of issues that could also be being discussed along with these things. And I was looking for more information on number seven, just to find out the outline about what else was going on. I mean, I did want to speak on item, I think it was number 14B, some kind of legislation that's gonna come in from almost done, it's on topic, but it's not coming in from Shasta County, but having over a three decade span of dealing with building jurisdictions, all this stuff seems very logical. I'd like to see more things in this room that are really logical, thank you. Hi Marilyn. A book that outlines about, it's titled Alcohol Can Be a Gas. Alcohol Can Be a Gas by Dave Bloom tells what he was describing in details. Well, it's amazing how what is presented sounds so glorious and a solution to all our problems and energy efficiency. Well, when you look at some critiques of what's going on, here's just a few sources I'd like you to read. A publication called Bees, Birds and Mankind Destroying Nature by Electro Smog. It's translated from the German by Warnke and shows how electro pollution is destroying nature. Very scientific document. The other book I'd like that one's booklet, this one is Arthur Fersenberg's book called The Invisible Rainbow, A History of Electricity and Life. And he has traced the history of electricity coming in and radar and satellites and then the telecom industry and each step of the way there were corresponding illnesses and increased mortality. I suggest you read that book. It's about a third references. Also, we hear about electric cars and the information of things. This is dependent upon 5G wireless microwave technology and connecting to all these antennas that are making people quite ill. Let's see what else here. We have PG&E doing these public safety power shutoffs, right? Why? Because they even state that their lines are subject to fires and faulty. So the whole electrical grid is problematic. It's also what it's done to the whole atmosphere we're in. So at my house actually, and many people are what you call electrosensitive or experiencing microwave illness at my house, I turn off the circuit breakers at night. I feel better. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Becky Steinbrunner. I'm a resident of rural Aptos. And thank you for the presentation. I've been very curious about this organization and actually sort of by accident stumbled in on one of the board and operational meetings. And I learned a lot. I would like to be able to do that again. So I appreciate your asking for ideas to increase the level of sustainable electricity. And I have some ideas. I thought that mention of the natural gas buses was a very good one because this county metro has just gotten some natural gas buses. So those would have to go away. Can 3CE help fund metros use switch to electric buses? I've been to metro meetings and I've heard them talk about it, but they're very expensive. That would be a really good project to encourage public transportation using sustainable energy. I also think that putting solar panels on top of all light poles, street lights and utility poles would be a very logical thing to do because then that could put energy into the grid during the daylight when the lights then at night pull them out. I wanna support all new construction being self-sufficient electrically. It's been talked about an affordable housing project on Capitola Road having a microgrid because they would have dental and medical clinics. And I think that's the way to go. Make these developments and commercial ventures self-sufficient with microgrids. And that way they are not dependent or victims of the PSPS events. I also learned at the meeting I stumbled into that hydro power is not considered renewable power. So if this area were to invest in some tidal generators, would that be considered renewable? I want to ask about the company's dependence on PG&E for distribution. If PG&E were to go bankrupt, what would 3CE do for the distribution lines? Would they, would you buy that? Would you manage that yourself or contract it out? Finally, one thing that I have noticed in watching building permit applications for large developments for the, especially for the Purewater SoCal projects, injection wells and things that are very, very high energy demanding. They're all just kind of brushing that aside saying 3CE community-based power provides green power. So we don't have to look at that. We don't have to look at the greenhouse gases, but they should be because you're not there at 100% yet. But that's a common problem with development applications now. They are not analyzing. Monica McGuire with Coralitas again, again it's always astonishing how well Becky does your jobs and just wish that you would take into account her incredible abilities and take her ideas, at least let us hear your responses to them. The lack of doing that all these years makes you look like you not only obviously don't listen to us, but you don't actually care for the good ideas that are given to you regularly by Ms. Steinbrenner and so many others. I can't help but point out that I know countless people who were part of the Monterey Bay community power and said, well, this is not really community choice and I'm getting off of it. This is making my life worse. I'm really bothered by offensive misuse of language. So calling something community choice at all when it really is another way that a lot of things are out of our choice and not accounting for what's needed for us. It's like so many other aspects of government gone bad. And we just ask that you be more honest and act like again, the Plaster County, they actually know their constituents by name. They actually ask them for what they need and want regularly. And then they fight amongst each other to see how they can help the greatest number. And I don't see you doing that again. I don't see you mentioning how many people are unhappy with it in this county and asking questions about it and not getting answers. That's very offensive. I also really wanna underline if we have another debacle like the bus where the supposed clean natural gas has to be shipped in by truck with regular diesel and gasoline from the Midwest, it obviously undoes any of the good. So please use common sense, especially as we bring it to you in your conversations to say, let's stop lying and or misrepresenting what's being done. We do not have clean natural gas buses in this county. We have a debacle that is more costly and for our pocketbooks as well as for our air quality. So again, we just, we know that we can bring these things up and hopefully get through to the people watching at home that they have the right to call you and tell you what they want as well because when apparently when enough of us in numbers do that then changes happen such as with the recent election. So we ask that you listen more and we have to keep asking because that's the best we can do. Thanks again. Thank you. Any other comments? There are no web comments. Thank you. Okay. Well, I wanna thank you for the presentation and there is no action that we need to take. Take care. God bless. Let's move on to item number eight, public hearing to consider application 181650. A proposal for permanent room housing at 14630, two bar road in Boulder Creek, requiring rezoning and a residential development permit determined that the proposal is exempt from further environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the planning director. We have the ordinance resolution, notice of CEQA exemption, planning commission resolution, project plan, slide photos and hello, thank you. Yes. Thank you, Chair Caput, supervisors, Daisy Allen here from the planning department. So the purpose of this public hearing as you mentioned is to consider an application to add the permanent room housing combining district to 14630 two bar road. So this property is approximately 0.63 acres. It's located in Boulder Creek as indicated on the map at the junction of highway nine and two bar road. The parcel is developed with a single family home as well as a multifamily building that includes four one bedroom units. The property was developed in 1940 as a motel and a manager's unit that has since been converted from visitor accommodation to long-term residential units. The single family home is about 1,100 square feet and the multifamily building includes four one bedroom units ranging from about a four to 500 square feet. Each unit has a full bathroom, kitchen and at least one parking space. The general plan designation of RR which is rural residential and the zoning of R1 15 does not allow for multifamily housing and actually also does not allow for motels. The motel was originally recognized as a preexisting nonconforming use back in 1966 with a use permit. Later the motel was converted from short-term to long-term rentals. And then in the late 1990s when the current property owner applied for building permits in order to make repairs it was found that since the motel had been converted to residential use the previous use permit was now void and the multifamily use is now considered illegal meaning that no further permits can be issued for the multifamily building under the current zoning. So the proposed project would remedy this issue of the multifamily building's nonconforming status and allow for repairs to the building over time by adding this property to the PRH combining district and would classify all of the units as PRH units. A zoning plan amendment is required in order to change the zoning to R1 15 PRH and a residential development permit is required to approve and define parameters of the PRH use. Staff has made the findings for the required approvals. Detailed findings are provided in the resolution and ordinance in your packet. But to summarize of the project provides a community related use which is housing that is affordable by design. Units were originally built as motel rooms which are not subject to density limits and a conversion of those rooms to residential use was not anticipated when the motel was first constructed. The site has been in residential use for some time and as such has low potential to function again as its original use as a motel. And in fact, as I mentioned, a visitor accommodation is actually not an allowed use in the R1 15 zone district. The rezoning allows for repairs to the building and is in the best interests of public health, safety and welfare. Also the proposed PRH density is compatible with the general plan and can be accommodated by available utilities and community services. Staff has prepared conditions of approval for the PRH use on this property. Conditions will include a building inspection and building permits for any upgrades that are needed in order to meet health and safety requirements. Conditions will also include submittal of rental information for the units as well as a five year review. The criteria for revocation of the permit are also included in the conditions of approval. So staff recommends that the board hold a public hearing, review the planning commission's resolution, recommending approval and adopt the rezoning ordinance and resolution approving application 181605 and direct staff to file the CEQA notice of exemption with the clerk of the board. That concludes my presentation. Okay, thank you. Do we have any questions or anything from comments from the board? Mr. Chair, Supervisor McPherson, this is the first of five items, items eight through 12 and all of these properties are in total 39 units that are gonna be discussed and each is gonna have an individual public hearing. But these properties are all rezoned in the fifth district and have been used as permanent housing for quite some time now. They're affordable by design and by rezoning them, we ensure that they don't lose any of that housing. We don't lose any of that housing stock. It's also a great example of that. The county can be creative and flexible, I believe, in its regulatory role and make sure that the community interests are well served. I wanna really thank the planning department for all its work and doing this. This is a great move to assure that we have more housing stock of this caliber in Santa Cruz County and it's highly needed and I appreciate all the work that the planning department has done on this. Thank you, Mr. Chair. You're welcome. Thank you. Okay, the only question I have is, I've never seen it since a five year review subject, I believe, to revocation. Is that something new where we go ahead and give the go ahead and then five years later what we pull the rug or what? Yes, so you may remember that last year we actually created the permanent room housing combining district and through that policy project, one of the provisions of the PRH ordinance that was added by the board was provision for a five year review process and then specific findings and requirements related to revocation of permits. This, I believe the impetus for that was that some of these properties may have code enforcement issues. There may be some police activity over time. There may be some issues with compliance with health and safety requirements. And so the board felt that it was important to add those provisions to the ordinance to ensure that the properties remain in proper PRH use over time. Okay, thank you. I'll now open it up to public hearing. We have no other comments. There are no web comments. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you, Ms. Allen for your excellent presentation. And I want to thank you for all your hard work on this. I've been watching it. I've participated in it with a former applicant and it's nice to see people like you working so hard to help the common people. Thank you. You do a great job. I also want to echo Supervisor McPherson's sentiments about the importance of maintaining these affordable units. And I think it is a very excellent method that the county has taken, although it's taken a lot of time and a lot of work for various reasons, but it also helps the owners of these properties to be able to, as we have heard, get permits to do proper work to maintain these very valuable affordable units and to support that in our community. So once again, thank you. I would like to encourage the county planning department to reach out and supervisors, you know where these places are in your districts. There are other places like these. When this program began, the planning department put out a letter asking for businesses like this that were interested. Not all of them came forward because of lack of trust. And now seeing that it can be done and the road is a smoother one ahead for any that may come after, I encourage you as the leaders in your districts to reach out to similar property owners who are not on this list and to encourage them to enter in to a similar agreement for the same benefits that this project and the others you'll hear about this morning will provide for the people and for the community and the property owners. I think it's always unfortunate when communities do not welcome affordable housing in their communities. That was the case in Aptros and it is a sad thing. But hopefully these projects that are very well run will show the county residents in general that this is a success and we can help those who need lower income places to find those places in our community and that they will be well managed and well run. Thank you very much. Welcome, thank you. If there are no other comments, then we're open for a motion. Chair, I think this is an important part. Chair, I'll just... I would second Supervisor McPherson's motion. Okay. We have a motion and a second clerk. Supervisor Leopold. Aye. Friend. Supervisor Friend. Coonerty. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Supervisor Friend. Chair Caput. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. We'll now go to item number nine. Number nine through 12 are very similar. So if we can go public hearing to consider application 181606, the proposal for permanent room housing at 146502 Bar Road in Boulder Creek requiring rezoning residential development permit determined that the proposal is exempt from further environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the planning director, ordinance resolution, notice of a sequel exemption, planning commission resolution and project plan site photos. Thank you. Yes. Back again. Yes, thank you, Chair Caput, Supervisors. So this public hearing is to consider an application to add the permanent room housing combining district to 146502 Bar Road. This property, which is under the same ownership as the adjacent property 146302 Bar Road is a 0.46 acre parcel in Boulder Creek developed with a single family home, a duplex and a four unit multifamily building. The property was originally developed as a motel and managers unit, but has since been converted to long-term residential units similarly to the next door property. The single family home is about 1,100 square feet and the multifamily units range from about 200 to 500 square feet. Each unit has a full bathroom, kitchen and at least one parking space. The general plan designation is rural residential and the zoning is R115. Similarly to the adjacent property, this does not allow for multifamily housing and does not allow for motels either. The original motel was never recognized with a use permit. At some point it was converted to long-term residential use. Similarly to the neighboring property in the late 1990s, the property owner applied for building permits to make repairs and it was found that the multifamily use was considered illegal and the county determined that no further permits could be issued for the multifamily building under the current zoning. Similar to the neighboring property, the proposed project would remedy this issue of the multifamily's non-conforming status by adding the property to the PRH combining zone district, classifying all units as PRH units. A zoning plan amendment is required to change the zoning to R115 PRH and a residential development permit is required to approve and define the parameters for the PRH use. Staff has made the findings and for the required approvals for the same reasons as the neighboring property at 146302 Bar Road. Detailed findings are provided in the resolution and the ordinance in your packet. Staff has also prepared conditions of approval for the PRH use on the property, including a building inspection, permits for upgrades as needed, submittal of rental information, as well as the five-year review. I'm not able to advance those slides now. There was something that came up on the screen while I was presenting. So staff recommends that the board hold a public hearing, review the Planning Commission's resolution recommending approval and adopt the rezoning ordinance and resolution approving application 181-606 and direct staff to file the CEQA notice of exemption with the clerk of the board. And that concludes my presentation. Okay, thank you. Any comments or questions from the board? I don't hear anything. Open it up for public comment or hearing. We have any? We have no web comments. We'll call for the roll. Chair, I'll move the recommended actions. I'll second that. You bet. Okay, we have a first and second. Supervisor Leopold? Aye. Friend? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. Newsperson? Aye. Chair Caput? Aye. Motion passes unanimously and we'll now go to item number 10, public hearing to consider application 181-607. A proposal for permanent room housing on or at 13320 Highway 9 in Boulder Creek requiring rezoning and a residential development permit determined that the proposal is exempt from further environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the planning director. Ordinance resolution, notice of seco exemption, planning commission resolution, project plans and site photos. Thank you again. Yes, hello again. Thank you, Chair Caput. Supervisors, the purpose of this hearing is to consider an application to add the permanent room housing combining district to 13320 Highway 9. This property is a 3.2 acre parcel just outside downtown Boulder Creek, developed with a single family home as well as nine former vacation cabins. The property was originally developed as a motel and managers unit but has since been converted to long-term residential units. The cabins range in size from 191 to 436 square feet. The single family home includes 1200 square feet of living area upstairs, as well as a lower level consisting of a garage, carport and office and guest suite with a separate entrance that was constructed later. The property owner proposes to recognize that downstairs office and guest suite as a separate PRH unit at this time, separate from the upstairs portion of the building. So the proposal is to have 11 units, BPRH units. All of the units have full kitchens and bathrooms and at least one parking space. The general plan designation is suburban residential RS and the zoning is SU special use which allows for single family homes at a maximum density of one home per net developable acre. So based on the general plan designation and the zoning, the number of units on this property does not conform to the maximum allowed density. The owner has obtained permits over time to update the single family dwelling that there's no history of permitting on this site that would establish the cabins as legal non-conforming residential units. The proposed project would add this property to the PRH combining district and would classify all of the units as PRH units, thus making the cabins conforming legal units. A zoning plan amendment is required to change the zoning to SU PRH and a residential development permit is required to approve and define parameters for the PRH use. Staff has made the findings for the required approvals. The proposed zoning rezoning to add the PRH combining district provides a community related use housing that is affordable by design. The existing zoning of SU reflects the fact that there is a special situation on this property that did not previously fit well into any of the county's zoning districts. The rezoning allows for the existing residential use on the property to continue, recognizes the residential units legally and is in the best interest of public health safety and welfare. The density is compatible with the general plan and can be accommodated by available utilities and community services. Staff has prepared conditions of approval for the PRH use on the property. Similarly to the other properties that were discussed, this will include a building inspection, permits for upgrades as needed, submittal rental information, as well as the five year review. So staff recommends that the board hold a public hearing, review the planning commission's resolution recommending approval and adopt the rezoning ordinance and resolution approving application 181607 and direct staff to file the CEQA notice of exemption with the clerk of the board. And that concludes my presentation. Okay. Any questions from board members or comments? I don't hear any. I'll open it up for public hearing. Any questions from the public or comments? There are no web comments. Okay. Chair, I move approval of the recommended actions. Okay. Second. And we have a first and second. Thank you. How about the roll call? Yeah, sorry. Thank you. Supervisor Leopold. Aye. Friend. Coonerty. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Chair Caput. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. That takes us to number 10. No, number 11. Number 11, yes. Okay. Number 11, public hearing to consider application 181608, a proposal for permanent room housing at 6154 Highway 9 in Felton, requiring rezoning and a commercial development permit determined that the proposal is exempt from further environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the planning director. We have ordinance resolution, notice of the CEQA exemption, planning commission resolution, project plans and photos. Thank you. Yes, thank you, Chair Caput. Good to see you again. Good to see you, yes. Here to present on another permanent room housing application. So we're considering an application to add permanent room housing, the permanent room housing combining district to 6154 Highway 9. This property is a 0.53 acre parcel in Felton developed with the former wagon wheel motel, which has been converted over time to long-term residential units. The building includes 10 units, one studio and nine one bedroom units, ranging in size from 297 to 624 square feet. All of the units have full kitchens and bathrooms. There are 11 marked parking spaces as well as additional unmarked parking at the rear of the lot. The site has a general plan designation of community commercial and is zoned C2. Visitor accommodation is allowed in the C2 zone district, but residential use is only allowed if the residential use is up to 50% maximum of the square footage on the parcel. So in this case, since 100% of the four areas is devoted to residential use, the property use is illegal with the current zoning. In terms of history of code enforcement and police activity on this parcel, which we do look at for all of the PRH applications, there was a 2003 case involving an RV that was parked illegally in the rear of the property, but that was resolved. The proposed project would add this property to the PRH combining district and would classify all 10 housing units as PRH units. A zoning plan amendment is required to change the zoning to C2 PRH and a commercial development permit is required to approve and define parameters of the PRH use. Staff has made the findings for the required approvals. The existing residential use would continue. There would be no intensity of use or change to the exterior of the building that would impact the neighborhood or add to traffic and utilities. Any application for any additional PRH units on the property would be subject to density limits and would require an amendment to the commercial development permit. The underlying C2 zone district standards would still be in place and the property owner would be able to pursue a development permit for commercial use on the property in the future with an amendment to the commercial development permit. One thing to mention about this property is that it's located in the middle of downtown Felton within the downtown Felton Town Plan area. So the Felton Town Plan was developed in 1987. It does not specify any specific changes to this building's design or use, but the plan does envision in use of the rear of the site for infill housing. Staff has reviewed the Felton Town Plan and has concluded that the inclusion of this property in the PRH combining district meets the intent of the plan in terms of adding housing to this property. Also the Felton Town Plan proposal for the site was conceptual and new housing has not been proposed for this site in the 30 years since that plan was put in place. So the proposal to legalize the existing housing units on this property for that reason meets the intent of the town plan and creating housing on this property. Staff has prepared conditions of approval for the PRH use on the property. Conditions will include a building inspection and permits for any upgrades as needed to meet health and safety requirements. Conditions will also include the submittal of rental information and the five year review similar to the other properties that we've discussed. So staff recommends that the board hold a public hearing, review the planning commission's resolution recommending approval and adopt the rezoning ordinance and resolution approving application 181608 directing staff to file the CEQA notice of exemption with the clerk of the board. And that concludes my presentation. Thank you. Any questions or comments from board members? I'll now open public hearing. Any comments or questions from, or any comments from the public? There is no public comment. Okay. Public hearing is now closed. Chair, I would make the motion to approve the recommended actions. Okay. Second. First and second. If the clerk will conduct a roll call phone. Supervisor Leopold. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Chair Caput. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. We go to item number 12. Public hearing to consider application 181609, the proposal for permanent room housing at 4,700 Highway 9 in Felton, requiring rezoning and a commercial development permit determined that the proposal is exempt from further environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the planning director, ordinance resolution, notice of CEQA exemption, planning commission resolution, project plans, and site photos. All right. Hello again. So thank you, Chair Caput supervisors. The purpose of this public hearing is to consider an application to add the permanent room housing combining district to 4,700 Highway 9. This property is an 8.1 acre parcel in Felton known as the toll house property. The historic toll house was constructed in 1868 adjacent to what is now Henry Cowell State Park for the purpose of collecting tolls for maintenance of Highway 9. The building was later used as a saloon and then as a tourist resort office starting in the 1910s at which time a complex of cabins, campsites, and other buildings were developed behind the toll house. The resort was active through the mid 20th century. Later the cabins were converted to mostly long-term residential use. Today there are seven one bedroom, oops, seven one bedroom cabins and a duplex that are used as long-term residential rentals as along with an apartment within the historic toll house building. Each long-term residential unit has a kitchen, bathroom, and two parking spaces. There's one additional studio cottage on site that is currently used as a short-term rental. The site has a general plan designation of CN which is neighborhood commercial and is zoned CTL which means visitor serving commercial in the L historic landmark combining district. The historic structures on the site include the toll house itself, the duplex, a garage, and two cottages. The CT zone allows for visitor accommodation but not for residential use. However, there is an agreement between the property owner and the planning department established in 1990 following the Loma Praetor earthquake at which time there were some repairs made to the existing long-term residential units and they were considered to be illegal non-conforming use at that time. The proposed project would add this property to the PRH combining district and would classify six of the long-term residential units as conforming PRH units. The PRH units would include cabins one, three, four, five, seven, and 12. The property owner is not proposing to designate all of the long-term residential units as PRH units at this time because in the future, there may be an opportunity to convert some of these cabins back to short-term rentals and or construct additional PRH units on the site while maintaining the maximum of 30% short-term rental units that are allowed on PRH zone district sites. In terms of code enforcement and police activity on this parcel, there were some cases in the 1990s that were resolved with the agreement recognizing the non-conforming residential use and allowing for upgrades after the earthquake. Also earlier this year, there was a police incident regarding a tenant that tenant has since been evicted. So a zoning plan amendment is required to change the zoning to CTLPRH and a commercial development permit is required to approve and define parameters for the PRH use for the six cabins that are proposed to be designated as PRH units. Staff has made the findings for the required approvals. The existing residential use would continue. There'd be no intensity of use or change that would impact the neighborhood or add to traffic retilities. The underlying CTL zone district standards would still apply. Staff has prepared conditions of approval for this property including a building inspection, permits for any upgrades as needed, submittal of rental information and the five-year review similar to the other properties. Staff recommends that the board hold a public hearing, review the planning commission's resolution recommending approval and adopt the rezoning ordinance and resolution approving application 181609 and directing staff to file the CEQA notice of exemption with the clerk of the board. That concludes my presentation. Open it up to the board for questions or comments. I don't hear any. Open it up for the public. Thank you, we do have somebody. Good morning. Good morning. Hi, my name is Patty Murray and I am the manager of the Tollhouse Resort property. And I just wanted to say thank you to the planning department and to Daisy Allen for all of her hard work on this over such a long time. And also thank you to the board for your time and energy and efforts on this. And as the property manager, just wanna let you know that I will uphold the integrity of this ordinance if you give us the approval. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, any other comments? There are no web comments. Open it up for a motion. I would move to approve the recommended actions. Okay. Okay, I'll second it. I wanted to again repeat and thanks to freshly Daisy Allen for preparing these. We have my project for 39 units and Sturmbeter 3 edition to house it up to at least three of our county residents. So thank you again. Okay, we're ready for a world call. Supervisor Leopold. Aye. Friend. Aye. Gunertie. Aye. McPherson. Supervisor McLeary. Chair Caput. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. At this point, well, I'm welcoming back our county administrative officer, Carlos Palacios. Do you think we should have a 10 minute break right now or wait for the next item? It would be great to just push on through if we can. Yeah, we're fine to continue on. Okay. Yeah, we're good to continue on. Are you, can you- 10 minutes? Well, I think we could just continue on unless you want to take a break. No, I'm okay. Okay, let's just keep on going then. Keep on going, okay. Consider number 13. Consider contract with four leaf incorporated for professional services to provide CZU, Lightning Complex Fire Recovery Permit Processing Services and an amount not to exceed $6,260,000. Adopt a resolution accepting $766,957 in an unanticipated revenue from permit fees for comprehensive CZU Lightning Complex Fire Recovery Permit Services, approve a one-time transfer of $900,240 from the Contingency Fund to Planning Department FY Fiscal Year 2020-2021 budget to establish funding for the first year of services and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the Planning Director. Contracts, scope of services, payment and fee schedule, fee schedule and ADM 29 agreement for leaf resolution, AUD 74 for leaf contract. Thank you. Hi. Good morning, good morning board and very nice to see the CAO here for the first time. This item is a contract with four leaf incorporated. The county is very committed to providing integrated and dedicated expedited permit processing services for the rebuilding effort after the fire and a key strategy for doing that is working with a consulting firm that has very deep experience in exactly this sort of situation to help us manage and process this anticipated number of building permits that will be coming to us in a very compressed period of time. The number of destroyed residences and other buildings is above 900 and 400 structures respectively and that just cannot be accomplished without specialized resources that are matched to that particular task. The contract is in agreement with four leaf to set up and manage a separate recovery permit center that will be dedicated just to fire recovery related permits. Four leaf has developed their expertise working in similar settings to Santa Cruz County specifically in Sonoma County over more than one disaster. They also have worked in other jurisdictions including the fact that they are now running the Paradise Permit Processing and Recovery Effort which is well underway. While it's unfortunate that Four Leaf developed this expertise through the disaster, our county is going to benefit from having a firm that knows how to streamline processes and integrate reviews and inspections so that survivors have the best experience they can have given circumstances. They know what the survivors need and what staff has to do to meet those needs. The process in getting to this point is that we did do a request for qualifications not very long after the fire was over. We were directed by your board on September 15th to pursue a contract for these kinds of services. We had a set of interviews that were, we had two interviews with Four Leaf and the CAO's office, finance staff, planning, environmental health and Department of Public Works participated in those. And then an agreement was negotiated and that is what is before you today. So primarily Four Leaf is charged with setting up that separate recovery process, permit process center. It will be located downstairs in the community room at least until some point in the spring. I think we're going to benefit from having them in proximity to the planning department while we'll be having a lot of interaction with them at the beginning of their, the beginning of running the center. Four Leaf is charged with providing guidance, pre-application meetings, pre-application clearances and the goal is to take an application from clearance to intake through review and inspection. They are staffed with people who have various certifications. For example, they will have registered sanitarians to work on environmental health issues. They will have fire protection officers to work on fire access and other fire-related issues. And with this collection of people, including a chief building official who will also be a manager down there, they have the expertise to work on permit reviews that include the reviews for various departments. So we are well on the way to having a one-stop process. It's not a perfectly one-stop process because with the complexity, we do expect that Four Leaf will be consulting with environmental health staff on the more complicated septic issues. And they are committed to consulting with the fire agencies, especially with problems dealing with access and other site standards, well, other circumstances where site standards cannot be met when there's a substantial variance between what the applicants are able to accomplish toward the standards and what the minimum standard is. It is the fire agency that will retain the determination of whether alternative means and methods will allow some kind of mitigation. With those caveats and also the fact that geologic clearances are still going to be done by county geologic staff. And that's because they have the very local knowledge and expertise and our comfort level with them is very high. The geologic clearances will be done by the planning department. So we are close to a one-stop experience, but not perfectly. On the financial aspects of this contract, it's important to realize that Four Leaf is paid in one of two ways. They will be paid by a percentage of permit revenue. However, until the revenue is adequate to be able to pay for the minimum amount of staff to run the center, the county will pay a monthly minimum fee to Four Leaf. We expect that we will be paying that monthly minimum for some time, possibly the first year, and that at some point, the model of paying through a percentage of permit fees will start. There is a pattern of recovery that is typical for these kinds of circumstances. And usually the first year is when there's a lot of pre-application activity and coaching and applicants are working with their insurance agencies still. And the number of permit applications that actually come in is maybe around 15%. And that is what we're forecasting for our first year. The bulk of the applications tend to come in the second and third years. And really this is kind of an arc of recovery and building permits that's about a four-year plus process. The not to exceed amount of $6,260,000 is what the full 31 months would cost if we had to pay that monthly minimum fee. But as I noted, that's not typical and it's not the expected scenario. Rather we expect that over the course of the contract, the cost to the general fund and the revenue from permits will approximately balance. I will read into the record the recommended actions. One, approve contract with four leaf incorporated for professional services to provide CZU Lightning Complex fire recovery permit processing services in an amount not to exceed $6,260,000 and a term of November 11th through June 30th, 2023. November 11th, 2020 through June 30th, 23. Number two, authorize the planning director to sign the contract on behalf of the county and to approve amendments that do not revise the term or the not to exceed amount. Three, adopt a resolution accepting and appropriating unanticipated revenue in the amount of $766,957 from permit fees for comprehensive CZU Lightning Complex fire recovery permit services. And lastly, approve a one-time transfer of $900,240 from the general fund for the fiscal year 2020-21 that will come from budget contingency and an amendment to the planning department fiscal year 2020-21 budget to establish that funding for the first year of services. And of course we are available for questions. Oh, what? Mr. Chair, this is Ryan. I don't have a question right now but I do wanna just say I appreciate the planning staffs bringing this effort forward. We've heard from other counties this is a vitally important approach to getting people's homes rebuilt and getting people back on to their properties. And I also think that there's an opportunity as we have folks come in from outside the county to look at our process and see what we can learn in terms of what we do well and what we can do differently where we might be able to expedite for people who aren't fire victims but are just trying to build or remodel their homes in the future. So I think this is a good opportunity and I appreciate, you know, we've had a lot of conversations and rebuilding meetings and other meetings with planning staff about how this will be developed and spun up, spun out. And I appreciate the efforts that have brought it to the board today. Mr. Chair, Supervisor McPherson, I'd like to reiterate Supervisor Coonerty's comments. I think for LEAP has expertise in rebuilding and other disaster areas that's going to be vitally important. I am especially impressed with the pre-application guidance that we're going to be implementing for fire survivors to divide a pre-permit clearance for fire access and septics and geological hazards. These are areas that often obstruct making progress in a timely fashion and we've learned from other counties and their disasters how they go about this. I'm also really happy that, and I think the public should be too, that we're going to be tracking how for LEAP accomplishes the timeframe goals to help property owners rebuild. Predictability of the permitting process is going to be, has been missing for years, I think, in this county. I think the notion that the pre-application meetings and customer services goals are folded into four-leafs work will be extremely helpful in the process and make it more predictable in times timeframe and cost. In fact, I hope that these streamlining measures as Senator Coonerty mentioned, may someday be incorporated into the county's regular permitting process. I think we're going to have a tremendous learning experience and a successful learning experience in this effort and this time that we're going through in the aftermath of the fires. There was a few questions I had, some have been answered, I think, that planning staff on occasion will have to discuss with environmental health staff on some issues on permits and I think that was stated and if I'm incorrect in saying that, please correct me and I just, how important is it for the four-leaf employees to be knowledgeable about the counties that they serve in terms of geography and other environmental aspects? I think you said that the geologic oversight will be done by our own planning department and then one other, does four-leaf have a Spanish speaking staff and if not, how would the Spanish speakers be best served under those circumstances? Those are a couple of the questions I had and thank you for this. I'm looking forward to moving forward and helping the people that have been devastated by this fire that we've had. So you might answer those questions and after some other supervisor's comments but those are a few of the questions I had. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Any other comments, questions from the board? If not, yeah. No, I'm glad to see this moving forward. I think it's gonna be important to help people understand that some of the challenges of rebuilding are not gonna be on the county. I mean, when you talk about only 15% in that first year, it's not because of anything the county's doing. It's really the cleanup process and dealing with the insurance companies that resulted in that low uptick in that first year and then by the second and third year, that's when those claims get resolved and then allow some to continue correct. Yes, there are also people have to get with their design professionals and get their soils reports done and it's a process that takes people some time to work through. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Any comments from the public? A lot of them were 13. Good morning again, Chair Caput, members of the board. Jim Heaney, I'm the shop steward in the planning department. First I'd ask, could you turn the timer off? You know, when I come up here, I will not waste your time but my comments may go slightly beyond the time. So I appreciate that courtesy. You know, first off, you know, as a member of the planning department staff, we've been deeply engaged in this process with the public through this tragedy and in our hearts go out to the folks who have both as employees here at the county have suffered losses and employees here at the county who are now supporting our general community. The shirt I have on today has a theme together we rise and that's exactly how we feel about this situation that together we will work in unison with our community and with this contractor to make sure that our community has the best chance of recovery. What I would certainly like to make perfectly clear today is we do not oppose the movement on this contract. We support the idea that we're gonna be overwhelmed here and we're gonna need support from an organization like Forleaf which I know very well, being a building plans to examiner, being a building inspector. These are contractors I've dealt with throughout my career. But what I do definitely want to say and make clear to the board today is this truly is a unique situation and it's an all hands on deck situation. And what I mean by that is right now, the members of your planning department are on a furlough. Right now they're expected to work 92% of their normal workload because that's what their money, that's how their pay has been affected and you will hear from personnel, for example, that they don't wanna take us off a furlough because there's cost savings involved in a furlough. And I can absolutely guarantee you, of course there's cost savings. When $295 each pay period is not in my paycheck, that's a cost savings. But how are those cost savings created or organized, generated in a sense that what was the goal of them? The goal was because we anticipated lower revenues. Well, as you've heard and we all anticipate, the revenue stream is gonna be much different over the next several years to, in the sense of permit costs. So we do ask that you seriously consider the CAO's office seriously considers removing members of the planning department from the furlough because we need to be there 100% of the time. We need to be there for our community. We need to be there as individuals. Again, would you suspend that please? Thank you. You know, we need to be there for our community and having folks work less time and a time when everybody needs to be there full time just doesn't make sense in a way to support our community. This is not a simple request. It's gonna be a complicated conversation but we need to be a droid as government and actually be able to accomplish the needs of our community. I appreciate your time. And again, you know, what's coming to me is people saying, well, if they're gonna have a contractor, why aren't I back at full time? So thank you. Any other public comments? Yes, we have one web comment from Bob Berlage. The County is contracting with Forleaf Incorporated for professional services to provide CCU Lightning Complex Fire Recovery Permit Processing Services. What course will be available to homeowners seeking to rebuild if the homeowners run into difficulties with Forleaf? Will landowners be able to take their concerns to the planning department or must disagreements be worked out solely with Forleaf? And that is the end of public comment. There were a couple of questions. One, some from Supervisor McPherson in that last one. Maybe it would be, it would be great if you could address some of those. Certainly. I believe the first question was about the importance of the contractor having local understanding of Santa Cruz County in order to do their work. And I would say that that is critically important. And the Forleaf has, I think luckily enough, their experience in Sonoma is somewhat translatable to Santa Cruz County. They have similar geography, similar policy challenges having to do with septic systems and road access. Forleaf has been here on the ground attending all of the public town forums and doing fieldwork, learning the ordinances. And so they are developing for themselves that local understanding. And I agree that it's absolutely critical both on a technical level and they need to understand our culture and what the expectations are of the applicants that they'll be working with. So they are on their way to developing what they need to do. The one exception is that we are most comfortable keeping the geologic work with the county geologic staff. And so that is what we have arranged. Your question about Spanish and bilingual services. We do have, in the beginning, Forleaf will rely on planning staff resources there. And that's another reason the proximity is very helpful. If it turns out that there is a moderate or high demand for that, Forleaf has indicated they have the ability to add bilingual people to their staff. We will produce the key outreach materials also in Spanish. And planning always has simultaneous translation when there's a public meeting. To respond to the public comment, Forleaf really their job is to function as an extension of the county and the county planning department. And we will be working very closely. And I believe I'll be spending a significant chunk of my time in the recovery permit center. So any grievances or difficulties will be worked on by local planners from the planning department. Forleaf is not operating as a free agent here. They're implementing the county's rules and regulations. All right, thank you. Question, comments? Well, Chair, it seems like it's worthwhile that maybe when we do the mid-year budget review to address this question about staffing and the timing of it, right? Because I think as we've heard in this presentation is that there's not expected to be an initial rush. But it'd be good to look at that timing and link up to the question about staffing and have that come back at the mid-year budget report to ascertain whether you have enough planning staff to be able to work with Forleaf staff to make sure that folks are getting everything they need as soon as they can. So I would make the move the recommended actions with the addition about this report back at the mid-year budget report. I'll second. And I'll just add a little bit of additional information. I agree with Supervisor Leopold's comments because the board has during the process of the furloughs worked on be it sanitation, which was obviously its own enterprise or cannabis, which had its own revenue stream in the worlds where there is cost neutrality. The goal here is to really try and save money for the county during this time of economic downturn. So it makes sense to get a report back at that time during the mid-year budget. I'm supportive of Supervisor Leopold's additional direction. We can do the roll call, I think. Supervisor Leopold. Aye. Friend. Aye. Duneer T. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Chair Caput. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. We'll go to item number 14, consider status report on rebuilding permit assistance efforts, including discussion and direction regarding potential approaches to permitting. Hold on one second and we might have lost. Yeah, I agree. I think we might need to take a few minutes just to get them back, right? Okay. Do we lose them all? We're good. Okay. Continue on then. You can continue. Okay. Unpermitted site structures proposed for reconstruction in the CZU burn areas and adopt a resolution amending the uniform fee schedule to establish certain fee adjustments for reconstruction in the burn area as outlined in the memorandum of the planning director resolution Shester County limited density ordinance fee information worksheets and fee changes table CZU. Thank you. Good morning, Chair Caput. Members of the board and the public. I'm Kathy Malloy the planning director and you'll recall that the last time the planning department was before you on a kind of a comprehensive overview of the CZU fire situation. I'm sorry they're commenting that the sound is not working. So sorry about that interruption, but. Does it what? Hit the escape on the keyboard. Tastink and you got people on teams here at chambers now. Yes, now I can. Thank you. Take two. One second. Thank you. All right. So the last time the planning department was before the board on a kind of a comprehensive overview of the CZU fire situation was September 15th. And at that time you directed us to return with the contract item that we just completed to hire a consultant to staff the recovery permit center. And you also asked us to put some more thought into how to deal with unpermitted structures and whether there were any fee adjustments that would be warranted. So this won't do it. So we just went through the four leaf contract with a very experienced consultant coming on to operate the recovery permit center in the basement community room here at 701 Ocean Street, two and a half year contract with a lot of flexibility with regard to staffing and the services that they'll offer. Since in the last three months since the fire, most of the effort has gone on to getting ready and dealing with the immediate aftermath of the disaster. And so the phases that people have been engaged with so far are making their claims, gathering information. We've all learned that the phase one hazardous material removal and debris removal, I think maybe took a little bit longer than some people might have expected. The public option for phase two is anticipated to start December 1st. We've also recognized that in terms of the temporary housing accommodations permits that we kind of initially thought we thought that we would be able to get those going very, very quickly. And we came to realize that in fact, the phase two debris removal does need to be complete before we can consider issuance of any temporary housing permits in the burn area. We are ready and able and have refined our materials for posting on the website. I think later today, at least this week for temporary to consider temporary housing permits outside of the burn area as well. We've lowered the fee from when we talked about it last time, I think we were talking on the order of $500. And then we started to get a lot of questions about what about temporary power poles or permanent replacements of poles and the temporary permit. So essentially the fee recommendation that's regarding that's before you today regarding temporary items is recommending a $327 fee. And that would cover the zoning clearance, geologic clearance and a site inspection of any temporary housing accommodations and the temporary power pole would be included within that. So we think that's a reasonable cost to get someone up there to a building inspector to inspect the installation to make sure things are safe. The item that's before you in the written materials, we've, I won't go through it all in this presentation but we did get a lot of frequently asked questions from people about how to obtain a temporary housing permit and what's involved. And so I encourage people to read over that report. It's posted on the Board of Supervisors agenda website. And also we're getting a fair number of frequently asked questions about permanent rebuilding and some of the most frequent are, how important is it that I match what I had before or that I not exceed the size of that house by more than 10% or that I remain in more or less the same footprint. And the answer to that question is unless there are special environmental conditions that really affect that development, you're advised to go ahead and pursue the project that you want and can afford rather than to artificially constrain the reconstructed house to a not more than 10% greater. It's the same building permit process will be in effect and for most situations that does not, it's not gonna change substantially if you're a bit larger house. Then the second very frequent question is, is it okay to include a new ADU on my site or is that gonna complicate my project? And we want the message to go out that we do include, encourage ADUs that are essentially considered part of a single family home, even if it's built as a detached structure. And as we stated previously within the CZU burn area, even though your primary house doesn't exist at the seventh time, and that's typically a requirement, in the burn area, we will allow for an owner to say, this is an ADU, I'm building it first before I do my reconstruction project. And you may have to develop or designate your development envelope for where that future primary structure is gonna go, but we will process and allow you to build an ADU first. So now onto the key, keep going backwards. The key topic of this particular item is to discuss what options there might be for how to approach sites that had unpermitted development, unpermitted structures within the burn area. So we're gonna go through basically four different approaches. And so those are summarized here. One is just meet the regular code. Another is we've got the acronyms going here. So one is the LOSP, which is basically conferring legal non-conforming status to pre-1986 development. Another we're calling FAIRP, which is an improvement reconstruction program that involves offsite, in lieu mitigation programmatic approach. And then the fourth is, I'm calling it a ELDO bird, limited density owner builder rural dwellings. And that's based on state law that's been around since 1980. And some communities are making more recent use of it. It's quite flexible in terms of building code compliance. And it's most recently used by Shasta County. So, why do we need to spend so much time talking about how are we gonna approach the unpermitted sites, sites that have been previously unpermitted? And that's mostly because they mostly had situations that were difficult to address. And that sometimes drove people to not get a permit in the first place that can oftentimes have to do with inadequate road access. So they don't meet access or fire code standards for access to the site. It could be that there were geologic concerns that can be expensive, not only to find out about, but to mitigate if there is some significant geologic hazards that affect the site. And then also septic systems. There may have been some constraints or lack of resources or what have you that caused people to think that they wouldn't be able to meet the septic requirements. And so they built without a permit. So they tend to be complicated situations then. Now sometimes though, someone just philosophically doesn't really wanna deal with the regulatory agencies and obtaining a building permit and getting inspections. And so they think they can go ahead and do that without and sometimes they do. But there may not have been any technical reason for why they couldn't have just gone ahead, gotten a permit, met the standard, and built. And so the first option is always going to be that we build to the current code. And if you truly can't meet current code standards, then we consider these potential approaches to unpermitted sites. So what we're calling the loss program is basically we would be conferring legal non-conforming status to sites that can document, get a county assessor's records, for instance, that show that there was development on that site prior to 1986. And we would basically just confer status as legal non-conforming. This is how we already treat sites that were developed before 1956. 1956 is when the county first adopted building and zoning code. So before that time, everything was considered legal. What does that do for you if you get to achieve or be looked at as a legal non-conforming? What that mostly means is that the zoning non-conformities that you had prior to the four to the fire could be recreated. That could even include density. So if you don't meet current density standards or you had two or three homes on a parcel and which didn't meet density requirements, but you can show that they were there before 1986, we would treat that as legal non-conforming density. Same thing with setbacks or anything else. So that's what that status would mostly achieve for people. However, when the project itself, the structure that someone proposes to build does need to meet current code. And aspects like septic compliance, road access, geologic safety, et cetera, would need to meet current code. So that option one, primarily is a zoning accommodation. Option two, we're calling the fair, the fire area improvement reconstruction. And that is, oh, let me just double back. On option one, staff is, we are recommending that the board go ahead and direct us today that we put that into effect. The next two options are what we, staff requires some direction. We'd like some public feedback. That's gonna require yet more discussion with affected agencies, permitting agencies, regarding the feasibility. But option two is basically where we know that certain sites can't meet all requirements as a single individual project, that there are neighborhood or community level constraints that require participation by numbers or that are expensive. And so people are gonna need to get together and apply for grants or share the cost, maybe even form an assessment district to achieve the safe road access or a way to provide power supply or water storage for fire code reasons or anything else. So that is really, if the board were interested in this approach, we probably wouldn't be able to start that until early next year given everything else that's going on and getting the Recovery Permit Center operating, a lot of focus these days on the debris flow hazard and getting ready to respond to that if needed, et cetera. But sometime in the early part of next year we could do some neighborhood and community outreach, talk with agencies. What we really need to do is diagnose just what the problems are and what are some options for addressing the constraints. So the last option is one that we didn't mention a couple of months ago or just finding out more about it. And that was what I mentioned. It's a limited density owner-builder rural dwellings ordinance. It's part of the California Health and Safety Code. It's been around since about 1980. Originally it was meant for kind of alternate houses, artistic and creative. I won't call them hippie houses but maybe that's how some people might call them. It was back in that era and so Mendocino County adopted an ordinance at that time. It was mostly in pretty far flung rural areas where that was adopted but it wasn't used very often. But Sonoma County has now adopted some provisions. They have a 20 acre minimum for what they call rural. And Shasta County has adopted an ordinance. And there is no minimum acreage size in Shasta County. They basically just say it's available within the burn area. What we've to date staff has been hearing is that residents of the last chance area in Bonnie Dune have been looking into this and contemplating whether they might request that the board make it available for that, for their area. And what I'll note in that program is that it's really for the home structures themselves. In Shasta County, for instance, rather than current building code, your owners are authorized to use the 1997 building code for structural and et cetera reasons. But they do have to meet current electrical plumbing, mechanical and septic standards. It also does not address the road access or geology, some of the more bigger picture situations that can be complicated. So for an area like last chance, which potentially could be a pilot program for the county, just to figure out whether it's appropriate. We could just try a pilot program. And that might, you might want to explore pairing this type of approach with the prior fairp approach, which is the offsite programmatic in lieu neighborhood level problem solving that would also occur. So that an overview of the potential approaches to unpermitted construction. This slide might look a little familiar. It's a refinement of what we showed a couple of months ago in terms of the permit fees. You have a resolution before you today, which would establish some adjustments that would be applicable in the CZU burn area. If the fees are not listed on the adjusted fee chart for CZU, that means that the standard regular fees would apply. So in this, as we developed the four leaf contract, we realized that in order to pay them and cover costs, we would need to charge regular building processing, building plan check and building inspection fees. So the items that are being not charged, and that's in your resolution to authorize us not to have to charge the general plan update and implementation fees. So that's a 7% savings. We would, we would, we were establishing one a fee we're calling the county environmental technical support fee. And so rather than a soils report review, you know, small project grading review, winter grading reviews, and any of a number of host of other environmental related reviews that might otherwise occur. Instead, we're just charging one fee for the consolidated review of what might be going on with any given site and would cover the small grading, winter grading and things like that. We're reducing the zoning plan check. We're rather than flat fees for the public works related reviews. The four leaf consultants will charge in 15 minute increments for any plan check of those types of things that they might have to do. And so it won't be routing to DPW, won't be routing to drainage. Four leaf will be provided the technical standards that they'll be reviewing against and they'll just charge in 15 minute increments for how long it takes them to perform that. All in all, the under the recommended fee approach, there's about a 30% reduction in fees from what it would typically be charged for a reconstruction permit. If you were to include impact fees, which also would not apply in the burn area, that would be a really a 50% reduction in the level of fees that's charged. So that concludes my report. We, the recommendation is that you direct us to go ahead and implement the legacy older structures program to confer legal non-performing status for sites documented to and been developed before 1986. And that you discuss and provide further direction regarding the fire area improvement reconstruction program and or the limited density owner built rural dwellings that Shasta County was provided in your packet as an example and provide, discuss and provide direction to staff on what level of interest you might have in spending staff resources to look further to work with agencies and neighborhoods to consider whether either or both of those might be feasible. And then lastly that you adopt the resolution amending the uniform fee schedule to adjust fees charged by the recovery permit center for burn area reconstruction projects. That concludes my presentation. I don't have any questions, but maybe my colleagues, Supervisor McPherson or Supervisor Coonerty have questions. Yes, this is Supervisor McPherson. I really appreciate the effort that you've made for those to help those streamline our permit process. I'm really impressed with the approaches here to help property owners who are having their older homes or challenging building sites especially. The report gives I think a pretty clear explanation of some of the complexities of the rebuilding process for these property owners. The objects that face them, I think each property owner is gonna have to find out what special issues they have, whether it be geological hazards or water and power or septic issues as well as the road issues that will have to be addressed by fire departments. But I believe the options outlined here are a very good start and maybe I hope much of what we need in the end, but we might not meet some refinements on major issues in the future. But a couple of other things that I do appreciate in particular, I like that we're allowing ADUs to be built before the main rebuilds take place. I think this is gonna be an important way for folks to live on a site where their homes are being rebuilt and then hopefully provide additional affordable housing later. Also, I appreciate allowing homeowners to pay their plan check fees at the end of the process and that overall we're lowering the fees by 30%. We've had members of the public raise concerns about fees. And I think this is a really good time to just remind everyone that we are simply covering our costs. We have to have personnel to process these applications and this is where we have landed. And I think it's a fair and reasonable way that we are approaching it. I do have several questions. If I don't know if you'd wanna answer them when maybe I'll go ahead. I mean, I know that Ryan, Supervisor Coonerty may have some, but regarding the near term geological hazards, do you know how many properties are covered under that distinction and will not be given clearance? And how do we plan to accommodate those property owners in hotels or shelters or wherever? But my first question of about a half a dozen. Do we, how many properties are covered by the near term geological hazards? Do you have an estimate of that? We do. There's been some fair amount of assessment of properties at risk of debris flow hazard within the burn area. And the sites that had burned structures that are in that status is about 260. And so of the 911 burned homes, about 260 seem to be located in the debris flow hazard area. We have created a geologic clearance process with using county geologic staff to, when we get an application for a temporary housing accommodation in the burn area, we need to check it, see if it's cleared. And all but about 260 we expect would receive that geologic clearance. But we really don't think it's wise to set up. You know, there might be some concerns. I'm not gonna say that it's impossible, but there might be some concerns about temporary housing in those 260 sites that are directly affected by the debris flow hazard. As I understand, and why is a septic required for temporary housing on property? If that housing is an RV, would it make sense to require it's an actual structure? For an actual structure, that would make sense. But why RVs? Could they have regularly service port-of-potties or something of that nature? I'm not sure whether Dr. Underwood is on the line, but what we've heard environmental health say in the past, or in the room, okay. I heard in the past is that in actuality, it's not that difficult to go ahead and connect up the RV or your temporary situation to your septic. And in fact, that ends up being easier than trying to drive off the site every three days to pump out or have a service to port-of-potties over one, two, three years. However long that your situation's gonna last. So Marilyn might want to expand on that answer, but what we've said, been told, is that it's probably not as significant of an obstacle as some people may fear it is. And it ends up being the least cost, most effective, you know, most time effective method for if you're gonna be up there for a year or two in that status. I don't know if she's going to be. Well, I'll see if Dr. Underwood wants to add anything. Hi, Marilyn Underwood. You did a great job, Kathy, summarizing. And basically folks have a septic system there. You think about it, it hasn't had a load for a while. Hooking back up to it is fairly easy to do. And really is over the long haul gonna be a much better option for folks to use the septic system to treat their sewage than driving off or even contracting. We don't think a service provider will actually probably even want to service something, a smaller tank like that on a continuing basis. Thank you. And why is there a limit of six months for parking RVs and driveways? Don't we have people storing their RVs all over the county at this point? So there's not a hard six month limits. What we thought that might be appropriate for is outside of the burn area. Say in the more urban, more densely developed areas, if you're at your friend or your family's house and you're parking your RV in their driveway, that that might get old in certain neighborhoods to have an RV there year after year or right next to your driveway. It might be appropriate in some locations. So basically at this point, we're putting out guidance that says that outside of the burn area, an initial temporary housing accommodation in somebody's driveway, we would give for six months, see how it goes. And then there is certainly the possibility of extending that term. Okay, thank you. How does the master riparian exception permit work within the Fish and Wildlife requirements? So the Fish and Wildlife has an emergency provision that allows for reconstruction after declared disaster within one year. And the owner only just has to provide notification. We've also crafted some riparian exception conditions of approval that meet many of the standard conditions of other permitting agencies. So that we're hoping to streamline the approval of the Regional Water Quality Control Board or Army Corps of Engineers or California Department of Fish and Wildlife if those agencies need to get involved as well. So what I'm told by my environmental staff is that California Department of Fish and Wildlife has an emergency notifications for this type of work. And they need to let that agency know that they've started work within 15 days. So that's a streamlining process. The other agencies don't necessarily have any explicit streamlining provisions, but they've expressed the intention to our environmental staff that they will prioritize those and process them more quickly than non-disaster time frames. Okay, again, and my second to last question is why not have for leaf handle the coordination of rebuilding where there's under permitted structures stood, are we putting that over to staff because it's more complicated and our current staff know more of the zoning code and so forth? Well, as we just reviewed, we've got some options for, we're not even clear really on what the policy is going to be for processing permits in previously unpermitted areas. The pre-1956 developed sites, those can go to for leaf because that's, we just, we consider them legal. They're very old and hopefully they'll be pretty straightforward. The ones that are, if your board in fact does direct us to treat pre-1986 as legal non-conforming, the reason the planning department staff wants to do those is we've got the relationships with other agencies because as I said, under that approach, it might, it's going to get a property owner some benefit potentially in terms of zoning compliance, but there still might be some other obstacles and so working with the fire departments or DPW or environmental health, we have the relationships, we know the geography, we know the permit process deeply and it feels like we're going to be able to be in a better problem solving mode than for leaf, at least initially. We did set up the for leaf contract that would allow us to go ahead and assign that work to them after all, but we're trying to balance as one of your public commenters said, Mr. Heaney from the planning department, we're trying to balance also making sure that the workloads remain in appropriately distributed to existing staff, not only just our consultant extension of staff and so we feel like we're best prepared to handle the more complicated projects, at least initially, and that's why we propose to keep them. And last, can you explain the difference between the very into standards on required septic repairs? Will brand new systems be required to meet the highest standards while repairs of existing systems only need to meet what was there before or how does that work? So in the burn area, we do have in our current ordinance a calamity section. So for rebuilds of like, what I'll say like for like, meaning same size bedrooms, we're going to look at historically to see how their septic was functioning because we have records from both complaints and septic pumping and we can look to see was it pumping well, then they can go ahead and build like for like three bedroom. In some cases, they will have to look at setbacks according to the ordinance, they will have to meet some setbacks to streams and to their neighbor's wells that are more current standards. And so that might require some creative working, like working on if they own the next door property, that's also small, working with that and maybe putting the septic on that. In some cases, they will have to do ad enhanced treatment to be able to meet the current setbacks. And again, on septic, remember, what we're protecting here is not just that person's well if they use well water, right? But we're protecting their neighbor's well, we're protecting the water that becomes our drinking water for the San Lorenzo Valley Water District for the city of Santa Cruz. So it's a greater issue here that, and we know now we have nitrates in the groundwater in San Lorenzo Valley, we've been under that concern for a while. We also have pathogens in our San Lorenzo Valley, San Lorenzo River water during the winter from septics. So what we're trying to do over time is start to apply these new standards that say, unfortunately, we have to be able to clean up the septic before it gets to our streams, before it gets into our groundwater. And so some of these systems, yes, we'll have to, even if they're billing like for like, we'll have to do some modifications. If you're planning an upgrade, meaning more bedrooms, then you will need to look at and we'll treat you as an upgrade in somebody that comes to us from even outside the burn area, looking at what your, excuse me, what's your septic will have to size, whether it's adequate sizing for that or whether or not you'll have to do some improvements to that system to adequately address the larger number of bedrooms. Yeah. That's well, thank you for that explanation. I appreciate it. That's all the questions I have for now, Mr. Chair, and thank you for your patience. Thank you. Any others, any other questions from the board? I don't, as a supervisor, Coonerty, I don't have any questions. I just want to make a couple of comments before we get to a motion. And the first is I want to appreciate staff's work on this. I think I appreciate the way with both the PG&E and temporary power, as well as the ADUs. We've been adaptable to people's questions and trying to meet their needs, where they are to help them rebuild. I do support piloting a program in the last chance area to see if we can help them rebuild under the class K option. And hopefully I can add that to a motion later on. Finally, I know that there was a tremendous desire for us to waive all the fees. And I want to appreciate the staff's effort to significantly reduce the fees and reduce the costs on people. There is a trade-off that we're making, which is to by charging fees, we create capacity to get people through the system faster, so that they can get back into their home sooner. And so we're trying to have that balance between having the resources available to help people, but not having the resources be so much that it precludes people from being able to rebuild. And then finally, as we move forward, I appreciate that we're keeping the unpermitted structures with the county or rebuilding of unpermitted structure with the county. I do think there's evidence that if we make our, if we make it too complicated, people will rebuild without permits. And so again, it's a fine line of trying to make sure people are rebuilding in safe, environmentally compatible ways, but also and having them go through the system and be in our system. And so as we move forward, we're gonna have to try to find that right line in order to meet our goals. But I wanna thank staff for their work on this. They've put in a lot of time and effort over the last couple of months to not only respond to concerns, but to build a system going forward. And I think they've brought forward a good proposal. Okay, thank you. Open it up for public comment. Yes, my name is Don Harris. I'm a long-term resident of last chance, 45 years. I was the last chance representative on the Alternative Building Standards Committee back in 78 to 80, which was the precursor to this. And I wanna, everything I've heard today has been very, very favorable, I find that the real purpose of that, the spirit of it was not so much, it was hippie housing, I guess, but the principle was simple living that we were beginning to do too much of the earth. So could we live in a simpler way, smaller, simpler, not less safe, but simpler, and use less resources and do less environmental damage. And that was the intent. It was never any particular set of rules. It was a continually changing thing depending on what needed to be done. It would be different now than it was then. What I've heard here is reasonable. I find, I look forward, and a number of us due to working with you to make this work for us and for everybody, because I think there's great benefit to come from looking at fresh ways of doing things. I wanna particularly stress a favorability toward compost toilets. I have 40 years of direct experience. At the time we pressed for that before, it was somewhat theoretical and it was a little bit unknown how it would work on a broad scale. Well, I've had two of them for 40 years, and I've learned a lot about it. They're much more widely used now around the country largely by public agencies. And there are things, they couldn't even be improved. There's management questions, there are a lot of things that are gonna have to be worked out. But one thing I can say, as an incidental, the fire, which had burned everything, it burned both of those compost toilets to the ground, and there was absolutely nothing left in or out of them. So that's one positive. Anyway, thank you for your attention and we look forward to working with you. Thank you. My name is Becky Steinbruner. I live in rural Aptos. I'm grateful that my area was not threatened by the fire and my heart goes out to all of those who have lost so much. I appreciate the county's planning department taking a fresh look at this with the Class K and the Shasta County ordinances. And I encourage the board to adopt it as the last chance community as a trial for this, what I consider very progressive and compassionate and realistic ordinance. So I really like that the ordinance from Shasta County begins with the purpose to support the people's constitutional right. Article one, section one, to protect and preserve and enjoy their property while not harming anybody around them or the environment. That we all need to take to heart. And I appreciate that very much. I want to ask how tiny homes would be accommodated in this. They're not technically not like an RV, but it is a tiny home. What about people bringing in tough sheds as an ADU? They're put together, they're very quick, they're relatively inexpensive. How would this allow for things like that? I wanna say that this county really needs to re-institute the building and fire code appeal board that was taken away from the people who had done very good work in giving people an appeals process before a board of construction industry professionals that was taken away and now your board is that appeal board. That makes no sense. So let's please re-institute the building and fire code appeal board appointing very knowledgeable people like perhaps the man that just was here to help people find ways alternative that are safe, habitable, and will do no harm, but are different than what the code would make them do. I encourage you allowing Forleaf to take more of this burden rather than less. Hearing that the county planning staff is familiar with the relationships and things is all well and good, but you've just verified in approving the $6.2 million contract with Forleaf that they are comfortable with local things. We have heard that the county planning staff is overburdened. We have heard this county wants to support affordable housing, that is outside of the fire. Let's let them focus on that and these experienced Forleaf people expedite. Thank you. We have two web comments. Okay. The first one is from Malaya Powell. Thank you board of supervisors for considering these measures for assisting those homeowners in the burn zone rebuild. I'm a resident of the community of last chance. Those of us whose homes have burned need all the help we can get. We asked the board of supervisors to implement all three of these plans for rebuilding non-conventional homes in the burn area. I asked that the board work with the affected communities to create a limited density ordinance that works for our communities. Last chance is a unique community that has been a part of Santa Cruz, approximately 40 years. We are caretakers of our environment and we care deeply about the forest in which we live. Our community was sustainable and self-reliant for 40 years. Now the fire has destroyed our homes. Excuse me. The second comment, I'm gonna start the timer on because it's kind of long. It's from Forest Martinez McKinney. Board of supervisors, thank you for considering the rebuilding complexities faced by the victims of the CZU lightning complex fire. I'm pleased to see your staff working extensively and taking a detailed approach. Please continue to direct staff to collaborate with residents as we work to craft of flexible regulations and affordable fees for rebuilding. As a lifelong resident of the last chance road who has lost everything, I attest to the unique and endearing character of our community and the individuals who reside there. Over the decades, we have faced policies that prevented our legal status. Despite those challenges, we have built a strong community who has stewarded the land and we have contributed wholeheartedly to the vibrance of the Santa Cruz County. Most residents of last chance have spent their careers contributing to nearly every trade and profession in Santa Cruz for generations, including healthcare, education, construction, administration, engineering, public service and the technical trades. In the wake of the CZU fire, I am reading language from the county that offers hope for a fresh and nuanced approach to our dire situation. Compassion and patience on both sides of the counter will support best possible timelines and results. This is truly an appreciated step in the right direction. I am writing to support adoption of an alternative rural owner built buildings to ensure rebuilding meets the minimum needs for safety while allowing residents to return to their homes. Many counties already have adopted versions of this code and Santa Cruz County should follow their lead for rebuilding in the CZU fire zone. At the same time, I am concerned by the staunch opposition of your staff to alternative means of waste processing while many sites and land owners will choose to implement a more conventional means of waste disposal such as septic tanks. A small minority would consider alternatives such as composting. Home composting systems were not ambiguous and while not ambiguous are used in many places both in California and internationally. While unconventional, this is a progressive and innovative approach that should be explored in detail and nuanced in its application for low density, rural residents within the current footprint. I am requesting that the board direct staff to remain flexible and open to exploring the benefits and applicability of composting toilets. As a county who provides itself, who prides itself on being at the forefront of sustainability, we owe it to ourselves and future generations to remain open to this concept. In summary, our community has thrived for multiple generations and will again. I would caution the county not to deem our community undevelopal as these parcels have been inhabited for many years. These homes have survived the 1982 and 2016-17 storms with more access, reliability in the San Lorenzo Valley. Further, our community survived the 89 earthquake with no damage. Policies designed. Three minutes. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, no other comments or we'll bring it back to the board. This is Supervisor McPherson. I think I would like to move the recommended actions and provide some additional direction that the Office of Response Recovery and Resiliency conduct additional research into the Fire Area Improvement Reconstruction Program, as I think it's called. Approach and report back to the board with more information as to its feasibility and utility for implementation. I don't know the timeline on that, but I would like to, I think it'd be important to have a report back on that and also to approve the development of the, was it quote, limited density owner built rural dwellings ordinance or rural areas that meet certain criteria and report back to the board regarding the criteria to be met for approval of that. I'm not sure how the timeline on that that the planning departments had plenty to do, but those are two additional directions that I would like to put into the motion for approval of this and thank you the planning department for its thorough review and proposal that it's brought to us today. I'll second. We have a motion and a second with the revisions. Yeah, this is Supervisor Coonerty and I'd just like to add if it's okay with the maker and the second that last chance be a be considered for a pilot for the limited density owner bill for rural dwellings. I accept that. Well, thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. I'll call for the vote. Yeah. Supervisor Leopold. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Chair Caput. Aye. The motion passes unanimously. We should take a little break here before we go to item number 15, right? And then we have closed session, correct? Yes. Do we take a 10 minute break or do we go straight into the closed session? Okay, so we could take a 10 minute break go into closed session and then come back at 1.30 for the last item. Is that what you prefer? That'll be fine. Okay. I don't know how long the COVID item is gonna take. I don't suspect that we have a very long agenda. So if the board is willing to just finish the items on the agenda today, then we take a 10 minute break before we go into closed session. You know, I just... Yeah, I think we have about probably 30 minutes total for the rest of the agenda. So why don't we just continue on with the agenda and then we'll take a 10 minute break and then go to closed session. Okay. So the next item then would be the item 15. Okay, so we'll go right into 15? Yeah, we'll go through, we'll go through. Power through. Okay, presentation, item 15, presentation and status report on the coronavirus relief fund programs as outlined in the memorandum of the County Administrative Officer, CRF status update attachment A and update attachment B and C. Thank you. Hi. All right. Good. Almost afternoon. I believe Christina Mallory is gonna start us off at this presentation. Okay. Yes. Good afternoon, Chair Caput, members of the board. I'm Christina Mallory, your County Budget Manager and I'm here in the chambers there. There's Eric Friedrich, one of our senior analysts who's championing this coronavirus relief virus fund project and working closely with the departments as we administer the program. So I believe we have a PowerPoint coming up. Yeah, it's up, Christina. Oh, I can't see it. Christina. Oh, there it goes. Now I see it. Okay. So we're just gonna give you, next slide. We're just gonna give you a brief background, an overview and give you an update on each of the categories and the spending on the NC if you have any questions. So as your board may recall, in response to COVID-19, the federal government passed the CARES Act. It was about $150 billion and created the Corona Virus Relief Fund, which we commonly know as CRF, to states in large cities to assist with the financial impacts of the health pandemic. The state of California received $9.5 billion and they chose to allocate $1.3 billion to counties and cities within the state as part of their budget process in June. When that was passed, our county received $27.7 million of that funding. And the expenses are to be used to address the financial impacts. They have to be necessary expenditures incurred due to COVID-19 and that we're not accounted for in our budget at the time that we received the funds, which was during the 1920 or the 1920 budget. And all the expenses incurred have to occur between March 1st of 2020 and end on December 30th. So are the immediate costs that were incurred March through June of this year were about $6.7 million. And due to the receiving of the funding, we were able to reimburse ourselves for our costs associated with our disaster service worker costs, public health and medical costs and the costs incurred setting up social distancing compliance. And then we had about $20.9 million left over, which your board, we gathered information from the departments and your board adopted a plan in August as a part of the budget for costs for July through December. And we've been providing your board updates each board meeting on the outcome of the progress. So we have been filing our state reports. We filed our first report in September. This was the cycle one report with the state. That was for the March through June costs. And then we filed our cycle two report at the beginning of October. And those were for costs for July through September. Now, one of the things that did occur is we received a report from the state the beginning of October before we filed our cycle two report. And they let us know that they anticipated based on their original guidance to us to be in compliance that they wanted all of our expenses the majority of them spent by the end of September. We knew this, but we also knew that we had a plan through December. So we, when your board adopted the plan, we had a backup plan in the event the state was going to ask for this type of compliance. And so we used our public safety costs as eligible expenses to claim the funding. So that way your board can, we can stay we can stay in compliance with what your board approved with the funds that were allocated through December and not be in jeopardy of having the state claw any of that back. And they accepted our report in October and we'll file our final report make any minor changes and adjustments as needed. The beginning of January and that will be our cycle three report. And now I'm going to turn it over to Eric and he's going to go into some of the details. All right, thanks Christina. I'm happy to take over from here. The CRF program is sectioned into six program categories as defined by the state. We'll be presenting a high level progress of each category and reporting on some highlights of the various projects and programs when within each section of details on the individual projects or programs can be found on attachment A of the corresponding board memo. So this is an overview of how the CRF funds were distributed amongst the six categories. The CRF plan is designed to support, augment medical and public health efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus, provide targeted economic support to local businesses and nonprofits, enhance county operations in terms of social distancing and provide some reimbursement for county costs for disaster response. We'll start with medical expenses. This category supports the county's efforts toward testing, contact tracing and targeted outreach. As of October 31st, CRF funds in this category are 76% spent or encumbered. Some highlights of this category include strategic partnerships with Salud Palajante and UC Santa Cruz to increase testing. UCSC is providing lab space. Salud is doing contact tracing and case investigation. Within the county, we now have 49 case investigators and 14 contact tracers. The CRF funds are also used to target outreach and education to the Hispanic community. As the data has shown, a disproportionate impact to these communities. I'd like to take a moment to show you an example here. My commercial is airing down in South County and was provided for by CRF funds and with our community partners. For public health expenses, this category supports the shelter and care operations including non-congregate and isolation quarantine shelters. It supports the food distribution, including partnerships with Second Harvest and it's the local match for the Great Plates Program. Lastly, this category is home to the county's efforts in PPE and sanitization efforts in county facilities. Funds in this category are about 54% spent. Some of the health programs include the continuation of the shelter and care operations which currently has 681 residents. It's helped support the Great Plates Program which has provided over 109,000 meals to local seniors and other qualified individuals. We've installed a hands-free body temperature scanner at the county jail to fortify the jail from outbreaks. We've doubled our cleaning and sanitation services to county parks which has the father of an almost three-year-old who thinks Leo's Haven is her dominion. That's really helpful. And we've distributed over 260 cases of PPE to county staff and to county facilities. The payroll category is designed to reimburse the county for payroll expenses related to disaster service workers, administration, and unemployment costs all due to the pandemic. While it doesn't look like much is happening according to the progress bar, it is our intention to draw down these funds in their entirety by December 30th. The county has deployed over 500 DSWs since March. The 2021 CRF plan estimates that we'll be able to reimburse $936,000 in DSW costs. And we believe we're on track to even exceed that number. And then also special reimbursements for our unemployment costs which also looks like that might be an overprescribed program. Just a reminder, as Christina mentioned, this is the category of which we were able to draw down all of our CRF funds from the state using the public safety line item. Moving on to social distancing compliance. This category has over 70% spent for supporting operations and compliance with social distancing guidelines. This includes supporting our remote work staff and revamping our recreational programs to be virtual as well as establishing distance learning centers to support students and families. Here you see on the picture on the right is the reception area of our ISD department which for a while was doing its best impression of an Amazon fulfillment center as we received numerous amounts of equipment to support over 500 county staff who are now working from home. The economic support category, over 92% of the over $4 million set aside for this category is out in the community supporting over 120 local businesses, nonprofits and community health partners. These funds also support a local rental and housing assistance program helping families who are struggling financially due to the recession caused by the pandemic. 93 businesses have been awarded funds. All of our core and cultural services nonprofit partners have been helped out and over 400 families have been supported with this program with many more to date as that program is really finding its stride. Distribution of almost $950,000 in community health partnership grants are also included in as part of a partnership with the Santa Cruz community ventures who are supporting families who are isolating in quarantine. Lastly, we have other expenses with just one line item and has to do with an enhanced fingerprint processing due to the large number of extra help staff we brought on to support with our shelters. In summary, we've spent 60% of our CRF funds to date with two months to go. Most programs were on track to be done by December 30th and CEO staff is continuing to monitor and report progress to the board. Recommended action is to accept and file this report. And with that, myself and Christina Mallory are happy to answer any questions. Chair, I just had a couple of questions. First of all, thank you for the presentation. I wanna just commend all the staff who've worked on this because it's a lot of money, $27.7 million. And although we know there's a lot of need, what we have seen nationwide is a lot of communities who haven't been able to get the money out the door. There was an article in the Washington Post just the other day which said there was a county that put aside $20 million for rental assistance hoping to help out 5,000 people. And so far they've only been, they got thousands of applications but they've only been able to help out 200 people because they created a system that they couldn't actually move the money. So it's a credit to the staff to actually come up with good ways to spend the money, to meet the needs of the community and also be able to move this money out into the community in ways that will, whether it be critically needed rental assistance, small business assistance, whether it be recreational support, whether it be cleaning that playground at Shana Claire Park or the new kinds of recreational programs that are out there and just the tools that we need here at the county to make sure that we can still provide services to the public in some way. And being able to move so many members of our staff to work, be able to support them in working at home is also a great benefit. Not only do we reduce virus transmission risk, we also take cars off the road. We maybe even sometimes improve their work environment. So these things are all critically important and it's great to see where this money has gone to and I just appreciate the efforts to get it out there to people. And I hope when we get the report on December 8th that it really shows that we're on target to use every penny, because I think it's gonna, that's, we shouldn't waste any of that money. So thank you for your work. Thank you. Anybody else on the board with questions? Yeah. Supervisor McPherson here. Thank you. This is complex and widespread and very costly. It's amazing how we're able to get a grip on where the funds should go. The way I read it, there's about $6 million left to be spent. Is there, do we have, what are the target, are there any main targets or what's gonna get the majority of the remaining funds at this point? How do we see it? I mean, we were saying another report's gonna be by the end of December and that's two weeks away. So where are we headed in the next couple of weeks or where is that gonna be focused? I can address that. So your board did allocate a plan to spend all of that money and we've been meeting regularly with the departments and we're assured even though the expenditures don't reflect as far along as some of them would like, they have obligations there in the works and we expect that we will spend the money as allocated. So we don't expect to have any funds left over. It's our goal to spend every penny and make sure that the money goes where your board has allocated it. Okay, thank you very much. Your job well done too. There's some very trying circumstances. Mr. Chair. Yes. Right, I just, I'd be remiss to point out that we've done a great job in providing relief both to our nonprofit partners as well as to small businesses and renters. But as we head into another lockdown for many more months without additional support coming from the federal government there's gonna be tremendous pain in this community. And I'm hoping that there's a recognition that if you don't support local governments and nonprofits and small businesses and families through this you're creating incentives for dangerous behaviors and just pure pain on people. And so one hopes that the new administration and Congress will get more relief to people soon. Yeah, we hope so also. We're anticipating as you know we don't have any funding in the budget for any additional cost in support of COVID-19 for January through June. So we are anticipating and hoping that the new administration will finally, the legislature will pass the additional funding that they have discussed in the past and send it out to the counties. And then we can come back to your board and allocate that funding. Okay, thank you. Supervisor Friend or? No, thank you Chair, there's nothing additional to add. The public, you want to say? Open with the public, open it up now to public comment. Thank you, Becky Steinbrenner, my resident of rural Aptos. Thank you for the report. These numbers are dizzying to me. And I really want to thank you for the good verification of where it is all going and how much is left. I did read in the report that when staff found out that the county's expenditure was only at a 60.5% at early October that somehow a bunch of money was able to get sent to the public safety. I'd like to know what that paid for. Well, how did you justify? Was that for the beach patrols? When the beaches were closed, what public safety was funded with that added expenditure that was put in in order to keep the money and show that we had spent 75% of the 27.7 million. Hearing that going forward, we won't have any money after December 31st. I'm wondering what is going to happen with all the homeless people in the hotels that the county has rented? What will happen to the transitional age youth in trailers at the Seventh Day Adventist camp? What's going to happen with those people who have been given services and suddenly were out of money and they're back on the streets? I want to ask too, I'm aware that the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds has a contract with the county for emergency and disaster relief. There is currently the Crescetti building is full of tents, empty tents that are set up just in case we need them for COVID. How are we paying for that? And why are we paying for that? And will that be used or will that go away at the end of December too? I really want to thank Mr. Randy Morris for his exemplary work, getting the great plates delivered program often running in this county. That whole program came as a surprise to most county government and with a very short timeline to get it up and running to qualify for the money. And he and his staff did it. It has continued to operate. And as you can see it has provided a wonderful service for a lot of the county's elderly fixed income, people who are not comfortable going out. And it has helped the restaurants too that are struggling and continue to struggle. So I really want to thank him for his excellent, excellent work. So I am interested in what will happen with all these laptops that the county has bought with the CARES money. Will county staff be allowed to continue working after COVID at home? It seems like an efficient way, better for the environment, less driving. And thank you for your work. Thank you, Becky. Okay, any other comments? We have no web comments. Thank you. Bring it back to the board for either comments or a motion. No, just again, an appreciation to the staff and hope that the legislature of the Congress can work with the Biden administration to get us more funds to help us out because we're gonna be in this for a while. I make the, I move to accept and file this report. Okay. We have first and second. I'm sorry, I missed who seconded. I think it was Coonerty. Thank you. Well, okay, so let's try this again. Supervisor Friend. Hi. Thank you. Coonerty. Hi. McPherson. Hi. Chair Caput. Hi, motion passes unanimously. Should we do 16, consider the final appointment of Natalie Gabbard to the commission on justice and gender as an at-large representative who has experienced incarceration for a term to expire April 1st, 2024. I move approval. Okay. Do we have any questions, comments from the public? And we don't, none on the web? We need a second. Then we're open for a motion. We have a second. That's Coonerty, that's second. On the roll. Supervisor Leopold. Hi. Friend. Hi. Coonerty. Hi. McPherson. Hi. Chair Caput. Hi, motion passes unanimously. Welcome aboard Natalie Gabbard. Number 17, consider final appointment of Ashlyn and Adams to the commission on justice and gender as an at-large representative of the LGBTQ plus community for a term to expire April 1st, 2024. I would move approval. Any public comments? There are no public comment. Call the roll. Supervisor Leopold. Hi. Friend. Hi. Coonerty. Hi. McPherson. Hi. Chair Caput. Hi. The motion passes unanimously. So we have. Now we'll take attendance. Well, no, we have one more item. We have one more item that was an addenda to the regular agenda. I could read it in for you, if you'd like. Which is item 17.1, consider approval and concept of ordinance amending Santa Cruz County code section 4.06.070C relating to cannabis business tax rates and making SQL findings as outlined in the memorandum of Supervisor Leopold and Coonerty. There's a board member printout and ordinance and the amendments. And I think Supervisor Coonerty was going to open it up. Sure. Thank you, Supervisor Leopold. Just very briefly, we've had a long day. As many people may know, I have held firm on not wanting to lower cannabis taxes. One of the promises made during legalization was that there would be funding available from the legalization to fund other priorities. However, in this particular two limited circumstances, I think it makes sense. One is this distribution tax where we're not collecting any and it's actually causing businesses to locate in other lower tax jurisdictions. And so we end up losing out on other cannabis revenue taxes, I think is a problem and needs to be addressed. And the second one is to extend the slightly lower tax fee for a year because it did take people a long time to get through our permitting process. And so they never got to experience the benefit that we intended in the first place. So with these two, these two, what I consider tweaks to our system, I'm hoping it gives our cannabis businesses the opportunity to continue to grow and create jobs and revenue both for themselves and for the county. Thank you. We just add that this distribution tax rate is the same that they have in the city of Watsonville and we could have all the cannabis businesses locate in the city of Watsonville, but I think we want them in the unincorporated areas as well. So I support these changes. They are modest, but they will have an impact in our future revenue in a positive way, even though it's lowering these rates. Mr. Chair, this is Supervisor Friend. I do have some questions if now would be appropriate. Yes, absolutely. This is a tax related fiscal item, but my colleagues did not list some sort of fiscal impact can we say how much we're currently collecting on the distribution and what one percentage point would equate to on manufacturing and cultivation? Hi, this is Melody Serino, Deputy CAO. So currently for last fiscal year we collected about $105,000 from the distributors based on data provided from the Auditor, Controller, Treasurer, Tax Collector's Office. Our cultivators and manufacturers last year gave us about $1.8 million in tax revenue. So a 1% change to delay that 1% increase would be about $18,000. So just, and this all is all general fund money. So about $120, $125,000 in estimate is what we'd be losing. That's total. Well, and look, if I could just add, part of it is whether we would lose the businesses completely if we keep our tax structure at 7% while neighboring jurisdictions are at 0% and it provides an incentive for people to move their other operations to the lower tax jurisdiction. This is a way to prevent that and create a lesser incentive for people to do that. That is correct. No, I agree that Supervisor Leopoldo, I mean, it sounds like a race to the bottom. I mean, I have some concerns about, I mean, generally speaking, I think from an ideological standpoint, the board doesn't normally take the position that lowering taxes to zero will increase our overall tax revenue. We have never taken that position on anything else we've done. The cannabis industry generally speaking over COVID has not been an industry that's been impacted in the same negative way that say hotels or restaurants or other businesses are, but we're not proposing like a reduction in TOT or some sort of tax holiday for others. So I do have concerns right now. I mean, in a large part of today was talked, was we spoke about from the unions and others challenges to general fund costs. And we know that there's money directly brought in and what we don't know as you're bringing up is whether this would have a positive impact. I mean, my sense is that it wouldn't. So I have concerns about it. I definitely have also don't really understand when we were already not increasing the cultivation of manufacturing until 2022 why we're just presupposing it should be dropped another year. I mean, it seems like the kind of decision that you would wait to make closer to 2022 as opposed to this far in advance you would just push it up until in another year. I mean, it already wasn't set for another 13 or 14 months to be raised. So it seems odd to not raise it for 25 or whatever months it is now when we don't even have the additional data of whether there would be an additional challenge in 2021. So I feel like it's just lacking on the information that would be needed for me to support this. I mean, it feels like it's supporting and this is just my own personal view on this that it's supporting this industry over programs and employees based on the money that would be lost. So I don't think I can support this item today but I do respect and understand where my colleagues are coming from on this viewpoint. I'll just make a brief comment that to conflate this with other industries that don't share the same emerging nature as the cannabis industry is to mixing the apples with the oranges. And the question about putting off the increases it was our policy goal to create a lower tax environment to help these businesses establish and then raise the taxes. Through our own change of regulations and slow processing of permits, we're not getting the benefit of allowing those businesses to establish and people are making decisions about where to make their investments based on what things look like and both the distribution tax change and the modest change of pushing back this on a year has an effect on people where people cite their businesses. And I completely respect that supervisor Leopold but under the same logic if our surrounding jurisdictions were to lower every other tax that we have from distribution, cultivation, manufacturing to zero I mean ostensibly we would face the same issue and based on the same logic then this board would be arguing to do the exact same thing. I just don't think like I said to have a start of the conversation that strikes me as a race to the bottom I'm not supportive of Watsonville's actions to have the zero percent. I don't think that was good and I don't think we should make our public policy decisions based on what a neighboring jurisdiction makes we should do it for what's best for us. And in my sense, I just don't think that this is the right policy but I do completely respect where we are coming from on this I just have concerns about the standard that it sets moving forward. Your point, I hear your point. Okay, any other comments or questions from the board? I wanna ask the public. Okay, open it up to the public. Yeah, hi. Good afternoon. My name, can you hear me okay? Yeah. My name is Terry Sardinas and I am a local resident of Santa Cruz. We have a regenerative farm. We are a cultivator and distributor in Santa Cruz County. As a distributor and cultivator I really urge you to reduce this tax rate. As a business, Bird Valley gets taxed twice. We get taxed for cultivation and then get taxed again for distributing our cannabis. Bird Valley Organic at the moment distributes for the top brands in our County and represent, represent Coastal Sun, Santa Cruz, Cana Farms and WAM, the Women's Alliance for Medical and Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana. The farms represent produced regenerative cannabis at a price which is affordable to consumers. Cannabis has always been about compassion and it is our combined shared ethos as a business to be able to promote and sell affordable cannabis to consumers. This in turn reduces our profit margins but helps patients and customers. We are not just serving Santa Cruz County but all of California and we are therefore competing with cities and counties for the best wholesale pricing. Retailers and consumers are also looking for the best prices in a very overtaxed market. Other municipalities have figured this out and have since made changes. We wish to stay but at the high tax rate it's forcing us to look for other options. We are residents of this county and employ 11 people who would have to commute to another city or county for employment. In your 2018 and 2024 strategic plan it says your mission statement is to have an open and responsive government to County of Santa Cruz that delivers quality data-driven services that strengthens the community and enhances opportunity. Please consider lowering this tax rate. It allows us an opportunity for growth and it makes us competitive in a market that is very highly competitive. Thank you for your time. Good, thank you. Bye. Hello, how are you guys doing? My name is Manny Alvarez. I'm actually her partner. I'm a co-founder for Bird Valley Organics. I believe our partner summarized it well. The message we want to drive home. Taxes are a touchy subject, especially when it entails a displaced medical industry entering into a new cost-heavy recreational industry. When Prop 64 passed a few years back it put pressures on municipalities to adopt regulations and decide tax structures and rates. Throughout that period of time of figuring things out we've lost hundreds of good standing operating companies that couldn't make it through the start of costs alone while the ones that did make it barely are left today still trying to recover from those costs. I'm happy to say that our company is one of those still standing along with our distribution license there are eight others in the county currently, eight. I'm happy to say that out of those eight companies or the nine distribution companies we're actually the only distributor that distributes for other brands and not just our brand. So we're literally the only distribution company you have in your county left. When Melody Serena was talking about those fiscal numbers that sounds very, very familiar to the checks that we write every single month. Actually pretty much adds up to exactly what we've paid this county. So I think she's talking about bird value organics. I urge you to please lower your taxes. Our farm is located in Watsonville. We have a good relationship with the city of Watsonville and to say that they're the only ones doing this I'm happy to announce that they're not the only ones doing this. Santa Cruz County is one of three left in the state to have exuberant rates. I don't know who you guys are talking to or what's going on here but something really needs to change because we're here to try to make a difference and stay in our county. We love Santa Cruz County. For us to be looking at other places it's just asinine at this point. Tech structures are exuberant. It's way too much, costs are way too much. It's a competitive market. We're competing against the black market as well. That's what people don't say, right? People are not talking about the black market but that's also something that we're competing heavy because of these tax structures. Thank you. We have two web comments in regards to this. The first one is from Matt Groves. My name is Matt Groves. I'm a cannabis business owner in Santa Cruz County. I'm writing in support of these tax amendments. Santa Cruz County is already one of the highest tax jurisdictions in the state. And this is further exasperated by A, the reduction of tax and other jurisdictions and B, Santa Cruz cannabis tax scheduled to increase further from 6% to 7% in the year 2022. The gross receipt tax hurts not only our bottom line, it also impacts our top line revenue growth because consumers are dissuaded and by excessively high prices, turning to the illicit market and B, business and lower tax jurisdictions can offer a more competitive pricing. The city of Watsonville has a much more favorable tax with manufacturers paying only 2% gross receipt tax and distributors paying 0% taxes. If the Santa Cruz County does not make changes to their tax structure, they will see many of their largest cannabis businesses relocating to Watsonville and other jurisdictions in order to remain competitive. The second one is from Darren Story. As a member of the County cannabis community, we sincerely appreciate any assistance with creating a competitive environment relative to other jurisdictions within the state. As we prepare for federal legalization, we can expect operators to become progressively efficient. High taxes create a huge burden on us as we attempt to create viable businesses with all the economic advantages this carries. Since the voters adopted California recreation legalization, Santa Cruz County is the only jurisdiction whose taxes have increased. Every other single licensing municipality has moved to lower taxes and make their operators more competitive. Just this month, traditional agricultural hotbeds, Ventura and San Joaquin counties voted in cannabis licensing with extremely aggressive tax schemes. In addition, Sonoma and Mendocino counties moved to allow 20-fold increases in canopy while simultaneously lowering taxes across the board. For Santa Cruz County operators to remain in the county, grow their businesses and put further pressure on illicit operators, we must create an aggressive and competitive tax environment. Thank you in advance for your diligence with this matter. And that's the end of public comment. Chair, I'd be willing to move the recommended actions. Okay. Second. We have a first and who was the second? Okay. Thank you. I'll call for the roll, Supervisor Leopold. Aye. Friend? No. Coonerty? Aye. McPherson? Aye. Chair Caput? Aye. Motion passes what, four to one? Yeah. Okay, thank you. And that is actually the end of the meeting. I think we're gonna take a 10 minute break before we do closed session. And there's nothing to report out, I don't think. All right. 10 minute break, okay? Sure, 10 minute break, there's nothing to report out for closed session. Yes. Okay, good. Thank you. Anything reportable out of closed session? No, nothing reportable out of closed session. Okay, then I'll just say that the next meeting will be December the 8th at 9 a.m. here.