 Welcome to the November 16th, 2021 meeting, regular meeting of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. It is 9 a.m. Please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Here. Friend. Here. The Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge of Allegiance. In addition, there are deletions to the consent layout 48 by 36, countywide map, plan C, Apple Hill, East Harbor, Scots Valley, Midtown layout 48 by 36, countywide map, plan EARC 21 proposed layout 48 by 36, countywide map. Also on the consent agenda on item number 43, staff requests this item be deleted. We'll be bringing it back at a later date. Thank you very much. Thank you. We have any announcements by board members of items to be removed from the consent or regular agendas. Seeing or hearing none. Comments from Mr. Warren? No, okay. We will now go to public comment. Any person may address the board and speak for up to two minutes on an item that is not on the agenda today or on today's consent agenda, closed session agenda, or yet to be heard items on the regular agenda or, but not on a topic that is not within the jurisdiction of the board. We have a two minute limit. Yes, sir, please. Forgiveness for oneself, one's nation's lies and not the unity and magneto biologic power. All human beings have with respect to being good shepherds and with the living planet earth. Yes, we are all able to make a choice as to what enemy to ultimately feed good or evil. We ignore this truth is to abandon the souls inside us from before, but to further lose track of the souls that may choose to use our energy in the future. This is the greatest fear of those who are about 12 million currently on planet earth, collectively responsible for earth's maths, sixth extinction caused primarily by some white men who seem to have captured the rainbows of humanities to control through enslavement all aspects and above this living earth. I'll comment on what I control later today. Long fellow, in the world's broad field of battle in the bivouac of life, be not like drum driven cattle be a hero in the strife. That line's too big of a subject, but I would love to start with what is now in South Africa. I will not though, falsehoods, no time. Well, let's talk about love and the use of civic duties of lesser magistrates. We all are lesser magistrates, think about parenting. Either we'll choose my interactions that support change doing so by engaging with boots on the ground, law enforcement. As law enforcement are the first to be thrown under the bus from their respective duties, not from their oath of office offices to uphold the US constitution that was thrown out after being raped. California and San Diego issued an order in the case of let them breathe the new some at all. So in that order, I encourage everybody to read it. In the order, the court stated that the CDPH guidance on testing and quarantines is recommendation only. It's not a mandate and it's not required. And the next thing the court also stated in the order was that schools cannot send students home or to independent study for failing to wear a mask at school. So I would like to urge everybody, everyone here today, especially the board members, if you guys could call an email, Ferris Sebaugh and all the trustees, make sure our county guidelines here in compliance with the law. So we have this new court order and I just really wanna encourage our county to be acting according to the law, according to this court order, because right now we're not in compliance with the law. Also, so last week in my comments, we had some Zoom problems and I think that Zach and Ryan didn't hear my opening minutes of my comments from last week. So I'm gonna go ahead and just start reading what I read last week to reiterate that because it's really important. So on Tuesday, November 2nd, Senator Ron Johnson held a panel on the federal vaccine mandate and vaccine injuries in Washington, DC. He invited the head of the CDC, Secretary of Defense Austin, Secretary of Labor Walsh, Secretary of Transportation, Buttigieg, FDA Acting Commissioner Woodcock, HHS Secretary Bakara, NAIAD, Director Fauci, NIH Director Collins and the CEOs of Johnson & Johnson, Moderna and Pfizer. None of them showed up for this hearing. So Senator Johnson explained there's three realities that federal health officials, President Biden and his administration are ignoring. Number one, natural immunity. Why would you force a vaccine mandate on those with natural immunity? Number two, that the VAX actually prevents infection or transmission, it doesn't. And so there's really no rationale for mandates when you know that and lastly, vaccine injuries. I emailed that to you all. I'll email it again along with this court order so you'll have it. Thank you so much. Many trees lived, but they're being cut down by the PG&E plan to protect the power lines all along the line. And it's super distressing to know that we're doing like the most cost efficient approach to this rather than bearing the lines, you know, taking thoughtful, careful action. You know, we're in occupied land of Amal-Matson, Tribal land, the place where we live is called Alwinta. People come from around the world to see this place. The trees should be memorialized. It should be a monument and protected as such and managed with care. I do telehealth now because of the virus and I'm at home listening to the chipper going and the chainsaws going and it's extremely distressing to feel the trees falling. And I don't know what we're doing. It's not smart. It's asinine and careless and short-sighted. And I emailed Ron Coonerty. I was hoping to see his face here, but I'm not nowhere. This is urgent because when a tree falls, you can't take it back. You can't, you don't get that back. So please, please take some action on this. I understand it's sanctioned and blah, blah, blah and private land this and the ownership that but you don't get the trees back. Thank you. Gary Ricciordano, Chairman, Board of Supervisors. The planning for this COVID or forced vaccination has occurred a long time ago. In fact, it was State Senator Richard Pan and Senate Bill 277. In fact, the school employees union was up there pushing for a lot of people that belong to these unions are never notified of what they're asking for. Senator Pan used to be a lobbyist before he became a Senator. We also have ex supervisor, John Leopold, who was one of two people, one virtually isn't here, Mr. Zach Grant, threatened both persons and property. We tried to get Sheriff Hart to do a report on it. He did not. Instead, he endorsed those two people that threatened members of the Grange and their property. Leopold also sent out an attack against his Victor Manu and attacked him for having anti-vax support. It appears that Leon Panetta and his whole machine could not prevent a new supervisor from being replaced. And I think everybody should remember that. In addition to these forced vaccinations, you have Walmart, Eris, working with the Democrats statewide. You've got Charles Munger, who's also a Walmart vice president, member of a secret society called Seven, involved with two presidential assassinations working with Panetta. They in fact took over the local Republican Central Committee in the last elections. Leopold also worked for COPA, which is the Industrial Areas Foundation rules for radicals. You'd think that would be the last thing that Sheriff Hart would want to put his crew under. Thank you. Thank you in advance for your help on this. There was a number of us in town here that met with representatives from Senator Laird and Mark Stone's offices. We were requesting a town hall meeting to meet with these legislators because there's a number of us in the community that are extremely concerned about the upcoming COVID vaccine mandates for school children. And while it's all kind of blurred and up in the air right now, what's going on, we do recognize that when the state legislature goes back in session in January, we want our representatives from these districts to go back to Sacramento, knowing exactly how their constituents feel about it. So we have asked their offices for a meeting for the community. We love an in-person town hall kind of something. Their offices are like, oh, we can't do that COVID, et cetera. But we need a chance to hear from the growing, growing numbers of very concerned parents and community members in Santa Cruz County. They represent us. So we want them to go to Sacramento knowing exactly how we all feel. So I'm asking your assistance in reaching out to their offices. They have rather dismissed us and our request. You can email and call their offices all you want. We never know if that goes through. We are the, they are our elected representatives and we want to see them face to face and tell them how we feel and how we want them to vote in Sacramento. So if you all could please help us reach their offices and request that they get a meeting scheduled, I'd really appreciate that. Our voices are feeling fairly unheard here. I don't like that my elected representatives completely dismiss hundreds and hundreds and thousands of parents in the community. So I ask for your assistance in that and thank you so much. Thank you. Is there anybody else here who would like to address the board? Do we have anybody on the line? Paul and user one, your microphone is available. Reminder to star six to unmute. Hi, this is Marilyn Garrett and the other phone has to be hung up. I also call for a halt to cutting the trees which are the lungs of the earth stop murdering the trees. Something else that harms the trees is all the radiation from the cell towers and the Y5G, et cetera. I call on the board to immediately halt installation of 5G and to remove the existing sites. I have a question. Are we seeing COVID-19 symptoms or 5G radiation symptoms? A book that shed light to answer that is The Contagion Myth by Thomas S. Callan, MD and Sally Fallon Morel. The subtitle by viruses, including coronavirus are not the cause of disease. We are already familiar with millimeter wave technology. This is the frequency of the airport scanners which can see through your clothes. Children and pregnant women are not required to go through these scanners and not to potential dangers. Adults get zapped a second or two. 5G basis in the same kind of radiation, 24-7. A particular concern is the fact that some 5G transmitters broadcast at 60 gigahertz, a frequency that is absorbed by oxygen causing the oxygen molecule composed of two oxygen atoms to split apart, making it useless for respiration. Illness has followed 5G installation in all major cities in America. We have 5G installations in our county, halt this now. Emily Hansen, your microphone is available. Good morning, members of the board. This is Emily Hansen and I represent Green Waste Recovery. This is regarding item number 43 on the consent agenda. We've been working on this item for more than a year and the county is required to be compliant with Senate Bill SB 1383 starting January 1st. The amendment before you today has a number of items on it. First and foremost, the item to authorize us to proceed with offering expanded services starting January 1st that would bring the county into compliance with SB 1383. If this item is delayed until December 7th date, Green Waste Recovery will not have enough time to adequately notice your constituents of the rate increase. We will not have adequate time to enter in the rates to be able to charge customers for the small increase associated with the provision of these services. And we will be in a position where we cannot offer that SB 1383 compliance, therefore starting January 1st. This morning is the first that we've been notified that this item was going to be pulled. We respectfully ask for this item to be pulled from the consent agenda, but heard today please and offer staff the opportunity to explain what exactly is wrong in the language. HFH Boltons is also available for discussion here today, but we've been working on the language for this amendment for over a year now and there's really just no reason why this item needs to be pulled today and it would be unfair to your constituents to have us proceed with a rate increase without adequate notice and we won't have time to do that. So I respectfully request that you guys pull this item from the agenda but have the item heard today. There's no reason that you cannot approve the amendment today with final language changes and authorize the CAO to sign so that we can proceed with SB 1383 compliance starting January 1st. Thank you. Caller 2915. Caller 2915, your microphone is available. Hello, this is Becky Steinbrenner. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you very much. I again want to follow up with the board on my concern that as I understand it, none of the properties in the CZU fire area have been adjusted for the loss of the structures. The CZU, the CSA 48 special benefit assessment was passed based on benefit to those who would receive extra protection for their structures. Those in the CZU fire who lost their homes, everything have no benefit from this tax but are still being required to pay it. As I understand it was no adjustment to their loss and this must be addressed. There has been plenty of time for the assessor to work this out and I ask your board to take emergency action to make an adjustment. I would like to speak to item Consent Agenda item number 35. I question why the planning department requires hiring an outside law firm to address illegal issues in affordable housing, $125,000. It is not clear to me why this has to be done. Is this related to the toxic land at 1,500 Capitola Road in Live Oak regarding that 57 unit affordable housing and dientes and medical clinic? That there's no remediation going on there. Nothing is being cleaned up. The toxic chemical is in the groundwater that's been determined. We need to do a clean up there. And I don't know if that's why this law firm is being hired to write deed restrictions so people can sign off in the county will not be liable. But I really question this. We've got a lot of attorneys in the county council's office taxpayers are paying for. Finally, now item Consent Item 38. I see no money in the capital improvement project to rehabilitate and repair the incredible Burt Scott estate. That was a gift by Burt Scott family, the head of granite construction. And that house is being left to be neglectfully disrepair not being used the roof leaks. And it is a disgrace. Thank you. You let your microphone is available. Hello. And I occasionally found on the agenda. It says that the board of supervisors has received the following items for correspondence which require no official action by the board at this time. And it says that my letter from Ludmila Boyka is received and is not considered again to be discussed and or do something about that that I'm asking already for 10 years. So 10 years I was trying to get the appointment with the previous board of supervisor, John Leopold. And I was unsuccessful to get face-to-face appointment. And since January this year, I'm trying the same thing to get a face-to-face appointment with Manu Konik. I still didn't get it. And my issue about the human's life. So is it human's life cost nothing for that board of supervisors that they do not wish to consider health and life as an emergency? And I never was allowed to get an appointment with the sheriff, also Jim Hart. And I was pushed away by Lieutenant Liberty first. And after that Lieutenant Payne threatened me to get arrested if I ever try again. I never was allowed to get an appointment with District Attorney Jeffrey Russell or at least with his assistant. So this is just insane that how difficult to get an appointment with officials in Santa Cruz County. And also our court is in not in compliance with the law. There is no rule of law considered by the court and the case get fabricated. So it is also a big issue that required attention board of supervisors, please. Thank you. Call in user two, your microphone is available. Board of supervisors and everybody listening. This is Diane Nicholl. I'm calling because I want everybody in Santa Cruz County to be alert, to look around them outside their houses, look on top of the utility poles at the very top of some utility poles in certain areas such as on Seabright Avenue, such as on Freedom Boulevard, such as certain areas in Scott's Valley, including the main drag. There are little, tiny, brown transmitters and just be alert. Those are the 4G and 5G transmitters and if they're by your house, you will have an increased level of radiation in your house. There's no doubt about that. I measure these with my meter regularly. And I want people to be alert. If they start getting symptoms, you get symptoms of sleep problems, difficulty concentrating, fatigue, even cancer down the line. Call your supervisor. Let them know you're not happy with this installing these without your permission near your home. And despite the scientific evidence, June 1st, 2016 press release about major US government study to find cell phone radiation causes cancer. This is about cell phones, but there's plenty about cell towers. I just happened to have this one here. US National Toxicology Program or Release Final Peer Reviewed Results of the 25 million study, dollar study on rats and cell phone radiation exposure. They developed malignant brain tumors, glioma or malignant heart tumors or pre-cancerous lesions. This is just one study of thousands. Thousands of studies. And just to let you know, the limits set by the FCC in 1996, a appeals court has ruled that they have to rewrite them. They have never taken to account these thousands of studies for health effects ever. And if appeals court has told the FCC, they now have to rewrite them. Thank you. Tracy Adams, your microphone is available. Good morning, board. My name is Tracy Adams. I'm the chief executive officer of Green Waste Recovery. I wanted to piggyback on Emily's comments. I'll be very quick here. I was a little taken aback this morning to find that staff has pulled item 43 from the consent agenda. And I would like to hope that we can work together in a meeting and put it on the regular agenda today so we can discuss what issues there might be so that we can move ahead and bring the county compliant with SB 1383 starting January 1st. There's a number of pieces of the proposal today that I think we can discuss. And I'm hopeful that as a team, we can work forward and continue to the partnership going forward and I'll surrender the rest of my time. Thank you. There are another speaker soon. Okay. I did see some folks come in later. Is there anybody that wanted to address this and oral communications? We'll, did you hear it, sir? Can I address, because I can't stay here long. Can I address the cleanup on the fire? Yes. If you're not going to talk about later, yes. Oh yeah. Do you mind? No, please. Go ahead. That's item number, what, eight? Eight, I believe. Yeah. Because I'm Luc Rosito. I'm a 71 year resident of this county. I'm working for a client at 340 Everest Drive, which is above the Boulder Creek golf course. She lost everything on the fire. And the cleanup was probably a good idea, but I don't think they had much supervision because they're going to cost her probably $20,000 more because when they scraped the land, they took out her 125 foot septic outflow. They damaged her septic tank. They took out her septic pump. Expensive retaining walls. I don't know what to do about it. I'm a contractor, been a contractor in this county for 45 years. I've been helping her out for free because she got insurance, but it's not gonna be enough to replace her house. I don't think, but I'm trying to pull all the favors I can for, because I've been working for her for 12 years. So they did excessive damage. All the drain lines are gone. I have to go in and clean up the site. All the 50 foot long, eight foot wide exposed aggregate walkway is gone and there was no need for it. There was nothing wrong with it. So I don't know what we can do about it. I'm hoping you guys can do something about it. We put in a claim. It was denied. I've got hours and hours of free hours for this lady. She's a real sweet lady. She has absolutely no family and she lost everything. So, and I've got some grudges against your planning department to begin with. You know, they've been hanging us out quite a ways. I've been cooperating. I said, just let me know what to do and I'll do it for you. But I hate to tell you this, but your planning department's a joke throughout the nation. I'm sorry, but I've been dealing with them for 45 years. And if you want to know skeletons in the closet, I know them and my phone number is 408-590-2946. If you'd like to know skeletons in the closet dating back to 1976. Thank you. But anyway, if you could do something for this lady, she's a real, real sweet lady. Okay. We will address this. It's a problem we're concerned about. We're going to be talking about it later on item number eight. Can you give me a time? Props to time? Well, yeah, it'll be probably pretty soon because it's going to be the next. You will have one item before that on the regular agenda than that one. So it might be at least a half an hour after we get to the regular agenda, but you wouldn't be able to speak again then, sir. Okay. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Anyone else? Chair McPherson on item number 43, it turns out that it will be problematic to postpone it to the next meeting. There are some final issues we need to resolve on the contract. And so what I'd like to do is put it back on the agenda and with the additional direction to direct the CAO and the County Council to finalize and execute the contract. There's just some minor adjustments that still need to be made, but it is time sensitive. And so I don't know if you want to leave it on consent with that additional direction or else we can move it to regular. I think, does it need further explanation of what adjustments are going to be made? Do you think what County Council should? No, I don't think it needs that explanation, but I just want to make sure that the staff recommendation for that action is not accepted because there's a draft contract that's on the agenda right now. And so what you would be doing is giving staff direction, the CAO's office and County Council to authority to make final revisions to the version that's online right now and then execute that. Okay, that seems to be the best procedure to follow right down. Okay, we will put item 43 with that direction back on the consent agenda. Any other comments from the board now? Okay, discussion on the consent items from the board, Mr. Koenig. Thank you, Chair. On item 34 approving Prop 68 grant applications. I want to thank the Parks Department for preparing these grant applications, but also which do include applications for the Simkins Family Swim Center and our Youth Activity Center and Outdoor Learning Center, Chanticleer Park Phase Two, South County Parkland Acquisition and North Coast Rail Trail Phase Two. I did also want to use the opportunity to say I hear a lot from constituents who are concerned about the state of our parks and a lot of the deferred maintenance. And so I would urge the Parks Department to work with the Parks Commission to propose a budget that's going to work and help address much of this deferred maintenance for next year. And also I'm just point out to this board that if we're going to continue to acquire Parkland and build more parks, we'd better identify the budget to maintain them. On item 36, the Unified Permit Center request for additional staff fully in support of the additional staff. The Permit Center will help address some of the shortcomings of our planning department and put a persistent focus on the customer experience and tracking performance metrics to determine operational success. I think that's essential. And I'm glad to hear that a focus group was held with local architects, engineers, planning consultants and designers. And I'm happy that we are dedicating more staff time to this full-time senior lead and at least half-time planner will be are much needed. And finally on item 43, I'm glad we can move forward with this in some form today. The amended franchise agreement is essential to allowing us to begin a composting program as required under state law next year. And I'm glad we'll be able to with a little last-minute work meet the deadlines necessary. Thank you. Supervisor Friend, any comments on the consent? Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate it. So I'll just speak briefly on a couple of items. First, just an appreciation in general public works. There's a couple items on here in regards to the CIP and storm damage updates, just compliments on the continued improvement on the CIP. It really each year just seems to get better with the quality of it. And for those in the community that look for the ways that we help prioritize our funding in regards to those capital improvement programs and projects, just take a look at the CIP. And I know that we have a study session in December, but I just wanted to compliment them on the work that they do to make it so easy to use and read. A brief moment of appreciation on item 45 as well, which is something that I know that Steve Wiesner worked on pretty closely in my district, which is to do, it just is listed here as a pinehurst and green briar pedestrian improvements. But it really is, is a pretty significant improvement around Rio del Mar Elementary for both ADA access and pedestrian improvements along overdue. We have a great partnership with PVUSD on this. I had the opportunity to speak to Trustee Jen Holm, who wanted to express her appreciation to Mr. Wiesner and the county for moving forward on this. This will really greatly improve pedestrian safety in and around Rio del Mar Elementary. There's a lot of kids that walk through there, through the neighborhood. So a lot of appreciation for both the school district's partnership and in particular Steve Wiesner's work on this. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Supervisor Coonerty. Mr. Chair, I have no comments today. I appreciate all the work that's being done in these challenging times. Thank you. Supervisor Caput, any comments on consent agenda? Thank you. Just a comment on item number 34. It's good to see South County looking for park acquisition, parkland acquisition. And it's something that should have been done, years and years ago. But anyway, number 34 is a good thing for South County. Thank you. That's it. Item number 26 of Watsonville Hospital. I want to thank our CEO, Carlos Palacios, our former health services director, Navy Hall and partners at the Povero Valley Health Care District. This project is critically important to the county, especially the South County. And because of its impact on healthcare for some of our most vulnerable residents. And thank you for that effort to try to pull that together. Item 33 is housing matters and downtown streets. And I'm pleased that we were able to work with housing matters and the downtown streets team on addressing homelessness. These two agencies are very effective partners because they meet people where they are and offer them opportunities to take steps toward finding housing, employment and other aspects of life that hopefully will end their homelessness. Housing matters and downtown streets team have been very, very important to the county for addressing this, helping us address this issue. Item number 36, it was been mentioned, the United Permits Center. Pulling together that center has been one of our most important strategic objectives for several years. The community really needs to have a forward-looking predictable process in terms of a timeframe and money. And as one spokesperson already said, our planning department could use some improvement in that area. They realize that along with public works and it's going to be very nice for the customer service lessons that we have learned from the Fire Recovery Permit Center will be folded into the center's operations which will really improve the customer experience hopefully to get a more timely response to their needs. And I look forward to seeing that center become a reality the next year. And I think thank the CAO and all the departments and the staff that have been involved in that. And finally, on item number 42 has been mentioned, the winter storm repairs. An enormous thank you to the Department of Public Works for its dedicated work in repairing those damaged roads from the 2016 and 17 storms. Considering the scope of that damage, it was $56 million. And this work has taken a tremendous amount of time for us to get across the finish line. The damage is mentioned in the years, it's five years ago and we've completed 43% of those projects with the rest in progress and which is a real testament to the perseverance of our Public Works Department and staff. They're really to be complimented because they've really worked hard and it's required a tremendous amount of work to manage the reimbursement process with the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA and the Federal Highways Agency. It takes a lot of time to get through this process and they've done an excellent job of getting this as quickly as we can. It is a long time, but we have done an outstanding job compared to the other counties in the state. And with that, I would entertain a motion for approving the consent agenda as amended. Mr. Chair, I'll move the consent agenda with the amended direction on item 43. Second. I think we'll roll. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you, motion with additional direction passes unanimously. Thank you. We will go to the regular agenda now. Item number seven, consider the adoption of an ordinance to amend the Santa Cruz County code chapter 2.98.040 section D increasing the compensation for members of the assessment appeals board is outlined in the memorandum of the County Administrative Officer. There's a assessors and appeals boards benefits survey and ordinance and Santa Cruz County section 2.9804 strike out and underline with that. Thank you. Good morning members of the board. This item is a request to increase the compensation for members of the assessment appeals board from $75 per meeting to $200 per meeting by amending Santa Cruz County code chapter 2.98.040 section D. Per the information contained in the board memo, we have found it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain members for this body and we have not had alternate members in several years. Currently the compensation paid is one of the lowest of all the counties. And we are hopeful that an increase in compensation will help to attract new members and alternates for the recruitment that is currently in process. The current cost for the three member panel at $75 per meeting for eight meetings per year is $1,800 and with the increase, the cost would be $4,800. Sufficient funds exist within the current year budget to cover the increase cost for the remainder of fiscal year 2021. Therefore, we request that you move and approve the recommended actions and I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Any questions from the board? No, Mr. Chair, this is a very reasonable request and I know that they've had a very difficult time retaining it's also a very important body that we have. And so I think that it's a this is a very reasonable request to do this. We should also in general actually look toward involve our commissions or there needs to be any adjustments and also build in any sort of escalators that may be necessary moving forward to spend so long since we've done amendments to some of these groups, including the planning commission that it may make sense to look forward in that. But for now, this right here is a very reasonable request. Thank you, Supervisor Koenig. Yeah, thank you, Chair. I'm just curious what the typical volume of cases that the assessment appeals board has to hear. So this year's course has been a little unusual because of the fire. So they've had a number of cases on any given meeting there could be 10 to 12 cases. And sometimes there's more than that. And I was also just curious looking at the benefits survey. Many counties just do a half day and a full day rate. Is there a reason why we chose to just do one flat rate? Yes, because typically our meetings go all day. So we just looking at the historical way that the meetings have gone, we didn't go to a half day rate. Okay, thank you. Any comments from Supervisor Caput? Okay, Supervisor Koenig, any comments? Thank you. Thank you from Supervisor Caput. Any comments, Supervisor Koenig? No, I agree with the staff recommendation. Any comments from the public? Did you have one? They've lowered their hands. So their nose, there they are. Okay, we'll bring it back. Caller 2915, your microphone is available. Oh, sure. Hello, this is Becky Steinbruner. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. I appreciate the work that all commissioners do within our county. I really questioned this one because in the past, the county had an agreement with an attorney that was well-versed in real estate law. And I think that is the more appropriate action. Right now, one of the commissioners, I believe, is Steve Allen, a property manager. What qualifications does this commission require? I think that we should go back to having a contract with a real estate attorney because that's what these issues are. And it would better serve the public. I have been to some of these assessment appeals meetings and there were only one or two people there. As staff said, this is an unusual year because of the fire. But going forward, that will hopefully calm down. And this will be an extraordinary expense to the public and maybe not serving the public in the best capacity for what is being brought before the commission. So I am opposed to this. And I think this commission, in particular, the board should consist, again, of a real estate attorney and that the county should go back to contracting with that. Thank you. There are no other speakers. Okay, no other comments from the public here. Entertain a motion. I'll move the recommended actions. I'll select him. You'll do the one. I'll make a cap. Please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. I'll move on to item number eight. To consider a report on the CZU August Lightning Complex Fire state debris removal operations road damage to the county maintain and private roads and take related actions that are outlined in the memorandum of the director of the office of response recovery and resilience. We have Cal OES office emergency services access road maintenance report. We have County of Santa Cruz fire debris removal report CZU fire road damage request of the county and FEMA appeals decision. I believe our public works director, Matt Machado and our office of recovery resilience, Dave Reed who are going to comment on this. Thank you, chair, board. Good morning. Yeah, we want deputy director or deputy CAO, Matt Machado and I wanted to share a little bit more information with all of you regarding the debris removal operations today to bring you up to speed on the efforts that we've been making on behalf of the county as well as the community that we may hear from as well regarding the damage done during the debris removal operations. Next slide. So we wanted to just review and update everybody on the debris removal scope of operations today. Talk a little bit about the contract details. It's often referred to as a Cal OES contract. It's actually a contract that Cal Recycle had with the debris removal contractor. We want to talk a little bit about the correspondence that transpired throughout the debris removal schedule and operations. And then we're going to discuss in some specifics the road damage that has occurred on our county maintained road network as well as on private roads, driveways and property throughout the CZU burn area. Next slide, please. This slide is an image showing the Cal OES debris removal dashboard just to give you a context for how many properties in Santa Cruz County had damage removed. This number reflects both private property and state park property, but over 683 properties, 740 in total when you factor in hazardous trees were worked on throughout the county. So a significant number of truck loads and debris removed throughout our county. Next slide, please. This slide I wanted to show and share that we, in addition to the public option that worked on a number of properties throughout the CZU burn area, Marilyn Underwood and her team managed over 200 private property debris removal operations. And without exception, we have not heard of or had complaints regarding the operations by private contractors, generally speaking because they were able to take a little bit more time. They were to use the appropriate size and scaled equipment. And they were working more closely with property owners to manage the critical hazardous debris removal, but to do so in a more sensitive site-specific manner. Next slide, please. This graph shows the timing of the debris removal and this is significant for a couple of reasons. So the blue bars represent the public option debris removal timeline. And you can see that in earnest, it started in February with the most of the debris removal happening in April, May, and June. So we were well outside of our rainy season by the time most of the debris removal operations were occurring. So there was ample opportunity to use best management practices regarding dust management and road management during the debris removal operations. The other reason this will become significant, I'll share later, just to reiterate that between February and July, most of the debris was removed throughout the county. Next slide, please. So some specifics on the Anvil contract for folks. This was a CalRecycle contract. As I said, the low bid was awarded to Anvil Builders Inc. for approximately $225 million for the debris removal in the Bay Branch region. So that Bay Branch region included more than just Santa Cruz County, but at the time of the preparation for this contract, it was estimated that about 1,200 properties would be scheduled for debris removal. We have over 50% of the properties that were managed by Anvil. So a significant number of properties for this contract. And as you can see, based on that dollar amount, a significant amount of money was contracted to remove debris in Santa Cruz County. The other point I wanna make just briefly is that WSP was the management team selected by CalRecycle. And in general, my experience, both with Cal OES and CalRecycle and WSP during the debris removal process was great. They worked hard to answer our emails, questions, we had numerous meetings, weekly conversations. We met with Deputy Director Burris on two different occasions. The Deputy Director of Cal OES on two different occasions, one around the hazardous tree removal process in early March. And we met again to discuss the road damage that was occurring. So during the process, things with all parties, the communication was good, but what we have come to realize through a lot of efforts by private property owners as well as Matt, is that it's been harder to get them to come to the table to address the issues that we're talking about today. Next slide, please. This is an attachment in the packet. The reason I just wanted to highlight this for everybody is that back in February, February 26th, 2021, many of the residents sitting behind me that live on last chance raised this issue and the concerns that we're talking about today around road damage. They were concerned about the grading that was being done to their roads to make them safer for debris removal. And CalRecycle, Cal OES issued this statement. It's an attached in the agenda item. And I highlight the box below on this first page, which outlines that the roads will be returned to condition they were in before commencement of debris removal. Return road conditions may be different, but equal to or better than the condition prior to commencement of the debris removal operations. This was their language. This was their document provided in February before most of the work had begun, but they had begun the preparations to do debris removal. And it was already clearly a concern for many residents in our County. Next slide, please. Now I'm gonna hand off to Matt Machado and he'll bring you guys up to speed on the County Maintained Roads and Private Road Damage work. All right, thank you, Dave. And good morning chair and supervisors. We have 45 miles of roads within the CZU burn area, plus many more miles of private roads. But the common thing is that all of these roads serve our community equally, so they're all very important to us. We did sustain a lot of damage from the CZU fire. Next slide, please. You can see that we lost many signs, many culverts. We actually even had four retaining walls damaged and burned. We lost a bridge. We had significant damage to another bridge. We lost about 4,000 feet of guardrail. We sustained damage. We know damage. We had to remove about 9,000 trees that threatened our road system. In total, we had more than $10 million of damage. We do expect about 80% reimbursement from FEMA on all this damage. Next slide. But what we didn't expect was all of the roadway damage from debris removal operations and the Anvil contractor. In our County, we generally have two types of roads. We have major collectors and minor collectors. The minor collectors are considered our local roads and they fall under OES and FEMA jurisdiction for emergency operations. Those are the subject of this slide. We have 17 county maintained roads that receive significant damage directly from Anvil contractor. And those roads are minor roads or local roads. They do not normally see heavy traffic and they were not managed well. And so we sustained significant damage. Next slide, please. You can see this is a detailed list of the damage we sustained on those 17 roads. We value it at about $4.4 million. We did alert Cal OES and FEMA in April of this past year of that damage. We filed a claim that claim was denied. We filed an appeal in August and we expect that to be denied based upon FEMA staff explaining to us that this damage is a direct result of a state contractor. And so it's not eligible for FEMA reimbursement. Next slide, please. What we also understand is that that state contract with the Anvil builders did include repair and maintenance provisions so that our road system would be protected both our public road and our private road system. You can see on this slide some details of the damage that we sustained on the county roads. We have about $4.4 million of damage. And then on some of the larger private road damage includes last chance nearly eight miles of roadway that was damaged at almost $3 million, $2.7 million of damage. And then even some of our CSAs sustained damage and they have filed claims. They are eligible for FEMA reimbursement but they've been denied as well for the same reasons that our county roads are denied. And then 71 private property owner claims that were denied. Throughout this summer, we were assured by Cal OES that we would get this resolved through the Anvil contract. Here we are in the near winter and the resolution has not occurred. And so we are here today. Next slide. Because we believe that continued advocacy will be critical to reach a resolution on all of this damage. Next slide. So the recommended action today is to accept and file a summary report of road damage on county maintained roads and private roads due to the Cal OES manages you fire debris removal operation and to direct County Office of Response, Recovery and Resilience and the Department of Public Works to work with a delegation of state and federal elected officials to meet with state officials regarding the damage incurred during the debris removal operations and advocate for our residents damage caused during the debris removal operations. And we can answer any questions you may have. Thank you for that depressive pressing report. I'd like to make a couple of comments first. Clearly the county can't bear the expense of repairing these roads and or pass it along to our residents. And we really can't allow them to remain in the condition to just gonna get worse and cost more. I would like to provide additional direction to this item to direct the chair to write a letter directly to Gavin Newsom, Governor Newsom pleading our case for the state and federal intervention repairing of the roads. Cal OES is under his administration but I think we need his leadership on this. And if we go directly to that office I think it'd be beneficial. My office has been informed the fire victims that have been damaged of the roads damaged by Anvil will not be allowed to apply for building permits until they receive fire clearance which will not be granted until the road is repaired. And this, is this the case? And if so, how are the fire victims on Anvil damaged roads going to proceed when Anvil is taking no responsibility for damage? And the negotiations with them may take months if not years. That's I think the concern we're gonna hear today but can you answer? I will share a bit about the last chance community cause I know they had that situation but I also know that they've invested a lot of their own resources to get those roads in some kind of conditions so that they can start the rebuild process. They've invested heavily themselves. And so currently the burden is on them. I will share that they've been working very hard very diligently and they have made some improvements. The past couple of storms they've suffered significantly with people being stuck or trapped in their sites but I do know they're making headway. So I think a lot of our advocacy will be an after the fact to help restore their roads to their former condition independent of the homeowners investing them their own resources so that they can start the rebuild process. I'd let them comment further but I do know and I am aware of some of those efforts. Any other comments from the board? Supervisor Coonerty. Yeah, Mr. Chair, I just wanna, I mean, I wanna take a moment to first thank staff because while we've been trying to respond to the largest natural disaster in the county's history and the building and rebuilding needs to be done our staff has also been put in the position of having to be advocates and intermediaries between community residents and these agencies and companies that are not as responsive as we need them to be. And it's as people have experienced trauma of losing their homes and their communities and everything else to have to battle companies that got large contracts for a job to do that we expected them to do well. And we expect anyone who has a public contract to do the job well, but when it's a disaster recovery and people's lives and livelihoods are at stake, we expect them to do better than well. We expect them to live up to the full contract and to serve, be part of the public service in a response to a natural disaster. And I appreciate this effort and I'm hopeful that by sort of moving this up the chain and creating an awareness and political pressure we can get a better response than we've gotten now. The people, this has happened across the fire scar but the people of last chance have been in an impossible position of trying to access their community after damage was done by Anvil and then not repaired and then sort of forced into these pressure filled releases of liability. And it's not a good situation. It's not how companies should operate. And I hope we can get a better response after this effort. Thank you. Any other questions from the board? I know we have some folks here that want to speak to this. No, I just say thank you for the report. And I guess with the rains last year it could have been a lot worse, of course, the damage, but this year we look like we're okay, I guess, huh? Well, we were fortunate to miss any debris flows. So in that sense, we dodged that one for now. But the past two storms have created a fair amount of problem for some of these communities. I mentioned a few minutes ago that we have heard of people being trapped at their home sites because the road damage was so great that they couldn't get out through the mud and the debris that was left behind. And so I don't think we're out of the woods in that regard, but they are doing some improvements. So it's a battle. Right now they're in the middle of the battle. Would you say the rain storm we had about two weeks ago in the long run that helped us or the same hurt us? Well, I think rain is a double-edged sword. It certainly helped our drought condition and suppressed any fire risk. But with road damage, that damage will get worse with rain. Rain is the number one enemy of roads. Or roads is number one. Anyways, they don't go well together. And so we have that continued situation. So it's kind of a blessing and a bit of a curse for this situation. Thank you. Okay, any other comments for the public? How many would like to speak on this? Okay, please, we have two minutes. Hello, thank you for having this item on the agenda for today. I appreciate it. My name is Susie Dever-Gran. I live at the end of Last Chance Road. And I appreciate the efforts on our behalf that have happened so far. I want to explain that Last Chance Road has one mile at the front that's paved and then the rest is all dirt. I approximate that it's around 25 miles worth of the main road and then seven spur roads as well as driveways. And all of those road surfaces were accessed by Anvil in the debris removal process. So they've all been impacted. We have a road association since 1972. Oh, sorry. I thought that was what you wanted me to do. We have a road association since 1972 and we have elected positions. We have a road manager and we have maintained the road for decades in very good condition. Over the years we've put gravel on it and that's kept the road in good shape. That gravel was all removed by Anvil when they came and resurfaced the road. I've been driving on the road for 22 years, commuting and so I've been able to see what condition it's in. And I was living at the mill site where it's at the end of Last Chance Road during the debris removal process. So I was right there with all the big trucks coming and going and was able to see the changes in the road as it happened. They use these big articulated trucks called haulers in some of the harder to access areas. And those are the areas that really got chewed up because those types of vehicles did a lot of damage to the roads. They created this what we call moon dust. It was like a foot deep of this spine almost like talcum powder dust that's been very hard to deal with and has created problems with the road since then with the recent rains. I had expressed some concern at the time when I was there about the condition of the road and talked to Misty who worked for WSP and she contacted the people with Anvil and they assured us that they would pave this front section after the last truck went out and they would leave us with gravel. Unfortunately, they did not follow through on those promises. So I appreciate your support on our behalf and look forward to hearing the results. Thank you. My name is Jim McCarthy. I live on Alba Road in Ben Lomond. And first I want to say I appreciate all the work that all of the supervisors do all the elected officials do. So we don't have to but one of the things that bothers me is I've lived up there for 39 years not a lot compared to some, but enough. And I remember when I moved there I could damn near lay on Alba Road and get a suntan without any vehicles driving by. Now I know, but I can't do that now. The population of San Lorenzo Valley has increased tremendously but I don't think the money that's being spent by the county to take care of the San Lorenzo Valley and Alba Road and some of the other roads that are up in the mountains is given as equitably to Alba and those roads Jameson Creek and so on as the money that's being spent on Pine Flat, for example. Now I don't know how many of you live on Pine Flat a lot of the University people I guess do but that always seems to be in great shape. I mean, perfect. Alba gets, pardon the word, stuck to it. And a lot of the damage that we're seeing now was started long before Annville ever came. Annville made it horribly worse. We have a couple of slide outs that they're working on. One's done, one's being worked on. Another one hasn't even started where the whole road, half of it's cracked and it's gonna go away and you won't be able to get one laying up and down. That's where all the turns are about a half a mile through course, a mile up Alba from Highway 9. Any on time, sorry, it took me time. All right, thank you. Hi, I used to live in the Riverside Grove community off of Pinecrest Road, which is this TSA, but below us the streets leading up to that are County roads. And those roads had actually been repaved not too many years ago and were in fantastic shape before Annville came in. And actually on the slide, you showed that the most of the cleanup was done after January, but in our neighborhood the cleanup started in January and in late January, we had that significant rainstorm. And it was after that that I started seeing damage. And I applied for a damage claim and CalRecycle rejected it because they said I signed the right of entry, but not all of my neighbors lost their homes inside the right of entry. So Annville damaged their road too. And I took sent in 60 photos showing the damage and the damage is now getting worse and worse now that we've had some more rains. And I'm thinking it won't be too long before emergency vehicles won't be able to get up there to those three surviving homes. And I don't know what the state is gonna do to address this. And I know Matt is documented as well, but we need to put pressure on the state. They need to, we can't afford this right now. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Hi, my name is Valerie Brown with United Policy Holders on the chair of the Santa Cruz County long-term recovery group. And I'd like to just echo what Supervisor McPherson mentioned and that the impact of not getting this resolved is gonna put people in a situation where they cannot rebuild. If they can't get access to the site, they can't get a clearance. This isn't, you're gonna lose so much of your population that's impacted. And that is key to recognize that there need to be some accommodation there, but also pushing on this level very hard in including Cal Recycles and the Water Board because that recycling program for the state is a complicated system with multiple players. Put them all on notice because they owe you what they promised you, which is they were gonna take care of this damage. And we're working on behalf of the hundreds of people who lost their homes and they don't have the resources to do this. You are their hope to make this happen. Thank you. My name is Roger Wapner. We have five acres up in Boulder Creek past the golf course. And we remodeled in 2010 to a 3,000 square foot house, a 13 car garage, it's all gone from the fire. I have a somewhat related but different type of testimony where I was present for the three days of debris removal, anvil performed and they did a pretty good job. And they authorized and left personal property and also the rebar that was attached to our 69 pylons for rebuilding the home. I was also present for the soils and for the spraying erosion control. I was on site, I saw it happen. Everybody did great. Then sometime in April, May, anvil came back and they destroyed a culvert and I complained about it. So this is how it ties into the road damage. I believe they retaliated by coming back after I made the complaint about the culvert damage, which really wasn't a big deal, but it was so sloppy. I had managed commercial drivers in the past denying attention. And the result was that all the rebar on my 69 pylons was cut, removed and my personal property was also removed from my property. I've put a claim in. It has not been acknowledged. So I am hoping that I can be tied in with the rest of the actions going to the state. And I really appreciate your support. We were underinsured and this would be a tremendous help. Thank you very much. Thank you for everything you've done up there too. Thank you. Good morning, Board of Supervisors. My name is Forrest Martinez McKinney. I'm a lifelong resident of Last Chance Road. I'd like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak. Our community has been failed in many ways over the decades and be at the park closing our escape route or Cal Fire's very slow evacuation order, which we know resulted in the death of one of our community members. Well, I've come here today to ask you to help us in holding Anvil to account to address the things that they failed us on. First and foremost is the repaving of the first mile of our road. They could probably get away with half of it. They could have probably gotten away with very little, but they made no effort at all. And so we're here today wasting all of our time trying to find a resolution. Our community is probably, you know, one of the more resilient communities in this county because of these failings of both government and public agencies over the years. And we're stronger for it. We will continue to be there and we'll continue to make our homes there. But we do request your help and we are very grateful for the efforts that you've made since the CZU fire to help us return to our homes. Thank you. Thank you. Hi. Stephen Barnes, I'm the last chance road manager. I'm responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of Last Chance Road. I hold an LTO license and many years experienced in road building and maintenance. You might get a little closer to the mic, please. Thank you. I'm gonna start from the beginning. Anvil's Road Person, I met with Anvil's Road Person, Eric and several other Anvil people before the cleanup and Last Chance. Eric consisted, he was going to bulldoze and use a grader on Last Chance Road. I told him, he said he's gonna make the road flat and a flat road does not drain water because we were disagreeing on how the road should be done. Eric promised me 40 loads of rock to reshape the road when Anvil was finished. This was stated in front of Scott of Cal Fire OES. So they came in, they scraped 35 years of rock off the road and took out all the culverts and a couple and the bleed outs. Throughout the cleanup process, they kept telling me rock was coming and they were going to replace the culverts. When the cleanup was done, Anvil packed up and left and they left the front 1.5 miles of pavement completely crushed and ruined. Their contract stated they were supposed to leave the road as same or better condition. I've been working the road since they left and I've never worked in such bad conditions. The spur roads to all the residents' houses were over a foot of dust. Once the rain came, I did what I could to get the water off the road. It was so bad when I was working Pine Mountain, the rain came, my work truck got stuck. So I abandoned it, walked home, came back a couple of days later and there was a Redwood branch come through the windshield. I'm doing all that I can to bring the road back to pre-Anvil condition. Anvil knows they left a mess and offered us $75,000 when we had engineers come in and estimate $2.7 million to repair. That's all. Thank you. Sorry about that. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Leslie Keady and I am the sole person that had a home on Upper Bloom Grade, which is the historic road that used to take people to Big Basin State Park. The County abandoned Bloom Grade and the section of Bloom Grade that comes off of Little Basin, I've been maintaining personally as a single female for 15 years and it cost me a lot of money to do that. The Anvil crews, I was encouraged to go the public direction when we went to the shelter to discuss that. So I went with that and I did sign the right of entry form and on that right of entry, of course, it stated that I would accept damage. I would have to commend Anvil for meeting with me and giving me personalized attention about crossing the road. And however, when they brought in the second piece of equipment, which was a huge excavator to demo my foundation, since they didn't have attachments for one machine, they had to bring in a second machine. When they brought in that second machine, they ruined a section that I had just spent about $20,000 overlaying where there was a slide. So that was damaged. And then I submitted the claim when I saw that information from you folks about claiming for damage. That was very encouraging. But then, of course, I was denied that. So the county has abandoned this road. All repairs are on me. When the PG&E crews came in to do all the tree removal for my tap line, I sustained a huge amount of damage. Then the rain came and I had major issues with erosion. Fortunately, Pacific Gas and Electric was very honorable and they paid out a claim which helped facilitate some of the repairs. I have, as a single gal, just spent about $30,000 repairing this section of upper bloom grade so I could actually get fire clearance on my pre-application. So any assistance that I could get to help repair this because now I'm looking at another 15 grand out of pocket to do repairs on the anvil section. So PG&E did a great job. Anvil tried to do a great job but they had too big of equipment and they ended up causing me some damage. So doing the best we can out there but any help you can give us surviving victims. It would be appreciated. Thank you so much. And first of all, Mr. Caput, Supervisor Caput, we did see some, a little bit less dust from the rains but it increased the amount of wash warding on the road. So it didn't really help that much. If you don't get anything else from my testimony, I want you to remember one thing. Anvil was simply the fox guarding the henhouse. The state didn't do its job and that's the problem. It's, you know, Anvil is a for-profit corporation. I don't really like them, but I don't blame them but there was no supervision on them, okay? The summary and analysis that you have in your packet is accurate. It's very good. And I hope that you take a good look at it. I hope also that you take a look at our engineer's reports that we hired to make sure that we weren't blowing hot air on this whole issue. So we knew what we were talking about. When we asked the state simply that they fulfill the conditions of their mitigation measures, that we be allowed to be part of the scope of work for fixing the roads. And third, that they withhold a final payment until this item was concluded. But there wasn't any supervision of Anvil as far as the roads. They did a fair job as far as cleaning up the properties. Some people had problems, of course, but I think that was where their supervision was. The project manager actually on his business card was a tire remediation specialist. So that was Cal Recycles project manager. So as I was complaining starting in April, speaking to Jason Heath and David and Matt and everybody else I could talk to, they weren't hearing us. I called the director of Cal OES and complained, told them that he had a supervision problem that was easy to fix. I heard from his people that night and within two weeks they were transferred. So after that, we didn't really get anything. The discussions with Cal OES. Could you summarize your comments, please? Yeah, I'm sorry. The discussions with Cal OES revealed that this was the first contract that the contractor was responsible for the roads. It was the ROE, the right of entry was in conflict with the contract. And thirdly, the state did not want to set a precedent of forcing the contractor to adhere to the mitigation measures. So basically that's it. Good morning, Chair McPherson, District Supervisors. My name is Olma O'Neill. I'm here to read a message on behalf of the White House Canyon Improvement Association President Julia Rivera. I live in White House Canyon. When Anvil started the debris removal on our road, they graded the road flat and removed about six to eight inches of material. That top six inches took about 30 years of work and rock to get to a place where we had a seal. The grading cracked that seal and removed hundreds of thousands of dollars of rock and work. Also by bringing the road down six inches, the existing granages were no longer functional. The portion of our road with this type of damage is primarily on state park property. After the debris removal, Anvil put about two inches of base on the road and called it good. The state park also signed off on the work and said they did a great job. Even Cal OES said the road looked great. Putting two inches of base rock may have looked nice, but is not functional. The first couple of rains proved it and the base turned to mud. We were supposed to have our road return to its original state. We are far from it. Our road is maintained by the landowners, even though it is a public road used by the state park who has never contributed anything in the past 30 years. The first portion is state park and the last portion is CSA number 18. We as landowners do not have enough money to return the road to its original shape. It will take us decades with the budget we have. This message continues with the next speaker. Thank you, sir, ma'am. Morning, Chair McPherson and district supervisors. My name is Rory O'Neill and I'm also from White House Canyon Community. I'm here to continue reading a message on behalf of our neighborhood association, President Julia Rivera. Anvil rolled a 10-wheeler dump truck into White House Creek and removed about two to three feet of road when they removed the truck from the creek. The instigating factor that led to this accident was Anvil's original mistake of grading the road flat and down too far. When they did that in this section of road, they buried a culvert that drained a natural spring. I told workers for over a week about this and that the road was getting more and more sloppy each day and they needed to unplug the culvert. They never made a single attempt to mitigate the hazard they created and risked the lives of the truck drivers, the residents and the public driving up the road. It was very lucky that the driver that landed upside down in the creek was not injured or killed. To mitigate this risk, they put down steel plates. Recently, they removed the steel plates and were not planning to fix the area until I mentioned that they were removing the only mitigation to the hazard they created and they could not take the plates without fixing the road. Again, they put more base rock on this area and walked away. They offered us a settlement of $4,600 for them to walk away. This was not only insulting but also inadequate. During this whole period, they had been telling us they were applying for permits to fix the road which they had not done. Permitting a loan to fix this section of road, I have been told can be up to $40,000. They did not apply for permits until we refused the settlement. We were also told that we should take the settlement because all the other communities had done so and we should not be difficult. Dealing with Anvil, Cal OES and Santa Cruz County during this process has put undue stress and financial burdens on the community members trying to rebuild. I urge you to hold Anvil accountable and also to hold Cal OES accountable. Anvil is a for-profit company so their greed is to be expected. Cal OES did not take the time to oversee Anvil construction and I would like them to be held accountable as well. Thank you. I'm John McKeon. My wife and I have a long-term residence off Last Chance Road. For the past seven years, I've been one of the two people involved with getting proposals for obtaining paving on the front section, 1.2 miles of Last Chance. So when it comes time, when the successful process reaches its conclusion to determine the expenditures for that section, I have some proposal information that may be useful. Also, no one seems to be talking about the retention hold back provisions of the contract. And it seems to me if the contracting agency doesn't use its retention leverage to enforce the as good or better repair provision of this contract is clearly in dereliction of its duty to the taxpayer. And there's no additional use of taxpayer funds involved here. We're really allocating between a private contractor's profit and the damaged private holders. So if something should I feel be actively done involving the retention provisions of that contract. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman, members of the board. First of all, I'd like to thank you for taking this issue on on behalf of the residents and a residents of the county as a whole and specifically some of the private residences that you're hearing from today and also from the county for doing the work and getting out on the ground and doing assessments so that there's something qualitative that can be looked at. I work for Redwood Empire Sawmills. My name is David Van Linnup. I'm registered professional forester and we're associated with two of the roads that have made it onto your report, Barakanoals and Old Women's Creek. We've been associated with those road systems for 25 years. Particularly Barakanoals was in a very serviceable condition. Condition that could be maintained by the residents had been put in a good serviceable condition through a Department of Fish and Game Grant 20 some years ago. Had a lot of rock, had good shape. Anvil came in, took the top six to 12 inches of the road off, pushed it to the outside edge, changed the shape of the road. They were alerted to this, warned about this and ensuing meetings and kind of the stop work was put on by the road association. Anvil was told not to come in and do any more work, any of the cleanup or any access until there was an agreement about how the road was gonna be treated after the fact and the story is the same. We were made handshake and verbal agreements by both Anvil and Cal OES that the road was gonna be put back to some reasonable condition. It may not be perfect, that it was gonna be better, that rock was gonna be brought in, shape was gonna be put back in the road and the road was gonna be returned to some serviceable condition. That work was never done. We were, the Cal OES folks took the path of lease resistance, whatever they could say to get the work to move ahead and then they washed their hands of the whole road system and the residents of that road system have no means to put it back together and you've heard that story many times this afternoon or this morning. So please continue to endeavor to get this resolved through Cal OES and we appreciate your efforts. Thank you. Thank you for your efforts too for helping the county and some issues in the past. Hello board, good morning. My name is Mike Duffy. I'm a forester for Redwood Empire. I've spent the last, well I spent since October in the burn mostly during salvage operations and spent a lot of time trying to restore roads or forest infrastructure to handle the rains coming this winter. When we first encountered Anvil, they had bladed off our road, created berms, in sloped roads that were once out sloped and it was clear to us they neither understood the forest practice rules nor did they understand rural forest roads, especially roads that had not been paved. So it takes an inordinate amount of effort and diligence to keep your road surface, your rock, everything functioning and that was bladed off. Frankly, before the contractor really was even arranged and once we pointed that out what they were told they told us that they understood the forest practice rules. The forest practice rules are my career and if you do something that's blatantly against the forest practice rules and tell me you're following the forest practice rules that's a tell. The contractor didn't, they were out of their element but I could tell that from day one. I don't blame the contractor. Cal OES made promise after promise after promise and never had any intention on following through and I don't understand that. I don't understand why a state agency made promises that they had no intention of following through on. It doesn't make sense. So I just wanna come, I guess forward with Santa Cruz County is not alone, San Mateo County is going through the exact same thing right now and I imagine wherever these operations are occurring. So I would suggest you reach out to those other communities those other counties because Cal OES probably is not gonna listen to one county but they'll listen to everybody. So thank you again. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Aretha, I'm from Catholic 30s and we work directly with survivors and the reason why I'm here today is supporting our clients and all the survivors. This is an issue that we see every day and it's a common issue that we hear every day and needs to be addressed in order for people and the community to move forward and be able to rebuild their lives because they are not rebuilding a home, they are rebuilding their lives back. So I will appreciate the time and the opportunity to be here and thank you so much. Hi, my name is Kat. I came in earlier but with a doctor's note and I was discriminated against I find that appalling because for a board that likes to talk about inclusivity and non-discrimination you actually would not allow me to be in this building. So that said, I wanna say, it's hard for people to hear me. This does not prevent transmission. I came here a year and a half ago to tell you this. The vaccine does not prevent acquisition of the virus or transmission. It is an experimental product. I am very concerned. You're concerned about the things out there for our children right now. They're experimental product. They're following an agenda. They are the code, the CBPH back. We're on the subject or last chance road, please ma'am. These are experimental products, liability-free products. I want people to be aware. You are all complicit in injury and death for all the young children that you are pushing these vaccines on. Please leave a like. We need a vaccination playbook. Please, everyone, check it out. You're all complicit. How do you sleep at night? You are responsible. Think about that. Wait, is this timer doesn't work? Go ahead, please. Yeah, I don't know how I can really top what was just been said and what has been said by about the subject or last chance road, please. Yeah, thank you. 20 other citizens about the last chance road. You know, Homeland Security, fighting terrorism since 1492. What does this have to do with last chance road? I spoke in front of this board on September 15th, 2020 about the cause of these fires with the CDU fire and all over the world. So that's available on YouTube, under James Ewing, under my personal presentations. I took notes on what stuff was going on here, you know. Quotes like Anvil was the Fox guarding the henhouse because they're a private corporation for profit that's working for the state. I think it's great that FEMA is presenting all this money to help fix things that FEMA caused. Please check out that video. Why is any citizen surprised by the red tape and seeming lack of accountability in so many government agencies? You know, since the CZU fires between 15,000 and 23,000 of pages of legislation in this room have been rubber stamped by you guys because you guys are just puppets of other corporations and foundations. So I think it's great that there were so many people in the public that were citing their concerns and also their compliments. I sure wish I had more compliments for the members of this board. You can bring Mike down just a little please. Thank you. Hello, Christine Harper, White House Canyon. I've lived there all my life. My husband was the road manager for 30 years. His father was before him for 30 years, 30 year retiree of granite construction operator, grader operator. I have a picture today I'd like to submit and this is the Anvil truck that went in our creek and we're not able to get our fire clearance until Anvil fixes this part of our road. And I'd like to hand this over. This was actually our debris cleanup started in January and that was winter. And they did start in January because our road was stated in very good condition. And I spoke with Sean Pittman, the superintendent of the job and I asked him not to break the crown, break the seal, plug the culverts, fill in the ditches. He did all of that and he said he was gonna do it his way. This was how he was gonna do his operation and then bring our road back. Our road has not been back. And we lost a lot of years in my lifetime, 60 years of repairs, a lot of money that our residents, 30 houses, 20 burned and we'd like to rebuild, but we need your help, please. I'd like to be in a house again. Thank you. This is the last person here in the audience that wants to speak on this subject and do we have any callers? We do, we have four via Zoom. Okay, we have a schedule time of 10.45. We wanna complete this item. And item number nine will go into the afternoon because that item on 10.45 is gonna take some time. Then we go into closed session and I would guess on item number nine, we will not be discussing it probably until two o'clock, something like that. Go ahead, sir, please. Thank you. The quarter of a billion dollars that was awarded to Anvil in order to help with the debris removal seems to have been maybe poorly managed. I wanna bring to attention the sketch 22 that you can't rebuild your house without getting the fire regulations complied with. So these are being preventative damage to the people who are trying hard to get permits. And even so, the permit process with the planning department is also a cost which is preventative for people to come back. When you follow the money, it's about whether or not the state is responsible. Sounds like this is gonna have to go to a state level. The FEMA money that's perhaps out there, perhaps to be applied for is yet another lengthy process. Being part of the Last Chance Road community has been very rewarding to me over the years. I understand that there's a pilot program for three years extended to the people in order to get through this planning process. I ask that that be extended. I ask that it be extended to at least a decade because this is how much damage has been done to that property, to the road, to the access if we are not given that much time, many of these people may have to abandon their properties. And as it also applies, there's state park access to that area. It was taken away from us a few years ago when two miles of the rear part of our road was recon toward making it a one way road, eight miles, seven miles long. That means people can't get in or out and with the new regulations of there being a limit of a one mile access road, this is an oxymoron, you can't have it both ways. So please consider all these. Thank you. Thank you, sir. The dollars, we have four. I just forgot to submit my letter. You want to submit, anybody can submit their letter or if they wish to the clerk, but go ahead, please. Caller 2915, your microphone is available. Thank you. This is Becky Steinbrenner. Can you hear me? Yeah. Thank you. I commend the board for taking this action, public action and their stated recommendations to contact Governor Newsom's office directly. I also want to ask that you involve state senator Laird and Assemblyman Stone. These are their areas and their help will be imperative and very forceful. I also think that state parks should be held accountable for closing off the access for this community and that this board should likewise take direct action to demand that that emergency access be reopened. It was the cause of a death and that is unacceptable. So please include that in your actions and requests of the state and state legislators and of the governor. What will happen if Anvil simply throws up its hands and walks away? What will be the backup plan for getting these people made whole and addressing the millions of dollars of damage that Anvil has done? I think we also need to look at that because judging by what I've heard and read, Anvil is not a reputable company and will simply skate away and the people will be left no better than they are before you hear today. Thank you. Sarah Polgar. Hi, I want to thank the board and staff for taking this issue on, assessing and summarizing the issues and taking action. My name is Sarah Polgar. I'm with the San Mateo Resource Conservation District and my colleagues and I have been working with and trying to advocate for landowners affected by the damage that Anvil did and that Cal OES oversaw in San Mateo County. These are the Barranca Knowles communities, Old Women's Creek, as well as White House Canyon. These are the roads that cross county lines. You've heard from these residents and the businesses about what happened with Redwood Empire, they Mike Duffy and David Van Lennep, Julia Rivera and Christine Harper from White House Canyon. You've heard their stories and really so many of them lost their homes and really all they had left was their roads and now that's taken away from them too. And so this is just so important and we strongly support the San Mateo RCD strongly supports this Santa Cruz County effort to address the situation and hold the state accountable and we look forward to coordinating with and helping in this effort. Thank you again. Lisa Warren. Good morning. Thank you. I am part of a family who has owned property and a home in White House Canyon for over 30 years and I wanna thank the board and staff for presenting this. I also wanna thank the neighbors in our community who have spoken and written. I'm really glad that Julia's letter was read. There is also a posting from Kathy and Jim Morley that I hope you read and I heard some things. Well, first of all, you've gotten a very good account of what happened in White House Canyon from the people who know best and I'm of course involved in email strings but I don't live there full-time so I follow what I can and I trust wholly in these people who have spoken to you. And I think there are others like me that couldn't be here that would say the same thing. Well, I know there are. So, and I thank David Reed specifically because he's the one person that I've had the most exposure to and he's been as helpful as he can be and truly listens. So thank you for that. Keep going. I heard that there needs to be continued advocacy. It's critical and I can't emphasize that more. I hope that that is the theme for all of you. I believe it was he that said right now, residents are in the middle of a battle. That of course means that the county should be in the middle of the battleground along with those residents, including my family and our community there. I, someone said, a speaker I believe that the ROE is in conflict with the contract which is blaringly obvious to me and I don't know why there is even a discussion still happening and more forceful actions haven't been taken. I know it's a process but really the process needs to speed along, please. And thank you all again for your time. Caller 7551, your microphone is available. I think we see that you have unmuted. Caller 7551, we can hear you. I'm Carrie Wienster, President of the CSA 47 Gramer Drive Road Association. After the cleanup following the destruction of 37 of the neighborhood's 52 homes, the state of the road is worse than anything I've seen in the last 18 years. There is damage to the road, to pavement edges, and to driveway culverts. Repairs go beyond our budget. High end residents of CSA 47, thank you for anything the board can do to support us in dealing with the situation. Thank you. The last call for any Zoom speakers. Sorry, there are several hands that come up and down. This is the last one, Angie Garez, your microphone is available. Great, can you hear me? Yeah. Perfect, so this is Angie Garez from the Resource Conservation District in Santa Cruz County. And I just kind of want to echo what Sarah said from the San Mateo RCD. We have had a lot of folks reach out to us. We do have some funding to help with repairs. We are stuck in this limbo because if the state is responsible, our funds can't go towards that assistance. So it's a struggle for us in trying to help landowners. We have seen some of the damage that we've been called out to look at and we saw the roads previously when landowners had done a lot of great work over all these years. And it's just disheartening to see that and know what folks are already going through. So we want to echo our support for moving forward. And then I think I would just also want to make sure that if Ann Bill comes back to repair those roads, that there is some accountability that the roads are put back correctly in the way that they were done before, the grading that was done, et cetera, and not just some, you know, bad repair. And I don't know how to keep that accountability, but make sure that that's somewhere in the conversation. So I think that's it. Okay, that will complete the public comment. I just wanted to ask Mr. Reed or Mr. Michala, do you have any brief comments that there was several? I think there was really comments that we had, but do you have any basic comments before we go to the scheduled item at 1045? I would just be brief that they validated really what we've seen out there. And so I think we hear everybody clearly and that's what we'll be advocating for with your board action today and with subsequent scheduling of meetings with state officials to advocate the same message that we heard today, because it's our message as well, it's what we've seen and heard ourselves. So I think it's all very consistent. Okay, that's right. Okay, I've heard it to the board. Any comments, Mr. Coonerty, Supervisor Coonerty? Yeah, I'm happy to move the recommended action with the additional direction of the chair reaching out to the governor and our state elected officials to add further amplify the voices and the concerns we have as a community. Any other comments from the board? A second. I think Supervisor Coonerty moved, Supervisor Friend seconded, call the roll please. Supervisor Koenig? Aye. Friend? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. Caput? Aye. McPherson? Aye. Thank you. Motion passes with additional direction unanimously. Okay, thank you for coming and expressing your concerns. We'll work on this as quickly as we can. Okay, we will go to now the scheduled item that is for 1045. It's a public hearing to consider proposed maps and plans for revised Board of Supervisors district boundaries, except in file report on the 2021 redistricting process adopt a final restricting map and plan adopt a resolution approving a final map revising reflecting revised Board of Supervisors district boundaries and adopt an ordinance repealing Santa Cruz County co-chapter 2.04 and adopting new chapter 2.05 related to supervisor districts and take related actions that's outlined in the memorandum of the County Administrative Officers. We have some attachments regarding Apple Hill East Harbor, Apple Hill East Harbor Scots Valley, Apple Hill East Harbor Scots Valley Midtown and the original proposal from the commission on redistricting attachment E. We also have a resolution establishing the 2021 Supervisorial Boundaries final and some ordinances referred to 2.04. And we have a presentation from Elisa Benson, our administrative assistant, County Administrative Officer. Thank you, Mr. Chair for the record, Elisa Benson, Assistant CAO and team lead for the County's redistricting effort. First, I wanna acknowledge and thank the super strong County team we have with Rita Sanchez, Susan Perlman, Matt Price, Jenny Gomez, Stephanie Cabrera, Ruby Marquez and we have our County Elections Clerk Tricia Weber who have just been outstanding partners in moving this process along. And they're here with me today if there's questions that I'm not able to answer during the presentation. Next slide, please. This is our fourth meeting on this topic and our fourth public hearing. I start with the slide because redistricting matters. This is a significant process we undertake every 10 years as a function of the decennial census to ensure that every legislative district is substantially equal in population and reflects communities of interest. This is where redistricting determines neighborhoods and communities that are grouped together for purposes of a lefting that represented members. It's very important that we have community voice as part of this process as unfortunately there have been many times in our history where redistricting has been used to disempower particularly disadvantaged and vulnerable communities. So this is an incredibly important process that we go through every 10 years. The other item we have to talk about is the effect of the COVID global pandemic and how that affected the census data and the provision of that data to this process which then affected how we went forward with this process. The pandemic also I think affected how folks were able to engage over the summer as we did take this on as they were dealing with COVID Delta variant and also just dealing with the process we're all going through with recovery. So it's been, it's an important process but it's also been a particularly challenging one given the events we've all been experiencing. Next slide please. Our objectives for today is again, I will review the legal context and our process for the county's effort as it is different than ever before. We will provide a recap of the various public hearings and the input and testimony that has been considered. We'll then ask the board to open this fourth public hearing to get additional feedback on the items that were posted last week. And then we will discuss and consider proposed maps and plans and take appropriate action if you all are ready to take final action. So very quickly, you've all heard this many times. This process was particularly different as a function of state legislation AB 849 for the Fair Maps Act. Very quickly starting from the bottom that piece of state law set forth very specific requirements around how the redistricting process could go forward. First and foremost, very strong record keeping. And so everything we've done has to be available and available on the web so people can have access to the materials that were utilized in making this decision. There is extensive amount of public outreach in multiple language that is required which we have undertaken. And then there's specific requirements around the public hearing processes themselves as denoted here on the slide. I'm gonna briefly walk us through the process that has gotten us here today. Our redistricting process for the purposes of Supervisorial districts really has taken place in four phases. The first phase, the planning phase for the process was really started in February with the decision of this board to establish an advisory commission consistent with the requirements of AB 849. We built our county team, received those nominations from the board for our ARC members and then convened that commission. Moving to the second phase around access and outreach, we launched our website in early May and that started to put forward the community of interest tools. One of the things that as I've mentioned has been challenging typically and past redistricting processes, counties and anybody that is doing this particular type of work has the census data from the start to inform the process. That was not our situation. So early in our access and outreach period, we just worked on awareness about what is redistricting and how to be involved. This included press releases, social media campaign. We developed an infographic in English and Spanish and shared that information with over 200 community-based organizations in August inviting them to participate in our process and asking to come to any forum that we would be invited to, to talk with folks in the community about this. The third phase of our process was a really around involvement and engagement of community. We had four public education and community of interest input workshops. Those are noted on the slide. We received the data during that period, preliminary data on August 20th and then final data in late September and we'll speak to that in a moment. And then really that fourth phase of the process was really the line drawing phase. So based on that input received either through the web portal or in our workshops, our commission actually started doing their work and taking that to develop proposals. So that, and I'll talk a little bit more to that on the next few slides. At 26, the board's phase of this work of that receiving the ARC recommendation and then considering additional testimony. Next slide, please. As mentioned, this is the composition of our advisory redistricting commission. We have so much appreciation and gratitude for each and every member and our commitment to do this work over the summer and in challenging times with COVID. I wanna just extend our thank you to our commissioners for their work and assistance in this important process. I will briefly talk about their role. As we mentioned, they were appointed in April. They really served as the eyes and ears of supervisors. They were heavily involved in the planning and the workshops that we did with the public, but they also did their own outreach within their communities to understand perspectives around the questions of representation and boundaries. They spent some considerable time with the legislative guidelines that inform redistricting, both federal and state and those very important ranked criteria are on this slide. Happy to answer any questions about them. And then as I mentioned, when we did receive that data in late August, they started their conversations and understanding what the implications of that data might be and integrating those with the committee of interest perspectives we had been gathering during the process. They met seven times as a commission and then many of them joined us for the four public workshops as well. Next slide, please. But I'm gonna move quickly through the public hearing schedule components of 8849. The board is required to have four public hearings, but the law also provides that one of the workshops can count as one of those public hearings. And we utilize the public workshop we did on September 30th in the city of Watsonville in the evening to meet one of those requirements. We are now in the fourth meeting, the fourth public hearing. So we are meeting the minimum required public hearings and the schedule is laid out here. As we discussed it last week's public hearing to allow for this meeting to be potentially used as the meeting for final adoption, we did move forward with your board's direction to notice a number of different plans and proposals for your final consideration today. And should the board decide to receive additional input beyond today, there is sufficient time in our schedule to add a fifth public hearing if you determine that's necessary. Very quickly, this slide presents current boundaries and the census data that we did receive. So as you can see, we are actually within 5% with the current boundaries which is considered substantially equal and meeting that first criteria. However, as I've mentioned at our previous public hearings, just being within that 5% goal is not sufficient. We also have to ensure that the criterias are met. I'm now gonna move forward with a recap of the previous public hearings and the input that has been received and considered by your board. On the 26th, we received the advisory commission's proposals. Those were proposals A and B, one for East Harbor and one for Apple Hill. We also received a redistricting plan and map from Kay Halonen and multiple communities of interest form. At the meeting that was held last week, there was additional redistricting plans and maps received from B Steinbrunner and from D Tim. An additional community of interest forms and emails were received about the various proposals. All of those materials have been included in your agenda materials as well as additional materials that the clerk of the board has posted to the website. Last week, we received specific direction from the board to notice a handful of different various maps and plans and that is listed here. These maps were noticed on the ARC website on November 9th with a countywide map for each of those plans and then district specific maps and detail maps. So all of those were available and high resolution formats for the public and any interested party to examine. And the GIS team as we move through the conversation today is ready to bring those maps forward I think you need to utilize those for your reference. Since last week, we have received considerable community input, attachment F to your agenda packet for this item included all of the community of interest forms as well as significant amounts of additional public comment. And then we had additional materials that we received since the agenda was published on Friday that was posted and was also provided to your board. We have additional copies here in chambers and I will have to say more and more comments continue to be posted into the evening yesterday. So with that, I am open to questions about any of the items and then we would move forward with the public hearing. Thank you, I think we've heard that on the board before. So I think I'll go right to the public hearing to see if there's anybody that would like to address us. Hello, I appreciate the opportunity to address the board and your members. My name is Jim Moser. I'm a retired public health attorney and I serve as the fifth district representative on the advisory redistricting commission, the ARC. I'm speaking as an individual today who is a member of the ARC and I'm not reporting to represent the ARC or any of its other members. I've submitted written testimony that provides my perspective on Mayor Tim's proposal and how it relates to the work of the ARC, which is in your packet. I'd like to just briefly today address what I consider concerns about the integrity and credibility of the process that we are involved in. As I understood my role as a member of the ARC, it was to be, as the staff said, your eyes and ears. So solicit public input, review, investigate proposals, analyze data and maps and working closely with each individual board member come up with recommendations for your consideration that hopefully would reflect both the public input and the priorities of the board. It's disturbing to me that the board is considering Mayor Tim's proposal about Scotts Valley, a proposal that the ARC did review. I spent quite a bit of time on that as well as a conflicting proposal you can see in my testimony, my submission about that. Without at least asking for a briefing from the ARC about our deliberations and why we did not decide to bring that forward. It was submitted at the last possible moment. As the staff showed, there have been multiple public hearings and the staff should be commended for the very intense effort to reach out to the public. It's hard to believe that the mayor would not have known about this. And it just, to me, it really undermines the credibility of the work that we did as the ARC and the process itself. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Jim Koffus. I live in Ben Lohman. First of all, thank you for your public service. I appreciate it. And to all the members of the ARC and the staff that have worked several months on these proposals, I appreciate all the effort that people have put into this. I just want to bring up a couple of issues. Number one, 10 years ago, this same issue came before the board. And at that time, the supervisors for the fifth district and the first district joined the majority to vote to draw the boundary on Highway 17. Second, the notion of trying to keep municipalities together is not anywhere in the guidelines. It suggests that we minimize the disruption but doesn't require a city to be boundaries to be kept together. Had it, if that were to be the understanding, then obviously Watsonville, Capitola, Scotts Valley would all need to be in their own district. Santa Cruz, we would have to minimize the disruption. So that would mean take it down to two instead of three. Finally, the process is important. And for three, the minimum of three supervisors to essentially disregard the process would, in my opinion, really demonstrated a lack of integrity. And so I would urge you to follow the recommendations of your commission and vote to keep the line at Highway 17. Thank you. Hello, my name is Jamie Ackman. I'm a resident of Ben Lomond and a San Lorenzo Valley Water District Director, although today I'm here representing comments that are my personal views. I ask that you support the redistricting commission's recommendation not to change any of the district boundaries. As Jim said, the legislation governing California's redistricting process does not require that cities be viewed as a community of interest. In fact, it offers specific guidance on the type of features that should be observed where district borders are to be set. And those features include rivers, streets, and highways. Highway 17 is a clear barrier that separates Scotts Valley's District One communities from District Five. In fact, Cal Fire used it as the evacuation border during the CZU fire, clearly identifying the boundaries of the current fifth district as a community of interest. Merely offering support to the communities directly impacted by fire does not qualify Scotts Valley's first district neighborhoods as a community of interest. If that were the case, Alaska would be a community of interest as well. The communities recovering from the fire and dealing with the ongoing threat of debris flow are the ones whose interest should be heard. And it's these communities who raised more than 229 signatures to oppose the last minute Derek Timm proposal in just a few days. According to Derek Timms comments defending his last minute proposal in the press banner, the true harm Scotts Valley has suffered has been quote, splitting a portion of our residents from the fifth district only serves to dilute our ability to select the supervisor to represent our community. In other words, he would like you to strengthen Scotts Valley's political power at our expense. In the last six months, SLB residents made clear they did not view Scotts Valley as a shared community of interest when they denounced merger talks between the two communities water districts. You should listen to those voices now. I urge you to support the redistricting commission's work. Thank you. Hi, thank you Board of Supervisors for opportunity to speak today. My name is Danny Rieber. I'm a lifelong Scotts Valley resident. I also serve on the Scotts Valley water board of directors for the water district. And I'm also the executive director for the Scotts Valley Chamber of Commerce. However, today I am speaking here as a resident on my own behalf. And I did just want to make a comment about this. I stood in this very room along with many of my other residents 10 years ago and we packed the room. And at that time we had unanimous support from the water district, the school district, the fire district, the Chamber of Commerce all in favor of keeping Scotts Valley in one district back then. And without getting the details because I was very involved in this when it happened 10 years ago, there were the political reasons aren't happening. This time they happened 10 years ago. And in my opinion, it was a travesty and an injustice to my community when our community was split. And I feel that this is an opportunity this time to rectify what was the mistake and the error that was done 10 years ago. And another thing I'll comment I want to make is I do have a lot of friends and family that live on that part of the road too. And with respect to Director Koenig, God, I even remember when you were campaigning that was one of the, you asked what an issue was. And I remember saying that even at the time, boy, we want to become whole as the Scotts Valley again. And anyway, I just would ask everybody to please consider this. And then also, I don't mean any disrespect and I think the committee further hard work, but the word did not get out in Scotts Valley. I gave a report at the water district to all of my colleagues. They didn't know this was being voted on. And then everybody I've reached out to didn't know it was. Even if you don't decide today, I would ask you to consider it further. I heard there was an opportunity to discuss this in a fifth meeting. But this is a very important issue to Scotts Valley. And I just humbly ask that we can undo the travesty that was done 10 years ago and make Scotts Valley whole again. Thank you. Hello, I'm Chuck Boffman, resident of the fifth district for more than 17 years. And while temporarily living elsewhere, we look forward to returning to the Riverside Grove neighborhood north of Boulder Creek. Oh, sorry. Yeah, sorry for that. I didn't know that's perfectly fine. Thank you for your gentle correction. I served on the Santa Rosino Valley Water District Board and as board president in the Santa Margarita Groundwater Agency as the vice chair. And I too want to speak to the redistricting proposal that the mayor of Scotts Valley brought to your board last week. Others have spoken to the issue of the mayor bringing his thoughts on boundaries to the discussion so late. I agree with those, but instead I want to bring to your attention for our likely unattended consequences of implementing today the change that the mayor wants. His proposed change has relevance to the Santa Margarita Groundwater Basin and it's a managing agency. Presently, Scotts Valley residents have representation on the groundwater agency via the city, the water district and the county. That is at least four representatives that they can contact with suggestions or concerns. This is more than say a resident of Boulder Creek has since they do not live in an incorporated city. Also, I estimate as the first district boundaries are changed, the number of residents in the district will drop by 2,300 from about 300 to 700. In this situation, the rationale for the county having two seats on the agency gets weaker and should be reconsidered. If the first district no longer had a seat on the city, had a seat on the city's seat on the city, the seat should probably be reconsidered as well so as to reestablish a not number of seats on the agency board, while also bringing equity to the representation that Scotts Valley has vis-a-vis the unincorporated communities of the fifth district. And of course, there may be renovations out there I have not thought about. Let's vote for the water manager this morning and they had not heard about this. I attempted to contact the second one but was not able to reach them. Since the water agencies have not been able, I have not been consulted, have not been reached out to, I think this should not proceed without the full engagement of such important bodies. And I ran into one of my neighbors coming into the building today and they had not heard about this. So this is not the time to have redistricting done when there has not been full engagement with the public and you should take the time, okay, if something like this is gonna happen to do that I don't think that can be done in the limited amount of time remaining. So there will be more redistricting in the future and this should come back to the board in the future. Hi, I'm Derek Tim from Scotts Valley and I do wanna just touch on some of the points today and also thank the county. We've had such incredible work from the, from Carlos Palacios and his team over the last 18 months and I think that really underscores the importance of having strong representation from our entire community on the board of supervisors. First time I attended a board of supervisors meeting like Danny Reber was 10 years ago. So first time I gave public comment and it was on this exact issue asking to keep our community together. We were split at that time and we felt disenfranchised. I think our neighbors and friends in San Lorenzo Valley would feel the same way of today we were talking about drawing a line down the middle of highway nine. We're not doing that. And what happened 10 years ago can be corrected right now legally keeping of communities of interest together is one of the critical missions of the redistricting process. Our schools, police, water, fire, city services, evacuation routes, they're all in one district. Board of supervisors should be the same. And this process it has been truncated. It's a shortened process this time. And to that point the outreach really hasn't happened to our community. I'm honest in saying I didn't realize was at this point I saw that article in the Sentinel I did not get outreach from the commission neither did any of my other council members to my understanding. So I'm here today just to ask for you to look back at that map, consider consolidating Scots Valley again reunifying it to the way it once was. We as a community really feel that it's been difficult not to have that level of representation at the county level. Right now we have great representatives but we might not in the future and this is our chance to have that voice. So let's get it right this time around and correct those mistakes of 10 years ago. Thank you very much for your time. Anyone else would like to speak to us? We have anybody on the phone? Excuse me, we have a person here. Thank you. My name is John Jameson and I live in Felton. This has only recently come to my attention from concerned neighbors and other people in the San Lorenzo Valley area who are of a different culture perhaps from those in Scots Valley. And I have some degree of paranoia about what's being proposed. And so I took a look at the demographics and it looks as though if this were to go through the Scots Valley people would move from 10 to 20% of the Supervisorial District. Of concern to me personally is that I foresee water wars in the future and Scots Valley is growing. I'm not sure about the San Lorenzo Valley but in any case if there's gonna be a fight over water I wanna make sure that everybody gets a fair share rather than somebody commandeering their resources. I'm on a private well so I shouldn't have much of a dog in the fight but the way the world is going I think everybody ought to be concerned. Thank you. Anyone else in the room that would like to comment on this? Do we have anybody on the phone? Yes, there are 10, we assume. Caller 2915, your microphone is available. Hello, this is Becky Steinbruner. Can you hear me? Yeah. Thank you. I would like to point out again to your board that there has been nothing about this at all in any of the public libraries. I have asked for that many times. I've asked the library to reach out. They contacted the county, ARC and there's still nothing in the public libraries about this. That's not acceptable because that's where a lot of people go who would be engaged if they were to know about it. How would the public be expected to engage in something that is so vague and they don't even know how it could or would affect them that is unrealistic for social media outreach? I want to urge your board to schedule another meeting. I want to urge your board to schedule that in the evening because the final workshop hearing of the ARC was in Watsonville and last week Ms. Benson could not even give a number or did not give a number but only said it was a very low turnout. I suspect it was zero turnout. And to use that as one of the evening meetings that is required I think is unacceptable. So please schedule another evening meeting for this important issue. Now you've got the public's attention and schedule it in the evening at another date. I want to say that my handwritten letter that I submitted in person at your special meeting on October 26th has not appeared in your packet until today. I want to tell you that the letter that I submitted last week with in person at your meeting is not in the agenda packet at all. It was explaining why I was submitting handwritten maps because the maps that came were not printable from the redistricting website. My maps were not even discussed. They were not even considered and by law you must consider and discuss all maps presented to you and if you don't accept them, say why? None of that happened. Mr. Koff has submitted a very good, some very good map to you. Other people have too. I just want to say that I have listened to the October 15th special meeting of the ARC you need to too because UCSC was a huge piece of information that is not being considered. Mr. Mosier did not want homelessness included in the District Five and that was the argument about. Thank you for your comments. Ron Sechel, your microphone is available. Hi, can you hear me? Yeah. Okay, first of all, thank you for letting me speak. I'm Ronald P. Sechel, longtime resident of the San Lorenzo Valley, retired and rolled agent and the chair of the Santa Cruz County Treasury Oversight Commission. First of all, I commend the process of redistributing of the committee and get San Lorenzo Valley and Scotts Valley are two very different areas. If anything should change in the beautiful San Lorenzo Valley, we have much more in common with Bonnie Dune and Davenport. And while if consolidation does happen, the half of Scotts Valley that is in the Fifth District has much more in common with the First District. But as we exist, there are no compelling reasons to change boundaries. If there is a compelling reason that seems to require this change, we should disclose what it is. Thank you very much. Email nbbm at cruzio.com, your microphone is available, nbbm at cruzio.com. We are moving on. Caller 1965, your microphone is available. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. We can hear you. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Hi, good morning. My name is Jessica and I live in District Five in the creek. And I just want to echo many of the sentiments that have already been stated that the San Lorenzo Valley is very different than Scotts Valley. And I would hate to see our district suffer just so Scotts Valley can benefit to having unification. You know, I really appreciate all the work that's been done by the committee. And I just would urge the board to take another look and really think about a new map that keeps the San Lorenzo Valley closer to the rural ties that it should be and not mixed with the entire city of Scotts Valley. Thank you. Laura, your microphone is available. Thank you. Good morning. Buenos dias. Laura Segura, Executive Director of Monarch Services. First of all, I just want to thank you all for the work that's been done so far in this effort. However, many of us have, as you've heard from so many others were not informed of this process. And I also, I consider myself a pretty informed citizen. Redistricting is an equity focused exercises, exercise protected by the Voting Rights Act and prohibits plans that discriminate on the basis of race color or membership in a language minority group. While we know there has been South County representation on the commission, it's concerning that there were no representatives of the Latinx community on the commission and the lack of representation will impact the redistricting plan. The commission should accurately reflect the racial and ethnic character of our county including South County without proportionate representation for the Latinx community on this commission. Santa Cruz County cannot fulfill the promise of its most fundamental right of equal political participation. So in the spirit of the Voting Rights Act, we request that the county host a Zoom town hall with interpretation services and sufficient outreach for authentic engagement with the Latinx population around this issue. The plan allows for communities of interest and the city of Watsonville has not had ample discussion, community input nor support to conduct this analysis as part of the county process. We request including county-wide engagement on this part of the process to deepen understanding of this allowance. The South County triage is a perfect community engagement structure that would give commissioners access to over 50 community leaders serving low income and vulnerable populations. It's a strong venue for the redistricting commission to engage, educate and include more voices in their recommendations. And you've heard from others from this group. So we encourage authentic engagement and we're willing to assist in making this happen. Thank you so much. Cocoa Walter, your microphone is available. Good morning everyone. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. My name is Cocoa Walter and I know a bit about civics and the difference between governments and politics. I believe what happened last week was blatant politicking. The advisory redistricting commission started its work in July of this year and I did participate. I knew it was happening. Mayor Tim's never participated in the process with the commission. He then jumped straight to the head of the line when he brought it before this board last week. And I'm sorry, that just reeks of entitlement on how that was allowed to happen and be brought forward. Mayor Tim wants Scotts Valley to be reunited without the separation of Highway 17. There's no precedent for this change. The cities of Santa Cruz, Capitola and Watsonville are all split up. Others have asked for unifications of their cities and been told no. Why then is Scotts Valley the only one to be unified? So I have real questions about that. However, whether Mr. Tim in the future decides to run for supervisor in either the first or the fifth district, we will be watching this behavior that was unprecedented last week. And I was absolutely appalled. Anyway, thank you very much. Judy Darnell, your microphone is available. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. I'm Judy Darnell, a 42 year resident of the San Lorenzo Valley. I worked at Valley Community Resources and now Mountain Community Resources and as a Healthy Start Director for the San Lorenzo Valley Unified School District. I, too, am in strong opposition to Mayor Tim's proposal and asked that the board reject this proposal to consolidate all of Scotts Valley into District 5 and adopt the boundaries as proposed by your redistricting commission. It would give the city of Scotts Valley an outsized influence over the fifth district and they already have a city council to represent them. I had faith in the commission, especially our representative from the fifth district, to review carefully and to develop a recommendation that was consistent with our need for strong local representation as a community of interest facing unique challenges. San Lorenzo Valley faces natural disasters, recovery and economic and social realities, including isolation, transportation issues that differ from the city of Scotts Valley. I can assure you that the San Lorenzo Valley residents do not share a community of interest with Scotts Valley residents. If any lines were to be withdrawn, it would make much more sense to be joined with our rural and narrow neighbors to the north like Bonnie Dune and Davenport. After recent events over the past year, such as the CZU fire and potential debris flows and evacuations, it is obvious we have many issues not shared by our Scotts Valley neighbors. I thank you for this opportunity to speak to you and hope that you take these concerns into consideration as you make your final decisions. Thank you. David V.B., your microphone is available. Hello, can you hear me all right? Yes. Great. Yeah, it's a little hard to follow, but it appears that after months of public process at the second to last meeting, a new and different proposal was submitted by one or two of the supervisors. And this proposal was influenced largely by a resident who would, as a result, change districts. So that's not disinterested. And if I'm reading the agenda correctly, the resolution on the agenda is to approve this last-minute map. And it might be favoring a candidate, Mr. Tim, potentially. 200 citizens signed a change.org petition against adopting this late redistricting proposal. Gary Patton even supported that change.org. The compressed timeline of this last-minute maneuver makes the public participation seem a little bit silly. It circumvents the advisory commission and their process. And lastly, today's agenda link to the November 9 minutes doesn't actually work. So I'm sure that this is all pedantically and scriptulously legal and the new proposal map wasn't literally drawn in Sharpie, but it feels to be not in the full spirit of transparency and engagement. I urge you to defer the vote on approving this last-minute proposal or better yet, support the commission's disinterested analysis. Thank you. Caller 6578, your microphone is available. It is star six to unmute. Good morning. My name is Nancy Macy. I live in Boulder Creek and have lived here with my husband and family since 1974. Been very involved in this process and was excited to see how it went and watched it happen and was remarkably impressed. I'm distressed to hear that there are some important people who have not heard about it, but it just totally shocks me that the mayor of Scott Valley would not be aware of a redistricting process. We actually returned from a visit in Southern California and helping our family members to an article in the press banner that touted the totally inaccurate idea that Scott Valley needs to be kept intact to be well-represented in local government. Keep in mind that no other city is represented in whole in one district in the county, which is actually a good idea because the cities are already represented in so many ways. The article also misrepresented the process. So people in Scott Valley reading the press banner or people in Boulder Creek reading the press banner might think that this was a legitimate step in the process and that there still would be ongoing public meetings and so on. I think you need to reread that article in the press banner. It is totally inaccurate. It failed to let the leader know that the proposal was slipped in at the last minute when it could have been thoroughly vetted, thoroughly evaluated during that four month process. It was a manipulative attempt to subvert the well-publicized and well-designed process. Those slides showed a lot and a lot of organizations were contacted. You know, the number of organizations obviously needs to be expanded. But at the same time, residents of Scott Valley have their own city government, their own water district. The city council itself has a voice as an entity with the county. It's a very strong voice. You can be sure that the fifth district supervisor has been and is responding to the concerns of all those living in Scott Valley with due diligence. This new scenario that has been foisted on the board at the last minute threatens to overwhelm the concerns of the San Lorenzo Valley, which really are different as it's been stated previously by other very articulate speakers. With the population of the entire city crammed, I'm just about done, crammed into one district, this already well-served population will have an either greater impact on county elections inevitably reducing the voice of the San Lorenzo Valley in the only local government it has. Thank you so much. Sorry to see you. Aller, Sean, your microphone is available. Thank you. My name is Sean. I have volunteered with the disabled and special needs communities of Santa Cruz County for almost 20 years. I'd like to say that I opposed this last minute proposal. I'd like you to please support the commission's recommendations instead. If this body is not willing to cooperate and include South County, I think it would suggest that's because they know Watsonville knows what's good for Watsonville and the residents show up and they return surveys and they vote, they're effective and they're progressive. Thank you. There are no other speakers via Zoom. Okay. I apologize, Chair. Barry Scott has raised his hand. Barry Scott? Barry Scott. The last call for Zoom speakers. Barry Scott, your microphone is available. Ah, thank you for permitting me to speak. I agree with David Van Brink and other speakers that this last minute change that would permit the mayor of Scots Valley to be included in Mr. McPherson's district suddenly. And it's my understanding that the mayor has an interest to potentially in running for supervisor is unfortunate and has the appearance of whether intentional or not of manipulating the process to serve a particular political end. And I think that we should support the commission's recommendation and dismiss or reject this last minute proposal. That could potentially influence the outcome and the future of our, the outcome of elections and the future of our county. Thank you. There are no other speakers on Zoom. I don't think anybody has come in late to address the board. Okay, I'll return it to the board and make some initial comments. First I wanna thank our area district commission staff members and the public who participated in the process. We've had over half a dozen meetings and workshops and I think the commission's process of analyzing the census data and considering the public's input and reviewing the various options really needs to be respected. Of the unincorporated cities within the county are currently represented by two supervisors and then one case, Santa Cruz by three. And the commission is recommending continuing that structure, which has proven to work well in my opinion. Each of the cities already has one primary elected body that represents their interests of work as a whole and that role of theirs in the city council. Keeping each city within two County Supervisorial districts, I think is in the best interest of each city and the region as a whole because it engenders across the aisle cooperation on regional decisions that affect each city and it bolsters each city's ability to receive partnership from the county. You have a few examples of that. There has been terrific regional cooperation on a ongoing water management planning process, Santa Marta-Gurrida Water Management Agency, some transportation projects and community choice energy. And I wanna thank Supervisor Caput and especially for last week mentioning that during our last meeting he was concerned about the perception that politics was at play regarding the late addition of suggested map changes. And I think that input I'm receiving from others in the community and I think the board should be mindful of those perceptions. I voted last week to get more information on this and now that we have it and additional public input with five proposed maps, not just two, I will not support those late submissions and I wanna support the commission's original proposal which is plan E. And because of the Rosenberg's rules that we do follow doesn't address this issue of chair making a motion, I'd like to vacate that my position or vacate that opportunity to make a motion and defer to Supervisor Coonerty. Oh, sure, thank you, Mr. Chair. So, Supervisor McPherson can't make a motion but I've met with them and talked to him about the issues that face the Valley and San Lorenzo Valley and the district and appreciate his perspective. So I'd like to make a motion and then if there's a second then I'll make a few brief comments which is to prove the recommended actions and including plan E. And I'll second that. Okay, and then so, look, I think I wanna say I appreciate everyone has gone through the process. This is not an easy process as we're seeing across the country. I do believe that it benefits communities and cities to have multiple supervisors who represent their districts. I also wanna say just to be clear, I thought Mayor Tim's proposal was consistent with what his position and other Scotts Valley City Council members were 10 years ago. And there was an opportunity in the process for people to bring forward their ideas over the last week. There's been a lot of motives subscribed to everything that people are bringing forward on both sides. But I think he was doing his job in representing the interests of his community and bringing him out forward when the county redistricting process invited folks to bring maps forward and we saw several people do so. At this time, I'm not in support of that map but I also wanna recognize that it was an appropriate thing to do and especially in his role as the mayor of Scotts Valley to bring forward what he considered his constituents to want. But at this point in order to have a smooth process and sort of continuity for the, and fair treatment for all the, as all the cities have in our community, I'm supportive of the commission's recommendations. Vice-Chair Koenig. Thank you, Chair. Well, it's funny that we've heard so much testimony from San Lorenzo Valley today. And of course, in the many, many layers we've received, my understanding is that we are supposed to, in order to honor the Fair Maps Act, take, to every extent possible, keep communities of interest together and pay attention to any comments saying that people feel they have a community of interest, including cities, and be deferential to that. What we're not supposed to do is listen to other communities who want to split a community of interest. The idea that we have to keep all the cities divided, that might be a justification for this process, but, or it might be an explanation or justification, but from what I can see, it's actually a violation of the intent of the Fair Maps Act, which says that to the extent practicable, we are meant to keep cities together. I don't think there's anything wrong with the way this process has moved forward. Late submissions, late, it's still right on time in order to consider at this meeting, this board takes actions all the time, which disregard recommendations from lower commissions, did it recently with the ADU laws that was proposed and we, some of my fellow members disregarded the recommendations of the Housing Advisory Committee and the Planning Commission on that. So as far as I can tell, we really, in order to honor the Fair Maps Act, should pay attention to the wishes of Scotts Valley and reunify them. You know, whichever way this vote goes, I think that the residents of San Lorenzo Valley, I find it slightly comical that so much has been said about trying to keep Scotts Valley over the entirety of it out of their district. Nothing has been said about the way the District Five line dances around in Midtown, going from one side of Stanford Avenue to the other. They seem to have no problem with City of Santa Cruz residents. And look at the end of the day, you guys are gonna have to learn to work together in the San Lorenzo Valley, both and with Scotts Valley. And it's, I guess it's representative of sort of political division we see in the country as a whole today, but it's also, frankly, a little bit sad. I'm not in support of the proposed action. Director Print. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do obviously hear and respect your comments as well as Supervisor Coonerty. Actually, let me first by say, we're actually really close. I mean, the advisory committee came up with a pair of recommendations and actually didn't reach consensus on some of the other issues. It wasn't that they made specific recommendations against the other recommendations. There was no specific consensus reached on a number of other considerations and our body right now is accepting their two primary recommendations and doing exactly as we were instructed to do, which is hold continued public hearings to consider whether any additional modifications should be made. I'm in complete support of the reunification of Scotts Valley. I don't understand a reason why it shouldn't exist. I think that it doesn't significantly actually alter the makeup of the fifth district, which it already is about 15% of the population would be about 20%, but it really is. And I think we should listen to the elected leaders up there that are asking for this to be harmonized. We're doing the same, by the way, in the fourth district. The addition of the Apple Hill area out of my district into Supervisor Caput's district, which she and I both support, helps bring even more of Watsonville into one community of interest in that area. I recognize that there's a motion on the floor. I think that this body should consider an alternate motion. So I'm gonna introduce an alternate motion. My alternate motion will be for, I'm gonna make sure I get the right one, which is for plan C, which is for the recommended actions and then for this body to adopt the Apple Hill, East Harbor, Scotts Valley reunification proposal. Second. That's a substitute motion, my friend, which will take precedence over my, Supervisor Coonerty's. Thank you. Mr. Caput. Thank you. I just want to clarify, the motion was for which one? Which motion, mine was to accept the commission's recommendation. Supervisor Friend with a second from Supervisor Koenig, wanted population, see was numbers, was it C? Yeah, plan C, Apple Hill, East Harbor and Scotts Valley. All right. So just for clarification, my motion is to accept the redistricting commission's recommendations and then to also reunify Scotts Valley. So it's just that one additional component to it. Okay, so we have one motion is for E as an echo. One is for C as in cat, is that correct? Correct. And what did you say, Supervisor Friend? Yeah, my motion is for option C as in Charlie or cat. And Supervisor Koenig's, excuse me, Coonerty's is for plan C. Well, C puts the... E, excuse me, E. That puts Scotts Valley back together again. I guess. Okay, and then I'm kind of for D, but the Apple Hill is my area, so I'm willing to go along with C if I'm hearing everything correctly. You want to go... Be clear, Apple... Plan C is Apple Hill in your area. Right, Apple Hill. East Harbor, which was in the original commission proposal plus unifying Scotts Valley. Yeah. That's what it is. It just provides the Coonerty and I had a motion that would just have Apple Hill and East Harbor. Okay. We already have one motion and a second. So we have to vote on that. The one that we're going to vote on first or maybe finally it would be Supervisor Friend's motion seconded by Koenig to for plan C, Apple Hill, East Harbor, and Scotts Valley. And that would be C. Correct. Is that, I mean... Okay. Am I okay for that council? The only reason I'm saying that is I looked at the population and D is closer to an even population. C is closer also. E seems to be a little bit off, but again, anyway, I'm ready to vote on it. It's not my area, but I did look at the maps and the logical one to me is D, but C is close to it. County councilor, do you have a comment? Yeah. Before a vote is called, there's a substitute motion on the floor, which has to be heard first. And that is Supervisor Friend's motion seconded by Supervisor Koenig to accept plan C, which is represented by a map. And for purposes of clarity of the record, can our GIS folks please put that map, call that map up so it's clear for the purpose of the record, the entire map representing all the county boundaries that's gonna be voted on in this motion. Sure. I'd be happy to do that. This is Matt Price with the County GIS. And I will go ahead and share my screen and call up map C. Is that the one you wanted to see? Correct. I wanted to see the map that was in the late added items that represents plan C. Yep. And here you go. Okay. This is the map that represents the motion that's currently on the floor. Okay. Can you just point you at this? Well, I'm sure I know by the board members, but for the general public, the three areas that you're talking about, just point them out, that's the Scotts Valley and that's Highway 17 coming down the middle. And on the right side or the east side is the, in the first district, the west side is in the, my fifth district. Then go to the harbor. Is that it or should they? That would take just a small portion of the third district and put it into the first district and split at the harbor. And then the last one is the Apple Hill, which supervises a friend or a Catholic might be able to explain it more than I can, but that in essence unifies those districts on a straight line, I guess, is about as forthrightly as you can put it. Is that correct? Does anybody have any board member? Mr. Glossiers, did you have a comment? Yeah, the Apple Hill reunifies the Apple neighborhood and to Supervisor Caput's district by moving the line slightly from Supervisor Friend's district. So it kind of unifies that neighborhood, that Apple Hill neighborhood and Supervisor Caput's district. Any other comments from the board? No, the only thing, I don't really have any dog in the fight, but because it's, you know, I'm away from it, but C, I guess is a better compromise to me than the, but okay. Okay, please call the roll on Plan C. Districting. This vote is for accepting staff recommendation and assaulting Plan C, which includes Apple Hill, East Harbor and the Scots Valley Unification. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. No. Drop it. Aye. McPherson. No. Motion passes 3-2. 3-2, I hope that Scots Valley and Santa Rosa Valley can find a better way than the past to get together. Okay. Let's see, weak. So, sir, we have a number of other recommendations that we want to make sure are addressed. So the motion was to accept staff, all of staff recommendations with Plan C, so we're done. All right. Okay. Okay, it is just before 12, and we said we'd come back at two. Can we get the people from behavioral health services back here at 1.30, so we come back at 1.30 instead of two or one? Yes, we can do one o'clock. One o'clock. We'll go into closed session now. Is there any, are there any reportable items? No, there are no reportable items. Okay. We will go into closed session now for till one o'clock and return here at the board to discuss some item number nine about the presentation on our behavioral services program. Okay. We'll return at one time. One o'clock. Here. Yes. And we'll get to the closed session and closed session. Then we'll come back. Come back here at one o'clock for the one item. Okay. We have about five or 10 minutes. Yeah, let's take- Are the two wrong? Yes. Okay. It is five after one on November 16th, 2021. We are going to address the final item on today's agenda of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. Item number nine, a presentation on the expansion of behavioral health programs, ratify three grant applications to the substance abuse and mental health services administration or SAMHSA or the healing, the streets and building hope and safety Santa Cruz programs and the California Department of Health Care Services for the new multi-year crisis care mobile units program except for multi-year grant applications in the amount of $7,945,000 and $755,000 from SAMHSA for the healing, the streets and building hope and safety Santa Cruz programs, the Department of Health Care Services for the CACMU program and the California Department of Public Health with the Comprehensive Suicide Prevention Program adopt six resolutions accepting unanticipated revenue in the total amount of $5,617,189 from the various grants and other funding sources in fiscal year 2021-22 approve an agreement with applied crisis training and consulting in the amount of $473,155 for the domestic violence emergency shelter and suicide prevention services, authorized fixed assets purchases in the amount of $625,000 for vehicles to support the CACMU program, approve addition of 23 and a half full-time equivalent positions as a result of grants in the addition of an assistant associate personnel analyst and two personnel clerk technician positions and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the interim director of the director of health services. We have a list of services and several items that are on the agenda as well, A through Q. So if we could just have the presentation now, that'd be great, thank you. Good afternoon members of the Santa Cruz Board of Supervisors, I'm Eric Riera and I'm the County Behavioral Health Director for the Health Services Agency. My pleasure to be here today to review several new grants that we were awarded this year. And review the different programs that we'll be implementing this year and into future years as a result of this new funding. As a matter of background, I wanna first acknowledge the really incredible work that was done by two of my staff in particular here with me today, Cassandra Aslami and Karen Kern. You could stand for a moment and just let us acknowledge the work that you put into getting these four grants. Thank you very much. Yes. Appreciate it. In my eight year career here in the County of Santa Cruz, this is definitely an opportune time for us. We've never had this level of investment from both the state and federal commitment of funding to expand behavioral health services in our community than I've seen this year. And I'm very excited to review the current opportunities that we have. And at the end, I'll talk about some future opportunities for funding that are also on the horizon for us. The first grant that I'd like to talk about this afternoon is called Healing the Streets. Healing the Streets was a nationally competitive SAMHSA grant for community mental health centers of which the County and our community partners are ones to expand community-based services for individuals with a severe mental illness and or substance use disorder. The proposal from Santa Cruz County was really a partnership with a number of different organizations, including the County Homeless Persons Health Project, County Behavioral Health and our Housing for Health Department in the Human Services Department. Healing the Streets program will provide direct services to some of the most vulnerable community members that we have in the County. As you may know, based on a recent point in time count of homeless individuals or people who are unhoused, we have a little bit over 2,100 individuals who are currently unhoused in the community. The Healing the Streets program will be targeting those most vulnerable individuals within that population who are both unhoused, have a serious mental illness or co-occurring substance use disorder with a mental illness with a geographic focus on the city of Watsonville as well as the city of Santa Cruz. It's an integrated service model bringing together County and community-based service agencies to engage participants and provide direct health in behavioral health services as well as housing navigation. The proposal includes funding to serve up to 600 people over a two-year period of time. The goals of the project include providing direct integrated services and establishing stable ongoing connection to health, behavioral health and housing providers for that population of focus as well as strengthening our safety net infrastructure and developing more efficient and effective pathways into care. As we've discussed in prior presentations, providing services to people who are unhoused in our community has presented a number of challenges in the past and not just funding, but questions and challenges around coordination and care. And that specific proposal that was funded by SAMHSA will help us address all of those different issues and challenges that we've faced in the past. We've been provided over $3 million for a two-year period of time under this SAMHSA grant. The next proposal that I'd like to talk about that we were also recently funded through SAMHSA is our Building Hope and Safety Program. This was a nationally competitive SAMHSA grant under the Emergency Response and Suicide Prevention Program. Santa Cruz County had previously applied for funding under this grant, but we were not funded last year. However, we were informed this year that our proposal was up for reconsideration and we were subsequently funded. This proposal is also based on partnerships with a number of key community-based organizations that will help support the implementation of the Board Adopted Suicide Prevention Plan for Santa Cruz County. The proposal specifically addresses many of the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental well-being of our community, as well as the need to implement our County Suicide Prevention Plan. Previously adopted, but no funding was attached to it. Through partnerships with organizations such as Applied Crisis Training and Consulting, Monarch Community Services and County Behavioral Health, a set of tailored interventions will be implemented using these funds. The Building Hope and Safety Program will fund a number of key strategies, including emergency housing vouchers for people at risk for suicide and experiencing domestic violence up to 150 people under this grant, clinical and community training in suicide prevention and safety planning, up to 1,190 people. Direct crisis services and behavioral health counseling to up to 2,500 people. Postvention services based on the local outreach to suicide survivors model, the loss model for up to 1,000 people. Distribution of a Behavioral Health Packet Resource Guide to up to 20,000 people in our community and a public education campaign with an emphasis on needs management and people at risk of domestic violence. C4. We received $800,000 in federal funding to support this initiative over a 15 month period of time. We were also recently awarded a suicide prevention grant from the California Department of Public Health for a comprehensive suicide prevention program. We were one of 13 counties in the state of California awarded funds specifically to strengthen our local suicide prevention efforts. Through the suicide prevention plan that was adopted by the board, we are able to leverage that plan successfully and apply for this funds. Santa Cruz County, together with our public health department, will use this funding to support work and review and analysis of risk factors for suicide and implementation of our local plan. These funds will be combined with the SAMHSA ESRP grant that I previously described and we received $200,000 over a four year period of time. The largest grant that we received was our crisis care mobile units grant which combined both state and federal funding to expand our crisis continuum of care. This expanded community based crisis system will include additional services for both youth and adults. It also includes for the first time funds to expand our behavioral health infrastructure including supervisors and managers to oversee program expansion, data reporting and outcomes measurements. This made both non-competitive funding as well as competitive funding available to counties to apply for based on the strength of their application. We were actually awarded close to $1 million more than what we asked for based on the strength of our application. We've also recently learned that we have an opportunity to apply for additional funding, which that application is due in January and we're considering applying for additional funding on top of what we already received. The CCMU grant actually has four different components for proposals that we made to the state which were successfully funded. The first proposal is a pilot program for an emergency medical co-responder model called triage, treat and transfer. This model will allow for a co-response model airing a behavioral health clinician with emergency medical services ambulance team. They will perform psychiatric assessments for individuals presenting with a behavioral health crisis in the field that prompted a 911 medical call. It's a very similar model to our highly successful mental health liaison model with law enforcement. And we have the opportunity to pilot this program with emergency medical services. We also, through legislation that was passed in 2018, AB 1795, which allows for diversion to a behavioral health facility or sobering center have the opportunity to pair this new pilot program with the provisions under that new law to divert individuals having a behavioral health crisis from having to go to the emergency department in the first place and be instead diverted to alternative facilities such as our community mental health clinics or a crisis stabilization program as appropriate. And that co-responder model with our local ambulance service will be able to do that under this triage, treat and transfer program. The second proposal that we made which was successfully funded is utilizing peers for a crisis response team in the community that would be peer led rather than professional clinicians. The members of this team would be individuals with lived experience providing crisis support, linkage and warm handoffs community programs and resources. Aid work in conjunction with other crisis programs to offer a peer crisis support model in the community. Peer staff would have lived experience and we would also include youth as peer staff. And they would also provide assistance with system navigation to support the individual and their family in connecting with services which we've heard can oftentimes be a huge challenge particularly for people going through a crisis type situation. The third proposal is an expanded mental health liaison program in Watsonville. This is based on the success of the mental health liaison program that we have in Santa Cruz the sheriff's office and also in Watsonville and provide us an opportunity to add a second mental health liaison for the city of Watsonville. All of the jurisdictions that are part of this program have previously had the benefit of two mental health liaisons with the exception of Watsonville and they've had a strong interest in expanding their own program and the cost of this expansion would be split between the city and county using these additional funds from the state. And finally, the fourth proposal that we made which was successfully funded is to acquire vehicles to establish an alternative transport program for patients. We would be purchasing actually four vans as well as six cars that would be used as alternative means of transporting individuals to our crisis stabilization program, for example or a clinic services instead of having to rely on law enforcement, for example which is very traumatic for the individual. We would also be using these vehicles these new vehicles to provide clinical services out in the field which has been done in South County and soon to be in the North County using our mobile behavioral health offices. That's been a highly successful model. It's much less stigmatizing. It offers a private space to do assessments and evaluations of folks out in the community and the CCMU grant will allow us to dramatically expand that program. As I mentioned in the beginning there's a number of future funding opportunities also coming our way. And more opportunity for us to expand behavioral health services and connect with our critical community partners expand services for schools, children as well as infrastructure development. One example of this was a CHAPA grant that we submitted on October 29th. If funded, this CHAPA grant will allow us to establish a new children's crisis residential program as well as move our crisis stabilization program for kids into this new facility. We applied for $21 million in funding from CHAPA and we're hoping to hear sometime in January that we've had a successful application and we can move this project forward. The future also holds additional opportunities to expand services for adults. And other infrastructure costs including rehabilitating some of our facilities which are in desperate need of repair and upkeep. And with that, I will entertain any questions that you might have. Thank you very much, Dr. Riera. Your presentation and congratulations to your whole team. This is phenomenal. We've never seen, I don't think anything like this in the county to address this issue. I'm just pleased that we're selected for these grant funding to these various programs. It's a long time need in our community as well as many throughout the state. I'm glad that we are one of 13 you said that really got this kind of a grant opportunity and success to address mental health along with what substance use disorder and homelessness. And again, I wanna thank your team. I wanted to ask quite, usually I hear of the homeless population about a third are suffering from mental illness or substance use disorder. Is that a general parameter that's probably... Yeah, I think that's a fair characterization. As you know, there's a continuum in terms of mental illness and substance use disorders, but a smaller group are more on the severe end of the spectrum and then there's a larger group that might have a mild mental illness or moderate mental illness, but serious substance use disorder. And you have the four programs. You had some, how the measurements are going to be and that's going to be interesting how you measure success or you're getting to what you wanted to do or not. But would that be an annual review of success or not, if we do anything, it's a success to help anybody. But when we get to get a review of this of how well it's working or what improvements need, would that be annually or every six months? Probably every six months pretty quick, but... Yeah, I'd like to actually call Karen to the podium to talk a little bit about the outcomes and data reporting for the grants in a broad way so you get a sense of the types of measurements that SAMHSA and the state are looking for under these grants. All right, thank you. Good afternoon, Chair and Board. So for the Healing the Streets program, which is the one that is specifically targeting people experiencing homelessness, that SAMHSA grant is going to be evaluated by RDA, which is a highly regarded statewide agency, evaluation agency. And the main elements of evaluation come through the GIPRA. I don't know if you're familiar with SAMHSA grants, but there's very strict regulations around the information and the data that's collected and it's collected at intake every six months and then when the person exits the program. So we'll have some rich data from that. We've got 600 people over two years that we're targeting to serve and we're expecting around an 80% return, meaning that everybody who enters the program has at least a second data collection opportunity at six months. The immediate services that we'll be looking at, which are the integrated with HP HP going out and providing street medicine services. So actually providing behavioral health services alongside with the health services that HP HP provides now in camps or various places around the county. We'll be evaluating those services by the type of service that is needed by people and the percent of people that are engaged in that service and whether or not that service was received and the effects of that service were sustained. We're also going to be looking at whether social service goals are met. So part of this program will also be providing access and linkages to like benefits, for example, if someone's Medi-Cal has dropped, we want to get them re-enrolled in Medi-Cal. The housing navigation services we're partnering with Housing for Health for that. So we'll be looking at all of those services to see whether we've made a successful transition and warm hand up into those services and whether or not those goals have been met. And then also just in general, the utilization of health and housing services as well as demographics. And then for that long-term system of care improvement, we'll be looking at the actual integration and coordination of care. So we're looking to improve our overall system of care and weave a tighter safety net for people. We'll look at data sharing efforts. We'll be, there's a through our whole person care pilot, we were using it together. We care platform through activate care. And so we're looking at using that same platform to track and hold all the data from the participants in this grant that'll help us coordinate and then also support efficiency and non-duplication. And then we'll also be looking at referral response and the rate of referral response and those warm hand-offs to make sure that they'll be happening. Very good. Thank you. Thank you for that summary. Appreciate you very much. Supervisor Koenig. Yes, thank you, Chair. Again, fantastic work. It's great to have so many resources to work with and the infusion is much needed. I'm just curious. I mean, Director Rieri, we know you and I have talked about we're responding to various members of the public who want to see more of a mobile crisis response. Clearly we're doing that here, but I guess my question is, with these various mobile outreach services, when will they be available 24-7? I mean, how will the different programs, what hours will they be available? Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you. Our goal is to use these funds to not only expand the type of crisis services that we have, but also the availability of the service itself. Our goal initially is to at least get to seven-day coverage for mobile crisis services. We are doing some programming after hours, including nighttime hours for a specific crisis program for kids called the FERS program. And it's a mobile crisis program for kids who are in the foster care system. They're taking incremental steps, but we're doing that with a community partner because we've actually learned that it's easier to partner with nonprofits in the community, particularly if we're looking at after hours and overnight shifts. But I think the future will be some hybrid model between county and nonprofits. And we're taking steps forward in that, but it will take some time to get to the point where we're actually at 24-7 coverage. The state under AB 988 had contemplated requiring counties to provide 24-7 mobile crisis services, but they were never able to get to the point of being able to fund the cost of that program expansion. So these CCMU grants are the first step in that direction, but we would be relying on additional funds from the state to be able to get us to the point where we're actually able to offer them 24-7. The other piece of legislation that I wanted to point out is AB 118. AB 118 is looking at alternative responses to law enforcement for crisis services. That's going to actually be run through the Human Services Department and through a pretty robust stakeholder process that AB 118 defines in terms of who has to be included in those decision-making recommendations. And that's really legislation that's targeting alternative to community, alternative to law enforcement response, the crises that happen in a community. So although our proposals have some alternative models, particularly the first responder model with our local ambulance companies as an alternative to police response. And we have our existing and MERDI programs, which are alternatives. There's strong community interest in looking to go even further with that. And so that's what AB 118 really contemplates. And there's no funding attached to it yet, but there's likely to be funding made available in the future once those recommendations come out on a statewide basis. Okay, thank you. And with the clinician going out with the EMS, since you're with ambulances, is that going to be at hours of highest demand or nine to five, seven days a week? How will that be determined? We're starting with a Monday through Friday model and we'll use a similar methodology that we did with law enforcement partners and we'll start taking a closer look at call volume and call times to see one of the most peak times of the types of calls that you would be corresponding for to determine what future staffing levels look like. Again, it's an opportunity to pilot this model. It hasn't been done in this county and we're not sure it's been done anywhere at this point to gather more information and help inform how we expand that model in the future. All right, thank you. You're welcome. Supervisor Friend. Thank you Mr. Chair and thank you for the presentation and what is really a pretty historic opportunity of investment within the greater behavioral health community and programs within the county itself. You outlined a lot of potential things or actually specific things that would be done and invested in to, I think what Supervisor McPherson's point on metrics and evaluation, what would you consider to be really a success? Let's look at it at a one year in the future from now. If you could outline something that you would specifically programmatically be looking toward that we could also evaluate and the community could also evaluate when this money comes in a success ratio. And I heard what your colleague said in regards to how the things would be evaluated but what would you specifically from an outcome based perspective view as a success which we'd be looking for say 12 months from now? I think it depends on the specific type of program that we're looking at. So if we're looking at our suicide prevention programs our county currently has one of the higher rates of suicide in the state of California. So we would be looking at significant drops in our suicide rate as a measure of success for those suicide prevention efforts. If it's some of our other programs particularly our crisis programs we're looking specifically at seeing reductions in costly hospitalizations for folks in the community and not requiring that level of care. We're looking at measures around connecting more people to services more quickly in terms of the progression of mental illness or substance use disorder. One thing that's of critical importance to us is continuing to build early intervention models. We're trying to connect people with services more quickly than we have done in the past and there are a number of metrics that we'll be looking at to measure that as an outcome. And with the Healing the Streets program a number of the measures are dictated by SAMHSA but again, connection to treatment and other social services supports is a big measure of success for us. We know that given the population of focus the more we can connect to active treatment and maintaining treatment for that population the more long-term successes we're gonna get from these investments. Thank you and Mr. Chair just to close on this and I appreciate those points. It's clear that there's a legislative alignment with this as Director Harris was saying both at the state and federal levels of how programs should be addressed moving forward and I appreciate that there's gonna be some funding alignment with that moving forward but it's also clear that in the last two years I mean one thing that's been very highlighted through the pandemic is the explosion in need for all these kinds of services across all age groups. Even not necessarily those that were necessarily viewed as at risk previously I think there's been a significant expansion of who would need some of these services. So I think that this aligns perfectly with the timing of need that already existed within our community but exploded over the last couple of years and I appreciate the leadership of Director Rear and others on this team for this work. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Coonerty. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate this. It's a lot of new programs, a lot of investment and I appreciate the initiative that HSA has taken to go out and identify these funding streams and I'm excited about the future funding streams you've identified and if there's any way we can help please let us know. Those are important to provide the infrastructure that will get to success. As I think we all have the questions about the outcomes I think it calls for a bimonthly report to the supervisors and I'm wondering just so we're all clear for each one of these categories on suicide prevention or in those bimonthly reports will we have what the suicide rate was in 2020 Q3 and then what the suicide prevention rate is as these programs go forward and so we can track that hospitalization, domestic violence, some of the other metrics that you just included will those be in our bimonthly reports? We still need to define what exactly will be in the bimonthly report and one example that makes it a challenge for us is around suicide rates for the county is often a significant lag time in getting that data so it's very difficult to report in real time on what that rate might look like. However, other measures and the ones that we're focusing on in our initial reports back to the board really center around the positions that we've established to implement these programs are we getting those positions filled? Are we getting those programs up and running by the deadlines that have been established by the grantors so that we can make sure we're not putting any of these new funds at risk and that's our critical path right now that we're most focused on. We need to hire people to do the work for these new programs. If we're not able to get those positions established we potentially risk losing these funds. Future report backs to the board we're certainly interested in hearing from all of you what you'd like to have for information in those report backs. We understand it's a really frequent report back period but we established that because we wanna be transparent and open about both the successes as well as the challenges that we're having with these new programs. Yeah and so I mean I think look we want you to ramp up and staff these programs obviously as quickly as possible and those metrics are helpful. I think all of us up here are interested in the community based metrics that our constituents don't care how quickly you ramped up and hired people. Our constituents care how many suicides were reduced in our community. And so while there's a lag I do think it's important that those community based outcomes be built into these reports so that we can report back on these programs and their success. And then also let's be clear that there are other these funds will not solve all problems. And so to the extent that we need to take new policy direction or coordinate with other entities, school districts or cities or other things. If we have those numbers we're gonna be able to take actions to better align programs or efforts so we can see the measurable impacts in our community. So I'm gonna be looking for not only the sort of program operational reports but also some of these community based impact supports even if there's a lag and I understand that some of the status easier to get than others. In terms of outcomes one of my and I think it makes a lot of sense around suicide prevention and hospitalization, domestic violence. One of my questions was about funds for homeless outreach it feels like there's a lot of efforts to create linkages and to provide sort of initial healthcare or other services to people but there doesn't seem to be the same effort at getting to being housed, right? And I've having lived through whole person care and the Alliance Housing Navigation Programs and ED Navigation Programs. One of the challenges I've seen this community is we've ramped up and spent millions of millions of dollars creating navigation programs when there hasn't been a shelter at the end of it or mental health services or treatment beds or other things that are the place we wanna navigate people to. And so my question is what strategy are we employing this time that we haven't employed other times so that we aren't sort of providing just enough services for people to subsist in misery and unmanaged encampments but instead are getting people to places where they can be successful knowing that we don't have housing stock in this community for most of those people or treatment for most of those people. So how are we gonna navigate people to places where they are gonna be more successful? Yeah, and I would absolutely agree that folks who are unhoused and being outreached by these teams have to have a place to go. And we don't necessarily have a solution to that through these grants but we do have a number of initiatives that we've been partnering on including the No Place Like Home program which are funding additional supported housing units throughout the county. And we have a number of partners that we've been working with and as the board knows, there are a number of projects on the way in terms of developing supported housing and that's clearly part of the solution that we need but none of these grants establish additional housing programs to them. That's a much larger issue that we're not tackling through these grants that I described today. Yeah, but I guess, I mean, I'm wondering in the recognizing the absence of that and then that we do wanna provide these, create these supportive housing units but they've already been assigned four or five times over to different populations. Do we have a strategy that says since we will not be able to house 90% of the people that we are outreaching to, we're gonna engage in efforts to connect them with family elsewhere to find opportunities where they can be more successful in other places or find treatment beds or shelters or section eight units that are more available. I mean, I think we need to assume that if we can't find a place for 90% of the people or more to go in this community, we have a moral obligation to find a place where they can go in another community and it needs to be built into the DNA of any housing navigation, problem solving, outreach that we establish. I would agree that all options need to be on the table, particularly for some of our more vulnerable folks. And if there are options with family members in another community that can take this person in that will definitely be part of our approach. We'll be looking at all options for people because it's very difficult to either maintain sobriety on the street or maintain your own recovery when we're looking at a mental health challenge if you remain on the street homeless. So part of the focus of these teams will be able to look at every option that's available to them for that person. Yeah, thank you. I mean, I think, yeah, I mean, it's also, it's also even if you get those services, it's very difficult to maintain housing in the most expensive housing market, maybe in the world, these would be wages. And so figuring out how to get people where they can be successful, I think needs to be foundational in the operational programs going forward. And then hopefully we'll also get that, we'll see the efforts and the improvement made in some of these outcomes that you'll be getting back to us about and that they need to be built into those outcomes as well. Agreed. Supervisor Caput, you have a comment. Well, Eric, I want to thank you and I want to thank your staff. You're all with the staff, right? Which you've done for South County in the past years is heroic. I mean, the services that are being offered in South County and Watsonville in particular is just wonderful to watch and see all the growth that's gone on that area. Thank you. Part of that is say everything is sort of centralized now in South County, the part, and people aren't running all over the county trying to get help. So anyway, it's kind of like having all the silos in one spot rather than in front of people running around. Suicide survivors, I saw that. Suicide survivors, is that like a family member, a loved one or friend, or a children of someone who committed suicide? Yeah, a survivor can be pretty broadly defined. Family member, friend, coworker, acquaintance, neighbor. And that's one of the profound negative impacts of suicide is just how many people within that person's circle that can negatively affect. So that's why we're having a focus on the people who are left behind as well and providing specific services and supports to them. Yeah, something like that would be very important, especially for children in a family. If something like that happened when I was a kid, I wouldn't have been able to handle it. I mean, I'd have to go somewhere and get some help. So, do you reach out, do you actually reach out and call families if it was a suicide? Yeah, I can actually, I'm gonna ask Cassandra to come up and talk a little bit about the types of interventions that we'll be offering under that program. Good afternoon, Board Chair, Mr. Palacios. Cassandra Aslami, Behavioral Health. And yes, it's the loss model, local outreach to suicide survivors. So this is a model that's highly renowned in Kings County and we had a consultant work with us in Santa Cruz County to try to help us figure out how to implement the loss model. So this is a team of both peers and people who've experienced loss by suicide who go out and do outreach to those affected. As Erica mentioned, that could be a parent, a child, a friend, a neighbor, or anyone that's kind of in the ripple effect zone of someone who has completed suicide. And they go out with a lot of different information. And we actually just completed the information for Santa Cruz County Behavioral Health and we're pleased to announce that we'll have that information available publicly on International Suicide Survivors Day, which is November 20th. And that information will be found in both Spanish and English and provides resources and materials for people who experience suicide loss. The team itself goes out and provides this information to people who have been met by the coroner or met by the sheriff's department or met by other people who've responded to a completed suicide. And the team themselves goes out and provides this supportive resource to those people affected. So that's the premise of the loss model. And I guess the behavioral mental health facility in Watsonville, we're still having some trouble hiring with psychiatrists. We are, we're having a number of challenges with psychiatry right now. Our vacancy rate is close to 60% right now. We're working very closely with health administration and the personnel department to develop some new recruitment and retention strategies, but it's certainly not unique to Santa Cruz County. It's a national issue right now in healthcare and also extends to medical assistance to nurses. It's just a huge challenge for all of us to deal with right now. Yes. Last, I'll wrap it up. Most of the money, almost all the money is coming from other than the county budget. Is it all state money? Is there some federal money also? Yes, it's a combination of both state and federal funds. There was a partnership between state of California and the federal government that was passed as part of the coronavirus funding packages that have gone through Congress. So they've taken those funds, combined them with additional state funds that were passed in the last budget in California, put them together and then release them through these various competitive proposals that we applied for. It's all taxpayer money. It is. It comes from a bigger pool than our county pool. Exactly. Everything, the taxpayers pay for everything we've got. I mean, it's amazing what the people in this country are able to actually do. Anyway, I'll make, do we need a motion? I'll make a motion to... Yeah, just to, I don't think there's any other closing comments. We need a motion to ratify the grant applications. Yes, I believe we have 16 recommended actions under this item. That's the main one because there's about four or five of those, of course. But yes, you're right. I have 17, no, 19. Mr. Chair, I don't think we took public comment or maybe I missed it, but I think we need to open it up. I just asked, but there was nobody here. Everybody on Zoom either, okay. Thank you. Thank you. We do have two speakers for you soon. Excuse me. Thank you. Mila, your microphone is available. Hello, is that me? Yeah. So I wanna say that what I learned about mental health system in Santa Cruz County that the mental health system used widely by criminals and it helps them to get away from charges, criminal charges. And I brought my daughter to mental health, you know, since after she got traumatic brain injury and she was rejected help, you know. And only a couple of years later, finally my daughter was kidnapped by mental health system in 2014. And ever since, you know, mental health system in our county worked on isolation of my daughter from normal society and alienation from her family. So this is an issue. All those years I see the same people on the streets, the same men and the same females who still homeless. My daughter was enforced to be homeless also between three public garden conservatorships and being autistic. And I believe she has autism, Asperger autism and mental health department refused to do tests and to create the real diagnosis for my daughter. So she gets mistreated, mismanaged and of course getting deeply sicker, sicker and sicker. And now my daughter is homeless again. So 10 years after we're trying to get services, my daughter cannot leave the homelessness because of her workers. And her workers unsatisfied by California, unlicensed by California. And this is who they hire. And by the way, I didn't find any license for certification for Eric Riiera. This is very sad. How a person can understand mental health and autism if no license or no certification. So we need to see how it supported the knowledge and the experience. Thank you. Thank you. I'll get the phone, I'm sorry. I thought you would staff, but let's go for the phone first and yeah. Peter Gelbom, your microphone is available. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yeah. I've been, I live in Boulder Creek. I've been working with one of the groups of people that Supervisor Koenig mentioned who were been advocating for quite some time now to try to get changes in the crisis, mobile crisis response system, very specifically three things, 24 seven, see everyone everywhere in non-law enforcement. And these grants are amazing and wonderful and very exciting. I was distressed to hear Mr. Riiera's response that it doesn't sound like 24 seven is coming anytime soon. Right now, my understanding is it's nine to five, Monday through Friday, is where the co-responder model is going in the behavioral health consultants riding with law enforcement. And two questions that I would appreciate either Mr. Riiera answering or one of the supervisors asking Mr. Riiera to answer. One is with the loan, the grant that's going to fund behavioral health people riding with EMS, will that be 24 seven? Will that be available 24 seven? In other words, whenever an ambulance goes out, will a behavioral health person be able to go with that ambulance, whatever time of day it is and wherever they're going. And second, I'm really curious about where all these many millions of dollars are going if not to 24 seven service when they are buying, plan to buy vans and cars, which is extremely exciting. So they won't be police cars. And my question is, is there some place in the agenda and the agenda report on the county website, behavioral health website, somewhere where I can see a detailed breakdown of where the money is being planned to go. Thank you very much for your time. Yeah, can you briefly answer that? I think you did explain it that you're not going to be or what you're going to be able to do with what we have. I think it depends on the type of program. So for our Merck programs, we are planning seven day a week coverage. Our current mental health liaison program is seven days a week and also extends into the evening hours. And the coverage for the mental health liaison program was actually based on actual data from calls coming in to 911. And we looked at the specific times when we were getting behavioral health calls coming in so that we could ensure coverage when the calls were actually coming in for service. You know, it would be great to do everything at once, you know, and jump right to 24 seven coverage. But the funding doesn't support that, you know. And I think it's important to keep in mind what the funding does support us doing and keeping in mind what we are able to accomplish with the funds that we received. They not be everything that we want to do in the future, but I think we're in a great start point. And the other thing that I wanted to mention in closing in terms of responding to those comments. When I started here eight years ago, we had no mobile crisis services at all. We had no mobile crisis team in the county of Santa Cruz. Now we have a mobile crisis team for adults. We have Merdy team for youth in both North and South County. We have a mental health liaison program with three law enforcement jurisdictions and we're about to start a program with our EMS system. And so I don't want to lose track of the progress that we've made. We appreciate there's a lot more that we need to work on for the future, but we're certainly making dramatic advancements in expanding these services for the residents of the county. Certainly, thank you. You do with what you have and that's great. Anybody else on the phone? I have other speakers on soon. Okay, yes ma'am, I'm sorry. I thought you were staff member. No worries. Good afternoon chair and board members. My name is Carly Memley. I'm a 20 plus year resident of Santa Cruz County and have spent the entirety of my work career on suicide prevention, intervention and post-vention services for our community. Most recently as a program director with our local suicide crisis line. As a two-time suicide loss survivor myself, both as a child and again as an adult, I have seen firsthand the devastation that it can bring to families. I have also seen the tremendous power of prevention in our community. I had the great pleasure of working with our local behavioral health leadership including Cassandra Aslami during our suicide prevention task force planning process in 2018. We had tremendously strong representation from peers, from community members, from public health. We engaged in a very thoughtful, data-driven community engaged process to produce the suicide prevention strategic plan that we brought to you and which you approved in 2019. I'm really pleased to say that as we continue to pursue these efforts as a county, what we crafted several years ago is still not only relevant and very much needed, but now is the time. I wanted to share with you as well. I'm the president of Applied Crisis Training and Consulting. So we're one of the points in your agenda today is one of the contracts as part of the Building Hope and Safety Santa Cruz Initiative. And if you have any other questions, I'm happy to answer them. There are a lot of helpful community metrics that we can share. The loss team, for example, someone mentioned. One of the things that we look at is how long does it take a survivor of suicide loss to get support between a passive system, which is what we have now and an active system, which is what we're moving towards. So for us, that ends up being an upstream form of prevention and I'm really excited to be able to work with the organizations in the community that have partnered in this. And I also just really want to commend county leadership for taking a stand and saying that this is important and it's a priority. So thank you. Thank you very much for those comments. Any other public comments? I'll make just one quick comment. I want to note that the wonderful job that the Mental Health Behavioral Health Advisory Board has been doing. And a lot of that is because of what you and your staff have been reaching out to them and they are a great resource and I've had the honor and privilege of working with them. And they, anyway, they're volunteers and they're just a wonderful group and keep in touch with them and make sure we listen to them. Thank you. I absolutely agree and also have appreciated your active participation on the group over the year. There's a real instrumental force in strengthening the work of the Mental Health Advisory Board. So thank you from me to you as well, Supervisor Caput. Thank you. I'll entertain a motion to... Did I make a motion or will I make a motion? Well, maybe you did. Okay, your motion, you to approve the recommended actions? Yeah, okay. And I'll second with the additional direction that staff work with supervisors to develop the outcome metrics for these bi-monthly reports. Very good. Understood. Please call the roll. I think this is for recommended actions with the additional direction that staff work with the supervisors to build metrics. Supervisor Koenig? Aye. Friend? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. Caput? Aye. McPherson? Aye. Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. Okay, that concludes our agenda for today. The next meeting of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors is Tuesday, December 7th at 9 a.m. It's the last regularly scheduled meeting for this year for the Board of Supervisors. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you.