 I'll now call to order the irregular meeting in the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. It is June 7th, 9 a.m. Clerk roll call please. Supervisor Friend. Here. Coonerty. Here. Abbott. Here. McPherson. Here. And Chair Koenig. Here. There you have, Corum. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now have a moment of silence and a pledge of allegiance. Is there any member that would like to dedicate this moment to anyone? Yes, Mr. Chair. I think that Supervisor Coonerty and I both have individuals we'd like to ensure are recognized today. I'd like to recognize Betty Allen of Coralitos who recently passed away. She had an outsized influence in Coralitos. Not only was she a local that went to EA Hall and Watsonville High, but she was one of the people who made sure that Aldridge Lane Park. Recording in progress. The Coralitos Cultural Center was started and the Coralitos Library was started. She was a real institution and very beloved within Coralitos community and she recently passed away. So I'd like to make sure that we honor her today. I believe Supervisor Coonerty also has some of it. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Zach. I'd also like to recognize in the moment of silence Trisha Geistreider. Trisha and Reed Geistreider have been real pillars of our community in every imaginable way. And she was an incredibly wonderful energetic human being who we lost too soon while she was on a trip to Europe. And we wish Reed and the whole family and friends the best in these difficult times. Thank you. We'll hold them both in our hearts during this moment of silence. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Teo Palacio, so are there any additions or deletions to the regular agenda? Yes, we have one revision. This is on the regular agenda, item number 10. There are additional materials. We are adding attachment one to resolution CSA 12 service charge reports FY 2022-23 titled CSA 12 wastewater management benefits assessment service charge report. And that concludes the revisions to today's agenda. Thank you. We'll proceed to item four. Any board members that wish to remove an item from consent to regular agenda? Seeing none, we'll proceed to public comment. Any person may address the board during public comment. Speakers must not exceed two minutes in length. Individuals may speak only once during public comment. All comments must be directed to an item listed on today's consent agenda, closed accession agenda yet to be heard on the regular agenda or topic, not on the agenda that is within the jurisdiction of the board. We'll not take actions or respond immediately to any public communication presented regarding topics not on the agenda, but may choose to follow up later either individually or on a subsequent board of supervisors meeting. Go ahead, sir. My name is Don Dietrich. I live in the F-5 district at 904 Lockwood Lane. I'm here today to urge you to reconsider the cuts to the community bridges program. As a retired community member, I feel fortunate that I can pay my bills so I don't have to live in a one-room apartment to wondering where my meals are coming from. Every Friday, I go out and deliver brown bags to shut in seniors through the Gray Bears program and I see how people live and it's awful. They shouldn't have to live that way in this community. So the community bridges provides that gap between those of us that are fortunate enough to not have to suffer like that and those that don't. And I feel the government's one of their fundamental roles is to make sure that we're taking care of those that are vulnerable and are incapable of living up to what I consider to be at least equitable standards. There's all these issues with food equity, healthcare and all these things that happen and these people live very silently and live very, very poorly and minimally in small apartments, one-room apartments. They're waiting at the door when I show up every Friday for the food that we're bringing that probably lasts them three days. So I think it's very important that we as a government take care of, as a community take care of these people. And I know you have a lot of hard decisions to make in budgets. I appreciate the work that you do but please reconsider community bridges and try and tighten up someplace else because the people that they serve are the people that need it the most. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Tric. Good morning. My name is Suzanne Stone and I'm the Executive Director of Advocacy Inc. Could you speak a little bit closer to the mic so we can hear you? Could I start over? Good morning. My name is Suzanne Stone. You could just pull the mic a little closer to your mouth. And I'm the Executive Director of Advocacy Inc, a core grant applicant agency which provides federally mandated monitoring and complaint investigations for seniors who reside in assisted living communities, skilled nursing facilities and board and care homes. We've been continuously providing these services to Santa Cruz and San Benito County since 1975. And we've been receiving core funds for support since the program was instituted. We're very appreciative of the support that you have given us in the past. Our request for proposal was not funded this year. And I'm here today to let you know the consequences for local seniors and out of home care if our agency does not receive the funds that we requested from the County. Advocacy Inc is the only program in Santa Cruz County that responds to family and resident complaints and coordinates with state and local officials to resolve them. Our core funding request for $60,000, 20% of the Ombudsman program funding is an essential component of our budget since we're required to have a local match in funding in order to receive the majority of our funding for this program, which comes from the Area Agency on Aging and MediCal Admitted Strait of Activity funds. Without the core grant funds, we're at risk of being unable to continue to operate the Ombudsman program. Seniors and their families rely on us to address violations of their family members' rights and to advocate for the care that these elders deserve. If our program closes, doing to losing our local match, who will be the voice of these? No, it's okay. We'll see you. Disturbed is the core. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Koenig and esteemed supervisors. At some point in your life, you, your parent, your grandparent or another loved one may find the need to be in a long-term care facility, skilled nursing or residential care facility. In fact, each of your district's houses, one or more of these essential residences. You as care concerns or care issues arise and you may not be able to get those issues resolved with facility staff, who would you turn to? The answer is simple. The long-term care Ombudsman. My name is Steven Matzi and I am the long-term care Ombudsman Program Coordinator with Advocacy Inc. Our small but dedicated team of two, including myself, full-time staff are mandated by the Older Americans Act to advocate for and protect the rights of residents living in long-term care settings. Today, I'm advocating for our program. We respond to complaints ranging from allegations of abuse and neglect to unsafe discharges and inadequate quality of care. Furthermore, we are the only provider in the County of Santa Cruz that provides this critical and essential service and work tirelessly to help long-term care residents live their highest quality of life. We have appreciated our long-standing partnership with the County and the City of Santa Cruz, so I was surprised and deeply concerned to learn that our program is defunded under the current core funding recommendations. Have we not learned anything about the needs of our long-term care residents during the COVID-19 pandemic? I humbly and respectfully ask that you thoughtfully consider the recommendations and the impact that the loss of this funding will have on our seniors living in long-term care settings. Thank you for your time and your consideration. Thank you, Mr. Madsi. Good morning, supervisors. Thank you for your service. My name's Shalaka Vannes. I love Santa Cruz and I have the privilege of serving as chair on the Mental Health Advisory Board. Supervisor Caput has been to almost every one of our meetings has provided the leadership you're gonna be missed very, very much. So thank you very much, Supervisor. I'm here to talk about a consent agenda item number 39, the residential facility for youth and adults. There'll be two to deal with severe crisis, mental health crisis, and strongly wanna support that as the Mental Health Advisory Board is important people are suffering crisis is that they stay here locally with their family in the place that they know in the community that can support them instead of getting sent out. And that's especially true for vulnerable youth who might be suffering mental health crisis. So as a Mental Health Advisory Board of Santa Cruz County, we strongly, strongly support the funds that we are getting and to continue raising funds to build the residential facilities for both the adults and the youth. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Caput. Good morning, gentlemen. I'm Thomas Wayman. I'm living in the mountains. Hopefully that's enough. I am here to comment regarding your proposed recycling rate increase. I looked at the numbers and it just seems to be an alarming increase. The total is 59% over five years. Well, four years if you're discounting the rate increases that averages out to about 12% per year. Now that's far more than the rate of inflation even with the recent price increases. And the problem I have is the government doesn't wanna do what the rest of us have to do to live within our means. If they wanna do some new big project, they just add on taxes. And you're getting more money every year because of increases in sales tax from goods that are rising in price. You're getting more from real estate as old houses are sold off. You get a huge bump in revenue. And I would just plead that you live within your means. Don't just come to us every year saying, well, I need more money. We need more money. You're getting a little bit more every year from inflation. So those are my comments. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wayman. Yeah. Good morning, Board of Supervisors. My name is Dana Wagner. I am the director of the Community Bridges Women, Infants and Children programs here in Santa Cruz County. Our program serves more than 6,400 individuals and 4,000 families each month. The proposed cuts outlined in the core funding recommendations will defund services vital to the health and wealth being of our community. A sudden 60% cut in funding to Community Bridges programs is short-sighted and will disrupt the lives of thousands of underserved families in our community and dozens of staff who have dedicated their careers to helping others. I ask everyone in this room to imagine the impact it would have on you if you suddenly woke up to the news that you were getting a 60% cut to your family's budget beginning July 1st. How would that last impact you and those around you and would have a ripple effects to those you may employ and to the local economy? Now, I ask you to multiply this by thousands and not just any thousand, but thousands of working families in your districts who are struggling to make ends meet during these challenging and unprecedented times. What will happen to these families? Over the years, Community Bridges has provided essential services to those young and old, specifically to the most vulnerable and challenged. Community Bridges Network of Programs is a safe and friendly place to receive these services. This was particularly true during the CZU fire throughout the ongoing pandemic and now during the infant formula shortage. Community Bridges staff have rallied during these crises. There's been no stoppage of services. On the contrary, services have been increased and targeted to meet the needs and challenges of the last two years. It is unconscionable that we would consider defunding these programs at such a critical time. Our community has benefited from the visionary leadership and dedicated personnel at Community Bridges. I respectfully request that you reconsider the devastating and decimating cuts to Community Bridges programs proposed by core. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Ms. Wagner. I'm David Bianchi and I'm Executive Director for Family Service Agency of the Central Coast. It's not a good morning for the clients of our agency. I've spoken here many times in this chamber over the past 35 years, but I'm disheartened to be standing here today. We've had a public-private partnership spanning over four decades to support our vital mental health services. We work to assist a number of agencies to merge with us to preserve existing services under a cost-effective umbrella, including suicide prevention of Santa Cruz, IU Venture, Family Service of Pajaro Valley, Women Care and Survivors Healing Center who joined our Established Counseling and Senior Peer Counseling Programs. Any process, no matter how carefully planned, can result in mistakes and unintended consequences for the very community it was designed to support. The process isn't sacred. Our staff were paid less, most of them can't afford to live here. Our hundreds of volunteers who take time away from their families to help others and our clients who have the courage to seek help at a time of crisis who need and deserve your support. That is sacred. I'm not going to ask our clients who are children, families and seniors in counseling, people who have lost loved ones to suicide, women undergoing treatment for cancer, survivors of child sexual abuse and care facility residents isolated and ravaged by the pandemic to come here and tell you what in your heart of hearts you already know. Despite our exemplary record of meeting all benchmarks, outcomes and level of satisfaction to these vulnerable target populations with our culturally aware diverse workforce of staff and volunteers, we are recommended for zero funding going forward. This is a significant loss of support. We'll likely cripple some of our programs and will result in the disenfranchisement of constituents in each of your districts and their ability to access our unique services. Please use your understanding and compassion to consider our public appeal and any formal appeal we're allowed to file. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Bianchi. Good morning. I've never been here to speak, but I just felt this was so important and was really shocked to learn about the cuts to the Family Service Agency that David just spoke about. My name is Elisa Berton. I've been a physician in this community for more than 30 years, working at community health centers, first at Salud Parra la Gente down in Watsonville and then at the Women's Health Center. I'm also the president of the board of the Family Services Agency. And it was just shocking for me to learn about the cuts to the services that we provide, especially at this moment when we're having such a crisis in mental health because of the pandemic, because of income inequality, the difficulties with the standard of living in this community. Family Services Agency has always been kind of a backstop for clients that couldn't access mental health services elsewhere. When I worked at the Women's Health Center, those clients that did not have MediCal or couldn't afford our sliding scale rate, the card that we always gave them was for the Family Services Agency for them to access the mental health services there. Just at this moment in time, I think all of us have read the newspapers and are aware of the mental health crisis that's happening in this country and in this community. And to cut services for mental health, it just seems unconscionable. And so I wanted to ask you to reconsider that conclusion. All right, thank you. Thank you, Ms. Berton. Good morning, my name is Cheryl Frenzel and I'm a rather new executive director for the Diversity Center. And I'm here representing the Diversity Center. I came to realize recently that the Diversity Center did not receive core funding, which it has in the past. And I wanted to come here and ask for consideration for some county funding for this incredibly important organization. The Diversity Center is the only LGBTQ serving organization from here to San Luis Obispo, frankly. When I came on this year, what was happening on the staff was a lot of struggle because of the amount of mental health crisis and frankly, suicide ideation and attempts. And when I came on, what was trying to happen was forming a community review of how do we shore up appropriate mental health support for LGBTQ youth and seniors who are being extremely impacted. And this also had county representation on it. And at the end of the day, it was really clear that we didn't quite have what was needed to care for LGBTQ youth because there's a special awareness that a clinician needs to have. So I took the approach in our core grant to ask for funding for a clinician because it was the way to shore up what was lacking. So that might have been the wrong approach. However, I am sincerely hoping that we can still count on county and city funding in order to help us continue the services to the LGBTQ community here going forward. Thank you very much. Thank you, Director Finsle. Good morning. My name is Shannon Calden and I am the Director of Elementary Curriculum and Instruction for Santa Cruz City Schools. On behalf of the district, I'd like to thank the core investments team for their recommendation that we receive a core grant. At Santa Cruz City Schools, we strive to support the education and health and wellbeing of our students and families in Santa Cruz. The focus of this grant is to give elementary students an identity as learners and computer scientists before they leave elementary school. Understanding concepts of computer science opens doors to students that were previously closed until high school or beyond. Research shows that the earlier students see themselves as capable of understanding difficult concepts such as computer science, they're more likely to continue to college and have a lucrative career path as an adult. We seek to support our immigrant children, children of poverty, children of the Latinx community and English learners with educational opportunities beyond reading, writing and math so they can realize a better future. Our process also includes substantial engagement of families, teaching them technology and CS concepts to allow them to better participate in an increasingly digital world. We look forward to partnering with our community to expand the work we've already done at Galt Elementary to the remaining children and families in Santa Cruz City Schools. We thank the Board of Supervisors and the core team for your support of our initiatives and your commitment to helping us create a brighter future for the children of our community. Thank you. Thank you. Gary Richard Arnold, remind the DA and the County Council was everybody saw on there that Zach Friend knew exactly what Ryan Coonerty was gonna say next and they live on opposite ends of the county. If there's three or more on a line, that's a violation of the Brown Act. This county is already run by conspiracy with the parallel government and bag never reporting since Manu has been up here to the public of the commitments to money et cetera that are done there. Gender 21, which you have signed onto was created by Maurice Strong. If you read West Magazine and from Colorado, he calls for the culling of the world population exactly what's going on now. And all these people begging for money, they don't care whether this is a sanctuary city in County, where drugs and crime and housing and hospital crowding and even baby formula is going to not the Americans you represent, but to this global lonely that Biden signed onto. Look up the Wall Street Journal where he says, God, it's gotta be 15 years ago where he calls, he says, I'm a new world order, I believe in the new world order. He does not believe in the national sovereignty and the constitutional protections of the United States. When Manu came here, he was not gonna be, he said he was not gonna be another Panetta machine person, yet he's kept of a public speaking time. He cut it by one third. He's created an absences staff. None of the supervisors any longer have anybody answering their phone. It all goes through one thing under our Carlos Palacios. Their own assistants no longer have a specific email address. They're literally out to lunch between 12 and noon when most people that are working have time, cannot reach you and remember Santa Cruz, they gave the key to the city to Angela Davis and has Black Lives Matter endorsed Manu with an organization co-founded called Sevenomics and one of the founders is Ronald Duelson. Good morning ladies, gentlemen. My name is Suzanne Forbes. I'm here in support of community bridges over the years. I've been here 26 years and throughout the years that I've been here and ever. Ms. Forbes, did you just step a little closer to the mic so we can all hear you? I'm so sorry, of course. My name is Suzanne Forbes. Reiterate, I'm here to support community bridges. I only recently learned of the budget cut yesterday. So it was kind of, I've got to come and say what little I have to say, so I'll make it as succinct as possible. They have offered me support and advocacy over the years and I'm really grateful for them. I had nowhere else to go for what I was given through them. Anyhow, I would hope that you would reconsider your cut to them, thank you. And all the other agencies that have come forward to ask that you rescind those agreements. Thank you, Ms. Forbes. Good morning, board. My name is Maria Cadenas. I'm the executive director of Ventures. I'm here to thank you for the recommendation of funding for the program, Semiguitas or Small Seeds, which is, we're just honored to have been partnering with the county and greater organizations, including first five Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz County Office of Education, Dientes, Salud para Al Jente and many others to bring Semiguitas to our county. Creating a vibrant, healthy community with shared prosperity does not happen overnight, which is why the county's investments in Semiguitas is such an important aspect on how we see our support and commitment to our Santa Cruz County kids. Semiguitas will provide an automatic college savings accounts to all county newborns and continued investment as they develop to make sure that their parents have aspirations and hope for the future. What's most important is the studies have shown that children with these accounts are three times more likely to go to college and four times more likely to graduate. And that doesn't even include the impact on decreasing maternal depression and the increase of social emotional well-being of the child from zero to five. This is because programs like Semiguitas are changing the way we welcome our kids and build aspirations from day one. From the onset this program and the leadership thing that made it possible had a commitment to our children in our county to make sure that they thrive and with it the future of this county. Again, I'm eternally grateful for the consideration of funding for Semiguitas and this bold step into the future for our county. Thank you. Thank you, Director Cadenes. So I came here to support community bridges from being cut. I haven't used their service so I hope I'm in the right line talking at the right time. But I have finally gotten a decent social worker with the County Mental Health that has given me resources that community bridges gives to families and seniors. Well, I fit all those categories. I'm a senior, I'm a disabled person, I'm a family, I live in below the poverty line. And as you can see, our country is going down more and more people are falling into poverty. This is the totally wrong time to start cutting vital services that helps the poor. While you fund, it seems like this county's all big on funding, big development, fair market rate, and they're looking towards the taxes moving over here. You've got the wrong crowd that you're funding. You need to help the people that really need help, not for profit, but just to live. I know like with County Mental Health, I tried to find these when I was homeless and when I advocated for homeless people, but they give you cards that help you out at the grocery stores for food. They give you cards for other things. I didn't know these existed because it's really hard to find these resources. So community bridges is a great resource and it needs to stay there and it needs to be funding people that really need help. We need to, in our country, we need an FDR type thing going on and cutting funding from this is the opposite of that. Right now, America isn't long to survive. It ignores its lower people that need help of local government and federal government. Thank you and my name's Pat Colby. Thank you, Ms. Colby. I'm sorry to come here without a speech or anything, but I was just informed about this recently. Hello. Community bridges in Felton has really helped us out a lot, not just because of my involvement with the homeless community there, but in regard to people who lost their homes in the CZU fire. Also, when the Mount Herman had to close down for as long as it did, that's where a lot of my colleagues, the people that I work with, were getting their groceries from. I had to go down there and literally load up a pickup full of groceries to bring back. We were exhausting our resources. We had food in our shutdown dining room, but that was very important to those people who weren't able to work at the time. And still, even though most of us are working things out, it's a very important resource for the homeless community in Felton. It's where a lot of people go to find jobs. That's how I found out about this because Mount Herman is in need of help and hiring people. And I contacted, it's called Community Bridges Now in Felton to see if they could post job listings for me. I know I have difficulty getting people to hire because they're not the greatest jobs, but there are people there who are willing to take that. So not only does it help me, but it helps people out there who are in need of employment. Looks like I'm running out of time, but so thank you. Thank you, sir. Good morning, Supervisors Karen Delaney. The organization I work for is grateful that we aren't being cut. And my staff was like, you're crazy. Why are you going down there? It's because my whole career, I believe in two things. One, people are good and will try to do the right thing if they have the right data. And two, we can do better even when it's hard. Core folks were given an impossible task because of the level of investment, limited levels set by your board eight months ago before we knew the economic climate, the conditions were any amazing new program only gets funded if you pull someone already away from the table. If you think those are still with the conditions, if you really believe that's the best we can do, let me tell you one example. This is what the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is voting for for their nonprofits. A 5.25% COLA for all staff in fully funded existing programs for all nonprofit partners. An additional 60 million over two years to invest in bringing all nonprofit childcare workers up over a living wage, not losing a single childcare slot. 30 million over two years to increase wages for nonprofit homeless veterans and mental health service workers so that all case managers make a minimum prevailing wage of $28 an hour. Plus a 37 million increase investment in new targeted services like our core. Sadly, in my beloved community, that model that every new dollar in a year where you have a lot more money has to come from another service is not true. I encourage you to hold over, get the list of the cuts, compare them to every dollar you're spending this budget. Thank you, Mr. Wayne. Good morning. My name is Diana, coordinates. Good morning. My name is Diana, Valades. First of all, I have arrived at school. At lunchtime in Os..... oh, sorry. Oh, yeah. I'm a mother of two kids who go to Live Oak School. My kids receive help and support from the Live Oak. I'm here to let you know that I am representing other mothers. It is very important for us to preserve all the supports and resources that we have. We want children who are happy and healthy. Have them realize themselves and be happy and be successful. We would like to have loving kids. It's only fair that we all have good health. Thank you so much for listening to me and for us. It's a good idea and it's wonderful for you guys to continue with this support. Thank you. I appreciate the input and I think these people may not be here later today but this item will be discussed in detail on item 12. After you speak, any recommendation or decision by the board will not be made until after the discussion on item 12. We appreciate your input but I just want to let you know the in-depth discussion will be coming a little later. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. We will take comment from people who are still standing here. We will hear the core item. It's item 11 and when it comes to online public comments, which I will have to assume people are slightly more flexible, I will ask anyone speaking to the core item until we actually hear that item. Go ahead, sir. It's item 12 or 11? It's item 11. Go ahead, sir. Good morning. Thank you for your time. We've been going to all the community breaches events they have and all the stuff they prevent for kids. Our team has been taking advantage of all the classes they do, all the tutoring. They've been doing that all the time. With COVID, we have helped them. They help us with providing food and all the bases and we need some of the head of the household. So when I went down with COVID, all my family wasn't able to do anything. And they were able to provide us. We could walk or the kids and the wife could walk and pick up groceries and bases we need to survive for a week or two. They've been providing a lot of stuff and a lot of support. I think it's a very happy joy in the clouds they have. And we'll be very happy for us to, if you just, if you folks figure it out and decide to keep it going, we'll be appreciated. And we're speaking in more of a minute and are unable to make it. Unfortunately, everybody has to work in different times, but we're supporting them and thank you for your time. Thank you, sir. Yeah, good morning. My name is James Ealing Whitman on the Consent agenda. Item number 21 referring to assembly bill 361 about remote meetings. This is almost as much of a full house as I've seen here in the past eight months since he've been open to the public. Look, don't you guys are wearing masks today? Look behind me, half the people are wearing masks. Just why is that? Why does the city of Santa Cruz not have open meetings? They did it for two weeks only. So also on the agenda item number 26, an approval of reappropriation of $124 million. What is going to go on with that money? I thought that was part of people's retirement funds. And number 38, the ex the emergency extension because of the tsunami that happened in January. So public not aware that these extensions just allow fishing expeditions for people for this government to get more money. You know, I didn't stand for the pledge of allegiance. What we have there are three flags, the United States flag or California flag and the pedophile flag. So when a nation is taken over, they sow something around it and it becomes a pirate flag. So I wish I had more support for the city of Santa Cruz, the county of Santa Cruz, the state of California in the US government, but it's been taken over. You know, I don't know how many of the public actually realized that the elected officials answered to the city and county managers who often aren't elected officials. So it's interesting that so many people have stood here today about the funding that they used to get and that they're not. I don't know if they would have shown up more to see what actually is going on in this room. That may not have happened. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Redmond. Good morning. Adult Education of Santa Cruz County partners with community bridges to provide childcare for adults learning English. This means that anyone who has a young kid can come to the Live Oak Center to take classes while their children receive top notch care. In fact, Live Oak Community Resources is the only place in the entire county that does this. There are no other options for students who want to learn English and need childcare. This service is crucial for immigrant families composed of parents who have the time, desire and energy to learn English, but need to have the childcare. These proposed funding cuts would take away not only the childcare but the ESL class itself from the satellite location. You should not take away the one classroom option our families with young children have. As the teacher, I, Miriam Cohen, can attest to just how crucial both classroom time and non-classroom time are. I have watched community blossom within our classroom at Live Oak Community Resources. Students study in class together for three hours daily, learning things like US civics, current events, how to navigate the various medical and educational systems, and of course grammar and pronunciation. About halfway through, they take a break to check in with their kids and let their minds relax. Since their native languages differ, they use English as their communal language to exchange woes on parenting struggles and tips on things like how to potty train their kids or how to find a preschool. If someone needs a dentist, they can ask how to find one and where to go. It's in these moments when students of diverse backgrounds are supporting each other through similar phases of life that relations are built and community happens. By the way, in the period from mid-October through last Friday, students attended approximately 1,550 hours of class. Through community bridges, these students and their families also have access to fresh food twice a month, parenting classes to help with those tricky preschool years, and help with applications and legal aid, among other services. In a time of soaring inflation and a looming recession, it is imperative that you support our families and preserve resources that bridge our communities. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Cohen. All right, we'll now go to Zoom. Is there anyone on Zoom who would like to comment on something? And again, since we have not actually come to item 11, we'll be hearing more about the core process. I'd ask that anyone speaking online try to address things that are not on our regular agenda. Carol, your microphone is now available. Good morning. My name is Carol Bjorn. I have a great idea actually on how you can solve all these spending problems. It's really quite heartbreaking to hear everyone's testimony this morning. But you know what? You should really consider getting rid of the county office of education. They really don't do anything to add any value to the students in Santa Cruz County. They're really just rubber stamping everything coming out of Sacramento. There's no critical thinking going on over there. And I'm sure they have a huge budget. So if you just get rid of that county agency, it would free up a lot of money to actually serve the poor people in this county. Please remove item 43 from the consent agenda and place it on the regular agenda. Please vote no on this agenda item. Item 43 would clearly violate the fourth and fifth amendments of the Constitution for the United States of America. Further, if you all vote yes on this item, you could be held liable for violating the fourth and fifth amendment rights of the Californians living in Santa Cruz County. Further, you all will be participating in the ongoing fraud of the COVID-19 pandemic. As I've talked about on numerous occasions before this board, there is no isolated SARS-CoV-2 virus. Thus, there is no basis for saying that it's contagious and there's no basis for saying that it causes COVID-19. Last week, I read from the book The Truth About Contagion by Dr. Thomas Cowan. Ms. Bjorn, we're getting a lot of feedback. As I was reading last week from the book, the question was, is the Spanish flu pandemic contagious? And again, during a study conducted by U.S. public health, it was found that the Spanish flu pandemic actually was not contagious. They did an experiment where they took mucus secretions from 100 people that were sick, put it in 100 volunteers, not one person got sick. You really need to read this book and I highly recommend it for everyone in the audience today. Thank you, Ms. Bjorn. Jeffrey Ellis, your microphone is now available. Jeffrey Ellis, if you'll accept the unmute, your microphone is now available. Hi, my name is Jeffrey Ellis, here to speak on item 46 on the agenda. These are applications for funding of homeless facilities. This looks to me like deja vu all over again. At your February meeting, you approved four home key projects, including the applications for funding, including the one on Park Avenue, which was done without any neighborhood outreach and engagement. It's caused a lot of unhappiness in that area. I've spoken to people there, they're appalled that it was done without consulting them. And now you have applications for a total of $6 million. And there's nothing in the agenda item about where these facilities would go and absolutely nothing about neighborhood outreach and engagement. Now, please, please, you need to let people know what's coming or what may be coming and get their buy in. And all I see on the agenda is let's get the money. Let's get the $6 million. Well, first, let's ask the people in the targeted neighborhoods whether or not they want these facilities, whether or not they will support them. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ellis. Elizabeth Madrigal, your microphone is now available. Good morning, Chair Koenig and supervisors of the board. Elizabeth Madrigal speaking on behalf of the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership. This initiative consists of a broad coalition of community members, local employers and organizations to advocate for and catalyze an increase in housing of all types and income levels near transit jobs and services in the Tri-County, Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito County region. And that fully supports agenda item 36, adopting a formal resolution for the pro housing designation program and directing the community development and infrastructure department to submit an application for a pro housing designation. Once the county has adopted sufficient policies and programs to qualify for approval. The committee of Santa Cruz for this step as a pro housing designation will grant the county an advantage in applying for state housing funds and be a state leader when it comes to building the housing that is desperately needed in our community. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you, Ms. Madrigal. In user two, your microphone is now available. Yeah, great way to fund everything is to just take a small portion of the military budget. How about the billions going to the Ukraine misdirection of money in this country? That's for sure. I would also call for you to put item 43 on the regular agenda on a future agenda. Violates fourth and fifth amendments. And I read Dr. Thomas Cowan's book. I recommend it for you. That Carol Bjorn referred to. I don't feel like to recommend that you read the printed speech of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in January. And you can from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial against the mandates. And it's Western a price. And one of the things he said, if you give government the license to silence its critics, you have given them the capacity to commit any atrocity they want and to obliterate all the amendments and rights of the Constitution. The freedom of speech is critical for people to know what's going on and that is being censored. And he said we've experienced a coup d'etat against democracy and the demolition, the control demolition of the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights under these these last months. So I recommend you read that and that the pharmaceutical. Serge Cogno, your microphone is now available. Good morning chair Coneg and board of supervisors. My name is Serge Cogno. I'm executive director of a local nonprofit. I'll speak on item number 11 when that agenda item comes up. I'd like to speak to item number 32 living wage ordinance. The living wage ordinance is a powerful statement of the importance our community places on ethics in our county contract budgets. However, there should not be an exception for nonprofits as a director of a local nonprofit. It's my ethical responsibility to provide my staff with a living wage. Nonprofit staff are the heart of services nonprofits offer County contracts should not have the ability to give exceptions for nonprofits requiring only a form. If you run a search for them throughout passport materials, you'll find them usually not filled out only having executive director signature. It's unclear whether County staff ever looked over the forums or whether further information was requested to explain why staff were not receiving the living wages. There's no reason a county contract should be given without funding for living wages to say that is because they're simply not enough funding does not lessen our ethical obligation to support our community through our programs. And that includes our staff studies have shown staff at nonprofits often need to supplement their income with public benefits. Staff have difficulty paying for groceries rent and gas like everybody else. There's no reason why a contract should be given knowing some staff do not receive a living wage, especially here in Santa Cruz. While there's no reviewing of the salaries of the executive team or the nonprofit of the nonprofit. Please make efforts to remove this outdated attempt to push lack of funding onto the backs of those struggling to pay their bills while doing the great frontline work of our nonprofits. As a co chair of the mental health advisory board I'd also like to speak on item number 39 in appreciation and support of the creation of these two needed programs. Thank you for your time. Thank you Mr. Cognaw. Mr. Cognaw, please or Lara, your microphone is now available. Yeah, good morning. Members of the board of supervisors as a lot of what the monitor would be central library council and happy election day and I'm calling about item number 11 since we're on the campaign trail today. But you know cuts and core funding to community pages program. Mr. Lara is there any way you can wait until we actually hear the item 11. I actually cannot. Please proceed. So the first closure of all four family resource centers would never negatively impact working families. Family resource centers service thousands of members of the Santa Cruz County community across its four locations loss of socialized house care slots how. partial closure of these sites would negatively impact not just youth, but also seniors. I urge you not to support not to support the the cutting of the core funding. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lara. Lorraine Iglesias your microphone is now available. Thank you. Good morning. I like to speak to item 11. I know that I cannot stay. So if you could accept my comments, I'd be appreciate that. Go ahead. Thank you. My name is Lorraine Iglesias. Good morning, Board of Supervisors. I sit on the Board of Directors for Ventures and I wanted to just show my appreciation for considering Semiguitas, which is a program in Ventures, which means small seeds. And I wanted to thank you for considering an investment in the future of Santa Cruz County Children's and the future equity for their lives. So again, showing my appreciation and thank you. Thank you, Ms. Iglesias. Jessica Peters, your microphone is now available. Good morning. Can you hear me? Yes. Hi. My name is Jessica. I live in District 5 and my comment is short and sweet this morning. I just wanted to say that I really appreciate seeing Bruce McPherson in person this morning. It's so important that we have good in-person present and engaged representation for District 5. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Peters. Whitney Barnes, your microphone is now available. Hi. Good morning. Thank you. I'm there as a representative of the team of adult protective services for Santa Cruz County. And I would like to thank the Board for proclaiming June 2022 Elder Abuse Awareness Month. Our team investigates allegations of abuse, neglect, self-neglect, and exploitation among older and dependent adults throughout the county. We strive to reduce risk and enhance safety for all community dwelling older and dependent adults in Santa Cruz County. The issue of elder abuse is significant and not just in terms of impact, but also scale. According to the National Council on Aging, roughly 10% of Americans over the age of 60 have experienced some form of elder abuse. Additional studies suggest that self-neglect adversely affects somewhere between 10 and 20% of American older adults. If you reflect on your own personal connections within your family, neighborhood, church, community, and others, consider that somewhere between one or two of every 10 older adults in your social circle may be suffering from some form of abuse, neglect, financial exploitation, or inability to meet their own daily needs. It's important to keep in mind that we do estimate only one in every 24 incidences of abuse against older adults is reported. And that highlights the importance of events such as this proclamation. Raising awareness on the issue of elder abuse will increase attention to the issue and hopefully ease fears for those who may need to seek help and support. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Barnes. Gloria P. Your microphone is now available. Buenos dias. Mi nombre es Gloria Palomo. Soy líder de copa. Good morning. My name is Gloria Palomo. Mi esposo, Leucadio Rivera, que hace 20 años fue diagnosticado con Parkinson y demencia. My husband does this with Parkinson and dementia. Es un paciente del programa de elder days donde lo cuidan cuatro horas por día y 20 horas por semana. Para mí estos programas son una bendición para poder sobrellevar estas enfermedades tan difíciles. These programs are a blessing for me and my family to be able to continue taking care of my husband. Y si dejaran de dar fondos para ayuda, yo sé lo que va a pasar. If you take the services away, I have a very good idea of what's going to happen. I've already experienced this when you closed due to the pandemic. Durante este tiempo me afectó al grado que me dio parálisis parcial y por favor he affected me health-wise. Y por favor les suplico que no reduzcan la ayuda porque no quiero no volver a pasar por esta experiencia otra vez. I will not like to leave this experience again. Por favor toquen su corazón para poder seguir ayudándonos. No cierren la ayuda para estos programas. Please don't take away this help and these programs. Gracias. Thank you. Thank you. How many more speakers do we have online? That was our final speaker. All right. Very well then. Thank you everyone. We'll now move to item six, whose action on the consent agenda. Any member of the board which to speak to items on the consent agenda? Mr. Chair, I'd like to speak on a couple items. Number 36, the pro housing designation program. I want to thank Dr. Ratner, our director of the county's housing for health division for bringing this opportunity to our attention. If we succeed in adopting policies to become a pro housing county, it will position us in a better place to be more competitive for state money to build project. I want to thank Chair Koenig and the staff for working with my office on this item. There's on items 39, 40 and 45. They all have to do with behavioral health funding. And I want to thank really our behavioral health staff and all our nonprofit partners for working in the arena of mental health services. I'm really glad to see a greater investments in addressing this issue as it is a major contributing factor to homelessness and it has co-occurring issue with substance abuse in many cases. We really cannot afford not to address this issue without adequate resources. And I think the recent events that we've seen in our nation have proven time and time again how important it is to provide more behavioral health services to our community. And I think we'll be able to do that if we are successful in getting these funding get these grants that we've applied for. On item 48, I have a question. It's about geological hazards and geotechnical engineering guidelines. I want to thank our staff for the community, from the community development infrastructure for bringing this item so we can really better understand how professionals are being advised on how to navigate this issue. I'd like to ask a question. I think our public works director is here. Do we anticipate that these guidelines are going to make it simpler and more predictable about people seeking permits to get through the process? I think this is really and important to think about in both the context of fire recovery that we've had and also other geologically challenging areas in the county that were directed by the CZU fire. It seems like the state and local guidelines are a little different and we want to meet them all and we need to meet them all. Yeah, good morning. My name is Carolyn Burke. I'm the assistant director with community development and infrastructure overseeing the permit center. Our current guidelines date back to the mid-90s. Since that time, there have been a lot of regulatory and technical advancements in both geotechnical and geologic reporting. One of those is the incorporation of stronger geotechnical requirements in the California Building Code. These guidelines bring all of that into one package for consultants. Our hope is that it will set expectations so that we can have a smoother review process as well as provide consultants with tools so that they can better scope their reports prior to signing contracts with clients and they're able to better anticipate timelines. Overall, our mantra is more complete reports and applications lead to more streamlined review times. So that's our hope in producing these guidelines. I hope that speeds it up and makes it more predictable because we've heard this for two years now and I know you have too, Ms. Burke. Absolutely. I appreciate the efforts that you've tried to coordinate what we do and what we have in the county and what the state demands too. It's been an easy process. Absolutely, Jan. With respect to the CZU fire survivors, the CZU rebuild directive is an option for them, which takes them out of the county code review process, but the California Building Code, as you know, still has requirements and so this helps provide a path for them to be able to at least anticipate what kind of requirements would come up in that review. Great. Thank you. Thank you for your explanation. And one other thing on item number 53, the California Department of Transportation. The litter and encampments along state highways right away have been an increasingly difficult problem throughout California because its local jurisdictions really don't have the ability just to go in and work in these areas. So I really appreciate the county's community development and infrastructure division again for working with Caltrans to provide the funding to maintain these areas to the best extent possible. I know it's a big issue here and elsewhere throughout the state of California. That's it. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. All right, seeing I'll just comment on a couple items here on item 33. I want to thank Mark Yellen for volunteering to serve on the Emergency Medical Care Commission as representative of the Santa Cruz Medical Society. On item 36, the pro housing designation, I also want to thank our planning staff who's committed to reviewing best practice policies from around the state and bringing them to our county so that we can proactively address the housing crisis. On item 51, authorizing the submission of a grant for 2023 active transportation program funding in the amounts of $67 million and $3.5 million for the coastal rail trail segments. And of course, I'm excited to see this project move forward and I thank Public Works for all their work on it. I just have to say I am concerned that there's a risk in applying for too much money here. We're a less than 1% of the state's population and we're asking for more than 10% of all the active transportation funding for this project, for a program that has been described as oversubscribed and highly competitive. So I'm hoping for the best, but I do have concerns. And then finally on item 47, extending the contract with housing matters and abode. You know, I just want to say here as well, I'm concerned that we're reaching the maximum utility of this program, allocating housing vouchers for people, you know, it's fantastic that we've given vouchers to 250 families and found permanent homes for 100 people. But the marginal utility is spending another $2 million on this program when we are in urgent need of other transitional housing options in our community. It does make me trepidatious and I'll support finishing out this program, but I think we need to seriously consider this as we look at what the best next dollar is to spend addressing homelessness. Those are all my comments. Is there a motion? Move the recommended action. I'll second. Motion by Supervisor Coonerty to accept the consent agenda. Second by Supervisor Friend. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk roll call vote please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Koenig. Aye. Thank you, Chair. The consent agenda passes unanimously. Thank you. Then we'll proceed to item seven to consider an option of resolutions confirming the previously established benefit assessment rates for County Service Areas 4, Pajaro Dunes and CSA 48, County Fire, adopt resolutions setting a public hearing on June 28, 2022. On the proposed fiscal year 22, 23 service charge reports for CSAs 4 and 48 and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the Director of General Services to report on this item we have. Director of General Services Michael Beaton. Take it away. Thank you, Chair Koenig. Michael Beaton, Director of General Services. I am a staff to this item and available for any questions. Okay. Any questions from members of the board? Seeing none. Is there any member of the public that wishes to comment on this item? Seeing none. I'll return it to the board. I have motion to be in order. I'll move the recommended actions. I'll second. Motion by Supervisor Friend, second by Supervisor Caput. Any further discussion? Seeing none. Clerk roll call vote please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Koenig. Aye. That item passes unanimously. Thank you, Director Beaton. We'll now proceed to item eight, the public hearing to consider approving a resolution establishing a charge for recycling and solid waste services infrastructure at the county's point of vista landfill and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the Deputy CAO, Director of Community Development and Infrastructure. And for a report on this item, we have Assistant Director of Community Development and Infrastructure, Kent Edler, as well as Casey Colasa in our Department of Public Works. Good morning, Chair Koenig. I'm Casey Colasa, recycling and solid waste services manager in the Department of Community Development and Infrastructure. Up here with me is Kent Edler, Assistant Director. Today's item is regarding the establishment of a charge for recycling and solid waste infrastructure. Since the point of vista landfill is nearing capacity and due to requirements of Senate bill 1383, the new charge would fund a transfer station infrastructure at the Bonavista landfill and organics processing facility at the Bonavista landfill and closure costs for the closing of the Bonavista landfill. This new charge would be collected through the property tax bills on developed parcels in the unincorporated areas of the county. The charge per parcel over the next five years is outlined in the board memo and they were developed by our solid waste consultants HFNH. And so in compliance with Proposition 218, the notices of the new charge were mailed on April 14th, which exceeds the 45-day minimum required for noticing prior to today's public hearing. Per Proposition 218, the new charge would not go into effect if more than 50% of affected property owners submitted a written protest prior to the public hearing. There are 45,017 affected property owners and we've received only nine written protests of the charge. So that's far below the 50% required for a majority protest. So the recommended actions are to open a public hearing to take objections or protests, if any, to the proposed charge for recycling and solid waste services infrastructure and close the public hearing. And upon its conclusion, adopt the attached resolution approving establishment of a charge for recycling and solid waste services infrastructure and we are available for any questions. Thank you. I'll officially open the public hearing for this item. Is there any member of the board that has questions? Supervisor Caput. Thank you. Yeah, they all caught me a little bit off-guard here. Now the recycling when you're talking about the charge, it would be taken when they got there at the landfill. So this charge would actually be put on the property tax bill. So it would not be when you go to the landfill. Do we make money on the recycle? Yeah, that's figured into our revenue for our budget. Yeah. Supervisor McPherson. I want to thank Public Works for bringing this item to us and for laying that round work and how we're going to deal with the eventual closure of the Buena Vista landfill, which has been stated, I think 20 years ago it was going to close in a couple of years. So it's held its ground as best it can. But to understand this, we understate mandates and for those who want to refer to legislation, it's Senate Bill 1383 to deal with our organic waste in a better manner. And this is going to help us come up with solutions to that issue and the demands that the state has put upon us. I have, and I think all of us have received some comments about why unincorporated residents are shouldering this. And I think it's important to note that the residents outside of the unincorporated area in the cities, the four cities in Santa Cruz, they do pay an additional fee to use the Buena Vista site. That said, I look forward to future discussions on this, about how we're planning to address our recycling and solid waste in the years to come. This is something that we just have to address and get ahead of. It's a state mandate and we have to meet it. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Any further questions or comments from the board? Seeing none. As any member of the public wish to address us on this item, please approach the podium. My name is Geraldine Decarlo. I live in Santa Cruz County, unincorporated. I did get the notification in the newsletter from Green Waste. And when I saw this, I was shocked. First of all, I am a senior citizen fixing gum. I do pay for recycling when I go to take whatever I need to at Buena Vista, which is not very often. And I do pay for services to pick everything up at my home, which I have to actually lug down the street, put down at the end of the street about a quarter mile down and come back and pick it up. I should not be paying an additional surcharge for something that I'm already paying for. So I'm protesting. But I also have to tell you the gentleman up here said, if he had gotten X amount of protest and writing, I would have responded. But there's nothing on this writing that says I have to protest and writing. Nobody's informed anybody up in that area to my knowledge that this is happening. So this is another piece of junk mail that comes through and people just toss it. We have not been properly informed of what's going on. That's all I have to say. Thank you, Ms. Carlo. Is there anyone on Zoom that wishes to address us on this item? Yes, we do have one speaker. I apologize. Two speakers now. Colin, user two, your microphone is now available. Excuse me, Marilyn Garrett. I appreciate the previous speaker there. I'm in the same category. I find this pretty outrageous that you keep putting more taxes on property owners. And also recycling is a myth. It's estimated that about 5% of the plastics is so-called recycled. Why are not the polluters of the plastic the producers halted at this source? This is ridiculous that, you know, what is that corporations privatize the profit and socialize the cost? That's what's going on. And during these last couple of years, there's been more and more and more plastic produced. It's clogging up everything with micro plastics, the oceans. This doesn't go to the source. Stop the pollution where it starts has to do with the profiting system. And I'm opposed to this increase in taxes. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Garrett. Jessica Peters, your microphone is now available. Hi. Good morning again. This is Jessica. I live in District 5. I want to thank the previous speaker for bringing up the mailing that we received. We also received that. I took it as mail that came from GreenWaste, which I do not feel that GreenWaste as our trash provider should be responsible for sending out information that has to do with our taxes being increased. I disagree with our taxes being increased. I feel that the budget should be balanced somewhere else. And us as taxpayers are being asked to shoulder far too much. Our trash rates have actually doubled in the last 10 years through GreenWaste. Our water costs are going up, PGN costs are going up, food costs are going up, gas. Everything is going up and we're being asked to shoulder all of this. But yet the county with their budget, I don't see where cuts to the actual county are being made. And I would ask that the taxpayers are not asked to shoulder this. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Peters. We have no additional speakers. All right, then I'll return to the board for action. Sure, you can provide the cabinet. Okay, thank you. Now the money, it's $110 a year, right? That's correct. That's the first year, though. It has a schedule where every year increases. How much is that total when you add up all the property owners? So the total for the first year raises about $5.8 million. And this is to fund, we have about $52.5 million of improvements needed in order to build the transfer station as well as the organics composting facility. And then there's additional costs for the closure costs of the landfill. Okay, well, what I noticed was it goes up every year about $15 to $20, right? From 2022 to 2023. How many years are we talking about this to go on? Then the year 2030, are we going to still be charging it? So what's before the board today is to approve five years with the rates. But we are expecting that in order to pay for the transfer station and the organics processing facility, we're going to have to bond for that. So every five years, we would come back, we would reevaluate the rates and the costs, and come back before the board with proposed either increases or decreases to the rates. Okay. Okay, yeah. The only question I have is, there's the charge and basically how many years that would go on. So you're saying after the five years, it would be a different rate? Yeah, we expect that the bonding for the facilities would be about a 30-year bond. So it could be for 30 years that we're going to have charges on the assessment, but the charges for these amounts in order to pay off the bonds for these facilities. Okay, but the money we're collecting is to build some kind of facility at the landfill. Once it's built and paid for, then why would it continue past the five years? I would expect that what would happen that once it's paid off is that we would just have it, that the capital cost to pay for it would be gone, and then we would just be left with kind of maintenance of the facilities, which would be a reduction. So after 30 years, my expectation would be that that charge would go down once the facility is paid for. Okay, that's my concern. It should go down after five years. It should go down. Well, after it's paid for, so we're going to be bonding for 30 years, so probably after the 30 years. But again, we're going to come back every five years and we re-evaluate, have a new cost of service report. So technically it will take 30 years to pay it off? Correct. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. Any further discussion? Yeah, Mr. Charitas have a, I think what might be a better way of asking the question is, what would happen if this was not done? So for Casey and for Mr. Kluss and Mr. Edler, say we were unable to bond and unable to build and given the new state mandates, what would be the impact of the landfill and for the county? So there's a lot of impacts if this doesn't go through. So what would happen is that five to seven years we would close the landfill. So there would be nowhere for county residents or the green waste trucks to take garbage within the county other than the Ben-Loman Transfer Station, which is a much smaller facility. So then what would happen is that the garbage trucks would have to, instead of right now, they go and they dump their loads at the point of this landfill. So without a transfer station, they would have to drive individually down to the Marina landfill or the Monterey Regional, which is located in Marina. So he would have individual trucks driving from Santa Cruz County down to Monterey County and back in the individual Packer garbage trucks. We've looked at those costs. Those costs would be more expensive than what this charge would be. And you would have additional greenhouse gas emissions with garbage trucks driving back and forth. We're planning to electrify our fleet once the technology gets there, which we're hoping will get there by the time the transfer facility is there. So that's some of the impacts. We've also, we've studied many things as well. We've studied rail, the cost of rail to ship it out. That doesn't pencil out economically at this point. You'd have just the amount of facilities and how far you'd have to ship and so forth. So we've looked at many different alternatives. We feel that this one is the best from a cost perspective and still gives the residents a place to take their garbage inside the county. When we all know that illegal dumping is constantly a problem, if we don't have a landfill in the county, we fully expect that there to be an increase in illegal dumping as well. And there has been a change in state requirements that have also increased costs for county residents in regards to organics and other issues that also drive up general costs in regards to landfill usage, correct? Yeah, that's true as well, because I was just speaking about the garbage previously, but there are SB 1383 requires all the organics to be taken out of the regular garbage. So that's, you know, that's additional, additional trucking that would be in separate trucks that would have to go down as well on Beat Hall out of the county as well, where this proposal before the board today is two facilities. So it's transfer station, so allow people to dump their garbage. And there's also a separate facility where we could process organic waste on site at the point of this landfill. Okay, I just thought it was important to note that some of this is Supervisor McPherson had noted it's just the pure age and longevity of the landfill. And due to both innovation and recycling, that it's been preserved just beyond its useful life. And some of those is also additional state mandates that require us to do various things locally. We've not historically been required to do. We can argue the merits of that, but the reality is those are unfunded mandates that are coming down that local use ratepayers are, that's we share the burden on that or shoulder the burden. So I understand the questions from Supervisor Cap and I appreciate them. I just think that the counterfactual to this would be catastrophic for a lot of issues within Santa Cruz County, both from what I would believe would be a significant increase in illegal dumping and waste, which is an ongoing issue for all of us in the unappropriated area. Additional climate change related issues on GHG, issues on transportation costs, and then just the reality that we wouldn't meet state mandates. So as a result of that, I will move the recommended actions. Second. Motion by Supervisor Friend, second by Supervisor McPherson. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk roll call note please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Koenig. Aye. That item passes unanimously. Thank you, Mr. Edler, Mr. Colasa. We will now proceed to item nine, public hearing to consider fiscal year 2022-2023 benefit assessment service charge reports for Sanitation County Service Areas 2, 5, 7, 10, and 20. An adopt resolution confirming the fiscal year 2022-23 benefit assessment service charge reports is outlined in the member end of the Deputy CAO, Director of Community Development and Infrastructure. And for a report on this item, we have Ashley Trujillo, Civil Engineer. Take it away, Ashley. Hey, thank you. So I'm Ashley Trujillo, Senior Engineer for Sanitation Engineering. And on April 12, 2022, the Board adopted the 2022-2023 benefit assessments for the County Service Areas 2, 5, 7, 10, and 20. And set today as the date of the public hearing on the benefit assessment reports. CPI increase of 4.2% for sewer service charges in CSAs 2, 5, 7, and 20 are necessary to adequately meet the CSA's revenue requirements. No additional increase is required for CSA 10. The benefit assessment reports were electronically filed with the clerk of the Board for public review on or prior to May 23, 2022. Therefore, we recommend that the Board open the public hearing and hear objections or protests, if any, to the proposed 2022-2023 benefit assessment service charge reports with the County Service Areas 2, 5, 7, 10, and 20 and close the public hearing and adopt a resolution confirming the 2022-2023 benefit assessment service charge reports for the various Sanitation County Service Areas are available for questions. Thank you, Mr. Trujillo. I'll open the public hearing on this item. Any questions from members of the Board? Seeing none, is there any member of the public that wishes to address us on this item? Is there anyone on Zoom? We do have a speaker on Zoom. Yes, one moment. Colin, user 2, your microphone is now available. Marilyn Garrett again. More and more and more taxes just on this agenda. There are quite a few previous agendas it adds up. And what are we really getting any benefit from? I see very, very little. And it's disturbing to me where our taxes go. You have plenty of money for the whole infrastructure, 5G, 4G, radiation facilities, surveillance, money for other things like that. And we were asked to pay more and more for more and more damage to the public overall. Very disturbing. Elected representatives should be protecting the public well-being. And unfortunately, I'm not saying that. Having attended board meetings for over 20 years, and when I retired from teaching, previous boards would have discussions. They would vote no on certain things. When Marty Wormwood and Jan Butz were there, things would come back. They would have other perspectives presented. This board, no, all corporate except occasionally, Greg Kappa, thank you for your no votes on occasion. That's all I have to say. Very disturbing. Thank you, Ms. Karen. We have no additional speakers for this item, Chair. All right, I'll return to the board for action. Is there a second? A second. Motion by Supervisor McPherson, second by Supervisor Friend. Any further discussion? Seeing none. Clerk, roll call vote, please. Supervisor Friend. All right. Coonerty. All right. Caput. All right. McPherson. All right. And Koenig. All right. That item passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hia, and I'll officially close the public hearing on that item. We now have a regularly scheduled, two regularly scheduled items for 1030 items, 13 and 14. So the Board of Supervisors will now recess in order to permit the Board of Directors of the Santa Cruz County Flood Control and Water Conservation District of Zone 5 to convene and carry out a regularly scheduled meeting. And as the Chair of the Flood Control and Water Conservation District for Zone 5, I'll officially call an open D meeting. And Clerk, if we could begin with a roll call, please. Here. Thank you. Thank you. Director Friend. Here. Coonerty. Here. Caput. Here. McPherson. Here. Jaff. And Bertrand. Director, you have a quorum. Thank you. Are there any additions or deletions to consent to a regular agenda? Good morning. You know, this is Rachel Patuhi with the stormwater management section, senior engineer. There is no additional deletion to that agenda. All right. Thank you, Ms. Patuhi. Item 3, oral communications. Does any member of the public wish to address the Zone 5 Flood Control and Water Conservation District? Is there anyone on Zoom to please to address us? We have no speakers on Zoom. Right. Then I'll proceed to item 4, approval of Zone 5 meeting minutes. Please. Any discussion on this item? Any member of the public that wishes to address us on this item? Seeing none. Is there a motion to approve by Supervisor McPherson or Director McPherson? Is there a second? Second. Second by Supervisor Friend. Any further discussion? Seeing none. Clerk, we'll call the vote, please. Director Friend. Here. Coonerty. Here. Jaff. Here. Coonerty. Here. Jaff. Jaff it. Aye. Tonic. Aye. And McPherson. Aye. That item passes unanimously. All right. The minutes being approved, we'll proceed to item 5, action on the consent agenda. Any comments or questions on the consent agenda for members of the board? Seeing none. Any members of the public that wish to address us on the consent agenda? Anyone on Zoom? We have no speakers on Zoom. All right. I'll return it to the board for action. Is there a motion? Remove the action. Recommend the action. A second. Motion by Supervisor McPherson, second by Director Friend. Any further discussion? Seeing none. Clerk, we'll call the vote, please. Director Friend. Here. Coonerty. Here. Jaff. Here. Jaff. Jaff. Coonerty. Here. Jaff. And McPherson. Aye. That item passes unanimously. Thank you. We'll proceed to item 8. Consider changes to the Zone 5 rules and regulations related to section 1.9, method of action, 1.11, election of the Zone 5 board chair, section 3.3, district engineer and adopt resolution amending resolution number 4-89z, approving set amendments as outlined in the memorandum of the district engineer. And Ms. Fatui, report on this item. So we're presenting this item for changes. The main change we have is initiated during the last meeting for streamlining the process for the chair and vice chair. And then when we looked at original, I mean, the current rules and regulations, there are a few changes that became necessary, such as a type what we had from the prior resolution. And also we have the Robert Stroll, we changed it to the current practice by the county to Robinson rule, as well as changing the name of the district engineer for public works to the community development or a new name. So those are the changes we did with this amendment to the resolution. Thank you very much. Are there any questions or comments from members of the board? No, Mr. Chair, as you remember, I brought this item, mentioned this last time just to streamline for future boards to make it simple with the two districts that are most impacted to have the chair, vice chair role. And so I appreciate the board's consideration. Thank you, Director Friend. Any member of the public that wishes to address this on this item? Anyone on Zoom? No speakers on Zoom, Chair. Thank you. I'll return to the board for action. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. Motion by Supervisor or Director Friend, second by Director Coonerty. Any further discussion? Seeing none. Clerk, roll call vote, please. Director Friend? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. Krapit? Aye. Koenig? Aye. And McPherson? Aye. That item passes unanimously. Thank you. I'll proceed to item nine to consider approval of the proposed fiscal year 22, 23, Zone 5, and Zone 5 expansion construction budgets, as outlined in the Memorandum of the District Engineer. Does that do it? So this item is approving next year's budget, Zone 5 construction expansion, as well as Zone 5, which is mainly, Zone 5 is mainly from revenues from annual assessment construction. Expansion construction is from impact fees. So the budget in front of you is for the expansion construction, the budget is in the total amount of the, I'm sorry, for operation. For the operation, we're starting with the operation that total, I mean, recommended finance, include an estimated fund balance as of June 30, 2022, a fund balance of a million, or the 45,587, and a tax levy of 829,700. And the recommended appropriation is 1,875, 287, leaving zero in an appropriated revenue. Basically, the revenues are appropriated into expenditures. As for the expansion construction, the recommended financing, including estimated balance as of June 30, 2022, there's a type of fund balance of 772,446, and a drainage fees of 160,000. That's for next fiscal year and permanent processing of 240,000. The recommended appropriations are 1,175, 446, leaving an estimated zero in an appropriated fund balance. With that, we recommend your approval, or if you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer. Thank you. Any questions from members of the board? Seeing none, any members of the public that wish to address us on this item? Anyone on Zoom? No speakers on Zoom. All right, thank you. Then I'll return it to the board for action. Motion would be in order. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. Motion by Director Friend, seconded by Director Coonerty. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk, we'll call vote, please. Director Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. Koenig. Aye. McPherson. Aye. That item passes unanimously. Thank you. We'll proceed to item 10. Considered option of resolution accepting unanticipated revenue of $55,000 in the Santa Cruz County Flood Control and Water Conservation District Zone 5's expansion construction budget is outlined in the Memorandum of the District Engineer. Mr. Coonerty. So for the revenues this fiscal year we're in, we're getting more revenues in reviews than what we anticipated. So what we allocated early on, we are exceeding that. So we need to accept this and addition our revenues so we can continue spending for the remaining part of this fiscal year. And the amount that we underestimated was $50,000. So we're accepting those revenues so we can spend it during this fiscal year. Thank you very much. Any questions from the directors? Seeing none, any members of the public that wish to address us on this item? Anyone on Zoom? We do have one speaker on Zoom. All right. One moment. Monika, your microphone is available. Hi, this is for the following item. Thank you. Not for this one. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. All right. Then I'll return it to the directors for action. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. Motion by Director Friend, second by Director McPherson. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk roll call vote please. Director Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. Koenig. Aye. And McPherson. Aye. That item passes unanimously. Thank you. That brings us to the conclusion of the Zone 5 meeting and I will now adjourn and I will hand it to Supervisor Friend as our Board Chair for the Zone 7 meeting. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Madam Clerk, do you need a minute to promote any of the attendees and to- Yes, please, Chair. Thank you. Let me know when you're okay. There, I believe all of our panelists have been upgraded. Thank you, Madam Clerk, for your help on that. I will now call to order the Santa Cruz County Board of Directors for the Flood Control and Water Conservation District or Zone 7 for our June 7th meeting if we could have a roll call, please. Director Koenig. Here. Coonerty. Here. Caput. Aye. Here. McPherson. Here. Culbertson. Billisich. Here. And Friend. Here. And I also saw that Ms. Lucas is here, although she's a non-voting member. We appreciate her attending. Mr. Machado, are there any changes to today's agenda? Thank you, Chair. No changes today. All right. We'll open it up to oral communications. This is an opportunity for members of the community to address us on items that are not on today's agenda but are within the purview of Zone 7. Is there anybody in the chambers that would like to address us on Zone 7? Seeing none, is there anybody on Zoom or on the phone that would like to address us? Chair, we do have one speaker. Thank you. Call-in user 2, your microphone is now available. This is the flood control and water conservation district. And people have been very diligent over all about water conservation. But we really need to ask the questions about the what is causing these extreme droughts. And yeah. And one of the sources of information I recommend for you and anybody listening is geoengineeringwatch.org with Dane Wiggington. And one of the things he states is that climate engineering operations are blocking the brain. And he cites patents that have been issued for various climate engineering operations. And he also recommended on his website seeing the dimming and said climate engineering is the elephant in the room. What we're seeing is not natural weather like we used to see. That's affecting the crops. And we have a big agricultural area south of this county. So this geoengineering really needs to be halted. So geoengineeringwatch.org. Thank you. It's really disturbing hearing the facts. He also has a program on KSEO Saturday morning 10.80 a.m. for an hour. And you can just hear the facts on geoengineering. Thank you. All right. Is there anybody else for all communications? Madam clerk. We have no additional speakers. Thank you. We'll move on to item four. And before we address the minutes just director Machado perhaps moving forward unless there's something that precludes this we could add the minutes into the consent agenda so it could swept into one action if possible. Are there any comments from directors on the minutes? Seeing none. Is there anybody from the community that would like to address this on the minutes? Anybody online? Madam clerk. No speakers for this item. Sorry I bring it back to the board director Billisich. Do you have a comment? I have a no. I'd like to motion to approve. Thank you. We have a motion. We have a motion from director Billisich. I apologize I missed the second. Also director Koenig. Thank you. Madam clerk roll call please. Director Koenig. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Crap it. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Billisich. Aye. And friend. Aye. We'll move on to item five. Is that action on the consent agenda which are item six and seven. Does any director like to comment on the two items on consent? Is any member of the community would any member of the community like to address this? I'll come back to you director Billisich. Is there any member of the community that would like to address this on this item within chambers? Seeing none. Is there anybody online that would like to address this on Zoom? We have no speakers on Zoom. All right I'll bring it back director Billisich. Do you have a comment on consent? Comment is that I really appreciate item six and the opportunity to teleconference. It's much more convenient and I think efficient too. Thank you director Billisich. Anybody else on comments and consent? Seeing none. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? Motion to approve. Second. We have a motion from director Billisich and a second from director Koenig. If we could have a roll call please. Director Koenig. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Crap it. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Billisich. Aye. And friend. All right. We'll move on to the first item of the regular agenda which is the program manager's report for zone seven. This is item number eight. So we're here to consider a status report on the Pahora River flood management risk flood risk management project as outlined in the memo of the district engineer. Director Machado please. Thank you chair and directors. Just a couple of highlights on the item before you for our management update. A good piece of information including your board letter today is a map of all the reaches that are under proposed for the Pahora project. And most interestingly is the status of our design progress with the Army Corps of Engineers. And they are designing reaches five and six. An update they're highlighted in the board letter is that that design will be about 35 percent complete this fall. Additionally the board letter highlights some new funding in construction that that we have celebrated a bit but I did want to highlight it again. We did receive 67 million dollars from the federal transportation legislation that was approved in November. And so that was good news and that'll go towards that phase one of reaches five and six. So with that just a quick highlights and then the last bit I did want to share and we'll talk about it more here in the near future is tomorrow's public hearing for our proposed assessment which will go towards the maintenance of the capital project that we're talking about now. So June 8th is tomorrow night and the Watsonville Chamber is a 630. With that I will conclude my remarks. The recommended action for this item is to accept and file the status report on the Pahora River Flood Risk Management Project and I am certainly available to answer any questions. Thank you Director Machado. The map was a request of this board previously for just clarity on the location. So I appreciate that that has been provided. Are there any questions from directors before we open it up to the community? Seeing none is there anyone in chambers that would like to address the board on this item? Madam Clerk, is there anybody on Zoom? We have no speakers on Zoom Chair. Great. This is an action item. I'll bring it back to the board for action. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. We have a motion from Director Koenig and a second from Director Bilicic. If we could have a roll call please. Director Koenig? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. Caput? Aye. McPherson? Aye. Bilicic? Aye. And Friend? Aye. We'll now move on to item nine which is a public hearing on Zone 7 assessment rates for the 22 and 23 fiscal year. We're here to hear any objections and protests if any and consider adoption of a resolution confirming the rate report as outlined in the memo of the District Engineer. We have a summary of the assessment rates and a resolution and the assessment rates. Director Machado. Thank you Chair and directors. So this is an annual adoption. This year's assessment does include a 4% inflationary index and this does cover the operations and maintenance of our Pajaro River system. The recommended action is to open the public hearing and hear objections and protests if any to the proposed 22-23 assessment rate report for Zone 7 and to close the public hearing and upon conclusion of the hearing consider adoption of the attached resolution confirming the written report on assessment rates for the 22-23 fiscal year and staff is available to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. Before we open the public hearing, are there any questions from board members on this item? Okay. Seeing none, I'd like to now open up the public hearing. Is there any member of the public that would like to address this on this item within chambers? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, is there anybody on Zoom that would like to address this during the public hearing? We have no speakers on Zoom, Chair. Okay. This will be a final call for comments or protests in regards to this item. Is there anybody that would like to address this during this public hearing? Okay. I'm seeing and hearing none. I will then close the public hearing and bring it back to the board for action. Director Bilisic. I'd like to make a motion for approval. All right. We had a motion from Supervisor Caput. Director Bilisic, would you second that? Yes. Thank you. Okay. Then we have a second from Director Bilisic. If we could have a real call vote please. Director Koenig. Hi. Coonerty. Hi. Caput. Hi. McPherson. Bilisic. Hi. And Friend. Hi. And that concludes Zone 7. Appreciation to Director Bilisic for joining us as well as Ms. Lucas. And then I'll turn it back to Chair Koenig for the regular Board of Supervisors agenda. Chair, do we have item 10? Yeah. One more item. One more item. One more item to get us out. He wouldn't let me. All right. So let's do item 10. Consider the 22-23. Thank you, by the way, Director Machado. Consider the 22-23 proposed budget for Zone 7 and accept to file the semiannual levy inspection reports as outlined in the memo of the district engineer. We have the Zone 7 budget. We have the budget narrative, the levy inspection report for both 21 and 22 and the table as the attachments. Director Machado, please. Thank you, Chair and Directors. So the item before you is our 22-23 proposed budget. The proposed budget includes expenditures of $4,683,279. Those expenditures are funded from three sources. First is the fund balance of $97,444. The second is grant revenues of $2,336,739. And the third revenue source is our assessments at $2,249,096. A critical piece here to really explain this proposed expenditure is Attachment B, our budget narrative information. These are proposed expenditures. I believe it's a good report. It's complete. And we certainly can answer any questions that you may have. The recommended action this morning is to consider approval of the 22-23 proposed budget for the Santa Cruz County Flood Control and Water Conservation District Zone 7 and to accept and file the semiannual levy inspection reports. I'm available to answer any questions you may have. Thank you, Director Machado. Are there any board members that have questions on the budget? Can I have a comment? Please, Director Belichick. I just want to say how much I appreciate all the detailed work, all the inspections that were done. This is pretty comprehensive and, you know, it tells us what condition everything is in. It's really a nice report. So I appreciate your fine work. Thank you. Any other directors with questions or comments before we open it up to the public? Seeing none, is there anybody in chambers that'd like to address us on the proposed budget? Also seeing none, is there anybody, Madam Clerk, on Zoom? We have no speakers on Zoom, Chair. Okay. I'll bring it back to the board for action. Is there a motion? I'll make a motion to approve the new budget. We have a motion for the recommended actions from Director Belichick and a second from Director Koenig. If we could have a roll call vote, please. Director Koenig. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Grapit. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Bilicich. Aye. And Friend. Aye. And now we will actually conclude the item. And my appreciation that I expressed previously did not go away for Director Bilicich and others that attended the meeting. Thank you, Director Machado. I'll hand it back to Chair Koenig for the regular scheduled board of Supervisors next item. Thank you, Supervisor Friend. I'll now resume the regular meeting in Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. I will thank everyone for their patience. We are almost at the item. I think most of you are here to discuss, which is item 11. But first, item 10, Public Hearing to Consider Resolution Confirming Proposed Fiscal Year 22, 23, Assessment Service Charge Reports for County Service Area 12, Wastewater Management, as outlined in the Memorandum of the Director of Health Services. And for a report on this item, we have our Director of Health Services, Monika Morales, and Director of Environmental Health, Marilyn Underwood. Please. Good morning. So thank you. As you described, Chair Koenig, this is a public hearing for the Assessment Community Services Charges, number 12, Wastewater Management for physical year 22 and 23. As a reminder, the CSA-12 was created in 1990. And it was in an effort to address the concerns pertaining to the failing onsite wastewater treatment systems in the county. So as such, with the passage of the local agency management program in October of 2021, the CSA actually became mandatory. What we're trying to do here today is follow up on our discussion for May 10th, where you adopted the Benefit Assessment Services Charges for CSA-12. Today's meeting is really for us to come back as you adopted the resolution that June 7 would be the date for us to have the hearing, the public hearing on this. As such, I want to pass it to Director Underwood to give you more of the details of what this proposal entails that we presented to you as well in May of this year. The gray button on the microphone. Thank you. Good morning, Supervisor Koenig and Board. Thank you, Dr. Morales, Director Morales, for your opening remarks. Again, as she has said that we're talking with you about the service charges for CSA-12 and 12A and 12N, these are all part of a onsite wastewater treatment system oversight. I'll call them OTS, trying to get away from the word septic systems as they become more fancy. This CSA was created back in 1990, and it really was some forethinking by the Board at that time about the need for a program to oversee septic tank maintenance, septic system disposal in general in the whole county, but in particular in the San Lorenzo Valley watershed because of its importance obviously to our water quality. And we know that we have impacts around the county that was summarized in our lamp that I'll talk about in a minute. And then in 1993, the Board created 12N, which I will also talk about a little bit, which are these specific service charges for particular what we call non-standard systems. We've been performing these activities since 1990, 1994, and overseeing these systems, and in fact there's been no increase in the CSA-12 and 12A charges since 1996, and since 2009 there was a change in the 12N. And as you're all very well aware that the state required us with the passage of a state law and also their state policy in 2012, that we developed minimum standards, that we've developed a program that meets the minimum standards they set forth in something called the local agency management program, the called LAMP. We did submit a LAMP to the Board and it was approved in October 14th last year, which allows us to continue to oversee onsite odds, permitting and inspections in this county. In the LAMP and in the state minimum standards, we had to do additional activities. Ironically, most of these are the activities that are already covered under CSA funds. So they not only require us to continue doing those activities, but we need to do a lot of reporting back to the state. And in fact, we need to expand some of our activities, particularly in the groundwater and surface monitoring areas. So I did an extensive study to look at the costs that it will take to carry out these activities that was included in the staff report in the May 10th meeting. So these are reasonable costs to carry out these activities. They do in the again, the thing that you already approved for the service charge increases for CSA 12. This is throughout the county, unincorporated, that have an odd system on their parcel. It would go from $6.90 to $33.32 cents. In CSA 12A, this is within the San Lorenzo Valley watershed. It will go from $18.54 to $23.14. And finally, for those that have non-standard systems, we're proposing a change in just the two of the three systems. Those that have non-conforming, that's a conventional septic system, they needed to do a repair. In some cases, we allow them to do that repair without meeting upgrade standards. It does come with the caveat that they can't do any expansion of their home and upon this transfer of the property, it does need to be upgraded to current standards. We're proposing a change from $1.01 to $331, or you've approved, I should say, $1.01 to $331. And then lastly, our alternative systems. These are systems that enhance systems that have a lot of bells and whistles and need to be overseen to keep making sure that they're acting properly, meaning that they are treating the sewage before it's discharged to our leech field. These kind of systems are required when they say there's not enough groundwater separation or the stream setback issues. These are becoming more and more prevalent in our county because of the site constraints that we have. Currently, we have somewhere around 900 of those. Most of them have what we call as an on-site service provider, an OSSP. We require that under the new lamp that they have a commercial entity to do this work and make sure that once a year we get a report from them. For that we're not changing any service charge. It would still be $167, no change. About 800 of our parcels already do that. We really want to get everybody to join the commercial, but we did cost out the estimate that it cost for us to enforce and IE inspect those systems if they don't take on an OSSP provider. And for that, you have approved an increase from 501 to 1,326. Again, we think these are reasonable costs to cover the expenditures to do this work, especially under the lamp. With this, the recommended actions are used for to open a public hearing. Your support objections are protested. If any, to propose fiscal year 2023 assessment service charge report for the county service area 12, waste fund management, and to close the public hearing and adopt a resolution confirming the proposed fiscal year 2022-23 assessment service charge reports for county service area 12, waste fund management. Thank you. Thank you, Director Underwood and Director Morales. Before I open the public hearing, are there any questions from members of the board? I'd like to make a couple of comments. This has been a long time coming. As you said, this was created, CSA 12 was created in 1991 and we haven't seen an increase since 1996. And in those 30 years or so, the population and housing have been greatly increased. And you've heard me maybe say it before that there was one report at least 10 years ago that said the density of septic tanks in the center of the valley is probably greater of any community west of the Mississippi. So we need to do something about this. It's as was stated by Ms. Underwood about the critical fact that the septic systems play in our water system that in the San Lorenzo River in particular that are so vital to our water sources that we have in Santa Cruz County. I really want to thank the Environmental Health for working on this issue. It's been a long time coming. And once again, we are dealing locally as we had previously in another item, how to respond to state mandates. And this is a case that's related to the environmental aspects of septic systems. So these increases will allow the county to provide the kind of service required by the state in terms of oversight of septic systems. I spent a long time coming and it's much needed. And I appreciate the work that everybody's put into it. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Further comments or questions? Seeing none, I'll open the public hearing. Is there any member of the public that wishes to address us on this item? Seeing none, in chambers. Is there any member of the public on Zoom that wishes to address us on that? We do have a speaker on Zoom. My apologies. They've put, okay, they've put their hand back up. Yes. Call-in user two, your microphone is now available. More taxes. Wow. This agenda's loaded with that. I have a request when the staff report takes place, please spell out the acronyms. There's a lot of them you listed. And could you repeat the one? I want to make comments first, but you changed septic tank ways to what seems like language is often euphemisms to cover up things that aren't so pleasant. And I also wonder with the groundwater and surface water, we really need to have rules that state, for instance, no pesticides, polluters are polluting the surface and groundwater. Why is that permitted? That shouldn't be allowed at all. And there are thousands of chemicals, including in this recent Soquel Creek water, what they call pure water, poop water that you cannot remove all the pharmaceuticals and toxins from. This is further polluting things. It really seems like there is a lack of ecological common sense problem solutions taking place. So again, I'm opposed to this increase. And please tell me what you changed septic tank ways to what? Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Garrett. Are there any, is anyone else wishes to address us on zoom? We have no additional speakers chair. All right. And Director Underwood, would you like to define Otz? Sure. Otz is on site wastewater treatment system. And it's been replacing septic just because we do have so many enhanced treatments that the term septic system is no longer relevant. Thank you. All right, I'll officially close the public hearing and return it to the board for action. Motion would be in order. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. Motion by Supervisor Friend, second by Supervisor Coonerty. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk roll call vote, please. Supervisor Friend? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. Caput? Aye. McPherson? Aye. And Koenig? Aye. Signed and passes unanimously. Thank you. We'll now proceed to item 11 to consider approval of recommended awards from the collective of results and evidence-based, that is, core investment requests for proposals, process and approve agreement between City of Santa Cruz and County related to core funding and contract administration. Direct the Human Services Department to return on June 28, 2022, with final core contract awards. Direct the Human Services Department to return on or before February 28, 2023, with an update on the evaluation of the core RFP process and community stakeholder process and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the Director of Human Services. For presentation on this item, we have our Director of Human Services, Randy Morris, and Assistant Director, Kimberly Peterson. Take it away. Thank you. Good morning, Chair Koenig and members of the board, public watching and members of the public who are here. I am Randy Morris, Human Service Director, joined by Kimberly Peterson, Assistant Director as Chair Koenig described. Appreciate coordination with the clerk of the board who's going to queue up a PowerPoint in a minute to go through today's presentation, but I'd like to make a few introductory comments in part and recognition of the emotion and passion and investment this community has in this program for 40 years. I'm mindful of the point in history I play in this. The first is I want to take a moment to recognize not going through names, but just generically speaking to this is a collaboration with the city of Santa Cruz who Kimberly and I will be in front of this afternoon. This is a dual jurisdiction of funding matter with city funds and county funds and our partnership with city staff, but a host of county staff and other support staff that were a team that helped us move this request for proposal and competitive procurement to where we are today and we anticipated given the challenge in front of us and there were some public comments during general comment this morning. The complicated position that we're all in when you have tens of 20s of 30s of millions of dollars of unmet need in this community and you only have five or six million dollars to spread around it is a complicated moment for the service providers currently funded for those who have been waiting for years and years to be able to have this opportunity to play and get funding for us as staff to establish a fair process and for you as our elected body to sort of figure out how to respond to the passionate emotions. But I stand here very proud as the human services director to give you a presentation with Kimberly that outlines what we did to execute that which the community asked us to do and what your board approved which were the rules and the parameters that were in the competitive procurement. So thank you to the human services and City of Santa Cruz team that helped us do all the work that you'll hear about today. The second comment I want to make is I do want to recognize that this is a process that has been in motion for generations before me and this particular board. This is a program that 40 years ago this Board of Supervisors were providing services through local general fund money to help a number of our local service providers help the community. And for 35 years the process took place in one sort of way and that was a lot of what's in the chambers behind me today and that is people who are providing service and the consumers that they serve coming to your board during budget hearings with great passion and pride in what they do asking your board to give them more money to do more of that good work. And the shadow to that was a lot of service providers who were asking how do I get some of that money. So that led to an action that occurred five years ago today. And that was for the first time ever after 35 years your board approved actually for the first time ever actually putting that money out through a competition called a request for proposal or service providers had to apply for money. And what occurred five years ago was not very many changes. There was a few. There was a lot of passion. There was a lot of debate. There's a lot of fight. And actually your board responded to one of those fights to resource some funding and approved giving the money back even though the procurement led to some cuts. So I want to recognize as somebody is newer to the community that this is a moment after 40 years where there is for the first time ever change. And we are going to talk about how we got to this moment. The process we establish and why we believe this makes sense what we have in front of you today. But I feel like I need to recognize that this is the first time there's change where there is a shifting of dollars between which service provider delivers what I want to take a moment to balance two comments. One is I feel as my responsibility express though not surprised a little bit of disappointment in some of the narratives that are in the community that from what I see are factually incorrect. So my hope is that throughout this presentation your board as our elected officials who have the ultimate decision making responsibility will have full information to make a fully informed decision. You will hear throughout the presentation a number of facts about what played out. And I just want to highlight two because there is a lot of emailing going around requesting people come to this board with talking points to do and I just want to name two things. Number one basically stop these cuts. The package in front of you today represents an 11% increase or $545,000 of more money than is in place today. So this is proposal is an 11% increase. Now from the individual provider perspective there are cuts to particular agencies but there are new agencies and the overall package is a $545,000 increase in services or 11%. So just as you hear the comments about cuts I appreciate and understand from a particular agency who is getting cuts I get it but there is not overall cuts to the safety net of services. There's a pretty large increase. And the second is comments that service providers who are getting cuts had absolutely no notice that this was coming and the rugs being pulled out from under them. Five years ago those who have contracts today were given three years of contract money. Your board approved a one-year extension to align with the two-year budget cycle this board adopted for this first time which gave them a fourth year of funding which to the shadow the CBOs who wanted to get this money had to wait another year. And then the pandemic this board moved it forward yet another year. So the current providers had five years of knowledge that this dollar was going to be put out for competitive bid and so I expressed my disappointment that their comments being made that there was no notice. So those are just two examples in my interest in sharing this is just to make sure as I see it the facts are on the table. My final comment I want to take the moment to share what I believe is my role as the Human Services Department Director who this is not our money. This is the only moment that we come to you as a department with recommendations for money that is yours. 40 years ago the board asked the Human Services Department to manage the contracts and we've carried on that tradition and now we're managing the second procurement ever. But our job in a democracy that's functioning well is to do what you've directed us to do to do it fairly to describe the rules but also to what I anticipate we're going to hear in public comment is to recognize that a functioning democracy involves passion, healthy debate and what I hope is respectful disagreement. If at the end of that your board has all the information you need to make an informed decision to accept our recommendations I feel like we've done our job. But I want to end my introductory comments before we pull up the PowerPoint by sharing with you what I see as a bigger concern of mine. If the economists' predictions are true the Human Services Department that manages $170 million and the Health Service Agency that manages probably $200 million we are likely going to be at a moment in the future we're going to have to be dealing with big cuts. So it is never a comfortable moment for service providers, clients who get services from service providers for us as staff or your board to have to make difficult decisions about cuts. I appreciate that but I'm hoping the end result of this conversation is your board is in a position to make an informed decision and you have all the facts and we welcome hard questions and we will listen closely to public comment as well. So thank you for the moment to share my perspective on this. Mindful, this is a bit of a historic moment and clerk of the board if you could pull up the PowerPoint. So if you could go to the next slide. So this is a quick overview of what I will be covering along with Kimberly. Quick repeat of the recommended actions with a little bit of detail. Talk about a little bit of the history evolution of core that God is today I think that foundation is important. We are going to then give a summary of the applications that were received and then to what I think is some of the most important moments for the public discourse and for your board's liberation is for us to describe in some detail that are in the public materials the process we put in place to move this process forward to ensure a fair application process and the recommended wars are done through a fair way and also the funding recommendations in the role us staff had making a few adjustments that you gave us parameters to work within in the RFP and then we'll end with talking about the role we have as county with city and end with the next steps to summarize what's coming after today's hearing between now and when we hope this budget passes at the end of the fiscal year. So next slide. So here's a summary of the recommended actions. I want to take a minute to talk about today's ask of you on item number one which is to approve the recommended awards. I want to be clear that this is the first of three steps in the process. Today is not the final moment for your board to make the decision about who gets awards. Per the terms of the RFP there is a significant adjustment in the sequence of events from what happened five years ago and that is because of the omicron variant. The service providers asked and we agreed with their request to delay the application deadline by a month. We came to your board in January to ask for you to approve that delay and we came back in March to outline the implications of supporting that delay which led to us having to get board approval to change the appeal process because we had to get to complete this process in time for the fiscal year. So what that has done is last time five years ago most major decisions were made at this moment in time when the awards and then there was appeal process and then it got brought back to the board to sort of just stamp approval for the budget at the end of the year. Today is step one. You'll hear from the community. You'll deliberate. You'll ask us questions. We are recommending you approve the package of awards. This morning all the service providers were per the terms of the RFP given notice by every single application whether they're being recommended forward to a day or whether they are not and their individual score. That triggers the appeal process. That is the second step and that is my recommendation to your board when you hear concerns and passion and arguments about keeping is to recommend the applicants file an appeal. That is the rules of this procurement. After the appeal process is completed then the last moment is on June 28th which is recommended action number three where service providers if the appeal is not upheld they have a chance to lobby to call you and to come back to the board on June 28th at which point you make your final decisions. That was a bit of a different of sequence. So I want to take a moment to make sure you understand that the request to approve recommended awards today is not the final moment. There are two more steps. Second this is the first time that the city and county funding is actually per terms of our agreement braided and the plan is for the county to hold all the contracts. So we have an agreement established and approved by both legal councils in the package and as chair Koenig you listed we ask you to direct us to return on the 28th where you will make your final decisions and we have some technical items we need your support for to execute contracts and then we will talk briefly in Kimberly's presentation about initiating a review process and a lessons learned process in the summer and coming back early next calendar year to provide an update on sort of how the contracts have moved forward and the lessons learned. So next slide. Evolution of core. It strikes me that this storyline listed here is really important to recognize what the rules are in are in this RFP today and what we have staffed to execute the rules in that RFP. For 35 years as I described in my introductory comments community service providers came forward during budget hearings made their arguments your board deliberated and contracts were executed. When the process shifted to what's called core the very first RFP was built upon four strategic plans and those strategic plans were informed in varying degrees by the community and those were the building blocks of how to determine how to for the first time ever award funds based on those four strategic plans. This process led to bringing everything to your board into the city council on the same days and then we which will be the bulk of our presentation implemented your agreements and I'm going to walk through these in a little bit more detail in the next few slides if you can move the slide forward. So the community informed process I just listed the community programs the first RFP since the awards were issued five years ago there have been five years of community engagement sessions with the service providers and other providers who wanted to be able to gain contracts through the next procurement for the last basically four years and then we engage the community more intentionally as we prepared for today. We had five stakeholder meetings that played out last summer where the service providers who have contracts today and those who wanted to apply for contracts had an opportunity to give us as staff feedback which then informed what we brought to your board to approve and if you can go to the next slide I'll share a bit more. Before the terms of this RFP were approved by your board there were seven public meetings where current service providers had an opportunity to speak publicly about what they felt the terms of this RFP should be. We were in front of you in February of 21 we were back in front of you in September of 21 and we came forward to you in November of 21 with the draft RFP. The city had two city council meetings and two community program committee meetings so those seven meetings were opportunities that were made available to the service providers to share what they believe should be the terms of this RFP. The terms of this RFP are as much informed by the parameters that your board approved and my final comments are and what were not included in the parameters of the board and this is where I want to have my last comment here be a pivot to what governed the terms of this RFP. Through those five stakeholder meetings and those seven public meetings there were 12 opportunities for the current service providers to share their perspective about choosing to prioritize a particular core condition of well being to prioritize a particular population to prioritize a particular region or for a particular provider to say why they felt they deserved carve out money and that they didn't have to compete for it and to the best of my knowledge and I've reviewed all 12 of those forums not once did it come up and therefore the terms of this part RFP did not direct or instruct us to organize the application process the panel review process or therefore what we're bringing forward to you based on any prioritization that is a very important fact because as staff it was not our place to manipulate the application process and the ranking process to recommend awards prioritize anything because those 12 moments did not leave to anybody recommend we do so so if you go to the next slide so this put us in the position of executing what your board approved as informed by those multiple opportunities for stakeholders to share what they felt should be the rules in this RFP first and I will say more of this in my closing slides this was a collaboration with the county in the city because the city shares in the funding and we work together every step of the way second to my earlier comments there are a number of service providers who have not had access to this money for for sure 35 years and in the last RFP if they were not awarded any money for really 40 years to create a level playing field we put in place a technical assistance program to help make sure all service providers had a fair opportunity to apply for these funds and as is articulated in the materials there were 64 training sessions provided before the applications were due that ended up supporting 298 participants to help make sure everybody interested in applying had opportunity for some technical assistance to submit a qualified application I'm going to end my comments by referencing these final three bullets and then I'm going to turn it over to Kimberly who's going to share what I believe is the crux of what we believe is fair and open and pieces of information for public comment for your board to focus your questions to us how did we execute to make sure that this process was fair the rankings were fair and the recommended in front of wards in front of you were following the terms of this RFP that this board approved it involved a process of recruiting and training and supporting panel members it involved a process of creating a scoring rubric that was used that was targeting each of the individual tier groups and in the end it involved us to staff within the parameters you approved bringing forward of some modest adjustments to ensure we could get the most amount of awards up to the community possible and Kimberly's presentation is going to cover these in much more detail and the materials also include a lot of information about these details I'm going to turn it over to Kimberly now and I will come back at the end to close out with the next steps thank you thank you randy can you hear me okay so as you make recall and as randy mentioned these are what you're looking at is the total number of proposals received as of March 4th 2022 which was following a one month extension of the initial deadline at the time that we extended the deadline we knew it would have implications further down the line in the process which meant a truncated timeline for reviewing proposals analyzing and submitting recommended awards as well as a truncated appeal timeline what you can see in this graph is that there were 127 applications received this represented 70 127 applications from 78 agencies we received 79 applications for new programs and 48 applications from existing programs and as you can see there were nearly 16 million dollars worth of requests which was more than two and a half times the available amount of funding but you can also see when you look at the column under the small tier is that there were fewer small tier proposals than there was available funding and as we will discuss a little bit more we took a portion of the remaining funding and moved it into other tiers and just to set up a moment of context this RFP was set up through um through tiers based on the amount of funding requested by each applicant and that's what you were seeing on the last slide as it relates to the panel process though we had a truncated timeline we worked to ensure that their process was still thorough and fair extensive outreach was done to recruit panelists with reference to the feedback that had been received from lessons learned from the prior RFP to have a local and diverse representation on the panels we had 58 panelists all panelists went through a training that was provided on the scoring rubric there was a scoring rubric for each tier level and following each panelist's opportunity to review the proposals and score them on their own there was each panel reconvened to discuss any discrepancies or variances among their scores and they had an opportunity to change those scores if they chose following that meeting during the panel review period the panelists had support from the core team if they had any questions regarding the process during the course of their review we had 19 panels and they were organized by core condition of all the applications received panelists were assigned based on their connection to the core conditions of the proposals and demographics as mentioned we were striving for a locally representative diverse group of panelists once all panelists had submitted their scores met with their fellow panel members and had an opportunity to adjust their scores if they chose then the final scores were averaged for each application and utilized to determine the final score of the proposal and the final scores were used in the ranking process for each tier funding recommendations so since applicants submitted their proposals at the end of February or early March we recognize that people have been very eager to know the results on May 26th we sent an email to all applicants letting them know that the funding recommendations would be presented at the June 7th board meeting and that we would send them the links to the materials once they were published last Thursday on June 2nd we sent all applicants a follow-up email letting them know that the board meeting materials have been published and that their and that their formal notification of their awards and whether they are being recommended for an award or not would be emailed to them on the morning of June 7th that formal email triggers the appeal process which will then end June 10th this Friday at the close of business the appeal period had been adjusted due to the truncated timeline as referenced earlier and we went to acknowledge that had we sent the formal notifications to applicants at the same time that the board materials were published was something we considered then that notification would have triggered the appeal timeline providing applicants less time to appeal if they chose to we recognize there's been a number of inquiries regarding releasing the scores and the fullest of applicants publicly we had not done that for a couple reasons one was that we had referred back to what process had been followed during the last round of the RFP cycle and at that time only recommended proposals were published in the materials and the other reason that we hadn't done it it was out of respect for organizations that were not funded and providing them an opportunity to see their own scores and consider what they wanted to do with that information this morning as Randy mentioned all applicants were emailed both their formal notification of the results and their score they were also provided a link to the human services department core website which includes additional information regarding the RFP process including the scoring matrix training documents and other materials I will also acknowledge that in light of the the number of requests that we have received over the last few days from a number of organizations and and elected officials to provide the fullest of applicants and in some cases rankings or scores we did also provide the information of all applicants by tier with high level buckets for the most competitive applications by tier so following the entire review and scoring process we did staff did utilize some of the discretion allowed within the RFP to make some minor adjustments as mentioned there were fewer applications received in the small tier than we had funding available so and following the scoring of the small tier funds we established a minimum score of 68 to recommend for funding and move the remaining funding over to the medium and large tiers we also used staff discretion to make a slight to make a slight 3 adjustment to all medium large and targeted impact grants allowing us to utilize all available funding and also fund two more medium and large tier proposals finally during the March 8 board meeting there have been direction to carve out funding for seals meal senior meals programs and align that award with the award that was made by the area agency on aging for senior meals so we did that and that proposal was included with the large tier proposals and is being recommended within that category along with the other large tier proposals for recommended funding of $436,000 as is in the materials so Randy's described the process that led that led up to this RFP and the the efforts for community and stakeholder engagement that have taken place up to this time and also in defining the RFP it was really it was community driven in the sense that it was up to the applicants to define the need in the community equities was an essential part of this RFP as well and applicants were to describe the need in the community for the inequity that they viewed and how they would address it equity was also a central part of the process from the perspective of providing an equitable opportunity for applicants and from the perspective of applicants defining the inequity they would address as you will see in the next few slides in many areas the recommended awards reflect the proposals submitted in a number of areas I will speak to where the recommended awards also reflect the awards from the prior RFP cycle so this RFP was built around the core conditions of well-being and what this graph represents is the percentage of funding requested by core condition from all the applications received with a comparison to the applications received to the applications proposed recommended for funding you can see that across most areas the recommended awards the recommended awards are very similar to the proposed awards the largest variance down is a five percent in the stable affordable housing area with thriving families which represents to tell you more about that core condition it means safe nurturing relationships and environments that promote optimal health and well-being of all family members across generations in that category thriving families there's a higher variance of recommended awards as you can see through the core framework though the for though the core framework has a number of interconnected conditions supporting overall equitable health and well-being for county residents applicants had to select one primary core condition though their program may intersect with others for example the watershed rangers proposal is a lifelong learning and education core condition category proposal though it can also be connected to healthy environments so this slide's showing a couple things on the far left column the population you 200 fpl represents the low-income population under 200 of the federal poverty level in each of the listed regions the middle column proposed represents the funding requested to serve those regions and the column to the right is the distribution of funding of the recommended awards in most categories the recommended funding closely represents the funded funding proposed it also closely reflects the current distribution of funding through the current core contracts some might notice that the low-income population in south county is higher and this could be interpreted to show that there's less funding going to south county though the the highest proportion of funds is actually directed to south county where there are higher poverty levels I can also note that Watsonville has a community has community programs where the city gives funding to community-based organizations and at the same time the city of Santa Cruz has partnered in this core process adding a million dollars to this core RFP process hence you can see that there is one one percent higher recommended awards the city of Santa Cruz compared to what is recommended but it's it's it's um it's not completely out of line with the funding available in the process what you see here this graph is similar to what you saw in the prior slide broken down by age I can also tell you that the percentage of funding recommended for for seniors we've heard many questions about that is consistent with the percentage of core funding currently directed for seniors in the current core contracts and this graph is also similar to the prior to you've seen it's the recommended awards broken down by race and ethnicity and as you can see again the recommended awards are pretty close to the proposed awards again referencing back that this was a community defined applicants put forth where they felt the need was and the recommended rewards closely reflect where the organizations said they felt there was need I can also say that these awards also closely reflect the distribution of funds through current core contracts um one area where there isn't a notable increase is that for the latinx community currently about 43 percent of funds go to serve the latinx community and in the recommended awards there's 50 percent of funds serving the community which does more closely align with the population as well thank you okay we are almost there I have two more slides we'll close it out and turn it back to the board I want to take a moment to recognize that as I said earlier this afternoon because this is both jurisdictions of the county in the city Kimberly and I will be in front of the city council at 430 and just want to give a quick highlight to share with you why there's the agreement attached this was a collaboration throughout there were shared presentations publicly with their city council in the afternoon of most of the presentations here at the board building up to this moment this is the first time ever bullet point two that all the funds are proposed to be braided the current core contracts some of the feedback we heard from the core service providers is they have a contract with the county and then they have a contract with the city even though it's the same program and how complex that is so we heard that and so staff work together to recommend that all of the core contracts are braided together and the third bullet the city agreed that the way to administer that since we have five six of the funds is to have the county actually hold the contracts so to ensure the city can feel comfortable with their money being journaled to us and built into the singular contracts where there's blended funding that led to a formal agreement that is one of the recommended actions in front of you that has been reviewed thoroughly by our county council and their city attorney's office to sort of govern how this shared funding and over county holding the contracts are managed so the next slide is just to close out with some next steps and I'll make a quick final comment as well I want to repeat you are likely because you've already gotten a lot of letters and a lot of lobbying and you're likely to hear a lot of public comments about asking you to take actions today to change what's in front of you mindful of the history here there was a reason this changed from appeals being made at a budget board hearing and you deliberating and recommending words in that moment to this process was to follow these rules and so these rules which are in the RFP as informed by the community and approved by you are to have the next step to be to file an appeal so I just want to highlight that to me one of my biggest concerns about this process this is ultimately your decision as a board is changing the rules or shifting the process raises the question why did we spend this time putting this process together so I would recommend the focus be in the conversation about the process the ranking etc and then unless there is any indication of anything that raises question about our confidence that the process was fair I would recommend that the next step in the process be followed which is all applicants which have been noticed this morning can file an appeal as I described earlier the next step after that is that depending on the results of the appeal if an appeal is not supported those applicants have an opportunity between that moment which is there's one week for county which is the general service department as the overseer of most purchasing in this county that will be one week and then they will have the last two weeks before the 28th to make their final case and come to the June 28th final awards moment to make were you ultimately and then the city council after you have an opportunity to make final awards wherever this process lands after June 28th and we will articulate this in more detail at that June 28th hearing we will then spend the summer executing contracts including an action on June 28th asking for your support to be begin issuing funds to new service providers and service providers or carriers or services can continue and then we plan to initiate an evaluation process initiating a collective impact process and shifting a process from 35 years and for the first time ever the RFP five years ago that led to small changes it is expected that there's going to be a lot of thoughts and feedback that we want to harness over the fall and then capture that so that when we have a future RFP we can take those lessons learned so the final slide is just to close to turn it back to your board I want to repeat what I said in my introductory comments this is a difficult moment these recommended awards honor the process your board asked us to follow we respect the passion and the debate that's going to follow and ultimately I hope that unless you find any fault in the process that we executed that you support our recommended awards thank you thank you director Morris thank you assistant director Peterson their questions or comments from members of the board Mr. Chair I'd like I'd just like to get a comment to hear the testimony on these on these items before we come back to our questions all right I'd supervise the community very quickly can you describe the what the appeals process will be so that the folks in the public who are concerned know what know what that looks like over the next two weeks so applicants have three three days to appeal following today they can submit there they would be submitting their appeal to the general services department who would then follow up on investigating the request the applicants would receive a response within five business days which would be next next Friday and then following the appeal process then we'll be coming back to you on June 28th and I would like to just piggyback if I understand your question supervisor community if people concerned about this are not familiar with public procurement an appeal process the reason why the general service department is the body that will review the appeal is for many reasons one is they are the department that primarily manages all rfps and public procurement and purchasing and they are an independent third party by design from us who did not um have a role in reviewing and seeing these so it creates an independent third party review to read the applicant's grievance and have an independent eye to determine if there's any merit to it and the investigation from my experience with general service department time here is pretty thorough to help create that second check and balance before coming back to you for the final on June 28th great and then I just if the chair will give me one moment I think just because I think I want to emphasize a little bit at least on behalf of myself what director Morris talked about which is what I want to thank everybody who's gone through this process I was on the city council elected 18 years ago and our community programs funding was based on who got funding 20 years before that and it was indefensible as an elected official to be able to describe why one program got x and another program got y and why new applicants couldn't apply and get money even though the needs have changed in the community the demographics have changed and other things we began this process of 16 years ago to try to make the process less status quo driven and more reflective of the needs of the community this is an iterative process and it will change but it's really important for people to understand that the previous process I found to be profoundly unfair in terms of how it allocated precious resources to the community and that we created this new process to get both political opinions out of the process and to make it expert driven based on the needs and changes in our community and then to to bring it to the board and have us to look at it and make adjustments and changes and go forward the second thing I want to say is as director Morris mentioned we added half million dollars to this budget and I think everyone on the board is very aware of the needs and crisis in this community on homelessness seniors mental health on and on and on but what we need from people today or over the coming weeks is to identify to make their case for why their program is important but which other program needs to be reduced in order to fund another program because we have a structural deficit we have a we get 14 cents of every dollar and in fees in property taxes it is magical thinking to compare us to San Francisco in any way shape or form and so to the extent we have a we have a fixed pie we we've baked a bigger pie but the pie is not going to get any bigger so to the extent that people believe that these very worthy programs need funding they need to articulate which program can be reduced and why because that's the choice before the board today and and over the next coming weeks and in three weeks when we make our final decision so it's going to be you're going to have the most effective testimony if you can articulate that for us going forward thank you thank you Supervisor Coonerty I'm just one further point of clarifications of the ultimately the city has to approve the same recommendations that this board does so if there were any changes made based on the appeals process or based on our meeting at the 28th would then just the city have another meeting scheduled after the 28th where they would also have to agree to the same recommended awards and if they didn't what would happen yeah I'm going to break that down in two ways as I'm hearing it and please let me know if I've responded to what I'm hearing is two different questions number one I didn't say it but I this your question compels me to sort of give this level of detail the city has agreed in our collaboration that the appeal process for the braided funding there one million and change and ours would be arbitrated by the county general service department so the first step is with city agreement it is in the terms of the rfp so the city council will approve that the first level of appeal is governed by the general services department the second is we do have a placeholder because it's not our place as staff to be able to predict or tell elected officials what to do between today's hearing and then the afternoon city council meeting and then on the 28th your board's hearing and then the city council meeting so we have a placeholder to cross the bridge when we get there if this board ends up making some recommendations that end up being different than the city I do want to use the moment to share with you and underline why I'm going to repeat this this afternoon at the city we put this process in place based on five community meetings and seven board hearings which was the opportunity for the community to make their recommendations and pleas for what should be prioritized the lack of any prioritization led to the process we executed which meant the best applications are being recommended for awards based on the process can really described so I'm backing into the answer to what I see as the second part of your question I'm recommending to your board and I'm recommending to the city today to encourage applicants to appeal and then there's opportunity for 28 to confront that question that we will have to confront if we get there if the two jurisdictions have conflict we are hopeful since there was so much process in advance that both elected bodies will support the process but we will see this is ultimately a decision of your board for the your share of the county funds and for the city this afternoon so I hope that answers it we have a placeholder potential work we might have to do if we end up in that moment but we will see all right thank you there are no just supervisor friend was there anything just briefly then to the appeal question Mr. Morris what if somebody what if there's merit to an appeal determined by GST that there's merit I didn't maybe I missed that component but how would that alter the 28th findings maybe you didn't hear that because I'm hoping that doesn't happen but it's a very good question and this is another placeholder we have in our sort of work plan if you will which is we would then have to in full disclosure take that appeal information and coordinate with the city at particularly if the application is city funding in it and we would have to come back on the 28th with our recommendation based on what came of that so we are not trying to get ahead of that and predict scenarios there's way too many applications but there's a placeholder to use the 28th is the opportunity to answer that question in full disclosure and give opportunity for anybody impacted by it to make public comment thank you all right so you know for their comment to supervise captain okay so we're we're still looking at all these things and so anyway I'm not going to go down each item but I appreciate the fact that we're being transparent and you know we're having people show up for example I'm having a hard time understanding some of the recommendations and I'll just I'm going to just do one but advocacy ink I think that they're getting about 59 60 000 a year now and they're not recommended to get any next year the short answer is correct given your choosing to ask about a particular I know there's some testimony this morning an open general comment I feel like the right answer question to zoom up from the particular and repeat what Kimberly said in the process yeah that organization applied in a particular tier that application was reviewed by the panel for the process Kimberly described and their ranking was not high enough to be recommended for an award my comments that I made in my beginning and at the end about process I want to be careful in the way I say this because I am not um judging I'm commenting on the process those 12 opportunities were opportunities for either the AAA who I know wrote a letter complaining about this process recommending advocacy ink at money or advocacy ink they had 12 opportunities at those five community forums and the seven public meetings that organization or any including the one that's here with a lot of people to make an policy argument to us as staff or to you as a board why they were deserving of prioritization over another some of the arguments in the letter from the AAA could have been made in any of those 12 forums they were not an argument could have been made when supervisor friend issued additional direction to guarantee a carve out of senior meals funding to be awarded to who the AAA funded for senior meals that moment could have been a moment for the AAA or advocacy ink or any provider of service through the AAA to say hey I would like to recommend that you also carve out money to give core money to whoever the AAA selects in their procurement that moment would have been an opportunity for your board to deliberate you could have weighed in if this is an important program to you supervisor cap it if the board so instructed us to do so those would have been the rules we would have followed the absence of that advocacy in those 12 forums is why my answer to your question is important to highlight we were not instructed to prioritize that program we are instructed to create a fair process and bring forward recommended awards to you based on the applications that scored the highest for the process we described in detail in the materials and Kimberly shared in our presentation yeah the example I'm giving here for advocacy ink it's the first one on the starts with an a right so it's an alphabetical there especially during the pandemic when we're talking about the ombudsman program and they don't have a big staff they have a small staff that has to cover all the long-term facilities in Santa Cruz County so what I'm getting at is they don't have a lot of time to lobby and go and present their case to the core process but can you imagine and especially during the COVID pandemic that there are people in rest homes that are actually being neglected or abused in some of them not all of them just in some of them so what I'm getting at here is we have to look at each one of these and and decide especially if we're going from some money to zero yeah I can see where we adjust certain the numbers but if we're going to go from sixty thousand to zero I have a problem with that and I'm only using the one example I'm not going to go down all of them so I want to respond to your comment you said can you understand so I want to offer some full disclosure in my former position in Alameda County I ran the AAA which oversaw the ombuds program so for nine and a half years I saw the pain and suffering of what happened when people in licensed facilities were getting hurt and mistreated and the program I ran that I oversaw that I funded and saw how much extra money I needed so I want to start with yes for my professional resume I have direct experience understanding what you're speaking to what I want to go back to is process before I was ever here these conversations occurred in budget hearings my predecessor was directed to shift from these discussions and arguments occurring in open budget hearings to a process and that process was a competitive application for these scarce dollars so what I would say and I'm choosing to use this moment supervisor cap it you're not running for your seat I'm going to be here again three years should this board choose to direct us to unravel this process we spent a year to put in place because of the very righteous and emotional argument you're bringing up what is missing from your argument is the hundreds of other programs that also don't have time that are on shoestrings budgets and the subset of them who actually do get funding our job was to create a fair process under your board's direction and we executed that process if your board wants to deliberate and start going through the list and picking it apart I really do ask the question for all of you who are still going to be here supervisor and myself why did we do an RFP if the end result was going to be reviewing of the list by list and because these are very righteous issues and when you have 16 million dollars of applications you have one third the money to dole out there is not ever going to be a good answer to your question okay so anyway we are we're reviewing everything and we're going to come back when my recommendation to repeat and I apologize for being redundant is to encourage advocacy Inc and anybody else who makes a passion plea today about why their program is deserving of funding even though their application was not competitive to encourage them to a file an appeal then on June 28 those applicants have between the time the general service department reviews the appeal and if they are not awarded money they have about two more weeks to talk to board members to do more press releases to do more lobbying and to come back in front of you on the 28th where a final decision is made so today is not the final decision but my strong recommendation is to support this process move forward because if you pardon for the analogy if you begin to pull the string out of this sweater by picking the first in the alphabet it begins a dialogue about every single other organization and I'm back to why did we do a competitive rfp okay so the final final decision is the end of this month correct with the process which again I want to highlight the many times that there was opportunities for people to lobby for car vows or dedicated funding that did not happen nobody brought forward that so this is the rules that are the terms of this rfp that were followed okay and one last comment because we're just reviewing it basically is for example advocacy Inc and the ombudsman program they they're they're not geared towards lobbying and actually you know presenting their case what I'm getting at is on the panel there should be people that realize the work that non that people that are not good at lobbying should be represented or known for what they do in the community so that's that's what I'm getting at we can we can have a program that's not doing nearly as good as some but they have good spokesmen that show up and they're very persuasive that's what I'm worried about so I think you're about to see that happen but let me go back to answer your question because I'm worried we might have not been clear in the public materials or our presentation if you are still wondering if there is an outstanding question that we have not answered so let me be clear the process that was run by definition eliminates the unfair playing field of advantaging organizations who are as you call it persuasive who are capable of buying t-shirts for people and busting them here to make large arguments to your point when smaller organizations don't have that capacity or political acumen I hear you your instruction as one of the five unanimous votes that determine the rules of this rfp is what led to that process being fair and uninfluenced by those who are more capable of persuading and lobbying and arguing and complaining because the rfp panels as Kimberly described we specifically recruited subject matter experts lived experience professionals and organized the panels based on people who have a knowledge of the general issues and they were uninfluenced by lobbying so we did at least as I hear your question exactly what you're wishing for and so now today is the day where the organizations who are more sophisticated who are upset with this will push hard already started pushing hard and my recommendation which I think is your point is to not let those with the loudest voices have you change your votes have everybody file an appeal and let the process play out and you still have June 28th to make a final decision I can add I would just add that the training that I mentioned and the scoring matrix was very specifically designed to eliminate eliminate bias so that each application was viewed on its own merits so we really when I mentioned equity that was really intent to create a level playing field for everybody so each proposal would have a chance to be viewed on its own right thank you yeah and and Kimberly you were in South County and another example that I'll wrap it up is the immigration project through cab and that's one that didn't have at the time someone to go out to all the meetings and try to persuade people to fund them and they were getting left out of the process I knew about him Kimberly knew about him and we knew the importance of the immigration project in Watsonville especially because of undocumented immigrants and blended families and all that but if we didn't know about that and if we didn't speak about it they would have been they would have been left out of the process and so that that's just the general thing I'm putting out there I want to make sure that some that don't have people that go out and a lot of times paid to go out and advocate for them they might be left out of the process okay Chair Koenig as you turn this over to I think public comment now Supervisor Caput I feel confident that we achieved that goal that you're describing by eliminating who lobbies and who's more organized in the process so what's in front of you today is an unbiased very clear and level playing field review of the applications and they were scored based on their merit now what you're about to hear is what I think you're getting at which has you as board deliberate when you get one or two organizations who are very sophisticated and well organized and how do you also balance the voices who don't do this as you deliberate okay all right thank you Supervisor Caput all right we'll open it for public comment anyone who wishes to comment here in the chambers please approach the podium thank you for your time Chair Koenig my name is Raymond Cancino I'm the CEO of Canary Bridges I just want to start with comments that look to silence voices and to somehow demonize clients who took their time to speak about these impacts well and how they will affect their lives is shameful and we disagree with the implications that today is somehow not healthy for democracy the irony of it all is that today is election day hear the facts on the table the quote Mr. HSD director we need to see the full scope of which programs and services will lose funding how many people it will impact where it will impact and none of this was provided to you in the report you saw especially when the data that is being quoted is simply demographic it's not how many clients how many people what services or what communities are impacted when you have over 46% of all previously funded agencies defunded and their programs realigned into new programs and over 2.2 million dollars redistributed there is a serious problem in addition to that when you have one agency representing over 36% of the total realignment there is a serious disservice that is happening to that agency its services and the client in which it serves through the last five years we have worked hand in hand asking tough questions around sparking discussions around equity and partners and concerns we've raised some of the questions that are being denied by the HSD director we have asked questions about how are we going to keep the social safety net and that those conversations were never never intended to have conversation about we should get funding over someone else it was a generative conversation about what is better for our community and by the recommendation seen today and seen and released on thursday how is our community better off good record can see now hi um pac will be again and this is going to the people that are going to our county supervisors i'm gonna have to ask if you've already commented on this item uh during general public but um after listening to him i have other points i'm sorry there's so many people that wish to comment on this i really have i really feel uh it's not fair because he framed things and like this gentleman said he demonized different agencies um it sounds like he says it there it's their own fault if we had to if we hear from everyone who spoke this morning and again i'm afraid we just don't have time for that so i'm sorry i feel like he's not doing his governmental job of being fair ma'am you're welcome to submit your comments to us in written form thank you i'll put them on social media so a lot more people will comment to you thank you because you're being swayed by some untrue statements and some unfair practices and i would like to um suggest you know for supervisors to treat the community bridges as a place that are very valuable for people and um it could be a place where people can come and talk about their problems and um get a help right away and uh since um we have live org resource center uh the community resource center and um maybe supervisor monoconic can set up time over there to meet with the community members and i think this is a great organization and i got to know a lot of good people and um such organizations should growing you know and instead of cutting a funding they should get more funding to connect more with the people in community and help you supervisors to do your job and make people to like to live you know on that ground and especially in live org and thank you thank you miss poika this program has helped me because my parents work more than 12 hours a day and still don't have enough money to pay me private tutor and this program gives me support by giving me a tutor which helps me keeps my grade which helps me keep keep my grades high thank you thank you and which program are you speaking to um live though community thank you good afternoon my name is Juanita Rodriguez what is community the western dictionary defines it as a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common we all have something in common we all are brothers sisters mothers fathers siblings children and grandparents the short term that i've been working for community bridges has um really opened my eyes to see how much vast of majority of people that we work work with and serve examples i have santa christ county employees go to my place so i can help them um do their time cards so they can get paid because of the lack of resources for them to have a computer at home food distributions i've seen clients that they do go and have go and pick up their food distribution in our location and yet by the end of the week i have been come back and ask to see we have beans and lentils for them to have translation i have seen most of the majority of the people that they go there for translation which i have helped as filling out as social security unemployment disability cal fresh and medical and others like housing applications um employment applications and so forth so with this said please reconsider our recommendations so we can keep on helping the 6000 families in our community plus more because santa christ clinton county is growing thank you thank you hello my name is judy sherman i'm a resident of the fifth district and i sent a letter to supervisor mcpherson about my concerns for services or in the san lorenzo valley but while i'm a resident of ben lomond i've and i was also a former staff member of the old valley resource center before it was mountain community resources but i have been a consultant for family resource centers across the state with their public and private partners for the last 20 years of my career so i'm here to kind of speak more generally about family resource centers rather than one specific f r c i was the lead author of this monograph called family resource centers vehicles for change that was published by the state department of social services office of child abuse prevention and the s h cal foundation that in an original monograph represent the beginning of the state's investment in family resource centers since 2000 i'd like to distribute them to you today to deepen your understanding of family resource centers and i'm here to speak in support for continued funding by the county of community bridges at the level necessary to maintain and grow the family resource and the four family resource centers and i want to tell you a little bit about the level of support from the state and how family resource centers can benefit locally from that support that's coming through the state in 2009 the welfare and institutions code was amended to require the office of child abuse prevention to use funds from federal funding to support coordination and sharing of best practices implemented by family resource centers sorry senate bill 436 defined family resource centers for the purpose of that provision in 2020 and 2021 emergency relief funds were distributed directly to family resource center from the state so that they could provide their neighborhoods in immediate with immediate concrete support surement if you could just start with the document for us here with the clerk i will redo it and submit it thank you thank you hello my name is sessia i will be reading a letter made by celia she was unable to attend today due to work hello my name is celia i'm writing this letter as a public comment regarding the proposed core funding cut to community bridges family resource centers i have been visiting mevavista for many years and as a caring mother of a child with the diagnosed disability it has been a challenge to get support for my child in a caring community such as mevavista community center i have accessed different services such as parenting classes track preparation computer lab for homework and job searching also tutoring child summer programs as well if i wasn't able to access these resources my family would be severely impacted and it could result in the struggle to find programs for my school age children and finding the funds to commute and program fees i am a single parent that does not have the financial capability of signing my children in enrichment summer programs or after-school programs unfortunately we do not have the same privileges as others in our communities such as the elected santa cruz county board of supervisors thank you thank you good morning uh brit the sony with seniors council of santa cruz and san bonito counties um the seniors council would like to um would like to express its concern and its opposition to the santa cruz county and santa cruz city's recommended cuts to senior programs and their core allocations scheduled for action this morning among the programs eliminated in which you've already heard about this morning our advocacy inks ombudsman program as along with three programs from senior network services information and assistance family caregiver support and senior shared housing programs the elderday community-based adult services program and project scouts tax preparation for seniors and low-income workers funding is also reduced for meals on wheels most of these programs use county and city funds as required local match for state and federal funding meaning the federal and state funds will potentially be lost as well the county reports indicate the county report indicates that 2.2 million dollars will be cut from previously funded programs and that the funds will be shifted to other organizations the report neglects however to share which organizations will lose funding or which local services will be reduced or will be reduced or eliminated from this action before taking any action seniors council strongly encourages the board to insist on seeing a list of services that will be lost and to discuss any plans for addressing those losses adjustments to the local um social uh social safety net were expected as a part of the core process but taking away 2.2 million dollars of funding with no plan transition or mitigation is clearly a flawed approach um programs that provide culturally diverse services to help vulnerable populations access sufficient resources to lead excuse me to lead a healthy and successful life or to prevent circumstances that put them at risk are a part of the safety net as well again the proposed 2.2 million dollar cuts to existing programs severely damaged that safety net we urge the board of supervisors to reconsider these actions thank you thank you hi um i'm mickey cohen and i come really just as a citizen um but representing community bridges and i really want to speak to uh the council here to talk about questioning what the process that had gone on because i'm it's hard to see that how impact seems to have been missing here you have an organization like community bridges that obviously has a huge amount of impact in the community um i see this as my wife is a teacher at esl there my child has taught and done tutoring at the organization um i've seen it myself for when we had uh the fire evacuations and the organization that was there front and center helping set up emergency evacuation shelters and everything is community bridges so we have this organization that's there that's that's deeply rooted in the community and it seems to me that it's a really flawed process where the result of this whole thing is some severe cutting to this organization so i implore you to just look in into the process and wondering how does that happen are you guys making a huge mistake by really adhering to what probably seems like a very flawed process thank you for your time thank you mr felon um i have a little speaker she's one of my students she was trying to say we don't want you to close yeah she's a little bit shy but kimberley is one of her clients um she's always comes by to the center to help us volunteer for the food distributions yeah she's a really hard worker she always draws for us um we are a lot with a green shirt um but we are a community we are representing for those who were not unable to attend i really do feel the services are really beneficial for our clients like tutoring counseling food distributions um rental assistance right now because of the pandemic a lot of people lost their jobs and they need assistance with their rent distributions there's some people that can't put food on their tables and having this distribution with the produce being so expensive at the moment it gives them a budget to help them save for something else tutoring there's a lot of kids out there that are be fine in school there are kindergartners that are supposed to be like second graders sorry um but oh sorry oh this is oh man so really if these services are cut it can really impact a lot of families um counseling there's a lot of depressed kids um sorry and the for the supervisors i know um you don't really know our clients but there are a lot of people that are going through things at their house especially because of covid a lot of i myself lost my grandparents to covid i do feel counseling is a really something that has to be at the moment sorry i try to make everything thank you thank you thank you thank you very much talk to the others oh good afternoon everyone my name is lydia and i'm going to read a letter from a client hola mi nombre es lisa santana hi my name is lisa santana les escribo para dar mi comentario sobre los recortes i'm writing to you to talk about the shortage of the funding that he has affected all the community projects yo visito el centro comunitario del live out this desde que inicio la pandemia y una i have visited these programs since the pandemic started y una de los servicios que utilice fue banco de comidas así como clases y services that i use was the food bank así como clases para padres and classes for parent parenting classes el centro de recursos ha sido no sólo un espacio donde encontrar ayuda the center has been very helpful también me he conectado a una comunidad i have connected myself with the community gracias al centro estoy cumpliendo una de mis metas que es aprender inglés thanks to this center and the support i've been learning how to speak english con el programa de isl with the program with the isl program y el apoyo que brindan de cuidado de niños gratis in the support for a child child care free child care excuse me hoy concluye mi primer curso today i finished my first course también mi hijo se ha veniciado con el programa de my son has benefited from the tutorial program así como próximamente con los campamentos de verano and in the future with the camping summer camp sino tuvieramos acceso a estos servicios sería muy difícil cumplir nuestras metas we didn't have access to those programs it will be really hard to meet our goals espero tomen a consideración y tengamos su completo apoyo para los centros comunitarios i really hope that you take this under consideration y y nuestra comunidad y adultos mayores padres jóvenes niños our community our adults and our children que somos beneficiados that are benefited gracias thank you thank you hi jamie ackman community bridges fund development i'm also a resident of ben loman so i'll be wearing two hats today first i think it's interesting and a little ironic that the fact that community bridges has the ability to reach so many people and bring so many people with us is being used as a mark against us because that's a very reason that the county partnered with us for covid relief early in the pandemic for rental relief as we help to support the community and make sure that our our community members had access to those vital services because we do have reach we do have impact and we serve so many people community bridges asked for just $100,000 to keep mountain community resources open in san lorenzo valley similar asks for our other four family resource centers all of which are being zeroed out since the start of the pandemic demand for food distributions at our community resource centers has increased by 43 percent demand for mental health counseling has increased by 39 percent we do 800 or more hours of mental health counseling at our family resource centers every year that's all going away with this budget we've seen demand for our client load increased by 50 percent at our family resource centers you paid $250,000 just a few years ago to improve the shower facilities and laundry facility at mountain community resources that facility will close and the unhoused living in our community will not have access to the daily shower that they now enjoy before they go to work in our community we don't have many local services available in san lorenzo valley and you're also zeroing out the san lorenzo valley highland senior center too not one of community bridges resources but one of the things that's losing san lorenzo valley is losing a lot in this core report as the fund development manager for cb i can only see the resulting impacts for all in our community a net decrease in subsidized child care a loss of services at our only adult day health care center in santa cruz county and more harm to thousands of residents thank you i'm my name elinda's program director of community bridges family resource um collective speaking for lamansana new avista live oak and mountain community resources i'm disheartened by the recommendations as our programs align with many of the core conditions i do value all the programs being recommended for funding and we have been key partners with these and many other organizations including the county if you call this a passion plea we'll let them be a passion plea we clearly have a reach of people that are at trust us in our community we are wearing our green shirts because they trust us we are a community we are here to empower these people to move and meet their basic needs we are not going to discourage them from having a voice and coming here today and tomorrow and whenever necessary because we are the voice of these people that have right now are working in the fields or working in the hotels or you know working away and cannot be present that came here earlier today and had to leave because they go to work i have received feedback from some county staff that we did not get get recommended for funding due to us getting funding from other sources well we do get other funding sources but they are for special projects they're not for our core services which is to enable social mobility for these individuals that seek our services and i'm speaking for 6 000 participants that come to our centers on a yearly basis services that have increased with the pandemic and the demand has not decreased the city of watsonville does not support our family resource center in watsonville and that is our largest family resource center core funds requested are for addressing needs of the community are targeted to enable clients to attain economic stability and social mobility thank you i i'm lois zones i'm the program director at elderday adult day health care and i am of course devastated by not receiving funding in this recommendation process but that's not really what i want to talk about right at this moment i'm horrified with this process i am really really horrified we're in santa cruz we do things together we work together this is so adversarial adversarial sorry i'm i'm really disheartened director morris by hearing you demeaning community bridges you are very demeaning and that's i'm i'm very proud of our agency and i'm very proud of what we do and i'm hoping that we can look at this now this time maybe for the next the next set of processes but we're um we're just not doing this right somehow we're not doing it right we're not coming together we're not doing what we need to do as a community these recommendations will really shred the social safety net local government isn't able to provide the local safety net and expects nonprofits to do that and there's not enough money there's not enough money for nonprofits to do that i would like to know how we all of the local nonprofits can work together with our local governments and figure out how to make this pie bigger because just cutting one set of organizations and giving it to somebody else is not going to fix the problem i think we need to figure out a way to fix the problem please good afternoon everyone my name is Silvia Sanchez i'm a program coordinator at La Mansana community resource center a program of community bridges in Watsonville um part of my job duties include working with tenants who are at risk of eviction um we've seen a lot of that increase with the pandemic um and today i would like to share a client story in the hope that you would reconsider the core funding recommendations Mary is one of one of our many clients she's 32 years old a single mother living in a converted garage in Santa Cruz county during the pandemic she lost her job and became unable to pay rent Mary came to our family resource center seeking rental assistance and later returned to us for legal support when her landlord became impatient and began to threaten to evict her and her five-year-old daughter more recently Mary's landlord began threatening to cut her access to the home's kid to the home's kitchen she goes into the main home to prepare her meals as she lives in the garage as i mentioned um Mary feared that she would no longer be able to prepare food for herself and her five-year-old daughter with the supportive community bridges um she received legal assistance that prevented the landlord from following through with his threats without core funding uh she would face delayed service with her three-day eviction notice and people uh for people like her and all of our clients the funding represents more than just the money it really represents the ability to live in a safe and dignified life um and i you know request that you restore funding to community bridges the family resource centers and my last comment is just that the reason you see so many green t-shirts here today is because we understand and we um are here to advocate for our clients thank you thank you miss Sanchez hello reverend beth love with each of the earth i'm the executive director and each of the earth was actually recommended for funding in the in the process that has been described today and i want to say that we were so elated when we found out because what we're offering is community members the opportunity to empower themselves to reclaim their health and transform their lives through the power of a plant-based diet and a plant-based diet has been shown in so many studies to be able to help people reverse heart disease diabetes um some cancers and certainly to prevent these diseases and so much more so we were so elated and part of that elation was just the fact that a government entity is for it has enough forethought and designed a process that would lift up a community program like this that has so much potential to support change we just finished our first pilot round and um one of our one of our clients who um lives in south county um i don't want to say too much about her but she um she reduced her blood in 10 day program she reduced her blood pressure by 50 points um she reduced inflammation pain she's sleeping better she's less depressed etc etc so we know this is powerful but i'll tell you what when i woke up this morning and i saw an email from survivor's healing center i used to be the executive director before it was under a family services agency and i saw that family services agency was losing 172 thousand dollars on the other side of the coin was revealed so as one of those shadow agencies that has come into the limelight and now has money um hearing that all the family resource centers are not getting funded and that the child care centers are losing money and um survivor's healing center is disheartening and i want to just say as a reverend i want to call you all up find that 2.2 million dollars somewhere like don't defund all these programs or find as much of it as you can i don't like the choice of somebody's gotta name my program to be on the chopping block in order for theirs to be funded fund them all thank you revenue laws thank you for your service um my name is cori birch i'm an advocate three at um mountain community resources a program of community bridges been there for 20 years um community bridges stands in the gap uh they serve people to access services for people who are um to provide access to services uh for people who are challenged both geographically mentally um transportation wise they don't have funds to get to places um um we need to build trust with them first that's what our walk-in services do we build trust by giving them some of the things they need the showers the laundry the lockers the mail services we build those services then we apply for things like a disability like some of the Medi-Cal and CalFresh a free phone from lifeline um domestic violence services um drug and alcohol addiction services we are the access point we have help for all all sorts of resources the reason why we haven't been able to go to all these meetings is because we've had two people that have to in order to stay open we have to be on our our sites to open our doors we are under funded under staffed and doing much more work than we've ever done before we were there for the CZU fires we were working out of hotel rooms to get access to people so that they could evacuate people would call me on the phone on my cell phone to say how do I get out of Boulder Creek I said life lift line is standing with the cops at the at the border there you've got to get to that and they'll bring you out you know we are strong and because we are strong we help people to help themselves thank you miss berth my name is senator delon uh work a lot of time out through our community bridges and uh I just want to say you know we do work passionately we're not here being passionate we are here to state the facts the community bridges is losing the core funding and we will say yes they have funding for a long long time and I have been working with them for 10 years and in those 10 years I've seen families grow we are not talking about families that can afford some resources and they're just using us for the moment no we have make families grow healthier stronger to move student to become financially stable now we are not working alone no we work with all the other agencies to provide the services some of those agencies are in your uh budget recommendations they are using us to promote the systems also we are not doing this just because we wanted to be the top we are helping I not working in this agency because I'm going to become healthy I mean um rich I work with the sentiency because I believe in the core values that the uh putting out there I'm using this shirt because I'm not ashamed to work for the clients I'm not here to ask big for my job no I'm very capable to get another job in another agency I'm here just to speak up for the process we can as a community resource center we cannot prioritize one individual for another I just wanted you to let them you know they appreciate the work that they did and I hope this to continue doing it hello I'm here again I just wanted to add a part that I did not say of the letter that I was reading which is from the from Celia she's a single mom I am perplexed as to how these individuals of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors have input on the distribution of funds to low-income programs when they have minimal knowledge of the struggles working-class families face I also question how they base their decision on the disbursement of funds and there might and there might be bias or conflicts of interest I would also like to add I grew up in Santa Cruz we've used these resources all our lives I remember growing up and not being able to afford a backpack coming in and they they provided a backpack for me where am I going to go where where what if was they going to go for a backpack they were not here also just a few days ago even though I just started working with them I saw these Ukrainian refugees came in asking for support for help if we're not here who's going to help them they were asking for to help them with the application resources could barely speak English who's going to help them if we're not here thank you thank you hello my name is Jeanette I work for Santa Cruz Marios Neals and we are deeply rooted in community and we've established deep trust from populations that find it difficult to trust as most of our the people that we serve are undocumented and we have declared our place a sanctuary and so we brought that trust we have food distribution twice a week Fridays and Saturdays and we serve over 300 people every day that we serve the food and RBU we have an audio engineering studio where the youth come in instead of being out in the streets they come in and they make music they record and they make videos and we actually they had their first their first show a couple of weeks ago and they really enjoyed that and so we have we have a lot of services we have a kids club also when we do tutoring we also work inside we go to the schools in Watsonville a middle school and we provide a culture a culture we teach them about their culture we're there for them a lot of those students there can do connect with us because we've all were raised the same way we were most of us are from the community and we work for the community and we provide and then so we also we send open and provide services through all through covid and also when we had that those the fires our place was a donation center and so a lot of people came in and brought clothes and furniture anything we needed and we were also the ones who would go and deliver to people who needed what they what they lost most of them lost their homes they lost anything that they that they needed we were there for everybody and so we also have reentry services for youth and for adults we work closely with families from the juvenile hall also and we deliver food boxes for them and so we're there and we help them advocate for themselves as well thank you thank you my name is fan I was a tutor for community bridges and it really is the only free tutoring program that we have and I really feel like I was able to help out the kids who I tutored and I think it was really valuable and you should really consider thank you hi client kept executive director of the seniors council area agency on aging and I have to say this is a really weird hearing it's the first time where I've heard community programs attacked and vilified and I don't believe that's what the board of supervisors would typically do or even mean to this point none of you have made those sorts of comments but I just have to call that out and what my first comment was going to be today was to thank all of you for your engagement and your support of the social safety net I think that's really critical it's admirable what everybody has been doing for years so thank you all for that I do want to disagree with some of the statements that were made about the AAA specifically which kind of confuses me about how to speak here when your agency is called out in the staff report and that information is inaccurate it's hard to include that in your public comments but I don't want to get into a debate publicly with with county staff but I think that needs to be expressed the other thing that I want to share is I've been doing this for 35 33 years and throughout that time we have had to apply for funds every single year sometimes we've been successful and this is with three different agencies sometimes not successful so the kind of backstory that this is the first time there's been applications being reviewed by anyone I don't know where that comes from but that's not the 33 years of experience that I have and then lastly I want to say just a couple things being challenged to say which community program should we be pitted against and take money away from in order to address seniors I'm not going to say seniors deserve funding over children or that seniors deserve money over battered women that's that's a zero sum game so that is also a very weird dynamic today I will say just one last thing that we're bragging about half a million dollars being added to the system but we have 750,000 taken away for a special project that's a net loss oh my name is Anna marine Anna Maria and I have three daughters and my beneficiaries and my beneficiary of the summer programs I can't see them from all the summer I would love to keep them because here as parents we need very for Mexico our children need help thank you very much John James and I'm from Felton I find most regrettable that we have people here fighting over the scraps that the system is willing to toss them and it isn't enough and actually it wouldn't be enough if the people at the top who have the assets distributed what they have because there are simply too many people on the planet this is obviously not going to be solved today but we need to take a look at that we are going to exceed the carrying capacity the planet probably in the next 20 years and we need to look in the mirror and see that we are each our own worst enemy both individually and collectively as a human race we are victims of our own success and so I think I don't have an answer to all the questions other than that if we could cut our population down to 500 million worldwide there'd be enough for everybody to be rich but I don't see that happening in my lifetime so I don't envy you having to make these decisions and I wish you all luck and I wish everybody in this room luck because I don't know that's going to go it might be a very rough ride thank you thank you Mr. Jameson good afternoon everybody thank you for your time my name is Amanda now and I am the program manager for LIVO community resources and we still community resources and honestly there's not much I can add that hasn't already been stated and that resonates personally with what I feel and what I've experienced but I do want to say that we work so deeply in community not just with the participants that we serve or our staff but also our volunteers and our interns and also other programs including programs that are recommended for funding you know we work in deep partnerships and our work and it's contributes to their work being possible so I just wanted to mention that and thank you so much for your time thank you Pamela I see no other members of the public here in the chamber just anyone on zoom yes we do have speakers via zoom Helen Ewan story your microphone is now available thank you and good morning chair and supervisors I'm Helen Ewan story acting executive director of the community action board of Santa Cruz County as you know cab is the county's designated community action agency charged with eliminating poverty and creating social change through advocacy and essential services driven by our values of equity dignity diversity and inclusion cab sincerely appreciates the core recommendations to support its critical employment services for adults with barriers immigration legal and educational services for DACA and other immigrant community members and food youth education family and senior resources and supports to isolated and predominantly farm worker families in the Davenport north coast area including those impacted by the CZU fire cab is also thankful for the recommended support of our homelessness prevention and intervention services including our south county housing collaborative to support housing vulnerable south county youth and families along with our partners crl a families in transition buffer valley shelter services and the pvusd's healthy start program we look forward to continued partnership with the county to provide these impactful services to thousands of county residents over the next three years with core funding support we also recognize that many of our and the county's longstanding non-profit partners who provide critical services to low-income children families adults and seniors are not currently recommended for funding this year or greatly reduced funding since we know that funding shifts of this magnitude will have impact both on those that depend on them as well as other community partners like have we respectfully encourage your board to find additional core funding or departmental funding to support these services at some level and or to partner with school districts or other philanthropy to help leverage and increase resources further we respectfully encourage that the recommended targeted tier impact projects of all the county including south county to support equity based services throughout the county for this important targeted service again thank you for your partnership thank you miss sorry sandy davie your microphone is now available sandy if you'll accept the unmute your microphone is now available it seems sandy's having connectivity issues we'll move to the next speaker your microphone is now available sorry your microphone is now available yes can you hear me yes thank you thank you okay my name is cori as abido i'm the executive director of senior network services the outcome of core for a senior network concludes the following we'll be out of compliance with the federal older americans act there will be the denial of outside state and federal dollars coming into the county there will be the closure of the most cost-effective dollar for dollar housing program in the county and it could close the doors of a 50 year old nonprofit does this sound like the outcomes of a good process this is not a zero-sum game there are ways to grow this pie the first priority should be matching funds senior network submitted two federally required programs that have a 10 to 1 and 3 to 1 match core value that match at zero and shows not to multiply their dollars in that way by accepting outside money we grow the pie there's also the cost of administration it was discussed 64 technical assistance trainings 12 public meetings there's coffee chats etc etc this is a sign that it's too complex and bureaucratic and too costly streamlining that process could take some of those funds and put it back in the pie by growing the pie there's also what is the value of nonprofits to the local social safety net i would argue it's more than the fraction of a percent that's currently set up on set aside by the county and the board of supervisors can grow the buy two and lastly a solution there is a 10 percent rule where core would not fund less than 90 percent of any proposal senior network believes that was unnecessary and is causing a lot of issues we see here today the elimination of that rule would allow these dollars to be smoothed over more organizations any nonprofit executive director would whether have 60 or 70 percent than zero and lastly the whole framework for core in my opinion is off this should be about a partnership approach and not a purchase of service approach thank you mr. asaveta edwardo santana your microphone is now available good afternoon we can hear you edwardo great good afternoon members of the council um edwardo santana project scouts program director i just have has been providing free tax services for seniors disabled low-income families and individuals in santa chris counter for over 40 years i'm just hard to know that project scout is not receiving any funding for the great service that our irs certificated volunteers provide a rich santa chris county community beyond losing funding this year in order for us to provide free tax services we are required to receive local match funds without such funds from the county the future project scout services are in jeopardy just this past friday project scout assisted 32 taxpayers with free tax assistance at the watson public library and secure refunds of over 17 000 for those we service the money that is put back in the wilds of our clients some of our counties more socioeconomically at risk get readily reinvested in our local businesses whether the money goes to pay rent taking the car to the mechanic or buying groceries this money has a multiplier effect then and without the assistance of project scouts ira certificated volunteers many of her residents will miss out on such refunds thousands of santa chris counter residents miss out on cashback from tax writers because they don't file taxes this is the time to invest in programs that provide financial stability and provide a safety net for our county residents not to defund them project scout volunteers work at least 10 hours a week as the ira certificated tax volunteers during tax season providing residents of the county over $35,000 worth of free services during tax season alone and some of the volunteers continue during the whole year it's a great investment if you ask me so the end of tax season project scout has assisted 12154 taxpayers and put over $1,500 back in the pockets of those clients with service without project scouts volunteer and personal assistance where all the santa chris county residents obtain free tax but the answer is nowhere project scout has always been a proud partner in the county fermenting socioeconomic growth it is hope that project scout will continue providing services for seniors disabled low income families and individuals with future support from the county project scout has a presentation of santa chris counter investment in itself i ask you to please invest wisely and i'm happy to share any data and stats with you guys that's uh necessary thank you very much coco walter your microphone is now available hi thank you uh chair conic and board i'm coco reyner walter and i'm here today representing the senior center organization of the san lorenzo valley otherwise known as highlands park senior center given that our facility supports other grantees we were hoping for financial support to maintain our operations we are centrally located in the san lorenzo valley and would be ideal and are the ideal facility to service our 25 000 residents in our area currently um um we support three of your recipients meals on wheels we um are a daily user gray bears is does food distribution weekly and the senior network services are starting to come in and do services this week we also have other nonprofits using our facilities regularly the red cross comes in for a quarterly blood drive project scout who just spoke they actually through the tax season come in twice a week and have we have supported them physically with that and now they're still coming in monthly and then the valley women's club is a year-round user of our facility the highlands park senior center is the only self-sustaining senior center in our county we are not supported or run by any of the cities in santa cruz county we have a 6 000 square building that needs constant maintenance and staffing with covid 19 we lost our previous staff and for the last two years plus we have staffed it all with our all volunteer board we are now open four hours a day five days a week what could we do for our community if we were open full-time and we would love to do that so we just ask for your help to sustain a wonderful program with the highlands park senior center thank you for your time thank you miss walter norah caruso your microphone is now available hi there can you hear me yes i'm norah caruso program director for the santa cruz toddler care center president biden has said show me your budget and i'll tell you what you value honestly i cannot believe that what is being presented in the budget is actually what you people value or what any of us value not only is the amount allotted for community programs or core funding is proportionately small but i'm going to talk to you today about child care in the 16 years that i've been doing this job i cannot remember a year that i haven't come and spoken to you or the city council about the cuts to our budget that you've made this year you're asking your proposal is that we are completely defunded we're going from 75 000 to zero the impact that that's going to have is that we will no longer be able to provide our hark high quality child care program for one and two year olds at a sliding fee scale we absolutely reject the idea that child care is for the wealthy families can't work if they don't have child care and communities cannot thrive or even stay alive if their participants can't go to work this is an incredibly short-sighted idea in terms of defunding child care to my calculation there were eight child care centers that were being funded just back at during the last cycle and now there's one something's got to give here and the idea that this is a zero sum game like our the other speakers spoke about is absolutely ridiculous it is not our job to tell you we should lose funding so that we can actually provide the good work that we do we want to partner with you to do the work that you know is really important in our community thank you thank you miss carousel surge cacno your microphone is now available thank you my name is surge cacno deputy director recovery catheters anchors i want to thank all of the county staff for the core trainings and support within the core application process i want to thank all of the non-profits who provide services i want to thank the board of supervisors for representing our community it's regrettable of the confrontative tone that we have in today's discussion the recovery cafe Santa Cruz offers a unique needed and proven service for those struggling under the many pressures in our present world building feelings of respect in community the recovery cafe offers a safe place to work on healing and growth in Santa Cruz we have seniors and people suffering from anxiety isolated our homes people challenge with homelessness people struggling with substance use and mental health people who identify as lgbt qia plus trying to find a safe place to express who they are domestic violence the human trafficking survivors trying to rebuild a sense of community former foster youth and people who are justice involved trying to restart their lives the recovery cafe offers services to all of them the recovery cafe Santa Cruz did not receive any core funding and though we feel we have a strong program oh other than one overall score there was no explanation of what our project scored in the different application sections or why as you can imagine it's impossible to use the appeals process within core without knowing those scores or the justification of those scores i can only guess it why we received the score we did our holistic program serves multiple core elements which put our application at a slight significant disadvantage to identify a single core element and lessened our perceived impact the application process lacked the ability of agencies to state that lower allocations or lower teals would be helpful and throughout the public meetings there were multiple questions agencies asking about the ability of letting the lower allocations the recovery cafe Santa Cruz asked the board of supervisors to direct the human services department to offer partial allocations for the recovery cafe and other programs which did not receive funding or yadira flores your microphone is now available hello good morning my name is yadira flores and today i will i will be wearing two hats um they're like those leaders our community invests in eight core condition essential for equitable equitable health and well-being in a collective effort to affect affect system towards alignment impact county park friends allows this approach to public funding however we need to bring you attention to the fact that in the recommendation published yesterday zero percent of funding was recommended for the healthy environment core conditions we encourage you to ask her questions about how we invest or not in equitable activity activation of connection to and to and benefits from the very healthy environments parks beaches trails and so we it's really important for us to get a connection with the community and that at the same way i'm here to advocate for the community bridges because i represent libel community and most of the families look at the numbers they put all the kids on the summer schools because they don't have access to recreation because recreation is expensive 500 dollars for junior lifeguards when we as a county park friends provide um scholarship for those kids so please consider and also our families really benefits for the resource center of libel some essential things like do and print a copy or i'm i'm so print something from the kids of school you can think like that's very naive or no sense but thank you mitzvarez or peter b your microphone is now available hello i'm peter bichier i'm the city of santa cruz the community liaison and i will work i just want to say that i've been a community liaison for three years and community bridges have been a key person helping me out in my job as a community liaison and both the small center in new avista and in lower ocean have been incredibly helpful for me most of the time we just you know they're the one who have the direct links to the communities and you know so i'm just a one person a job or and so it's very hard for me not to be able to get the support from that institution also when i see that with the budget we're talking about like the how it is separated for example that one people are some you know it is a matter of right now of a food but a lot of times one person doesn't just have a problem that they're lacking their ends meet for food it's just a general yes it's it's food but then it's also because they got injured at work they get another support where they need also help with rent and work or taxes and as a whole that entities have been really a lot of the people and um and that's i just wanted to share that thank you thank you peter amy your microphone is now available hi my name is amy i'm 17 and um thank you for your time i wanted to let you know that the live oak resource center has not only been a pillar of my community but of my life as well and i know i'm not the only one my parents immigrated here and all they have wanted for me was a better life which the resource center has always helped me achieve the resource center has always been a safe space for us for my siblings um for my community for me um um uh i know i won't be able to find a safe space like this anywhere else community bridges has helped me in many generations um i'll be able to vote soon and a number of youth that have benefited from the resource center um will be able to to and we will remember the kind of people that helped our community when we needed it the most you might be able to easily dismiss or please to keep these resources for our community because we see what our communities go through every day we see the amount of work they put in to even survive um so please reconsider this please have empathy thank you amy deuteron your microphone is now available can you hear me yes thank you thank you board of supervisors deuteron kibbutz executive director for mentors we are one of the programs who applied and waited for five years and for the new process unfortunately we didn't get funded and we think the process this round seemed as fair as it could be without looking behind the scene um our request is that we are the only organization in the community in the bay area that's serving a holistic approach to positive masculinity boy development youth fathers and men so as we look at the issues of domestic violence to the recent mass shooting to anything that's happening in the community that's negatively impacting there's one thread that continued to happen toxic masculinity so we can address issues from intervention perspective or we can do prevention that's what we're trying to do we understand there's a lot of programs that did not get funded and you know there's nothing we can do except work with those who are funded so we ask the board of supervisors as part of the contract process to request that everyone who's funded to have a father-friendly policy in their contract so that we can work with them and providing these necessary services i'm also disheartened to hear the family resource centers are not funded the family resource centers play a critical role in our community from la manzana to mountain community from live up to new avivista and they bring people together and support fathers mothers children and they are the lifelines so for me to see those programs to go away really makes me very sadden and thank you for the opportunity thank you to try caller 2000 your microphone is now available as a reminder it's star six to unmute or mute yourself yes hello hello hear me yes we can hear you okay my name is julie julie i'm a fire victim up in bonny din and i'm calling in today because i'm just i've listened to all this and i've listened to how you're going to fund this that the other and what the process is and how fair the process is well the only help i've gotten as a fire victim is from community mountain the resources in selton the only help you know they they put this really hard site check plan for as expensive that doesn't work i couldn't do it i'm not computer literate but guess what community mountain resources can because they're confident i i just listened to that whole thing about the fairness of the process and how that guy was so condescending and a three-day appeal process and then they give themselves five days to respond to the appeal of three days it would be funny if it wasn't so tragic the county's been no help to me in fact they've hindered me in trying to rebuild and trying to get back on my feet after this fire the only help i've gotten is from community mountain resources in pelton and they're confident what they ought to be doing is signing people up to vote and then as they come in and maybe something would happen but i'm just outraged i'm a person that's been paying taxes for 45 years property taxes in this county and i am outraged find the money it's there i know get rid of some of those uh those guys that are trying to figure out how to make the process there take his salary and throw it in because that that would take the girl benefit office and community mountain resources probably a couple hours in the afternoon that she could figure it out better thank you caller 2000 your microphone is now available we have a second caller with the same identifier as a reminder it's star six to mute or unmute yourself are you able to hear me yes um so thank you to the board of supervisors for letting me talk um i'm calling as um a concerned parent and also as an educator myself over the weekend this proposal was brought to my attention and my son who's three years old currently attends um the redwood mountain school which is part of community bridges um i really think and employ you employ you all to consider that today's youth is tomorrow's future and by cutting funding that has anything to do with our youth you're being short-sighted and not investing in our future um i live in boulder creek and i'm a really proud member of the sander in the valley um the thing that saddens me the most about this though is that if the funding is cut you're essentially voting to create an equity gap in education based on family household incomes i've worked as a teacher and my wife has worked as a teacher for our careers and seeing that our child could be part of a process as an imposed equity gap based off of finances from an age as early as three that means and is extremely disheartening um so like i said i'm just speaking to all of you as a parent and educating myself and i really hope that you think about your decision in a long-term sense to invest in our community and the citizens of our community and in the children who need this early childhood education for language development social emotional development and physical development 90 of the brain development of children takes place before the age of five so please please please think about your decisions think about the funding what you're putting money into and why thank you sir dina your microphone is now available hi good afternoon can you hear me yes terrific good afternoon my name is dina i'm with sander cruise community health through the sander cruise women's health center the east cliff family health center and the newest sander cruise mountain health center in ben loman sander cruise community health is a federally qualified health center provides comprehensive primary care services in english and spanish to all ages genders ethnicities abilities and sexual identities and orientations regardless of their ability to pay i want to thank you for delivering a clear yet complicated process and i understand it's even getting more and more complicated while the application itself was no walk in the park it to me it was very clear and supported by endless opportunities for additional help and technical assistance so i thank you for that i'm at once disappointed to not be celebrating the recommendation of both the proposals that sander cruise community health put forward but absolutely grateful for the recommendation made to support our healthy steps expansion proposal by nearly every measure children living in families with low incomes and children of color face the biggest obstacles such as low birth weight unstable housing and limited access to early learning experience when we remove these barriers greater access to opportunity and flourishing as possible for everyone a healthy steps is a program of zero to three it's evidence-based team-based pediatric primary care program promoting the health well-being and school readiness of babies and toddlers with an emphasis on low income families again i want to thank you for considering the recommendations made thank you thank you dina allison your microphone is now available thank you good afternoon supervisors and community members my name is allison givara and i'm the director of cradle to career santa cruz county as you know while there is great need in our community which has been matched by incredible resilience over the past two years among the many devastating consequences of the pandemic there has been an historic separation between families and schools and widening differences in students resources and support for learning yet cradle to career has shown that investments and family empowerment and community organizing builds community resilience we are deeply honored and grateful to be recommended to receive the core targeted impact grant and serve multiple communities across our county this will allow us to expand our work to three additional school districts where we have heard from superintendents desperate to engage and support families who have been hit the hardest by systemic inequities the pandemic distance learning and the cz u fires it will also allow us to convene a county-wide learning and leadership circle where we will continue to catalyze whole child whole family whole community collective impact solutions we have a powerful collective of partnering organizations and school districts who will be involved in our expansion including united way the county office of education and compass head start first five santa cruz community health and many others as well as our cdc parent leadership committee and promatora collective who will help ensure these precious dollars result in meaningful change our work is to uplift the abundance of healers advocates and community architects all around us and to collaborate to address the root causes of adversity and ensure vital interconnected community services and public policies are sustained and strengthened we truly value community partners including community bridges family resource centers and child care centers and feel it's critical that we work together to ensure their doors remain open i want to thank you for this incredible opportunity for your support for a thoughtful process and for your vision for our community thank you so much thank you miss gravara diane your microphone is now available good afternoon board of supervisors and community partners first of all i just want to recognize everyone's involvement in this process it was is and has been an arduous process for everyone but as i read the the recommendations for funding i notice that that child care is not really listed we have one program that was funded and after going through the last couple of years through the pandemic i think the community not only our county and state and nation has realized the important role that child care plays in the restoration of our economic growth and so today i'm i'm recognizing and requesting that those that you recognize in and and also you know maybe even rethink funding for some more child care programs as we move forward in this restorative process that we're all in i want to also recognize you know all the the programs that are that are serving our most vulnerable populations both north and south county and how important they all are and also to you because this is a difficult job and your staff is doing a difficult job too and i just want to recognize them and you for your time and thank you so much for the whole process thank you diane sandy your microphone is now available thank you um i'm interesting that i'm coming after that that last person spoke because of one of the pieces of information that wasn't presented in your summary is that um the core recommendations call for a 90 percent cut of all funding to child care for young children um and essentially the amount allocated for child care is point zero zero one percent of core funding that's a rounding error now you say that the goal of core is to be more reflective of the needs of the community the community needs for child care for young children have been affirmed time and time and time again by assessments made by santa cruz government agencies as well as state federal academic business and then at the raw experiences of every working family if you affirm the decision as it stands now you need to be aware that you're stating that you think child care is not an important need for working families in santa cruz county and the personal impact for you will be that your personal legacy a supervisor will be as the defender of child care this is not about individual agency this is about decisions made about a whole sector of service that is an ideological one and it's reflected in these finding decisions so think really carefully because this is a three-year cycle and many of you are going to be gone and that is going to end up being your personal legacy and i know for many of you that that's probably not something you want to have one other thing i want to reflect is in terms of the process of appeals here's the determination we're given these are the only way we can respond and here's the parameters there's an error or abuse of discretion the record includes inaccurate information a decision is supported by the record or determination or interpretation is not in accord with the solicitation i don't know what that means and we have three days to do it it's not a real process it's a thank you sandy we have no further speakers for this item chair thank you then i'll return to the board for action supervisor McPherson yeah mr chair i want to start by quoting the the staff report a key phrase that we should keep in mind it's quote the evolution of the core program including the development of this request request for proposal has been community informed board and city council approved and staff implemented i want to thank those also who were on this committee the the rfp panelists and those people who came here to speak to let us know today it's not a surprise and i'm i'm really glad that you let your feelings be known this ever really started in 2015 and it's undergone a continual revision improvement over the time with numerous public hearings and meetings and private consultations with community board organizations the board did direct staff to develop and implement a fair and data-driven transparent rfp process that involve professional consultants and content experts who could approach evaluating the proposals without a bias or conflict of interest and i do think they really did that to their best of their ability the aim of the aim was really to grade programs based on documented outcomes and collective impacts among other criteria along with the county's operational goals and objectives toward improving how we serve the community with with all the grant programs however there will be those who are recommended for funding and others who not are not and which is the difficulty we're grappling with it today and we have for by 10 years on the board of supervisors that difficulty really should not call into question the high standards we set i think for the process as it is and but rather should be viewed as our why our way of trying to address the best ways to serve the community and by the numbers this really can be an overall win-win situation for everybody i mean when you have 127 applications from 78 organizations going after 5.8 million dollars when there are five 15 and 0.6 million dollars of requests it's pretty obvious we're not going to be able to please most people um or many of the organizations but we have to do the best we can with what we have and uh i i encourage the programs who are not recommended for funding to participate in the appeals process and i know some of you don't think that's adequate but this is the the the system we put into place and that is why we set it up for there to be a transparent process and i do believe this has been transparent throughout the the process to address those concerns um to without unravelling the thread of the sweater i think it was mentioned there is one program i can say and i hope we can't start nitpicking every of one of the 126 27 applications but there's one program i think it should be known that i cannot support for being part of the recommended distribution and that's the harm reduction coalition's expansion into the south county as recommended by the core panel and the reason is i've repeatedly voted against uh and with the majority of this board to priority prioritize our own health services agency uh its own syringe services program and we have also directed staff to tackle the syringe litter issue that itself is a public health program and so far has not been comprehensively addressed so i support harm reduction as a public health goal but this recommendation i don't believe it complies with the previous board direction and there's not been enough time for us for this organization to just to demonstrate the ability to partner with the county on achieving all of our goals for harm reduction so that's the only point that i would question on this overall proposal and i do hope those who have expressed their opinions will take part in the appeal process and that we can have a clear picture of where we're going to go and why if if any changes are made in my june 28th thank you mr thank you supervisor mcpherson supervisor kindred yeah thank you um so first of all i want to take a moment um and appreciate everyone who came out today to let their voices be heard and then obviously for the work that people are doing day to day to make um to provide a safety net in our community to improve quality of life to serve uh people in need and families in need um it's remarkable work and um and you know in a in a in a better more perfect world we would have the resources as as folks said to to fund uh everybody and more um for the work because the needs are great and the resources are scarce um i will say there there were some comments about how like this doesn't feel this feels uncomfortable this feels bad i don't want people i don't want to have to pick people to lose who lose funding and everything else but i i got to say the reason we haven't had these conversation this hard conversation in the past was because people weren't allowed to participate groups like the teen kitchen project food what jacob's heart soluti carino the homeless garden project and then increased funding for diente tsunami they weren't allowed to apply for the last five years and get any funding um and prior to that those who have been on these boards for a while and watched this process they weren't allowed to apply uh for uh existing pools and funding so we did so in some ways we didn't have to have a hard conversation because new people weren't allowed to participate new groups and organizations weren't allowed to participate um and so i i recognize that this is a hard moment in a hard hearing and i have a hunch it's going to be a hard couple weeks and an additional additional hearing but i do think you know that's because we've opened up this process and when you open up a process and invite a lot of new groups into the room it it makes the existing resources more scarce and it's more difficult um in the in the hopes of moving forward i'd like to make a motion that that at least the board can consider as we go which would be um recognizing this is a first stage in a process there's going to be many more uh one we approve recommended actions two we remove the 145 thousand dollar funding recommendation for the harm reduction coalition as as is inconsistent with prior board direction to prioritize the county's own syringe services program and system systematically address syringe litter as supervisor McPherson mentioned we direct staff to return on 628 with recommendations to redirect the 145 thousand dollars consistent with the process framework approved by the board for core and in consultation with board offices and then for we direct staff to return to the board on 628 with elements that will be included in the core contracts for county-wide service provisions in other words there's both who gets funded but once we fund people how do those programs get get operationalized across across the county so that's my motion um i'll second the motion if it's proper yeah perfect motion by supervisor community second by supervisor McPherson any further discussion i have some comments that's appropriate mr chair um you know ideally we would live in an equitable enough community where uh these programs that spoke today and applied wouldn't be necessary but we're not there yet i mean we have to remember that these programs are created by a series of need because of inequities within our system and ultimately um it says a lot about the challenges that our overall macro system face that these systems are desperately needed and continually underfunded and a lot of the board's focus needs to be on how do you change that that underlying trajectory uh to ensure that that we we move we move toward that greater equity and and i hear i mean that the comments that were made today are real i mean these are these are stories of people that need the community's help that rely on the programs that are being provided to them i believe programs that were selected and programs that weren't selected are all doing uh absolutely essential work within our community and i believe that that uh and this is a small portion by the way of what the county contracts out i mean the human services and the health services world contracts out a lot to a lot of these community-based organizations to provide a lot of various services and safety net services but uh to supervisor coonerty's point it is true that the and there was near universal agreement about this with community-based organizations that the underlying original process of presumed funding uh static funding and then a lot of the debates were just over whether there would be colas or whether there'd be increases or cuts depending upon the situation um was not an equitable process that allowed for alignment to changing demographics and changing community-based needs i mean the fact that some of the issues are still static from 40 years ago is is is an unfortunate commentary on on on our society on a greater level but but there's also we can all agree the community has a lot of different challenges today than it did originally which which necessitates a shift in how the county allocates this funding may that would be irresponsible for the county not to do that kind of review with all that said i i do think some of the the comments that were made today about they may not have been couched in this way but but i took it in this way to improve the system moving forward or fair i i agree with uh miss peterson and mr morris that this is that the process was followed that we created a process with a lot of community input a lot of hearings over multiple years um and that that process was followed in the decisions that were recommended today with that said it was also said that that we would evaluate that process and make changes and i'm sure county staff sees some of the ways that things can be improved moving forward i have some personal thoughts on ways that things can be improved moving forward but that's not a commentary about whether or not the current process was followed or not it's just a commentary about how future processes can learn and be informed by uh real-world examples of how this process played out and i think that one of them may be um uh one of the things that may need to be looked at is just adding additional flexibility um on the core funding on these on this sort of last day situation we can get into more details what that may be but maybe it's a certain percentage is done through the process and there's greater flexibility on on the day of on a set aside for not and that's not necessarily a growth of the total pie but a set aside that allows for flexibility of of evolving needs and that would allow for the transparency and still allow for flexibility of of the board moving forward i understand that the board in theory has total flexibility now but ultimately um if we were to start a reallocation process it'd be really problematic for not just the very important community programs that were funded but the process that we work so hard to create and to shift and i think this is going to be the most difficult time while we're transitioning but i also think that this is the most important time then for us to receive that feedback on ways that we can improve the process moving forward so i will be supporting uh the motion today a little bit uh with hesitation just in the fact that i do feel that we created a a process and we should just hear the process i do hear what supervisor McPherson's saying in regards to this one particular program i also recognize i imagine the city is going to have similar concerns but but uh i i do want there there was some personal statements made about county staff i just want to i want to reflect on the fact that um you know i don't think people choose to work in the human and health services world without uh really having their calling be how do you help people that have less among us and i think a lot of director morris and miss peterson the fact that they've chosen this vocation they could do a lot of other things um i don't question their motivations and i also understand that in the heat of the moment uh we all can say things that maybe that we didn't exactly feel uh or maybe weren't the most articulate at that moment i know i definitely have done that a number of times in my life but but my experience with county staff especially within those departments has been nothing but how do we provide greater equity how do we improve outcomes for people throughout the community um and there are some of the strongest advocates behind the scenes for uh community-based organizations and and the partnership that they have with the county so i just want to make sure that uh that county staff knows that that i truly do appreciate uh your work for the most disadvantaged and i truly appreciate the partnership we have the community-based organizations we serve partnerships in a partnership role we can't do it without them and they can't do it without us and sometimes like with any partnership there's these challenges thank you mr chair thank you supervisor friend um i'm wondering if i make a friendly amendment that uh in order to assist the appeals process we issue each one of the uh applicants their scoring matrix so that they have a better sense of of you know the basis for the number that they received this morning so we uh actually i did want to address that uh organizations that did want more information regarding their score and since be their scoring summary they can reply to the notification email and we'll provide that information and uh we will be following up an email we'll send send an email out to all applicants letting them know that information in case they're not watching today okay thank you so not needed as an amendment um but um i'm glad you'll be in touch with them to let them know um i mean i'll just add some reflection i mean to the effect that this is supposed to be uh results and evidence based i feel from my perspective like i'm seeing very few of those results and evidence uh you know none of the programs being suggested for funding or not i mean am i seeing you know just number of people served um or you know the efficacy of the money being used results from um you know the last round of funding so i mean um something that we can improve in the next round but um and if no i heard that comment a couple times today and um it does resonate with me um feels like where that work was all done by the 58 reviewers and uh very little bit is available to the public or even transparently to this board at least in our public materials um so again i do think we have a lot of work to do going forward um i'm willing to support the motion uh today and um you know i think we'll there's a lot to consider as far as all the comments presented um and we'll get through the appeals process and uh look at things on the 28th any further discussion well uh just uh make a comment i want to thank you for all the time and work you put into doing this you've taken off you've taken a lot of pressure that we you know we would have to deal with and uh uh this is not a perfect uh proposal it needs to be you know worked and uh so what i'm getting at is uh as much as we appreciate all the work you've done i'm not going to rubber stamp something just because you know it's it's come to us and then uh the other is we all have our own ideas on how to make it better uh and that's what we need to do in the next couple weeks uh so anyway it's gonna it'll be interesting thank you supervisor cabinet right uh yes i have just a question it's a technical question i don't know if our CAO councilor you as the chair i i want to just make sure i understand what's being voted upon in terms of the um additional direction is that something i should ask for after your vote or before your vote because where the staff needs to operationalize that so just know technically when's the time to ask that question county council well i think i did want to want to ask a question about the emotion just to clarify us the 135 000 i i or 145 000 i heard a clause that uh that would be discussed and deliberated on with board members and i want to be sure that we're in recognizing brown act issues and uh i'm wondering whether the motion can be amended um to eliminate that clause sure so the clause the the exact clause was that it would be uh consistent with the process core process framework and in consultation with board offices uh and so um i i have concerns about that clause and so i would um i would recommend striking that clause that the recommendations be made in consultation with board offices okay i'll strike that clause and may i ask it is appropriate for me to ask one i had that was one of my questions is this is a chair is that i heard three parts to it supervisor uh coonerty one was the uh supervisor mcpherson in your second it sounds like the board's going to support removal of the 145 then i heard the return on 628 with a recommendation after that i'm hearing it's being striked in consult boards but there was a follow-up one that i missed and i tried to write it down something about for us when we return on the 28 to be clear about what we plan to list in the in the contracts just want to make sure i understand what that direction was so we can comply with that for return on the 28 yeah so it's just what elements will be uh included in the court contracts to the provision of county-wide services okay i think i understand so we can be clear in the board report for the 28th how we recommend to operationalize that and your board could deliberate and public could comment and we'll execute whatever the final decision is when we execute contracts yeah okay thank you all right if we're all clear on the motion um then clerk roll call vote please supervisor friend all right coonerty hi cap it mcpherson and conan hi that item passes unanimously as amended thank you um we had a 130 scheduled item and is now 149 i don't know where we stand with closed session i'd be inclined to take a 15 minute break and then come back to do resume our 130 scheduled item but but yeah we you can do that but i would recommend moving closed session to the end of your agenda today if you want to take a 15 minute break now all right yeah we'll we'll take a 15 minute break i will move item 12 to the end of our agenda and then after that we'll have closed session all right we'll break until 205 thank you we'll now resume the meeting of the santa cruz county board of supervisors will be beginning with item 15 but first clerk if you'd please call the roll supervisor friend here coonerty here cap it mcpherson here and conan here thank you chair you have quorum we're going to item 15 do you consider authorizing the issuance of a proclamation honoring general services department deputy director carole johnson on her retirement from the county of santa cruz to be signed by all members of the board as outlined in a memorandum by myself um i suppose as a introduction i'll read the proclamation that we have before us it covers some of the many accomplishments of miss johnson though whereas deputy director of the general services department carole johnson is retiring after 20 years of dedicated service to the county of santa cruz and whereas carole began her career with the county in march of 2002 when she was hired as an accounting technician with the auditor controller's department and in march of 2003 she promoted to a senior account technician with the general services department and whereas after joining on with gsd carole rose up the ranks from administrative services officer to administrative services manager and finally became the deputy director of gsd in 2019 and whereas in 2013 carole received an employee recognition award for her role in the gsd energy efficiency upgrade team which was responsible for the implementation of grant funded energy efficiency upgrades at five different county facilities which significantly reduced the county's utility costs and whereas in 2014 and 2018 carole again received employee recognition awards for her roles in leading the seismic retrofit and upgrade of the santa cruz memorial building and efforts that created monterey bay community power and whereas 2018 carole received recognition and honors from the california state legislature with the 2018 clean air leader award and whereas in 2018 carole was part of the first graduating class of the santa cruz county leadership training program known as leap learn engage apply and perform and was recognized by the california state association of counties as a credentialed california senior executive and whereas carole is known by her colleagues for her outstanding customer service and can do attitude along with her snazzy sayings like that would be deluxe and whereas in her retirement carole is looking forward to hopping in her rv and touring baseball fields across the country with her husband keith as well spending time with her children now therefore the members of the santa cruz county board of supervisors hereby thank honor and commend carole johnson for her years of dedicated service to the counting of santa cruz what any members of the board like to add specific um yes mr chair there's a lot of things we can say very good things all good things about uh this johnson carole johnson and we all know what an amazing resource she has been to the santa cruz county team for her entire career here as the deputy director of general services most recently but i do want to highlight one area that was mentioned to remind everyone how instrumental her work was informing monoray bay community power which now is central coast community energy of course the entire executive team of the county was involved in that that stretch but carole was really the it was central in coordinating the regional project development advisory committee and attended many of the final decision making public meetings of the various city and county boards throughout the regions and now we are in within five counties from here down to santa barber county with 34 agencies and central coast community power it wouldn't have been a reality really if she wouldn't have been there as really a rock to make this happen and uh before the joint powers agency had any staff at all uh carole was there as the central hub of communication for all the parties involved and her clear close work with my office made a tremendous difference it made all the difference in the world and i just want to thank you carole for once again for your partnership hard work and dedication over the four years it did took to have us that we had to take to make that organization become a reality it's a tremendous organization and you're a very very important part of it i just want to say thank you for everything that you've done in particular for that but everything for santa cruz county as well thank you mr chair if i may as well thank you supervisor macpherson i've had the the real honor of working with miss johnson since uh before i worked at the county i was at the santa cruz police department and she was uh somebody i worked with a lot on grant related issues and and she is just an absolute quiet leader just someone who never seeks the limelight probably actually hates being where she is right now being recognized by all of us was so patient with me with these very gentle reminders that you're late on your grand application sack or the stuff you sent in isn't right per usual and then she would tell me the best way to do things always always guiding always teaching always on top of everything just that without her ability to implement uh without her ability to deal with so many different personalities as supervisor first one was was actually noting throughout the the multi counties on on that project but you know we this is a real loss for the county i have to say just someone who is that talented does not seek the limelight gets the work done has made a huge difference in people's lives throughout multiple counties and in my case actually uh guided me through learning some processes that have been useful for me as i've continued on in my my current life as a county supervisor so so carol congratulations i just wanted to thank you for the the almost 20 years now that we've worked together and i'll let you know that that you were uh at the time of when i was at the pd probably my favorite county employee at that time so i got to say that uh you've uh you've and you're still very very very high on the list if i didn't say that my staff are the current uh favorite employees i get a lot of hard time right now but but i just wanted to say that you are an outstanding individual you deserve nothing but good things in your retirement and thank you for all that you did for me and for the county at large and i'll just add that um anybody who can teach supervisor friend anything uh deserves more than a proclamation but um i want to thank carol for her uh really tremendous career it's you need consummate professionals in any organization to keep to keep everything going and um you know the general services department is something that doesn't get a lot of time and attention but carol's leadership there in so many ways in so many different initiatives and and efforts across the county on energy on energy resiliency on emergency response she's been absolutely fantastic and she certainly will be missed but has this is well deserved and uh and i appreciate everything you've done for our county thank you for your wonderful service uh to the county i think everybody realizes uh the last couple of years has probably been the toughest uh couple of years of anybody's uh service to the county so thank you for going through everything that we've had to go through and all your help that you've done uh looking forward to hearing from yourself when you get the proclamation thank you carol i just wanted to uh thank you personally for everything you've done not only for the county and the community but for me as well you're just someone that um we could always rely on and that as um i think zack mentioned you're a very quiet leader but also a very strong leader and we just appreciate everything you've done you're a role model in terms of a public servant for all of us thank you carol just that we we don't have many years working together but when i did show up in january of 2021 uh and you you i think you were one of about 10 people here in this building so that said something to begin with um and then you handed me my parking pass and i asked you oh well who's enforcing this uh you said oh i am so that you know just i think that demonstrates the ability the fact that you always show up you do what needs to get done and this long list of accomplishments here on the proclamation i think is a result of that attitude that you showed up with every day and we really will miss you thank you what anyone else like to say anything about miss johnson thank you chair and board michael beton director of general services uh this one's uh i know i don't have a problem doing public speaking but for carol this one is actually uh choking me up a little bit uh on april 1st 2022 i thought i received what i would call the almost greatest april fool's joke ever carol called me into her office uh like she normally does and she handed me a piece of paper and i quickly read that piece of paper and realized she was retiring i stood there in disbelief and i went away for about a couple other meetings and i and during that second meeting i realized wait today's april fool's day so in my excitement i ran back and i was thinking she's playing april fool's joke on me i can't believe it but i am sad to say that she was not so that's why i call it the almost greatest april fool's joke ever carol has has uh been a leader a mentor and a driving force for the county and general services department for the last 20 years serving 19 of those in general services i first heard of carol when i was with the health services agency approximately 10 years ago she quickly became one of the go-to contacts in order to get stuff done i've had the luxury of working with her learning from her mentoring with her over the last four plus years carol has always done the work of two people and always with a smile i would be remiss if i didn't say i'm sad to see her go working with her these last four years has been fantastic i enjoyed her personality and her good times and her bad although i can never really recall any bad times as she's always happy and always customer service oriented carol's positive attitude and contagious smile will be missed day to day inside gst but on behalf of gst carol i want to thank you for all you've done for this county the gst family but more importantly me i wish you and keith well in your joint retirement carol would you like to say a few words well as supervisor friend alluded to i do not like the spotlight and i don't like public speaking so i've made a few notes so first of all thank you chair appreciate this and the board for the recognition never did i think that 20 years ago i get the opportunity to do everything that i've had the chance to do collaborate with county staff on projects like you mentioned but also primo the county strategic plan i've worked with amazing colleagues i can only name a few either driscoll lord bowers christine and maury my mentor trish daniels kathy sams disko randolph all the staff and personnel who've helped me navigate all those amazing tiresome personnel guidelines and hiring people um they've shared their guidance their wisdom their experience and i appreciate all the time that it took them to do that with me and then over the last two years i've had a chance to work with departments of public work public works and human services as we struggle to get through cdu lightning fire and covet 19 and help the community rejuvenate i was overwhelmed by their compassion dedication and collaboration to the people in our community and i was proud to be a part of that response i want to thank the amazing staff in general services especially our admin and physical teams purchasing and warehouse and fleet they have had my back the entire time i could not have done my job without them and i appreciate them every day and lastly michael it's been an amazing four years um again i've learned from you you inspire me i can only imagine where the county is going to be and general services especially in 20 years and your leadership so thank you thank you so before i give this proclamation to you i we're always forgetting that we have to authorize them with the motion so if could i get a motion from a fellow board member second motion by supervisor mcpherson second by supervisor friend any further discussion uh seeing none roll call vote please supervisor friend hi coonerty hi rapid mcpherson and comic hi that item passes unanimously all right now that i'm duly authorized to give you this proclamation so much appreciate it all right we'll now proceed to item 16 to consider authorizing the issuance of a proclamation honoring paia levine to be signed by all members of the board and i'll go ahead and read our proclamation for paia whereas paia levine is retiring as interim planning director from the county of santa cruz after 35 years of dedicated service and whereas paia earned a bachelor's degree in earth sciences from the university of california at santa cruz and began her career as a watershed analyst in the environmental planning section of the santa cruz county planning department which after which she went on to become a resource planner staff geologist and then principal planner managing the environmental planning development review and sustainability policy sections of the department before being promoted to assistant planning director and whereas paia was called upon to assume the role of interim planning director after the unprecedented pressures of the cz u august lightning complex fires and cova 19 pandemic during which she led the development of new work processes and trying times and exhibited leadership professionalism and grace and whereas paia's sense of compassion and equity converged with the needs of those rebuilding after the cz u august lightning complex fire disaster and she worked tirelessly to create recovery permit center and rebuilding policies to support cz u survivors on their path home and whereas paia utilized her leadership skills and geologic understanding to respond to two major santa cruz county natural disasters 1989 loma prieta earthquake and 2020 post cz u fire debris flow threat with respect and empathy for survivors and swiftly negotiated the creation of sound recovery policies to allow reconstruction of damaged structures and whereas under paia's guidance the planning department has made strides toward finding solutions to complex land use housing climate change and regional challenges which necessitated the development of numerous land use policies and regulations including cannabis regulations and the sustainability update and whereas paia has not only been a dedicated a leader throughout her esteemed county career but has also been a valued mentor problem solver and source of guidance wisdom and calm during any storm as well as a cherished co-worker and friend to many who will be missed but contacted frequently and whereas paia will set an example for others in retirement as well as traveling throughout the globe and finding new rewarding challenges both physical and philanthropic now therefore the members of the santa cruz county board of supervisors hereby thank honor and command paia levine for her years of dedicated service to the county of santa cruz our members like to add a few words yeah mr chair i'll start if that's okay miss levine is just an outstanding public servant and a remarkable listener and when we would meet there was never a code issue that was in the depths of the code totally esoteric that she couldn't tell you exactly where it was or what it meant one of the things i always feared about miss levine though is that she would take copious notes when you had talked to her and i wasn't sure if they were just she was just judging everything i was saying or whether she was whether these questions this guy's asking but at the end of the day what i appreciated was she listened she always had a creative idea for a solution on problems that we brought forward and was always willing to work toward change to effectuate something and a lot of people in the community don't get to see uh the work that county staff does i recognize that the board is out in front or there's certain department heads that are out in front but paia you really shifted a lot of of for the better um culture and opportunity within not just the planning department but overall and things that we did on housing policy and the way that you advocated for changes in the code quietly but effectively to help improve outcomes of people in the community i always respected and trusted your council because it always came unfiltered it always came from a place of knowledge and history that i did not have and you are a wealth of information and just a trusted individual and i i truly admire you as a person and also as a public servant and you will be missed at the county thank you let me also just uh agree with what zach said paia is just the consummate problem solver and then over the last couple years as we faced cz u fires and then debris flows had real grace and intelligence under pressure to find creative solutions to navigate very very difficult issues some of which we control many of which we do not um and a real commitment to public service and serving uh the fire victims and people who we could uh who were in real need of our of our help um and then finally i think also as zach said in these meetings um always getting right to the heart of an issue and doing it with um real thoughtfulness and then just a real sense of humor which is not always the first thing that comes when you think about code requirements or other issues that we face but it's truly been a pleasure to work with you as a professional as a human being as a member of our community yeah i would uh like to reiterate those comments that were made by uh zach and and ryan and she came into her most recent position really at the most difficult the times as it was mentioned to cz fire which has been how do you react to it and do it as quickly as you can especially when there's some state obligations you have to meet and she just you know just wove through those issues and got to where we needed to be as quickly as she could and then coven hit and so she didn't have the employees to see face to face like everybody else was used to uh that that was another complication but she got through that and did it and i i want to compliment because of her leadership the planning department ran very smoothly as smoothly as it could under those conditions and i want to thank her again for her hard work and professionalism that she exhibited through dozens of meetings and consultations to address the recovery issues in particular as i mentioned um working on planning is never easy but it's i can't think of a more difficult time than when she has been the head of the department uh that she's had to really go through there's been a lot of emotion um and on the side of many of our constituents that we have had in the recovery process but thanks paya for your leadership your dynamic personality and yeah having a sense of humor as much as you can under some real trying circumstances she is a special special person we're lucky to have her in the most difficult of times that i think we've we've uh we've faced in the planning process in many many years if not forever in santa cruz county so thank you paya and enjoy your retirement yeah 35 years a long time and uh you were probably uh well probably very young when you came here and started working and i don't know i'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say uh um and uh thank you for getting through uh uh you know a lot of things that we had to get done and uh actually uh improving the planning department of the whole process so thank you paya i just wanted to thank you um you stepped up at a very difficult moment in the county's history into a leadership position uh that was a very difficult leadership position and you did it with such grace and such calmness and such professionalism i just really admire you i think you're a great person and you really saved us at a time we really needed you thank you very much i'll just add that as a new supervisor taking office during a clear housing crisis i of course came in with lots of ideas for how we can improve planning and what we can do about housing policy uh and i paya you were always there for a one-on-one and um where it's so easy to say no so often in government because of liability or uh because you know the way we've always done things you always said yes if uh and had a had a way through it um with a reference to the code and something that we could work on together and it was a very collaborative attitude and i really appreciated that and i i know you all have been interim planning director for just a year and the department is undergoing some major changes but i think you really set us off on the right foot with your leadership so thank you anyone else like to say a few words good afternoon carol emberg assistant director of community development and infrastructure um so i'm both happy and sad to be here um so uh in deference to paya's east coast sensibilities i'll try and keep this short and to the point um no one breaks down a problem like paya levine um you can be in the midst of the most complex situation and she says okay and starts pacing and eventually in the course of about 10 or 15 minutes we've distilled things down to the main points that we need to solve to get where we need to go and that type of leadership was um what we uh what we so desperately needed in the midst of two crises coming at once and paya have been through trial by fire when she went through as a staff geologist the loma prieta earthquake um and learned so much that she brought to us um in between she has led every section in our department and um it's that accumulation of knowledge and wisdom combined with a complete lack of ego and making these decisions and policies and always at the forefront um looking for good planning and um treating her staff well um sometimes to her own detriment she would um everyone has gotten the late night emails from paya most of the time the 2 a.m. emails are set to go out at 8 a.m. so that she um makes sure to set a good example for staff and we have always appreciated both her care and her knowledge and we will miss her greatly thank you paya good afternoon board my name is daniel sasweta i'm assistant county council and i represent the planning department and where is she paya levine just wanted to come up here and say thank you to paya um and i wanted to make sure that everyone in this room and uh everyone listening and for the record to show just how much i appreciate her hard work and i wanted to acknowledge that um you know a lot of times as as the attorney you get to see all of it right you get to see the good the bad and you have to come in and do some cleanup sometimes but um you know we get to see in the public eye a lot of stuff that uh maybe doesn't always go right but i get to see behind the scenes of all the stuff that does go right and there's just so much of it um she is a tireless advocate for the county um and we are just so lucky that we had her for so long um you don't know how hard she i got to see how hard she works i see how many hours how many weekends how much time she spent caring about this county and caring about the institution um so i think it's uh the sad day for us but i think it's a great great day to recognize paya levine and say thank you good afternoon uh susanne say with the housing section and planning and i just want to echo the comments that have been made here today and say how much um we are going to miss paya it's been really great working for her um she did come into the position she has now at an incredibly difficult time i personally can't imagine having to juggle everything that she juggled and all the crises you know with the pandemic the fires having you know uh department retirements and all of that uh it's just mind boggling to me that she was able to pull that off without having you know a nervous breakdown i think it's um amazing and i i don't know if you know folks outside our department can really fully understand and appreciate how much expertise she has and her depth of knowledge in her fields um and what an incredible uh loss this will be but i i totally wish her the very best in her retirement and we're very happy to congratulate her today on her retirement thank you i know would you like to say a few words we've had a lot of discussions about um my retirement in the department and they usually end up in a lot of tears around the table so um i've had to write down my remarks um thank you everybody for your kind words um i don't trust my memory enough to recognize everybody who's been important along the way but um firstly i'm so grateful for the opportunity to have done meaningful public service in my adopted home community for so long and um to work in so many different roles over time my career here has been very many things but it has never ever been boring i started here in the previous millennium um by a somewhat random event i filled out an interest form at which the personnel department was the personnel department was recruiting at a professional meeting i was at and i filled out an interest form mostly to encourage the young gal who was sitting at the table because she wasn't getting very much traffic and the next thing i know i'm a watershed analyst and gradient specter in the planning department that evolved quickly into practicing geology which is my actual specialty just in time for the magnitude seven earthquake and once i and all of us recovered from that i joined the ranks of the california sequa nerds and finally i shifted to the built environment and to administration my gratitude extends to so many people my colleagues staff mentors advisors of all stripes clients the technical community in this town our customers commissioners and the board members i can't hope to mention you all but if you're in this room you've influenced my career in a positive way and i thank you all um a few particular shout outs firstly um thank you to my family for sharing me with my job and so phi robert teresa jeff terry and diego diego thank you for being here this afternoon thank you to the staff of planning you will not find a more dedicated and creative group of people anywhere and i think it was daniel who said so much goes on behind the scenes that um their effort and their talent is i think vastly underappreciated and they are the reason i was able to do any problem solving at all so um thank you so much to the staff you know in particular the way the staff responds to challenge is with teamwork and professionalism um and really it's it's just extraordinary what this group of people can do at the end of the day for me it's the teamwork that i value and my idea of a good time is spending the day in a room of other people solving problems so it's it's been a good match in that way the current team of managers i've been privileged to work with is an outstanding group of leaders and friends stefanie hanson and carol and berk amy will banks and jocelyn drake matt johnston and marty heaney susan you say lasan jeffs and julie newbold they are all heart as well as professionalism and including also our counsel daniels asweta the generosity within that group is really just it's been wonderful to be a part of many thanks to my mentors and advisors among them kathy maloy who was our previous director she saw where the best fit for me would be when i could not see it myself and as usual she was absolutely right thank you to the ceo office and particularly um melody sonino she taught herself land use and has been a fantastic support especially in the last 10 months um i think being a great mentor is part of your passion for organizational development but it also reflects that you're just a very generous person thank you to the rest of the ceo team um i value my new relationships with elisa and david thank you to all the county council staff especially to jason he's been a reliable and smart sounding board and i hope friend thank you to carlos for giving me the most recent opportunity to matt michado for carrying on the planning and environmental principles of our county into the new community development and infrastructure department and lastly i would like to thank each of the board members for having confidence in me for the times that we were thought partners on how to accomplish your goals for the community and for your revived investment in the community planning professionally speaking i grew up here and i will miss each of you i will look forward to the fine things that will happen in the community development and infrastructure department and my very best to each of you going forward i now um can have my nervous breakdown on a weekday if i can just get a motion to approve this proclamation i'll move the recommended actions second i will call out please supervisor friend hi tunerney hi apet hi mcpherson hi and conan hi this item passes unanimously we'll now proceed to item 17 to consider authorizing the issuance of proclamations honoring larry bigham jerry christensen and john minzloff to be signed by all members of the board and for this item we have our public defender heather rogers nope sorry if she's on zoom uh who knows these three better than anyone are there i believe you have your microphone wonderful thank you so much can you hear me okay we can wonderful i want to start by saying congratulations larry jerry and john you did it you set out to create a public defense firm that fought for the rights of the underrepresented seamlessly defended them and turned out aggressive committed skilled public defenders for over 45 years you have done just that there is not a defense attorney in this county who has not been touched by your life's work we proudly follow in your footsteps honored to be a part of the family you've created a tribe of attorneys investigators and administrative staff who followed you down this difficult path taking up your calling to stand up for the accused i can honestly say that each of you dramatically changed the course of my life when i took a law clerk internship at bcm in 2003 during the final semester of my final year in law school i thought i wanted to be an environmental law attorney and within a few weeks i knew that i would never handle another clean water case i was completely and hopelessly in love with this work i shared a windowless office in annex two with mandy tovar across the hall from lisa mckay me i wrote my first 995 from mark garver that's chance with my brilliant supervisor i think we were running dots at the time on this big clunky computer with a tower but none of that mattered the team at bcm were brilliant vibrant fun social justice warriors with big ideas big hearts and a relentless passion for justice and you three led that team larry with a story saying or quote for every situation always up to jam on a case full of advice very calm under pressure there for us when we needed a cool headed assessment and the straight truth about a situation never pulling punches don the thinker brilliant and intuitive the human supercomputer of information about every one and everything in santa cruz county every law in every case is a knack for getting to the heart of the matter i knew right away that i was going to do whatever it took to join you in this fight and here we are i am humbled and honored and happy to keep walking this path with the bcm team continuing your life's work which is also ours when you're in italy walking on the beach playing with your grandchildren gardening and listening to jazz think of us we'll be sitting around that big round wooden table that in a few weeks will move from the library at bcm to the library at our new office and we'll be talking about our cases wondering how to handle something and somebody will remember the sign above the copier if you're not making dust you're eating it we'll know exactly what to do thank you would anyone else like to say a few words yeah mr sure i'd like to add in some words it's it it's nice to be on the other side so that i'm not just listening to larry jerry john talk to me right guys like these are these these three amazing people are people that i've known for a long time similar to carol i first encountered them when i worked at the police department and let me say something about their character um it says a lot about people when you can be on the other side of them on an issue and you absolutely respect every single thing that they're saying and know that what they're bringing to the table is clear honest and a perspective that's worthy of listening to and i've always felt that way about them and uh and i think the entire community did and for that matter at the time in law enforcement all law enforcement felt that way that they may not they recognized that everybody had a role but they had just such utmost respect for their for the approach that they did for the care and effort that they brought to those that needed adequate defenses in our community and just the intellect that they brought and it was it says a lot that they they did it for so long and and we're such a trusted source i've had the privilege personally of also getting to know them not just professionally a great fortune of of having them actually live in my district two of them anyway and uh you know this is this transition to the public side is the right thing but it wouldn't have been able to happen without the culture that they created within that agency to help develop internal talent and uh the work that they did to adequately represent the indigent and others within our community so just a deep amount of respect for you that this is what you chose and also let me say this too that a lot of attorneys go the corporate way in order to make a lot more money and some of them don't have a choice because of law school debt and other reasons but you know you chose the hard road you chose making sure that somebody's constitutional rights were protected and that they had a very strong voice in our local justice and system and you know that says a lot about who you are all three of you so i just wanted to uh to send that respect over and looking forward to seeing you in a personal capacity in your retirement yeah uh i'll just add in that um one i hope this doesn't mean that i won't see you guys wandering around downtown looking for a good lunch spot downtown economy needs uh needs your business but um appreciation for your passion and commitment and also your willingness to engage in um in moving upstream and helping people avoid the criminal justice system and finding alternatives uh to incarceration and alternative programs that that involved accountability but and treatment um and uh and created an option for people uh to get to do better and for our community to see less impacts and i appreciate that and um over the many years i've had uh larry come to my class a bunch of times and every time uh it was an inspiring um lecture on what it means to do justice in our system and why his job uh and the job of his firm matters um to people uh to all of us not just those accused um and so i'm grateful for your service to our community uh and i do wish you all the best in all these other endeavors but um you've all been just outstanding advocates and people and leaders in our community please it's been a while before i've appeared before this august body it's nice to see a real old friend there that has the staying power that the group that we're honoring um here today had my name is bill kelsey i was retired i'm a retired judge i was an active judge full time for 38 years mostly here but often everywhere else in the state of california and i had an occasion to observe public defenders because of course guess who has the most knowledge about the performance of lawyers that appear before them it's the judges and i had occasion to see different kinds of public defender offices the the type that we're structuring now which is fine a private firm like these fine gentlemen have had all these years as well as even an elected public defender in all those years because it's not easy for anybody but somebody in the system to judge a public defender i mean after all they don't pick their clients they don't pick their witnesses they really don't have regular hours they're often overworked and so it's only the judge that gets to see them on a daily basis observe their demeanor their character their proficiency their initiative and i have to tell you this private law firm from my experience is the most remarkable public defender's office i ever saw it was amazing to me as a judge to see for almost 47 years this high level of proficiency this high level of ability lawyers that who were always well trained and they were well trained by these remarkable men and i just have to tell you and i know harry brower will disagree with me but in 19 what was it 75 i wasn't even a judge then it took two years later he got together with some of his colleagues the county administrative office and basically directed in his fashion that these men be appointed the public defender and i find it the most remarkable accomplishment there's only one person whose accomplishment could perhaps come close to meeting it and of course that's bruce he's been outstanding all these years in public service but these men had done something quite remarkable because it has simply been consistently the best office i've ever seen thank you very much jelsie is always a hard act to follow my name is craig haney i'm a psychology professor at uc santa cruise and i've known these three gentlemen for the better part of the last five decades we were only three years old when we met i came here about 40 plus years ago to take a job as a assistant professor at uc santa cruise i was fresh out of graduate school and law school and at that time it was fashionable to be critical of public defender's offices they were characterized as overworked and underfunded as eager to plea bargain their defendants in cases where they shouldn't plea bargain and assembly line justice was the term that was often applied to them and even before i got here i had seen some of those assembly line justice public defender offices and consultations that i had done in different parts of the country newark philadelphia los angeles even and so when i came to santa cruise i expected to see much the same thing and um early in my tenure at uc santa cruise almost the first year i was here i was invited to come up to their office and i was shocked to see something entirely different the complete opposite of the stereotype of a public defender's office even in those early days they were totally and completely committed to their clients they were committed to defending their clients at all costs no matter what energy it took no matter what toll it took on them as lawyers no stone unturned was the motto and it was a motto that they applied to all of the cases small and large it wasn't just commitment it was also sophistication so i watched them develop remarkably effective techniques trial practice techniques that weren't really being used anywhere else i still consulted with public defender's offices across the country so i can endorse what judge calcy has just said which is i've never encountered a public defender's office any better and rarely found one that could match them um early in the 1980s santa cruise had a number of high-profile capital cases and the public defender's office handled them and in those cases they perfected techniques that are still being used today i was at a death penalty training seminar just a week ago in baltimore for death penalty lawyers from across the country and they were teaching as best practices the practices that the santa cruise county public defender's office developed in the early 1980s they're still using them and as you heard judge calcy say there are many many lawyers who got their start in this office and have taken that commitment to justice the social justice warrior ethos that they instill and the techniques that they taught taken them out of the office and into the community and we in the community are the beneficiaries of their training and some of those lawyers are not just in santa cruise but they're across the country the other thing that they've done and i suspect few people in the community know it but i know it very personally is they had mentored hundreds of undergraduates from ucsc over the 47 years that they've been in practice so why in other ucsc faculty members in the legal studies and politics and psychology department send that law office undergraduate students who work in a variety of capacities learning how the law operates learning what it looks like and feels like learning the commitment to justice that is so much a part of what they do in that office many of those undergraduate interns have gone on to law school themselves and they're practicing law not just in california but across the country i run into them at conferences and they say i took your class you advised me to go to the public defender's office it opened my eyes i went to law school i became a lawyer i'm a public defender now myself one of those people is my own daughter um my daughter erin graduated from ucsc she wasn't sure what she wanted to do she got a job in the public defender's office and they instilled in her that commitment to justice she went to law school she became a public defender in san francisco herself she's now the national legal director for uh the reform alliance it's a criminal justice reform organization run by van jones and others and she's often said to me that that the spark to do that kind of work was instilled in her in that office so a while ago i asked her well what erin what was it you learned there what was it that really put you on this path she paused for a minute and she said courage and i asked her to elaborate and she said well courage the courage to stand up in any room and do the right thing no matter the odds against you and she said they taught me that there and i said to her i thought i told you that and they said well you did that but they taught me how to do it in the courtroom and that's that's the kind of ethos that is um it's it's hard to put a label on it that kind of commitment to social justice is hard to define it's hard to quantify but that's what these men in that office have been doing for the last 47 years so on behalf of the thousands of people whose liberty you've protected and the scores of lawyers you've trained and the hundreds of undergraduates at uc santa cruise that you've mentored and instilled that ethos and i want to thank you you three men are retiring as legends not just in this town but in the defense community at large thank you i need to get the carrots before larry before you get up i just have to say if you know larry i'm up here bruce uh you know we who stole high bruise yeah you know we politicians have to say something about you you can't say anything better than those last two speakers uh the quality of what we have had here in santa cruise county that who have serve with the utmost the highest grade of professionalism devotion and dedication for you know a relentless passion for justice that's what they are about they are really the best you could ever get and they have been through some trials and defense situations that have reached national attention certainly statewide attention and they are just the the best of the group as with men said when you compare to what other judges and the professors have seen these three are the top of the ring and i i i don't know uh john and larry as well as i do jerry because jerry and i go back way back uh when we were putting league all stars and uh we lost two to nothing to lemesa or we would have gone to the world series and uh you know if we could have each hit a home run we would have won how jerry yeah right that he if he wouldn't have been an attorney he would have been a professional baseball player but uh you know i have um i am again when you talk about public defender i think some many of us have been in that conversation with gosh how difficult would that be to do that you know really and to do it with the integrity that you have and have displayed that is as we have learned nation what you recognize nationally uh certainly statewide uh it is just a classy classy office that you have been part of and led you have a great team of people with you and uh they're they're just fortunate to have worked under you but thank you for your service and really for uh your your relentless passion for justice much appreciated thank you everyone um perler and else per rest with assembly member mark stone and my colleague jonathan engelman with state senator john layered's office okay so we just wanted to um on behalf of assembly members mark stone robert revas and senator john layered we wanted to present the following resolutions to um larry bigum john minzloff and jaryl christensen for all your hard work for our community and i actually wanted to add that um during 2020 it was actually an investigative intern and growing up i've always loved and um i knew wanted to be an attorney but after completing this internship it just really solidified my love um for this issue and uh i cannot um follow up with all these stories but just goes to show how incredible the work you guys have all done for our county because all these people are out here with all these amazing stories for you in 47 years is just truly incredible to think about and you know one of the pillars of our country is the rights legal counsel regardless of socioeconomic status so to do that is a truly righteous inspiring and on behalf of state senator john layered assembly member mark stone and assembly member robert revas we're just incredibly thankful for all the work that you've all done and we have these resolutions for you from the state legislature the mic turn yes it's your turn go ahead thank you for all the kind remarks we have fought the good fight we have finished the course we have kept the faith and it's time to pass the baton i am blessed to have had a long career in a profession with such profound purpose representing people's liberty is both an honor and a serious responsibility 50 years nearly 50 years as a public defender is a very long time in what is an often competitive and occasionally contentious profession and i'm grateful to many people who made it happen first of all i want to thank the people who hired me initially gary britain and jim jackson from britain and jackson the firm that had the contract for indigent defense services before i and my partners got it um they hired me in 1972 i'm a new i don't think you were even born and this is in the midst of the um the mass murder trials which i know you remember bruce mullins kemper and frazier the office was small it was overworked life was hectic but with their encouragement and their support i tried some serious cases at a very young age and i matured professionally and i'm very grateful that they hired me back in the day i want to thank the judges because we've been in the business that long in large part because of their support the judges at the end of the day understand the value of healthy checks and balances in our system to ensure reliable and legal outcomes so i'm very grateful for the judges support throughout the years and i have to give a special shout out to harry brower who didn't allow me to board in 1975 pretty effectively to appoint our firm to get the contract i'm grateful for all the bcm lawyers and alumni who are strong and courageous our investigators now and in the past and our staff and all those ucsc students who've done such a good job and have kept their sense of humor and sanity through some very stressful times in the office and they have made this work really rewarding for me personally and for the clients as well and the community i'm grateful to our court and justice partners who respect our role and with whom we find common ground to try to make the system more resilient more effective and more fair and many of them are in the court in this room right now and i want to say thank you for all your cooperation it's not always an adversarial system i'm grateful for the support of the county administrative office and their staff throughout the years and the many supervisors who have channeled or reflected the values of our community and have financed our community community support for common sense constitutional principles like equal justice and due process and fundamental fairness it's because of your support over the years that we were able to do our work and improve our staff increase our staff and meet the challenges in the community finally thank you for your trust thank you for your support it's been a great ride um it it has a good future you've got the right person leading it our own heather rogers who's been with us for 10 years she's a strong lawyer and she understands our mission and that's really important here so i'm grateful that you selected heather and i look forward to the future in the new office thank you very much thank you all for your kind remarks and to the board for your proclamation uh my one of my heroes is of course william shakespeare and uh on his behalf brevity is the soul of wit so i'll make this short and i'll have jerry come up and make some further remarks after i'm done but 47 years is a heck of a long time and it's gone by awfully quickly what i'm most proud of oh going says 47 years is the fact that three of us our office our staff on a daily basis every one of those days we've collectively breathed life into the sixth amendment of the constitution our lawyers have represented our clients diligently effectively energetically and competently for 47 years and we're damn proud of that thank you all very much i'm going to change the tone in a tiny bit here um and uh basically uh let everyone here in the room and on a uh a secret you say secret uh and maybe not so secret a secret and that is being a public defender isn't always popular and that may be an understatement in fact i'm certain that's an understatement because and we've all heard it and bruce commented briefly on it earlier we've all heard the refrains but they've represent such yucky people they how can they defend someone who's that guilty and it's a fact of life essentially a fact of life and so i think it's worthy of reflection to contemplate those 47 years as public defenders because 47 years is a long damn time in a interesting and controversial area and so i reflect on it and i've reflected on this question is how in the heck did they last this long okay how did they survive how are they still standing and i think the answer to that really lies in a uh a beatles song believe it or not okay and i'll spare everyone and everyone's ears and i will not sing any of that song but i think the real answer is we got by with little help from our friends and in our instance it actually wasn't a little help from our friends it was a lot of help from our friends and it begins with ceo's office and the board of supervisors who have always strongly believed in looking out for the disadvantaged and believed in us in regard to carrying out that duty to the disadvantage and supported us and honestly without the money you can't do this type of thing and so thank you thank you in regard to that this and previous boards and ceo's number two the judges many of whom are here today will become as much friends as colleagues and i want to thank them also because what they have done for us other than supporting us which they have surely done very very strongly but they didn't give us blind support no one should have blind support they put us to the task they essentially monitored our performance they were the ones who made sure that we did what we said we would do which was vigorously represent those who cannot look out for themselves and so that accountability to the judges was exceptionally important and once we established that they could not have been any more supportive than they have been number three i want to thank the district attorneys and you just say come on jaren you're going a little a little far here you bitch about them all the time and they bitch about you all the time and that's true it's part of a competitive environment there are institutional adversaries but i will tell you this and i'm not a lot of people know this and thanks for the little league comment i'll appreciate that forever bruce but in my background my first job was actually in one of the most magical i really have to say magical da's office that has ever been local legends multiplied within there Peter Chang, Chris Padel, Bill Kelsey who was here earlier today, Art Danner, John Fry, John Bohr what a group and it's remained with me all those years in regard to what a special thing that was now of course a long time ago i switched over to the defense side and i love it love it love it and always have but i still want to thank the da's not just from my previous experience it's because they challenge us and as part of that challenge how people react to a challenge says everything because it makes you stand up it makes you stand up for that client and you know what it makes you a better lawyer for the people that we represent and so a real strong thank you to the district attorneys in fact a former district attorney who is no longer with us Art Danner made me a much better lawyer from the fact of basically bumping chests in a courtroom multiple times for a long amount of time made me a better lawyer number four i want to i want to thank and acknowledge my two partners phenomenal lawyers phenomenally committed never never never doubting the mission never and they're better human beings than they are lawyers and that's just what they are and i have been blessed to have the two of them by my side throughout this entire time period and finally and probably maybe the biggest shout out is to and there are a lot of them here the people who've done this public defender work with us you know this is the furthest thing in the world from a three person show this is a this is something that's a creation of an amazing amount of people uh phenomenal amounts of them phenomenal amounts of courage phenomenal amounts of standing up and it just it's impossible to say enough for the public vendors and i'll say what i always say is go public defenders and that sort of segues into the fact that Heather Rogers was one of those extremely strong public defenders for 10 years she's lived within our environment she's the right person to take this into the next county office and i just want to close with the fact that we want to wish the new office and Heather the very best thank you all and thank you all for coming here today it's been amazing incredible and wonderful right thanks let me okay yeah i just wanted to say uh you look back on all these years and uh all the innocent people that you got off and maybe a few that weren't all that innocent but uh if if i was accused of a crime and i had everybody pointing their finger at me and saying i'm guilty but i knew i was innocent you're the guys that i would want to have in my corner and uh that's uh that's what makes actually our country so strong that even for somebody maybe doesn't have any money or they don't have any uh you know political clout uh there's people like yourselves that will stand up for them and fight and win so thank you and a real quick question i don't know if you know a ballpark figure of how many clients you've had throughout the 47 years uh is it a thousand is it more you know yeah i think first of all Greg i've represented worse than you we can handle it but uh why don't you multiply 47 times 6 000 and you'll get to a ballpark is that right yeah i don't know what that is but that's a that's a ballpark okay wow it'd be 282 000 you did it okay wow all right well can i get a motion to approve these proclamations i'll slick it motion by supervisor mcpherson second by supervisor cap it made it for the discussion seeing none clerk will call out please supervisor coonerty hi cap it hi mcpherson and conic hi seven passes with the tenants mackayla calling from santa cruz oral surgery this message is for i'm good very much appreciate it we're all these flies down here uh we we do have one last item of business so if you wouldn't mind taking the celebration out into the hall yes right All right, we'll now proceed with item 12 to consider approving and concept and ordinance amending subdivision A of section 2.02.060 of the Santa Cruz County Code relating to the compensation of the Board of Supervisors and schedule the ordinance for final adoption on June 28th, 2022 as outlined in the memorandum of the Personnel Director and County Administrative Officer. For a report on this item, we have our Personnel Director, Jeeta Patel. Good afternoon, Chair Koenig and members of the Board. The item before you today is to consider ordinance changes to increase Board compensation. Pursuant to county code, you may consider increases annually each June. Salary adjustments are tied to those of Superior Court Judges, which are set by the California Judicial Council. Board salary shall be no greater than 62% of the judge's salary. Based on the 2021 data, which is detailed in the Board letter, staff recommends that you maintain the 62% alignment, which results in a 3.6% salary increase effective August 2022. Your Board's last increase was in September 2020. Happy to answer any questions you may have regarding staff recommendation. Thank you. Any questions or comments from members of the Board? I'll make a comment. I just like the way we do it now. It was always to me a little embarrassing. And then when people would, people would say we gave the impression that we're the only ones that could vote on our own pay raise, right? So I know in ethics, they say watch out, do things right, but also watch out for the things that can have an impression of not doing the right thing. And I always felt that it was on the borderline. So it's our board that changed it. And I guess you remember going back to Bruce when we always had to go and do that. So anyway, it's a much, much better process. And anyway, I appreciate it. Yeah, I just want to get this over with you. But historically, I've been in the state or here, I've not accepted pay raise until the next election. But I think we have a policy here that is the right one. And I just, and I'm not trying to put this or be holier than now, but my intention is to give the pay raise to the human health and services, fire departments, libraries, parks, whatever it might be. And I do think the board should be commended to under this situation about taking the 10% pay cut when others were taking less than that. That's not to say that we're greater than somebody else, but we're sensitive to this. And I just wanted to mention that. I just say the same thing. When we took the 10% pay cut, I believe Carlos did too. And the county council also. And I'm very proud of how we were trying to deal with a crisis that we never really saw before, and hopefully we'll never see again. All right. Thank you. There's no further questions or comments. Is there anyone from the public that wishes to address us on this item? We have no speakers for this item on Zoom. All right. And I'll return to board for action. I'll move the recommended actions. Look at the motion by Supervisor Coonerty, seconded by Supervisor Caput. Any further discussion? Seeing none. Clerk roll call vote, please. Supervisor Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Koenig. Aye. That item passes with attendance. That concludes our regular agenda. We will go into closed session now. We'll take a 10-minute break and convene closed session at, actually, maybe, yeah, 340. Is there any reportable actions we'll come out of closed session? Nothing reportable today. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.