 Good morning. Good morning. It is September 14th, 2021. Welcome to the Santa Cruz County 9 a.m. Welcome to the Santa Cruz County Board of Services regular meeting. Clerk, please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Here. Friend. Friend. Here. Coonerty. Coonerty. Here. Tappet. Tappet. Yeah. McPherson. Here. Thank you. Have a quorum. Thank you. We'll now have a moment of silence and record the Pledge of Allegiance. Is there anyone that wants to mention anything? We'll have the Pledge of Allegiance. By and by the United States of America. We'll have consideration of late additions to the agenda, additions and deletions to be consent and regular agendas. Yes. Let me go through the corrections first on consent agenda number 21. Staff requests this item to be deleted. Packet pages 168, 169. There's an addenda to the consent agenda. Item 51.1 Adopt an ordinance amending Chapter 7.130 of the Santa Cruz County Code relating to cannabis dispensary, citing criteria, setback waivers. There's a board memo printout attached. In addition to an unwritten correspondence, there's a correction. The item should read letter of Ian Larkin, unit chief Cal Fire, Santa Cruz unit convene copy of a notice of intent to harvest timber slash domestic water supply inquiry issued by the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. In addition, there is a late addition request. This is under item three to consent consider addition of late item to the regular agenda relating to Senate Bill 496, 496 as outlined to them in the memorandum of the County Administrative Officer. Consider authorizing the chair of the board to sign a letter on behalf of the board of supervisor urging Governor Gavin Newsome to sign Senate Bill 496, which would specify that the Department of Water Resources may provide up to 100% of local subvention funds for the Pajaro Valley Flood Control Project as outlined in the memorandum of the County Administrative Officer. That item will require a fourth bits vote of the board to add to the agenda. So if you could go ahead and proceed with that, that authorization and then we'll add it to the agenda. I'd like to bring that item to the board. Mr. Friend, you're chair of the Zone 7. This is a real critical thing. We appreciate Senator Laird in Sacramento putting this forward. Do you want to just make a brief comment about it? Yeah, I could just make a brief comment about you're talking about the Senate Bill funding, correct, Mr. Chair? Correct. Yes. I mean, I can't I can't stress enough how close we are to the finish line and the state is helping us pull over the goal line. As you know, we were able to get reauthorized this entire program a couple of years ago on the federal side and some initial funding. But this right now, there's a maximum of a 70% state investment in the local cost share. This allows the state to go up to 100%, which is pretty significant when you're dealing with two federally disadvantaged communities, both in Watsonville and the town of Pajaro. Obviously, we're very grateful not just to Senator Laird, but also Assemblymember Rivas and Stone to help carry this through. You know, it passed unanimously, both in the Assembly and the Senate, so we're hopeful that we can get this all the way through. But but as you know, very well, Mr. Chair, having served there to have this kind of funding coming forward in potentially it could mean about 40 additional million dollars to our community for specifically for flood protection in the Pajaro region. I'd like to make just one suggestion. It's to request me as board chair to write this, but Mr. Friend, Supervisor Friend has been chair of his own seven and been instrumental in getting this to where it is, along with Supervisor Caput, but I would like to have him sign it as well. Okay, I would entertain a motion to send a letter to the governor. So this is to add it to the consent agenda. Add it to this consent agenda. Okay, we'll just add it to the consent agenda and I'll move to add this item to the consent agenda. Second. I'll move second. All approve. Do you want to call the world, please? Supervisor Koenig? Aye. Friend? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. Appet? Aye. McPherson? Aye. Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. Great work by everybody on that. That is so critical for the South County. Yeah, I want to, if I could, real quick, want to thank Supervisor Caput for his leadership in the past few years. And this is a truly something to celebrate. Thank you very much. We have any announcement of our board members of items removed? Agenda? Yes. Seeing none, we'll move on to public comments. Ms. Cabrera, do you want to make an explanation, please? It's time for public comment. If you wish to comment or join us through the Zoom link, please find the hand icon at the bottom of your screen and click this to raise your hand. This will place you in the queue to speak when it is your turn. I will call you by your name and you'll see a pop-up on your screen. Ask if you want to accept the mute. Please accept this and start speaking. If you're calling from a phone, please dial star nine now. This will virtually raise your hand and place you in the queue. I'll call you by the last four digits of your phone number. At the end of your two minutes, your microphone will be muted automatically. Please press star six to meet yourself when it's your turn to speak. Ahora es el tiempo que la Junta Directiva de Supervisores recibirá comentarios del público. Si gustaría dar su comentario en español, tenemos un servicio de traducción disponible para asistir. Si desea comentar y ser unido a través de Zoom, busque el icono de la mano en el fondo de la pantalla y hazle click para dar la mano. Eso lo colocará en la fila para hablar. Cuando sea tu turno de hablar, te llamaré por tu nombre y verás una ventana emergente en tu pantalla preguntándose si quieres activar tu micrófono. Por favor, accepte y comienza a hablar. Si se ha unido a través de teléfono, por favor, marque estrella nueve para levantar la mano y estar colocado en las filas de hablar. Cuando sea tu turno de hablar, te llamaré por los últimos cuatro digits de tu número de teléfono. Por favor, marque estrella seis para activar tu micrófono cuando sea tu turno de hablar. Al fin de tus dos minutos, el micrófono será desactivado automáticamente. Thank you. Any person may address the board once during the public comment, not exceeding two minutes. Comments must be directed to items on today's consent and closed agenda session agendas and yet to be heard items on the regular agenda or on a topic not on today's agenda, but within the board's jurisdiction. We'll take comments now up to 30 minutes. If necessary, add additional time comments after the afternoon session. We have a scheduled item at one thirty. Please. Good morning. And thank you, board members, for the opportunity to speak to you today. I especially want to thank supervisor McPherson and Capit for proclaiming September as suicide prevention Awareness Month in Santa Cruz County. My name is Gail Pellerin. I'm from Santa Cruz and I'm here once again to talk to you and members of the public on a topic that is profoundly personal to me and my children, Jacob and Emily. Suicide was not a topic. I spent much time thinking or talking about before November 19th, 2018. Never gets easy. When my husband, Tom, the father of our two children, died by suicide. The past one thousand and thirty days, my daughter's been counting them. I've learned a lot about suicide and about grief. And I've met many amazing people who have been impacted by suicide. And I motivated to speak openly and publicly because there's a stigma associated with suicide that has got to end. Early in the grieving process, I went to a talk on suicide and the speaker encouraged us to put our grief to work. That really resonated with me. So I joined a suicide survivors group called Wings. I reached out to our behavioral health director Eric Ray era and suggested that suicide hotline posters be put up in our county bathrooms. And I believe they're working on that. I participated in the American Foundation for suicide prevention out of the darkness, suicide prevention walk in San Francisco, where my family and I walked 18 miles through the dead of night in an effort to raise. Oh, can I get more time? Okay, participate in the American to raise money and awareness for suicide. I started a Facebook group called Suicide Survivors Santa Cruz County. And I recently joined our National Alliance on Mental Illness Board NAMI, which is an incredible organization providing education support to families and people in need. There are so many organizations and people who are on the front lines of this battle that many still refuse to discuss in public. I know how difficult it is to talk about suicide and mental illness. Actually, I prefer to call it mental conditions. In the beginning, it was very hard for me. But now as my friends and family can attest, I do it often. The reality is every one of us, each of you board members, everyone hearing my words has struggled, has felt hopeless, has been depressed, especially during the last 18 months. Yet many of us silently fight our battles in silence. I no longer use the word committed suicide, you commit crimes. You do not commit an illness. You would not say someone committed cancer. Instead, I say died by suicide or took their own life. I also do not believe suicide is a selfish or cowardice act. Suicide is possible when someone is in a very dark, painful, hopeless place, and they lose their fair death. The statistics are daunting. Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States. It is the second leading cause of death for 10 to 24 year old Americans. There is one death by suicide in the US every 11 minutes. There's been one since we've been here, or 130 suicides per day. 47,511 people died by suicide across the United States in 2019. That's almost three times the number of homicides. In 2019, 1.38 million people attempted suicide. Firearms are the most common method of death by suicide. And in Santa Cruz County, the suicide rate is 16.4 per 100,000 residents compared to 10.7 statewide. Suicide does not discriminate. It impacts all people of all ages, genders, race, ethnicity, incomes and sexual orientations. But suicide numbers are higher for white males, active military and veterans, and LGBTQ youth and transgender adults. Depression is the leading cause of suicide. However, 80 to 90% of people who seek treatment for depression are treated successfully using therapy or medication. So we need to talk about mental health a lot more and make sure people have access to treatment. I've learned a lot about grief over these last 33 months. Brief is not something you get over. It's something you learn to live with. You see when a loved one dies by suicide, a parent, a child, a spouse, a sibling, a family member, a co worker, a friend. There's a sudden and unexpected hole in your life that leaves you in shock. When someone else kills your loved one, you can direct your anger and pain at that perpetrator. But when it is the person you love that is responsible party for their own life, taking much too soon, there's confusion, profound sadness and loss on how to deal with your emotions. Sometimes friends and family think it's time to get over it, time to move on. They don't like to say his name. But my children and I need to talk about Tom. We need to remember his smile, his sometimes annoying behaviors, his love for history and physical activity and his love for us. You see with suicide, there is no moving on from grief. You simply pick it up and carry it with you. And for me, I have been inspired to put my grief to work. And that's why I'm here today. So what do I want to achieve? I want us all to recognize that suicide is a public health crisis. I would like the county to provide suicide prevention training for our county employees. I urge schools to make sure parents have information about suicide prevention. And I encourage parents to talk to their children often about their mental health. I hope all of us, no matter what line of work we do, will take some time to talk to our coworkers, students or clients about suicide awareness and prevention. I want everyone who is listening to accept that we all have a role in preventing suicide. Learn the warning signs, ask the difficult questions, and let family friends and neighbors know they are not alone. Let me expand on this a bit. When someone you know talks about wanting to die, or talks about feeling hopeless or having no purpose, or feeling trapped or being in an unbearable pain, or talks about being a burden to others, or you see someone increasing the use of alcohol or drugs acting anxious or reckless, sleeps too little or too much, withdraws or displays dramatic mood swings, please reach out. Talk to them. Listen, you don't have to be an expert. And it might feel really uncomfortable. Let them know that help is available. Tell them what they are experiencing is treatable and that suicide feelings are temporary. Suicide is final. In closing, I want anyone who is thinking about suicide to know that your life matters. Your family and friends will not be better off without you. Please reach out for help by calling the hotline at 1-800-273- TALK or text to 741-741. And I just have to say if you haven't voted yet, please get out and vote today. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much for your courage and your explanation. Very well received input. I'm sorry to hear about your situation and so many others. We need to do what we can to help others in this. Thank you. Good morning. My name is James Ewing Whitman. I really appreciate what the previous community member stated. I've been a first responder for two suicides in my life. And I've personally helped three others cannot kill themselves as a first responder. I can say that my first experience with law enforcement is they kept me on the phone until law enforcement could physically see me. I think that it was beautiful and it helped me mitigate that situation that first happened in my life when I was 21. I'm now 54. It would be delightful if I would get the same respect to say what I need to say. Thank you. This is an excerpt on page 25 from a bio mag healer training that I took in early in late March of this year. Warriors are not what you think of as warriors. The warrior is not someone who fights because no one has the right to take another life. The warrior for us is one who sacrifices themselves for the good of others. Their task is to care for the elderly, the defenseless, those who cannot provide for themselves. And above all, the children, the future of humanity. I was said to be a set of from chief sitting bowl. Since I'm going to run out of time. I wrote something this morning. I'm not going to do the first page. I'm going to go to this middle of the second page. Now I'm going to get personal and real and mean and raw. The absolute violence of this board of supervisors in Santa Cruz over the last 50 years, but specifically when the seeds project at Denja 21 agenda 2030 was adopted into law in 1997 and the community foundation of Santa Cruz matches observations written and physically created in the Georgia's guide stones in 1980. All real wealth in any social order. And in its reverence for the natural magneto biologic leadership skills and children and its care to represent their parents, grandparents and great grandparents. Wolves and velociraptors family orders could each forgive and parisunder these 12 million individuals where the rest of humanity out numbers them 625 to one. Thank you. Thank you for completing your comment. No person speak for several minutes. Can I understand that? And I'm going to rest. Hello. The hydro turf needs to be reapplied to the to the burn scar in the Santa Cruz mountains. My name is Marcia St. Clair. I'm 71 years old and immunocompromised in the year since my house burned. I've moved eight times. I currently live in a tent with my husband, dog, cat and two gopher snakes. The snakes were uninvited. I also live at the Brookdale Lodge where my husband tries to manage a multinational company when there's electricity. I've given up my personal medical devices because there are large clouds of billiless round spoil blowing everywhere. And it's too hard for me to sterilize them because I have to start a generator to get water. And then I have to boil it on a butane stove. I take cold showers and drink bitter coffee, but not as bitter as the taste I have in my mouth toward my own county government or their systemic ignorance of the cruelty that the planning department in there in as much as they try have been unable to overcome. We need to have the erosion and control reapplied to those areas that since it's been over a year now that where the soil is blowing around. Also, I could use a case of water. Thank you. Yeah. Good morning. My name's Brenda Brenner and I'm the director of the emergency medical services here in the county. I'm here as county staff to the Emergency Medical Care Commission to talk about item number 29, which is a contract for Z consulting that contract will provide for an assessment of our public safety radio infrastructure system and also provide for recommendations for needed improvements in that system. In addition to the need for the sheriff's department to have improved radio security, fire and EMS providers need to see a reduction in the gaps in the radio system within our county. That would be gaps in the ability to both receive radio traffic as well as to transmit or speak on the radios. These gaps exist because we have an incredibly beautiful but hilly terrain. That's hard to provide coverage for and also because there's a lack of enough radio towers and cell towers in our county upon which to place the radio equipment to make it possible to be able to transmit and receive everywhere. These gaps in our radio system create a hazardous situation for fire and EMS responders on a daily basis. Because of these gaps, there are times when fire and EMS cannot hear critical safety information being given to them by the dispatch center. There are times when they cannot call for help if they need it in an unsafe situation and they can't necessarily coordinate operations at a large incident such as a big fire or a disaster. In addition to the needs of the first responders, we have an additional need for cell towers to improve the ability to get emergency alerts to residents and visitors in our county for things such as emergency evacuation or shelter in place when there might be criminal activity taking place. The Emergency Medical Care Commission would like to request your support and approval of this contract as a critical first step toward resolution of the gaps in the radio system and improvements to the safety of first responders. Thank you very much. Thank you. Agreed. Good morning. My name is Sarah Steiger and I'm a resident of Ben Lomond. As you probably may know, especially Supervisor McPherson that we've had ongoing power outages for the last four days. As of this morning, Zianti was out of power, which affected 937 residents according to the PG&E report. We are really struggling with no power, not clear information from PG&E. Every time our power goes out, I call PG&E to report it. They say they're not aware of it. The automated message says that they say they'll send somebody out. I myself probably haven't been as impacted as other people I know that work from home. I have a neighbor down the street who was giving a presentation to clients in France. His call got dropped. People that are working from home are being impacted. Kids that are learning from home are being impacted. A lot of residents are low income. They don't have generators to be able to run power. No internet. Some people don't have hot water if they're on demand water system. People are losing food. They can't run fans or air conditioning and hot weather or heat and cold weather. We want to know what's going on. We want to hear from PG&E. We want to hear from you. We hope that you will have a town hall meeting a way for us to communicate our concerns and to learn more about this new technology that PG&E is using to keep our power ongoing because it seems to not be working. Thank you. Thank you. I know it's been a nightmare in San Rosa Valley Monday morning. I called PG&E to request a town hall meeting. I'm hopeful that we can have one on Thursday evening. But I haven't gotten confirmation on that yet. Thank you. Anyone else want to address this public comments? Okay. We look for. I do have speakers on. Excuse me. Carol, your microphone is available. Good morning. My name is Carol Bjorn. And I just want to encourage the board. If there's a two minute time limit on speakers, let's apply that across the board. We all have various interests that we're passionate about. And if you all are going to limit us to two minutes, it needs to be applied to everyone, not just certain people. So yesterday, in the Atlantic, there was an article released and the title of the article was our most reliable pandemic number is losing meaning. And a new study was released in this article and it said from mid January through the end of June 2021, 48% of all hospitalized COVID patients may have been admitted for another reason entirely or had only mild presentation of the disease. Researchers from Harvard Medical School, Tufts Medical Center and the Veterans Affairs Health Care System analyzed nearly 50,000 COVID hospital admissions across the country to see whether each patient required supplemental oxygen or had a blood oxygen level below 94%, which is the NIH definition of severe COVID. If either of these conditions was met, the authors classified that patient as having moderate to severe disease. Otherwise, the case was considered mild or asymptomatic. The study suggests that almost half of those hospitalized with COVID-19 were admitted for another reason entirely, or only had mild or asymptomatic cases. So I just wanted to bring that to your attention that there's been a lot of misleading information. This is just one example of that misleading information for the last 18 months. The second example of misleading information is the quote unquote Delta variant. There is no specific test for the Delta variant. And so whenever Dr. Newell goes out and talks about the Delta variant, or anyone else talks about the Delta variant, they're engaging in fraud, because there is no specific test for that. So I encourage you all the next time she speaks publicly, to ask her about that, ask her how she knows that there is a Delta variant, and then do some investigative reporting on your own to investigate that. All in user one, your microphone is available. It's a reminder to star six to unmute. Hi, this is Marilyn Garrett. And we should have equal time, everyone. I learned at a young age that democracy requires debate, investigation of various sources of information, and questioning authority. I'm going to read from a statement from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The question is whatever happened to liberalism, cognitive dissonance in the age of phasism, the amended liberal code, censorship is bad, except when it comes to vaccines, informed consent should apply to every medical product and intervention, except vaccines. America should honor her treaty obligations under the Nuremberg Code, and the ethical precepts of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, except where they impede the forced vaccinations. Every medicine should be safety tested, except vaccines. Pharma is greedy, homicidal and untrustworthy, except about vaccines. By the way, a number of antidepressants state on the readout that it causes suicidal tendencies. Number six on this list, mercury and aluminum are dangerous neurotoxins, except in vaccines. My body, my choice, except with vaccines, glyphosate and permaldehyde cause cancer, except in color 4658 your microphone is available. Hi, my name is Tim Folger. I'm a longtime resident of Watsonville. My family roots go back 150 years. And I'm speaking to agenda item number eight, the topic is a consideration of a moratorium on the cannabis ordinance and county code. I have familiarized myself with the county code. And to my careful examination numerous times. It's pretty unclear. We have a new application now, different than last month's application, that is radically different. And focusing on co licensing, which I think to use the previous speaker's characterization of democracy requires calls for careful examination of the facts and do process and careful public input. I'm interested in studying the facts. I've done that for as long as I've been a resident of the subject area. I'm right next door to the parcels in question and the application. I've been part of a very active community of neighbors for many years and study the conservation of water and by that saltwater contamination overdraft. How do we protect what we have? How does everybody get a fair shake? In this instance, we have a operation that is basically a vessel at least a tenant farmer. Their participation in the activities of the neighborhood is very different than ours. All residents have made a long term commitment by properly approving it, conserving the resources that we have around us. We have made that commitment. I need benefit. I don't have I do have seven other speakers. You have seven. There are seven other speakers. Go ahead. We are at 931. Joseph Oh, your microphone is available. Thank you very much. I hope you can hear me. I'm speaking about the recent increasingly horrible response of PG&E. Thank you very much for trying to organize a town hall. I recommend this is focused on more on the CPUC, the California Public Utility Commission overseeing PG&E. So I think it's more their responsibility for not caring, not giving a good direction. As you know, every other public utility commission overseeing a monopoly in basically any other state, any other jurisdiction cares about having good quality, power, low cost, good service, higher reliability. We get none of these things. I'm a 23 year resident here near the Summit and 17 area, Santa Cruz County. And it's about 100 times worse this last month and a half than it's been in the last 23 years I've been here. The number of power outages has been through the roof. We're getting often a few per day. They typically last 12 hours to a day and a half. Horrible long things. I highly suspect it's because they cranked up their sensitivity to have any other little little power outage from anywhere in the whole large jurisdiction to shut off everything. That's fine. And that's good. In the past, they would turn things back on when they realized it's not from the circuit. What they're doing now is keeping it off forever and ever until they physically walk or recently now using a helicopter, the hubris of the waste of time, waste of energy, waste of money of the helicopters of our time for being out of power for many days in the hypothetical possibility that in between the time that a power outage occurs in one place in the next five seconds that an align has gone down and they have to be so super careful is utterly ridiculous. It's goofy. The loss to the great payers to the citizens is so inefficient. Please let's do have a town hall. Please make sure that the California Public Utility Commission there as well, because they're the ones who are overseeing this huge mess and they're approving it unfortunately. Thank you. Okay. We'll take two more speakers. We have David Gazzak. Your microphone is available. Great. I just pressed unmute. Thank you. I live in La Selva Beach. Tim Folger, who just spoke, is my neighbor. I also support agenda item number eight calling for a moratorium on non retail cannabis licenses within a 500 foot setback. It's critical that the supervisors have this opportunity to review and examine the criteria that determine where these licenses can be issued. The moratorium will enable the supervisors to do this to evaluate and strengthen protections for children, families and residential neighborhoods in the same way that they have done for retail cannabis. Thank you for your consideration. Last speaker for this section will be Paul Lego and as a reminder that public comment will continue after the agenda has completed. My name is Paul Lego. I also live in the La Selva Beach area of Watsonville. I encourage the board to support the moratorium proposed and agenda item number eight and to support the proposed changes to the non retail cannabis ordinance to separate cultivation from residential communities by 500 feet. I'm not against cannabis. I'm not against cannabis cultivation. I support the right to farm. I oppose cannabis cultivation near residential communities, regardless of zoning. Cannabis is not just another crop. Other crops do not require security fencing and motion sensing lights every 50 feet. Other crops don't require odor control. Other crops aren't grown at night. Other crops aren't illegal in many states and at the federal level. We've lived with farms next door farming other crops like flowers and strawberries for decades successfully. Cannabis is different, as already acknowledged by the existing ordinance. When Santa Cruz County chose to drop work on the draft environmental impact reports for California Sequa, you took on legal and moral responsibility to evaluate and mitigate the environmental impacts of cannabis cultivation on a project by project basis. It's clear that there are significant and difficult or impossible to mitigate impacts of cannabis cultivation near residential communities. Those impacts are on children and other sensitive populations as well as our environment. We're legally inbound to bound to consider those impacts. I strongly encourage you to consider moratorium on just new cannabis licenses that would potentially violate the proposed setbacks of 500 feet from these residentially zoned lots. I also encourage you to consider and change the cannabis cultivation ordinance to keep cultivation separated from those lots. There are hundreds of other parcels that are still viable for cannabis cultivation. Be true to Sequa and be kind and fair. Thank you. We will go to item number six. Pardon me, Chair. We're going to go to item number six for action on the consent agenda. Any board members, Supervisor Koenig, any comments on the consent items? Yes, thank you, Chair. On item 30, approving potential locations for alert wildfire cameras and asking OR3, the Office of Response, Recovery and Resilience to provide regular reports until we get at least three more cameras installed. I just want to encourage my colleagues to review the list of potential sites for additional alert wildfire cameras and work with OR3 to help get them installed if you know constituents with good potential locations or any of the called out locations. We were able to identify some private funding in the first district for one of the locations. I think we'll be able to move quickly on at least one site. And I also just because there's a few grand jury reports that we're responding to in item 23, I want to call out that with item 30, it's actually following up on an item from last year's grand jury report, the one called ready aim fire Santa Cruz County in a hot seat that talked about fire response preparedness. And that was recommendation 23 in that report was to get more alert wildfire cameras. So I just want to assure the public that while we're not always respond to these reports immediately, they do provide a good list of recommendations that we can work with in the future. On items 40 and 45, I just want to thank public works for completing these essential repairs, both the storm damage repairs to so Cal San Jose road, which is of course the major artery in our county and the many other repairs with the R step funding and item called out an item 45. And then finally, just also want to point out item 44, we're spending a significant amount of money on design for the new transfer station or actually potentially multiple transfer stations from Buena Vista with just eight to 10 years of remaining capacity at at this county dump. You know, I think it's essential that we continue to pursue as a board waste reduction measures. That's all. Thank you. Very good. Thank you. Supervisor Friend, second district. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Supervisor Cronig for your comments on in particular on item 30. I share them very strongly about the value of these wildfire detection cameras, which was a commentary we'd had during the budget hearing with our three. I would like to obviously see some additional locations within the second district and happy to work with our three on that. I do recognize that there are also some private companies that have been partnering with PG and others. So this is a list of what we're dealing with, but they actually are some additional cameras already set up within our respective areas in both the third, first and second districts. But but I think that this is a pretty cost effective way to get some eyes in the air on early detection, which is something that should that have been able to happen in CZU. It's possible we could have had better outcomes. If nothing else, it's something that Cal Fire definitely wants to see a significant expansion of the status provided additional funding for in their most recent budget. And so I'm looking forward to that extension. I appreciate Supervisor Cronig's efforts on that as well. I'll just make a comment on whatever the new number of the item is and recording the letter to the governor. I assume it's 51.2 maybe, whatever the last item we just added to the agenda was from the consent agenda. Again, appreciation to Dr. Mark Strudley in public works for his remarkable leadership on this. I can't emphasize enough how difficult it's been to thread the needle between local state and federal government on this to get a project funded that for 60 years couldn't even get out of the feasibility stage. So we've really had to pull some some both policy and political miracles here, but we have a very can a very committed group both at the county as well as at the state and federal delegation to make this happen. And there's just so much momentum in this last state effort. If the governor if the governor can sign this bill will remove a enormous burden from two disadvantaged communities, eliminating what we estimate to be at least half of their of what we'll need to ask local voters to help fund for the opera ongoing operations and maintenance on that. So it's pretty remarkable. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Supervisor Coonerty, Third District. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. Just two brief comments. One is on I'm number 37. I want to thank the parks department for getting the Keep America Beautiful Grant and investing it up on the North Coast and an item number 42. I want to thank Public Works for working on the Swanton Road repair. It's been long overdue and it'll be a big benefit to the residents up there. Fourth District. Thank you, Chairman McPherson. Item 22 of the Redistricting Registricting process takes place really at the city, county, state and federal areas every 10 years, and it's very important when it comes to elections and representation for everybody pretty much. So the next one in South County will be in Wattonville, September 30th at 6 30 p.m. And that'll give the public a good chance to give their opinion on the whole process and how the maps are drawn for the representation in the elections coming up in the next 10 years, basically. Number 23, Grand Jury. Just want to say definitely we have to get more staffing in the Correctional Bureau, the prisons and they're understaffed and they have a lot of mandatory overtime and it's a very stressful job. So I just want to assure everyone that the board takes that very seriously and we're going to look at it coming up real quick. Thank you. Thank you. I'd like to comment on a couple items. Also on number 22, the redistricting process. I want to encourage members of the public to participate in that process by our county advisory redistrict commission. We have three meetings that will be drawing the net or Supervisorial lines for the next 10 years. They're all at 6 30 September 22nd at the sheriff community room in Live Oak. September 29 at the Felton Library and was mentioned September 30th at the Starlight Elementary School in Watsonville. On item 23 also on the Grand Jury report like to thank members of the Grand Jury for their service and thoughtful findings regarding the CCU fire complex and other topics they reviewed this past year. And item 29 that's also been mentioned about the next 10 years. I'm happy to see this move forward. As we saw during the CCU fire as our emergency responders see every day, really communication among the agency is incredibly vital. It needs to be improved and modernized and I look forward to seeing the analysis that come forward. On item number 30, I want to thank Supervisor Koenig for bringing this item forward to cameras are very useful tool and putting out the fire. I just I want to ensure that the sites considered here will be evaluated further and confirmed to be feasible by fire authorities and other experts before this item comes back to the board. So I'm not sure what this process of evaluation is, but I think it's critical. We have the fire districts involved and so make sure that that happens. I think it's probably in place, but yes, absolutely. We'll make sure that happens. Okay. And on number 45, the resurfacing projects regarding the road repair projects on today's consent agenda, the public works department is doing a phenomenal job with the funding it has really supported by a measure D that was passed by county voters in the fifth district. I can tell the residents and Alba, Bear Creek and East Siamese roads that they're thrilled and thankful for the public works department for that. With that, I would like I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as amended because we added the item. Does that be the correct way? Yes. We do still need the addition of supervisor friend signature added to 51.2, which will be the Senate bill. So we'll need the motion to include that additional direction. We need a specific motion for that. Okay. I'll add the extra direction for supervisor friend to sign a letter on SB 496 with you. Okay. Would that be a separate motion? It can be part of the same motion. Yes. I have a second. Second. Second by Koenig. Please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. He said aye. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. We'll go to our regular agenda presentation on COVID-19 response and infrastructure enhancement plan except COVID-19 epidemiology and laboratory capacity grant in the amount of 11 million 79,439 dollars from the California Department of Public Health. COVID-19 local assistant grant funds in the amount of $1,517,000 353 from the CDPH immunization branch adopt resolutions accepting unanticipated revenue in the amount of $5 million for the fiscal year 2021-22 approved addition of 11 and a half full-time equivalent positions, permanent positions, the addition of 20 full-time limited term positions through June 30th, 2024 direct the Health Services Agency to return by August 31st, 2022 with an update on the community-wide response to the COVID-19 pandemic and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the Director of Health Services. We have the list of positions, the epidemiology laboratory capacity expansion and a resolution on that expansion. We'll go to our regular agenda resolution on that expansion and I do want to say as we go into this my thanks for the staff for what I consider to be a gold standard of responses to the pandemic. This has been and continues to be an enormous challenge and I especially like to mention Mimi Hall the County's Director of Health Services she will be leaving the county in October but it's done an exemplary job in getting our community on track and staying there. We have fought this crisis as well as we can on health issues and I want to thank you for your input and your whole department and what it's done so thank you very much. Go ahead and make the presentation. Thank you so much for your kind and supportive words Supervisor McPherson it's truly truly appreciated today I do have with me both of my assistant co-assistant director Jen Herrera who is the force overseeing the COVID response on the ground in the department operation center and I'd also like to introduce Tiffany Cantrell-Warren who has joined us virtually. Tiffany comes to us most recently from the City of Long Beach Health and Human Services and Tiffany if you'd like to say a brief hello that would be great I believe she's joined us. Taking the dresser so she should be ready. Hi my name is Tiffany Cantrell-Warren I am very excited to be joining the county of Santa Cruz I actually grew up in Santa Cruz County and so I'm really happy to bring the experience that I've gained in a different community in Southern California back to help my home community and I look forward to working with each of you and with our community members to elevate health protect and promote health and wellness for the residents all residents of Santa Cruz County thank you Tiffany and we also have Dr. Gail Newell and other staff available should the board have questions after our presentation so I do want to note and again your words are so meaningful Chair McPherson the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the death of almost 700,000 Americans to date and tens of millions more Americans have been infected and the dollars that we are asking for the board to accept an appropriate today are incredibly needed to not only continue our responses but bolster them for what we anticipate will be a prolonged response effort into the foreseeable future so with that I'd like to turn the presentation over to Assistant Director Jennifer Herrera who will provide an overview of the COVID-19 response to date and the infrastructure enhancement plan as a result of the funds we request that you appropriate today thank you Director Hall and thank you board during this presentation we will cover the county's pandemic response to COVID-19 the purpose of this item is to request your board's authorization to accept an appropriate new funding for COVID-19 public health activities and request your board's approval of new positions to sustain the response we'll start by reviewing what we've accomplished a phrase I call the sprint during this time frame public health and the community sprinted to get ahead of this novel disease by building and innovating new infrastructure in partnerships next we'll review where we're going what I call the marathon the marathon is about enduring for the long haul we expect the pandemic to last for years and the impact to last for generations the work ahead will need to be energized focused and steady to sustain the response and recovery we will conclude with the recommended actions for this new phase of our pandemic response and closing remarks from HSA director Mimi Hall the county sprint to build the pandemic response was done so with these core attributes in mind what is our legal duty recognizing that partnerships are vital needing a unique infrastructure for this unique moment ensuring health equity legal duty under California code of regulations Title 17 local health departments have a unique legal responsibility to control the spread of communicable disease at a population level or the entire county population regardless of where people in the county where people live in the county what type of insurance they have or where they receive medical care this unique duty authorizes a county health officer orders and enforce preventive measures that are necessary to protect and preserve the community from public health hazards during times of emergencies furthermore counties have the unique responsibility of ensuring a medical health operational area coordinator or a MOOC is available to coordinate medical and health disaster resources with the state the county's pandemic response is based on the understanding that a public health crisis should be led by public health the entity with the knowledge and responsibility for population based disease control partnerships HSA public health division's mission statement is to collaborate with the community to protect, promote and improve the health and well being of all though we have led the countywide response population based impact is not possible without partnerships the county's accomplishments have been dependent on partnerships with a wide array of internal stakeholders including the human services department's shelter operation and the county's emergency operation center as well as external stakeholders including the entire health care system community based organizations county office of education neighboring jurisdictions and community coalitions such as Fajardo valley state lives the success of our response has been dependent on developing these unique partnerships infrastructure we utilize the incident command system or ICS structure to support the need to rapidly develop an organized response to the pandemic using ICS we formally activated a departmental operation center or DOC which has stayed active since its initiation in February of 2020 during the course of this response over 300 staff have been deployed to the HSA DOC the majority of deployed staff have been from HSA admin and the public health division however most HSA staff have continuously worked the front lines of the pandemic our clinics and behavioral health staff continue to provide direct services to patients and environmental health continued to provide education and technical support to businesses struggling to keep up with the changing industry guidance health equity last but certainly not least at the core of our pandemic response is health equity health equity is a concept that everyone should have a fair and just opportunity to live their healthiest life as public health experts we knew that there would be populations disproportionately affected by this pandemic populations historically impacted by social and structural determinants of health such as poverty and racism we continue to center health equity at the core of our response using data and an understanding of the social determinants of health to identify health disparities and allocate efforts accordingly to focus our response efforts early on we assess the existing knowledge of the pandemic response and develop the framework to characterize the purpose and general activities of what we're doing this became save lives Santa Cruz County the purpose of our response to COVID-19 is to save as many lives as possible in Santa Cruz County and we do this through the acronym of save slowing the spread of the virus adapting to a new normal ensuring vaccines and therapeutics are available and elevating public health readiness save lives has been a helpful framework to reference over the course of this pandemic this orange line here is the average trend of daily COVID-19 cases in our county over time you can see that we've had surges and lulls over time and we are currently on the decline of our third surge between January and June of 2020 there was a rush or sprint to understand we first heard of the novel coronavirus in January of 2020 public health at that time convened regular meetings between its communicable disease units emergency preparedness and emergency medical services to keep tabs on this emerging situation there were so many unknowns at the time how does it spread is it airborne, is it droplet, how lethal is it is it worse than the flu how many ventilators will we need what was clear is how this virus was impacting healthcare systems internationally Wuhan, New York City, Italy the images and stories of health systems overwhelmed they were horrifying and worrisome though we had a few cases during this period it was a time frame marked with uncertainty chaos and a lot of preparedness at this time we put out mass gathering guidance there were new shelter and place orders put out there was insufficient testing and so there was a lot of coordination in the healthcare system on that and there was a lack of clarity from the CDC as the science was still emerging our objectives during this time was clear flatten the curve meaning slow the spread to maintain the healthcare system which would save lives repair our community to the extent that we could at the time and contain the spread through testing case investigation and contact tracing we activated the DOC in February late February once it was clear that the virus was in California and by the end by early March we were notified of our first case we spent much of this time building new systems and partnerships to prepare for the surge to come in July through October we rushed to address our first surge and manage multiple emergencies in July we experienced our first local surge of cases while simultaneously onboarding to new technology to increase our case investigation and contact tracing efficiencies at its height we reached about 44 cases in a day the surge highlighted the urgent need to create new systems in order to protect the population from this virus after the surge ended HSA responded to the CZU fire supporting the medical health branch of the EOC's operation section nurses that had been previously deployed to support COVID investigations were immediately rerouted to support shelters our MOOC team coordinated mutual aid from the state and other jurisdictions including the deployment of behavioral health staff from other jurisdictions so that our staff could continue to serve our high needs clients and we procured rapid COVID-19 test kits for use of the shelters while partnerships and systems were being built this was a difficult time for all county staff we were all dealing with multiple emergencies direct services the newly instituted furlough we rushed to increase our capacity to make sure help and contract staff to maintain the response however there were many accomplishments including the distribution of health equity grants using coronavirus relief funds and an increased understanding of COVID-19 science which helped provide better employer and industry guidance during this phase our objectives were to mitigate the spread of COVID and once case rates declined our objective was to suppress further stages by maintaining testing investigation and isolation and quarantine capacity between November and February we experienced a war surge yet peaking at about 300 cases per day during this time frame we saw many outbreaks in higher risk settings such as skilled nursing facilities our hospitals were over capacity and we saw many deaths around 167 deaths during this period our staff were overworked never adequately rebounding from the first surge and dual emergency response extra help staff proved vital and worked so many additional hours that they were at the verge of exhausting their allowable time of the county and therefore at risk of being separated mid-year during this period the sprint continued staff worked quickly to mitigate the spread but there were a couple of silver linings we knew that the surge would end which it eventually did around February and vaccines highly effective vaccines became available by early December this period was literally a rush to save lives addressing outbreaks managing efficient distribution of scarce vaccines with very finicky logistics and working with personnel to maintain our staffing between March and June of 2021 we sprinted to vaccinate as supplies became available our community held a variety of mass vaccination in pop-up clinics with much success in partnership with our health and community partners we were consistently one of the top counties with the highest vaccination rates vaccines were distributed equitably by geography in our county vaccines became steadily available in routine healthcare settings such as primary care and commercial pharmacies cases continued to decline to rate similar to earlier in the pandemic and we continued to refine our disease control infrastructure and the DLC staff were granted an exception to roll over their furlough hours to the next fiscal year which created which provided greater flexibility with our staff capacity as vaccines steadily showed their real-world effectiveness there was a rush to provide guidance in this new normal where mass necessary to vaccinated people need to quarantine what will return to work look like is it over yet our focus during this timeframe was to continue to suppress the virus vaccinate as efficiently as possible and now we are in our current phase starting in July which we continue to sprint to mitigate the surge and understand the impact of the COVID-19 Delta variant we continue to focus on neighborhood based vaccine clinics with a focus on actual vaccine distribution local state and international data has proven the effectiveness of vaccines that preventing serious illness hospitalization and death 20 months we have been sprinting we've done so much and we realize that this isn't sustainable and it's time to pivot and that pivot is to this next phase which I called the marathon the pandemic isn't over and won't be for a while the actual surge and lows of the pandemic could last for years and the recovery efforts will last many more and though we have learned a lot there are still many unknowns about this virus there are questions about how you know how long will the vaccines hold out what are the effects of long COVID what are the long-term social impacts of the pandemic economic instability lack of in-person instruction for schools behavior health and traumatic events and coping for the community public health needs to maintain an adaptive response to COVID-19 and other threats to public health every surge has been a unique experience affecting different populations and settings with a variety with varying severity so we need to remain flexible to the situation planning for this marathon we need the following we need to strengthen our partnerships every partnership that we have developed over this this pandemic has been extremely valuable and we need to sustain what works and grow on those partnerships we need to increase our internal capacity for sustained response we found that we can't sustain an adequate response with extra help staff and volunteers and contractors we need to also have hired staff to continue on with this on this long road infrastructure readiness to accept future funding it's not just about disease control operations like case investigation and contact tracing we also need accountants admin aid analysts the staff that ensure that we continue to be responsible stewards of public funds that is rapidly becoming available and we need to develop necessary infrastructure for HSA's unique role to address county priorities such as racial equity COVID has exacerbated existing disparities if we are truly going to achieve health equity which is at the core of our response we need to address the root causes of the systemic inequities that cause these disparities such as racism it's not a coincidence that the primary population affected by COVID-19 are those who have identified as Latinx or Latino or Latino but this disparity is preventable for this new phase in our pandemic response we are requesting the acceptance of two funding sources both from the California Department of Public Health on the left you'll see the ELC expansion funds which is a total of around 11 million dollars this funding spans from January 2021 through July 2023 we are asking for 4.5 million to be appropriated for this fiscal year and the purpose of these funds is to support basic public health disease control infrastructure to sustain our COVID-19 response on the right you'll see the other set of funding that we are asking to accept which is a total of 1.5 million dollars through our immunization grant it's a supplemental to an existing five-year grant that we typically get from the state and we are asking to appropriate 500,000 for this fiscal year this will support services and systems changes to integrate COVID-19 into the healthcare system during our sprint phase we realize how chronically under staff we were to adequately fulfill our role to lead the countywide pandemic response though we have had success with external partnerships it became clear that we need to increase our internal capacity here's a graph that shows a vacancy average for HSA's public health division you can see in the course of the pandemic it drastically increased just reflecting the realization of how much stuff we actually need to be an adequate health department the pandemic has highlighted our unique role of a local health department and this new funding that we received has provided some great opportunities for us to be innovative with how we staff for department so our staffing request is to add 11.5 full-time equivalent permanent positions because we are expecting to receive ongoing funding in the future after these one-time grants and in 2023 and 2024 for example the state general fund has promised 300 million annually to public health starting next fiscal year so we look forward to learning more about that we're asking to add 20 FTE limited term positions as well as extending 32 limited term positions many of which are already filled with excellent staff this is a timeline to fill those positions and the list of activities that we need to do to have a candidate start and we'll continue to work closely with personnel to fill all of these vacancies at HSA it can take anywhere between 11 to 20 weeks to fill a vacancy if there is no existing list then it can take about 11 weeks if we have to do a recruitment to develop and rank a list that's when it takes closer to 20 weeks to fill a vacancy so in this last stretch of the sprint we aim to move quickly to have many of these positions filled by January of 2022 or sooner and I will turn it over to director hall for closing statements thank you director Herrera clear from assistant director's presentation that we have really really risen not only as a staff but as a community and as a county to address COVID-19 and one of the things that I'm so grateful for in terms of these funding is that they provide an opportunity for us to address equity we can see that across the country the pain that we've seen from COVID-19 has disproportionately affected certain groups in certain communities and we've seen that here in Santa Cruz County communities color in particular have felt the pain of the COVID pandemic much more sharply and they have experienced disproportionate case counts deaths and other social impacts and the disparities that we've seen over the last year weren't a result of COVID-19 they're actually a result of illuminated inequities that have existed for a long time in our county systems so in order to achieve health equity we really have to address the structural barriers that we have that impact any of the groups differently influence where a person lives, where they work, where their children play we understand that race and equity are determinants of health so as assistant director Jen Herrera has communicated HSA truly has a critical role not only in fighting the pandemic but in all matters of health to address the impact of racism and other social determinants of health so as we stand before you today or sit before you today to ask for appropriation of these funds we promise that we will continue to expand our internal agency efforts and also strengthen our external partnerships to foster greater diversity and an inclusive approach to addressing our biggest health problems we are also relieved that our federal government as well as our state has committed to ongoing funding to support public health infrastructure and we know that now is the time to acknowledge the work of public health and act quickly to help us bolster our capacity for the future there have been a lot of kudos given to the HSA team and our public health staff and they are absolutely well deserved we have by far the best team that has worked conscientiously to follow science best practice and the value of every single human life but I would be remiss if I did not thank our overall county leadership and our board the reason that we have been able to have the kind of impact we've had with the COVID-19 pandemic in Santa Cruz County is because we had the political will to let science lead and let the experts in public health emergency and we've also had top county leadership that has supported that and I believe that lives were saved in Santa Cruz County because of this approach so I want to thank our county leadership our elected officials the CAO's office, our county EOC all of the departments that rallied behind us in the public health approach and it truly made a difference in Santa Cruz County and with that today I would like to ask for your board's approval for the various items before you to accept and appropriate funds from California Department of Public Health to help strengthen our public health infrastructure thank you I want to reiterate how fantastic and I'd say unbelievable the staff work that you've had I mean it was double overtime for many many of your staff and this request for additional personnel to address this and attack this pandemic is very impressive and I just can't I don't know how to express more so than to say thank you for your unbelievable commitment to the public safety of the people of Santa Cruz County I'll start the comments from the board with Supervisor Coonerty great thank you I want to thank you all for you and your entire staff and the efforts you made during that sprint and now the efforts that will be ongoing during this marathon that will face not only COVID but just the changing challenges the emerging challenges that we will face and future pandemics and infectious disease and challenges that we will have my only question about this was you know that you showed the staffing challenges during the pandemic and now we're increasing staffing it's as we all know it's very hard to recruit people to come to Santa Cruz County because of the high cost of housing and I'm wondering what we're doing if anything to create a pipeline from our local schools and universities into the public health division so we can make sure that these positions are full thank you Supervisor Coonerty for your question we actually have support for that we haven't come yet to the board for it we have an additional stream of funding in the amount of $750,000 for public health workforce development and the state is also providing technical assistance training consultation to help do the things exactly like you described it's not going to happen in three months or even a year but it really is laying the groundwork in partnerships with our universities local education K-12 many many other sectors to build up that workforce and at the same time we are looking at being competitive as a health services agency it's not enough in government to be equitable with your county counterparts we are competing with hospitals the veterans administration with the schools for school nurses and if we want to attract and keep really really good staff and not have them leave for the next better job we really have to address workforce and that is one of the things that both of our co-assistant directors will be working on bolstering in the next year with the assistance of those workforce development dollars great thank you congratulations oh hi there good morning how you doing I'm doing alright thank you for your report it's been quite an experience the last year and 10 months and I can't think of anybody better than you and your staff helping us helping guide us through all of the challenges we had and I also want to wish you the best in the future that's it thanks Mimi thank you also thank you chair and of course thank you to you and all the health staff for your work during this very long sprint we've all heard about all the state money available these days with the huge budget surplus and it's fantastic of course to see it showing up in our county in a very tangible way that's going to improve people's lives you talked a lot about improving our local health infrastructure and obviously more staff are the primary way that we're going to do that but I'm curious are there other ways that you look at spending this money on infrastructure itself that will also improve our overall system and what are the grants what kind of spending is eligible with these grants we're fortunate to have some flexibility with this funding especially the ELC expansion funds which is generally to support disease control infrastructure so what that looks like in addition to staffing of course there's training and so we want to ensure that all staff have training in something as basic as equity and racial equity as well as disease control processes and infection control so that we have a clear baseline standard of competencies for our department in addition to that we're looking at big infrastructure like technology working with the Santa Cruz health information exchange to create efficiencies with how diseases are reported into our department to public health and then also investments into how we analyze into our analytics and which you can see some of those investments in our data dashboard that's developed over the course of the pandemic increasing our epi capacity and the tools to provide them so that they can work on that analysis so that's some of the things that we're working on in addition to that we're looking at contracted partnerships with organizations to do outreach and engagement although in public health we pride ourselves in being public health professionals and equity minded we also recognize we're not necessarily the right people to do the outreach and so that's where we work with community organizations like the live out cradle to career program and their promotora program so developing a network of promotoras so we're looking at workforce not just internally within public health but we're also looking community wide what does public health workforce look like community wide and that includes training our people with lived experience and people in the community around public health Thank you for that you know we've been working on these matters before the COVID COVID just created the impetus for the funding to be able to pursue the infrastructure that we wanted so I did want to note for that pre-pandemic we had been working we Jen and I to kind of reorganize how health services agency delivers its public health services so as you know from previous discussions we look upstream as well as midstream and downstream and make sure that our investments are equally weighted far upstream and focused on prevention so we have in the past couple of years worked on reorganizing our public health division and so we have a population health unit that didn't exist before we have a unit that focuses on overall prevention we brought in substance use disorder prevention from behavioral health into public health so all of these things that kind of make us work smarter and put the right people working on the right things in the right way Thanks you've talked a lot about equity and you just described some of those ways that you can do that working with community partners but of course one of the big reasons that we saw much higher rates of infection in the Latinx population particularly in that I guess middle first and middle wave of the pandemic were because we have multiple families looking for household because of the income inequality and of course that combined with the acute shortage of housing in our community and I noticed in some of the grant eligible spending things that hoteling was one of those and I just wondered if there was any contemplation of potentially buying some sort of small units that you could keep on either one of the north or south county health campuses so that in the future if someone does contract COVID or another infectious disease and they need a place to remove themselves from their family that they could do that rather than infecting the rest of their family or other families that they're forced to live with I'll try to address that and you can clarify Assistant Director Herrera I don't think that this allows for a large capital purchase it allows for construction improvements and vouchers and paying for hoteling but what you say is spot on in terms of our need and we are experiencing that not just with COVID but with recuperative care two whole floors of the roadway in that we are using as an INQ shelter is a lot much of those floors are from patients being discharged from the hospital that aren't prepared to take care of themselves that don't have an adequate place to go and when the funding runs out for us to cover those costs we're going to have a problem and so we are committed to working with Housing for Health with the community partners in our cities to think about how do we address this particular piece that has been highlighted by the pandemic and is our obligation to address going forward okay so you recognize it's a need but maybe this is not the right funding source is that what I'm hearing yeah I think there are ways for us to work with other partners to address that and this may be a part of it if some of this funding becomes ongoing and I hope that it may it could be that we figure out a way to actually purchase or acquire property that the operational costs can help be paid by this particular funding stream it's about braiding all of our resources but there are a lot of potentials okay thank you very much thank you, Supervisor Friend thank you Mr. Chair thank you Director Hall and Assistant Director Rivera congratulations by the way on the Assistant Director role I don't think we publicly acknowledged you on the evidence well absolutely well deserved Director Hall while this isn't part of the presentation let me just start by saying you will be missed as Supervisor Caput noted you really did help guide us along with Dr. Newell and everybody else on your staff well it's not done yet but through a pretty remarkable trying time in our community and I thought it was important as part of this presentation as Ms. Rivera noted sometimes when you're in the middle of this challenge you don't take the time to reflect on all the things that were done and the decisions that were made with imperfect information and oftentimes people judge on spot decisions that are made as though that there was a counterfactual known and most of these decisions were just being made with the best of the ability given the opportunities that we had and I have to say that overall is remarkable how correct your health team was and helping guide this I guess when you rely on science and not on things you read online you can actually make pretty significant improvements in people's lives so I just wanted to appreciate you and your team for being steadfast throughout that entire process completely in support of the actual item that's before us and sort of restructuring this in a longitudinal way that can ensure that we can begin to build back the department in a better way. There has been a historic under investment in public health across the country as you know started pretty significantly declining a couple decades ago and so if there can be one good thing about that comes out of tragedy or out of pandemics or out of these kinds of challenges it would be that hopefully it can reform how we look at long-term investments and things because they make long-term valuable outcome differences and so I think that this hopefully is the beginning of that component so thank you again for both of you for your work and I am supportive of the item. I'd like to make a short comment about the time factor in it it's nice to know that this is going to be going through and accommodate these physicians through June 30th, 2024 one of the things I'm concerned about it's the federal and state funds we have to address this pandemic and other issues too often it's a one-year deal this is two and a half years out or more almost three years out so that gives it some what shall we call sustainability and that's very welcome that we're not going to have to ask for this every year that this the funding will accommodate the positions you're asking for through June the fiscal year June or 2324 that's not the way it usually is but I'm sure glad it's there I have just a general statement any comments from the public my name is James Ewing Whitman recently heard a mortician of 15 years describe what was going on in Great Britain with fascinating kind of makes me want to be a mortician to help support the families you know the 11th leading cause of death in the United States may be suicide but long before this the leading cause of death in the United States is western medical doctors and I would love to just speak really quickly on what I wrote this morning it was from my heart I am just upset with the criminal malfeasance here it's disgusting thank you the DC administration is paying the state legislators county governments to run the covered 19 agenda you know as we spoke about this about three weeks ago there is no purified isolation of the genome anywhere to be found in the world so there is no covered 19 we've asked you to check the EUA life in CDC page 39 in the health department which wrote a spackle letter they both have no isolation there is no need for remedies the mask and the injection this injection creates no immunity it is experimental and there is no liability if somebody is damaged or dies it's on them Dr. Cahill, Stanford and Cornell are diagnosed cell cultures from ostensibly patients being treated for covered 19 they have found only Fleaway and Flea B and with frequencies with the 4G and especially the 5G and comorbidities people can get sick we also now know that the no swabs are vectors people sick they contain ethylene oxide and graphene oxide no disease in history has lasted one and a half years the injection is killing and maiming millions over the world reported body spasms blindness the eye doctors are reporting they've never seen certain kinds of eye diseases that they're seeing now it's also creating CVAs which are strokes heart attacks, choralysis and much more the agenda is communism control and injecting people worldwide with toxin graphene oxide lipid spike proteins that attack cells and cross the blood brain barrier causing prion disease which is like mad cow disease and nanoparticles that are wild cards that may cause more gelants disease in people what's more important you're more compass or the funding and control to ask you consider these are injections that are damaging a lot of people thank you any other comments from the public have any on the phone as a reminder for those joining us on zoom these are comments for item number 7 if your hand is still up for the public comment section I've written your names down we'll call you again at the end of the meeting please lower your hand if you intend to only speak to public comment if you are speaking to item 7 please maintain your hand up Valerie Laveroni-Coral your microphone is available and a star 6 to unmute yourself thank you I apologize for my oops you'll need to turn off for a second I have a problem here excuse me I wanted to address the issue of cannabis moratorium and I'd like to thank you we're listening to the we're listening to the we're listening to the we're listening to the we're listening to the we're listening to the item number 8 Lee I'm sorry I will have to come back I'll just send in a letter and save your time my apologies I could not get into the meeting earlier no problem that is Board of Supervisors at Santa Cruz County dot US it's call in user 1 your microphone is available this is Marilyn Garrett can you hear me yes we can hear you okay thanks to the previous speaker Joanne there and I want to recommend two books that go into more depth on how this virus has never been isolated and some other factors that cause disease one book is called the truth about contagion exploring theories of how disease spreads by Dr. Thomas Callan and Sally Fallon Morel it can be ordered from Dr. Tom Callan.com website the other book is coming out in November by Robert F. Kennedy Jr titled the real Anthony Fauci Bill Gates Big Pharma and the global war on democracy and public health and I want to read a little from the forward to Dr. Callan's truth about COVID-19 book and it's by Robert F. Kennedy Jr please let me read this paragraph without cutting me off instead of citing scientific studies to justify mandates for lockdowns and vaccines our medical ruler site CDC FDAN NIH captive agencies that are groveling sock puppets to the industries they regulate multiple federal and international investigations have documented the financial entanglement with pharmaceutical companies that have made these regulators cesspools of corruption and I fear that our own county is part of this financial entanglement Monica McGuire microphone is available Thank you so much I am can you hear me yes I'm again terrified to see that you are hired employees have not only ignored our efforts to create local expert debates on this topic which we've offered over and over to find out what would be best for our county needs you have misrepresented and hidden with the emergency declarations you continue to renew that are supposedly to overrun avoid overrunning our hospitals are baseless because our hospitals actually closed down sections in order to look as though not enough beds etc all of this including of course that we know the PCR test has been brought to your attention over and over it was never intended to be a test so you're voting today whether to accept further huge amounts of money to support injecting people in this county with this experimental mRNA therapy in multiple forms is actually just putting all of us at risk including yourselves because doing so despite so much evidence of harms already in recipients of these injections is furthering harms to everyone else who volunteered to be part of the experiment and those of those of your constituents who said we want no part of it all people who love our rights have proclaimed my body my choice among other great phrases and yet that right to determine what health experiments each of us desires to join is not being honored you haven't brought this up you haven't responded to our questions and points about it and you are putting yourselves further at risk by continuing to not act in the public's best interest this way you are harming children especially as people have asked you stop forcing them into masks and distancing at schools that's ridiculous since they have continued to prove they neither die of this nor are spreaders to anyone else closing down all our small businesses while you use the money for anything you want is disgusting there are no other speakers on Zoom okay I'll return it nobody else public wants to speak on this I'll return it to the board for action I'll move the recommended action I'll second be seconded by friend call the roll please supervisor Koenig friend thank you thank you thank you item number eight is to consider and adopt an urgency interim ordinance to place a moratorium on the issuance of new cannabis business licenses for operations on parcel zone commercial agriculture or CA that are adjacent to or within 500 feet of residentially zoned parcel and scheduled public caring for October 19 to consider an extension of the interim ordinance as outlined in the memorandum of the county administrative officer we have the notice of the public hearing and urgency interim ordinance a moratorium on cannabis licenses on the commercial agriculture zone presenting this today will be SAM before tea from our cannabis licensing manager and let's go ahead I'm going to go ahead and present this morning I'm sorry that's all right chair good morning chair and board members Melody Serino deputy CAO at the August 24th 2021 meeting the board of supervisors your board identified potential conflicts between residentially zoned partials and commercial agricultural operations in the commercial agricultural or CA zone district the board directed staff to come back with an interim urgency ordinance to impose a temporary moratorium on the issuance of new cannabis business licenses for operations on parceled zone CA that are adjacent to or within 500 feet of a residentially zoned parcel while staff considers and studies a proposed prohibition and county code amendments staff were also directed to return on November 9th to consider policy proposals and changes to the ordinance that reflect these parameters I just wanted to give a quick review of current licensing areas for cannabis cultivation because you might not remember all of this we did this so long ago and the minimum acreage required please note that other non retail operations such as non volatile manufacturing and class 1 distribution are also allowed on these parcels based on the current ordinance in order to allow time for the board to consider possible changes to the ordinance to address the conflicts between residentially zoned areas and cannabis activities in the CA zone district a temporary moratorium is proposed on issuing new licenses in CA zone parcels that abut or are within 500 feet of a residentially zoned parcel I just want you to note when we looked at this we included all residentially zoned parcels and that a residentially zoned parcel would include RA which is residential agriculture where cannabis activities are currently allowed if the parcel is 5 acres or more so I want to show you a map and can you give me control you should have these so first I want to show you all of the CA zoned parcels and I'm just going to zoom down a little bit so you can see there's some on the north coast as well but the green primarily the CA zone parcels are in the south county but the green areas the light green areas show all of the CA zone parcels within the county of Santa Cruz and I'm going to focus mostly on the south county since that's where most of the parcels are but I will show the rest of the map you asked for a 500 foot buffer so we added these red lines into the map so you can see the buffer zones and then you asked for that buffer around all the RA parcels so now I'm showing you the map with all of those parcels identified and I'm going to show you now this is what's left then once we take out all those parcels the dark green now indicates what parcels will be available for cannabis cultivation that do not abut or are within 500 feet of the parameters that you established so the quick numbers sorry we can get out of the map and back to the slide so these are the quick numbers are shown so there's 100 1462 CA parcels in the county once you take out those parcels within the buffer zone or that abut we're left with 689 CA zone parcels that are available for licensing still during the moratorium and I again I just want to remind you that RA zone properties already allow some cannabis activity though there are other considerations you may remember including setbacks and canopy size limitations on those RA zone properties so these are currently licenses in process which would be impacted by the moratorium which was information you asked for some are working on meeting their use permit conditions of approval building out their facilities to become operational and those ones in yellow are the ones who have submitted pre-applications to start the licensing process so each line represents this particular APN number and you can see what district they're in potential licenses within that license the current applications and review and if there's any current licenses on that parcel the total potential licenses including those that are in the pre-application phase represent approximately 22,000 square feet of indoor canopy cultivation 530,000 square feet of greenhouse canopy operations 20,000 square feet of hoop house canopy cultivation 150,000 square feet of greenhouse nursery operations and 22,000 square feet of outdoor canopy cultivation the total value of the potential revenue loss of CBT is estimated at 2.5 million and I want you to understand that this is a very broad estimate we did not have time to do a really detailed analysis around this that looks at market price fluctuations or the likelihood of loss production area given whether these facilities will actually be built within the year and other important factors but we will look at that in time for the November report back those who currently hold a license and are required to renew annually would not be impacted by the moratorium however our budgeted tax revenue for the current fiscal year included is increased based on projects in the pipeline so should these projects, these ones here the potentially impacted one be delayed in their licensing or not be allowed to continue we may not meet our projected revenues either for licensing or CBT in addition if the board makes these changes in November and includes the current licensees precluding them from renewal because they are but or are within 450 feet or 500 feet of a residential parcel this would impact approximately 37 properties impacting about 60% of our non CBT revenue so these are the recommended actions for today and we are prepared to answer your questions thank you for that presentation most of these are in the second and fourth districts of course as identified we will go on Supervisor Zach Friend in the second district if he has any comments before we go to the public and I think you might we just want to go to the public to go ahead thank you chair McPherson I appreciate the presentation there's a couple things in the presentation I did have some quick comments on what's being proposed doesn't impact renewals or current licensees so I know that comment was made at the end but that's not the intention that would be in conflict with this additionally a lot of the people that are in the early licensing process that doesn't necessarily mean that they will receive a license so I think that there's a little bit of clarity generally speaking on that on that slide because there's a lot of that makes up the majority of what was shown that could be prevented but as you know not everybody that applies for a license necessarily receives a license but just given the amount of feedback I think that we've received on this item over the last couple weeks I think it shows that the board we've been doing the iterative process on this for the last seven years that we still have work to do we've had these top-line interests the board has been very consistent on preventing any sort of activity within residential zone districts and also minimizing any environmental impacts we do that on dispensing we do that on manufacturing we do that and that has been the goal regarding cultivation as well which is why we did some of the movement from the hills did some of the movement away from some of the RA zone parcels and while we had this discussion in 2020 about setbacks and noticing in regards to CA and we had a commitment to continue to review this the setbacks and the we're not approved at that time there was a there wasn't full board support at that time but here we are over a year later and we actually have some information that shows that that there are some still some conflicts in regards to this activity vis-a-vis residential zone districts so given the fact that this would still maintain nearly all the activity within the second district given the fact that there's still over tenfold growth and potential licenses even with what's being proposed I consider this to still be a very reasonable approach moving forward as you may remember and the board may remember we did a full environmental impact report and we looked at CA, RA, SU and TPC zone parcels and at the end of that the IR showed that there was significant unmitigatable impacts and traffic, water, noise, smell and other impacts which is why we didn't certify the EIR because we wouldn't be able to have any kind of commercial activity at all but that was looking at current commercial agricultural activity on those parcels and then the change and intensification used to this so it shouldn't be particularly surprising then that exactly what the EIR showed is exactly what these residential areas are dealing with and so I think that this is just our opportunity to make this modification but still continue to have most of it, or actually almost all of it in the CA zone parcels and basically all of it still within my district but just moving forward to address those continued conflict points in the residential area but I'm very interested in hearing the continued community input on this and I appreciated that the board was willing to put this item on to hear more of this feedback. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you and this to adopt this urgency interim word is we'll take a four fifth vote of the board. Supervisor Caput, do you have any comments? Yeah, thank you very much for the report. I just want to state something here. Every so often we hear that cannabis marijuana brings in a few million dollars every year to our general budget and we do appreciate that but we have to remember that neighborhoods want to be in their lives residential homeowners pay hundreds of millions of dollars to the budget and we have to understand that they the people that own the homes the people that actually rent the housing and all that they live in neighborhoods and they shop locally they pay the sales taxes they pay the gas taxes they pay for pretty much everything their children go to our schools which we're very proud of so it comes down to protecting neighborhoods and what people that live in those neighborhoods want that's something that I really respect I know who pays my paycheck and that's the residents that live in this county so it's pretty clear what I'm getting out here and how I'm looking at this whole issue Thank you. Just a couple questions so you mentioned the potential loss of revenue of $2.5 million is that from not processing the current permits or is that if we move forward in November with completely excluding these zones That's based on the current permits in the pipeline. That's pretty significant just with current permits and obviously if we're looking at potentially losing half of parcels currently available for cultivations can have a much more significant impact you bring back that number for our November discussion okay thank you and then the map is extremely helpful would love to spend more time with that I don't know if you can make that public or part of the item in November in my mind there is a significant difference between residential residential zone parcels and residential agricultural I mean agriculture is part of their name it would be really helpful if we could see what kind of difference you see if you didn't exclude RA parcels versus all the parcels was that possible with your current functionality or had you grouped all the we grouped all of the residential parcels together because the residents even in residential agriculture is the kind of the top line of the tiers of zoning and so we included RA what we might what I might suggest is that we look at RA that is five acres or more since those are acres that already allow for cannabis activity so we could single out those parcels that are less than five acres and look at it in that respect yeah that would be helpful I'll just say this is going to be a difficult balancing act as we move forward that's all my comments for now thank you chair sir Coonerty do you have any comments at this point no I'll just wait after public comment Mr. Chair I do have one additional question if I may I just wanted to ask staff why they included SU in their understanding when we had done our original maps we didn't include SU which showed that there would be about another 100 or so available parcels for commercial cultivation I wasn't sure why SU was included and therefore prohibiting within 500 families sorry SU was included because residences can be built on SU property and so it would create the same conditions right if the conditions are this tension between where there's homes and where there's commercial agriculture because SU parcels can have residences on them we took that into consideration as well looking at the larger picture of that tension I mean okay I think that was a kind of a broad read of board direction because we were trying to prevent from those that already have resident in the name itself residential zone districts because my understanding is that would have allowed a little over 800 I believe remaining parcels as opposed to the 679 I don't have the exact number in front of me but I appreciate that I just don't think that I think that that was just an expanded reading of what the board's specific motion was which was just to deal with those that were specifically residential districts which I do look forward to the public comment on this I'm sorry would you like me to pull those out in the next iteration supervisor friend the SU parcels yeah I mean I think that I was surprised to see it today so I would like to just see it as well as what supervisor Koenig's question is or your point on the five acres or above an RA although realistically when we look at the underlying general plan designation of an RA residential and the type of commercial agriculture that's even allowed there is very limited compared to what is allowed on a CA parcel so I think it still is very residentially focused but yes on the SU I just that surprised me to see that in there okay we're going to go to the public how many people want to speak on this issue okay we've got several we're going to limit the comments to two minutes we have each of the board members I can assure you has received numerous emails or communications if you could keep your comments as brief as possible and not be repetitive but might be difficult to do that but it will so just stand a line and it's two minutes let's start good morning my name is Karen Ringenburg I'm an attorney I help people go through the state and local licensing process my office is in Oakland but I've done not all of the state including here in Santa Cruz County since 2018 I drove down from Oakland today to explain how pernicious this action would be to the 24 applicants who are currently in the queue when this board acted in 2020 to make commercial agriculture principally permitted for cannabis cultivation people did exactly what you expected investments based on that decision by this board they bought and leased properties they've invested millions in improvements consultants engineers architects to move these projects forward the board today considers pulling the reg out from under all of those people throwing away all of that investment we all know that if this moratorium goes into effect it is very likely all of those programs all of those projects are dead and all that money is flushed down the proverbial toilet so I would encourage you to consider limiting your action to only new applications that have not yet been submitted so all of those people who've invested millions of dollars on projects this county invited should not have the rug pulled out from under them I would encourage the county to do so not only because it's fair to those applicants but also because it sets a tone for how the county is perceived in the business community writ large if the county does this and veers the guardrail with these significant changes to its program it tells future businesses that the county cannot be relied upon to have a stable hand on the rudder in deciding policy these types of decisions should be made carefully over a long period of time not on two weeks notice with very little input because it's going to expect significant harm on lots of folks who are doing nothing other than what the county asked them to thank you supervisors I may see a property owner landlord and businessman here in Santa Cruz County over the last 10 years we have had tenants legally cultivated cannabis on our property without a complaint and fraction or citation of any kind and we're locked in on all sides by residential parcels I prefer to call them all neighbors we're here today because of concern regarding small two small parcels some neighbors have valid concerns but I also hear a great deal of paranoia and misinformation gun seizures raids, razor wire light pollution odor year round children in danger property values plummeting all in true or addressed in an ordinance already these neighbors seem to conflate enforcement action against illegal actors with what is happening at licensed facilities this is totally false and the record must be corrected by this body licensees must follow strict rules or they can be cited if they don't they can lose their license it's that simple I encourage everyone to read the ordinance the moratorium is unwarranted 500 foot setbacks and elimination of CA parcels adjacent to residential it is a lazy decision it's also not a minor change do this and you break the back of the industry in Santa Cruz County the bad actors win actors with existing licenses across the county would be wiped out and most would be forced into bankruptcy or leave here permanently if you force these licensed operators out someone fills the vacuum then we just push to the schools and not adult use dispensaries now we're moving the wrong direction citizens of Santa Cruz County have a right to save cannabis products from right here by their neighbors infusing much needed tax revenue into the general fund not a black market these proposals are the true threat to our public health, safety and welfare especially more vulnerable low income communities that's the party to not second Zach Frins motion for moratorium and rejected indefinitely thank you about five years ago cannabis was worth more per pound than gold and that's going back 40 years ago for 1937 Wild Hemp was everywhere but when Wild Hemp was eradicated by William Randolph Hearst and only five million dollars it forever changed the health of all mammals on this continent natural CBD oils were in the meat in the cheese, the butter and the milk yeah it's amazing their revenue a couple million dollars property taxes 2019 what was that 571 million as I recall it could be wrong during the Civil War Hemp was required to be grown the average sailing ship needed 1.5 million feet of hemp rope so while you guys are bickering over these little things about what my land war told me in 2008 donors come up with the best ideas in the world they're just too stone to do anything about it Good morning my name is Rod Composti and I'm a land owner in Santa Cruz County long-term resident I own property on Firm Flat Road I have watched the grow that at least my land for purpose of having legal cannabis operations spend hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars over the last year and a half to meet the requirements of the county's rules and regulations now in the 11th hour the county's attempting to implement the regulation that could potentially change the status of the permit as worked so hard to obtain who does the new regulations for future applicants or existing applicants please define this licensing of property and cannabis based by case situation should be repeated as such I feel applying the regulation of CA properties is arbitrary and unfair I am asking that you consider the new rule instead of 500 feet from an RA property line I'm asking for 500 feet property from an RA dwelling I'm going to transmit a lot of growers that have a pending permits to give those neighbors that a concern of great offer it should also be noted that in our neighborhood and the neighbors are RA parcels of pro cannabis and should be taken that into account please allow the growers to have applied that have a vested interest and complete our applications in our area there are one RA parcel the 20 parcels of zone CASU and that was owned okay thank you good morning I'd like to speak today from the viewpoint of a farm owner I've been in Aptos for two years now we own the property we built the farm and started a life here over the course of the last year I've worked closely with the city the county and our attorney to ensure we follow every guideline set by the county to obtain our license we are deep into the process here going on 12 plus months and to spend over $100,000 and countless hours of labor and building our farm to code as required by the county for approval we are steps away from the finish line and to have this moratorium show up in the 11th hour and jeopardize my entire livelihood is not only frustrating but devastating should this moratorium pass would not only cripple my business but it would shut me down and completely bankrupt the company I'm empathetic to the residents and their concerns I've owned several legal farms in other counties and I've always been successful at maintaining friendly relationship with our neighbors and city council while serving on the local agricultural alliance board and planning committees I have no doubt farm owners and nearby residents here in Aptos can have the same success as I currently have with the homeowners neighboring my farm I do ask that the board consider rejecting this moratorium for one that fairly serves all parties I would propose that instead of requiring a 500 feet from the property line that you consider a 500 feet or greater restriction for many dwelling on a residential property as the configurations for each individual situation are not synonymous amongst all farms our particular gross site is well over 1500 feet away from the nearest home I would ask you to please consider this impact on myself and others in my position we should not be forced to lose everything we have put in this county without putting real efforts towards a solution that works for all thank you for the opportunity to speak my name is Nick to see as I'm a local business person I live in Aptos adjacent to a few CA parcels so these residential agricultural conflicts are not new news to me my business it also owns a few agricultural parcels in south county they're at least a licensed canvas cultivators and this moratorium will impact my business negatively as well as those of my tenants who I deeply care about at this point they're in this room this I think the rule change is only as smart as the rationale behind it seems the rationale is based primarily in complaints from neighbors and I think there's a lot of misinformation in some of those complaints for the written documents on your own website so I'd like to address a couple of them directly on the subject of crime there have been a lot of references to gun seizures from licensed properties licensed canvas cultivated operations the number of gun seized on licensed operations in this county is zero zero gun seized fire and the sheriff's department both give feedback to the licensing process and the number of substantial fires that have broken out on the same group of licensed properties is zero there's no risk so far from fire at least to date on the subject of water cannabis crops consume approximately 50 to 60 percent of the water needs of other conventional crops in our community the principally cane berries strawberries and gun row crops so there's a substantial savings there and finally on the subject of noise and smell in our county all commercial farming produces noises and odors which is precisely the reason why all residential neighbors are required to sign a statement of acknowledgement accepting farming related inconveniences and discomforts for noise dust smell before purchasing or developing their properties these protections for farmers have been in place in Santa Cruz for half a century and should be continued so I encourage you to support farms of farmers thank you for your time today my name is Evan to see us and I co-own the real state business that my brother alluded to just momentarily ago I'd like to just read that statement of acknowledgement that he was referencing it's entitled the statement of acknowledgement regarding the issuance of a county building permit in an area determined by the county of Santa Cruz to be subject to agricultural residential use conflicts it says I we do hereby acknowledge that a property described herein is adjacent to land utilized for commercial agricultural purposes and residents of this property may be subject to inconvenience or discomfort arising from the use of agricultural chemicals including herbicides pesticides and fertilizers and from the pursuit of agricultural operations including plowing spraying ruining and harvesting which occasionally generate dust smoke noise and odor and I we further acknowledge that Santa Cruz county has established agriculture as a priority use on productive agricultural lands and that residents of adjacent property should be prepared to accept such inconvenience or discomfort from normal necessary farm operations everybody who buys a piece of property in Santa Cruz County adjacent to a CA zone parcel acknowledges this in writing it is bound to their deed it's something that everybody knows about because we prioritize the use of our farming community as such and I support you to object to the moratorium Hello my name is George Workman I'm a young agricultural professional I went to school for agronomy and my access as an entrepreneur into the industry of agriculture is through cannabis I've dedicated my life and my time in the last four years to get things compliant and to move a project down the road we're at the finish line of the project and like so many others have stated before the rug is about to be pulled I'd like to point out one of the big points elephants in the room and that is the root of this issue is the classification and the matter is that there's people coming from the tech industry over the hill and if you're not a computer engineer if you're not computer literate then you're getting priced out and you're not having access to work what my company and a lot of the other companies in this room are looking to do is to provide a diversity workplace for several other individuals in this culture not just engineers that can type away for Google and operate with integrity and with the mind of the people around us that's why we're trying to be legal operators that's not why we're otherwise we'd be in warehouses or we'd be underground still we're here because we want to do it right and we want to grant the opportunity that we've been given to others around us so I hope you reconsider this really unfair just moratorium thanks my name is Aziz I'm a local cannabis business owner and I really couldn't say it better than any of the people ahead of me but I wanted to remind you cap it we are also renters we are also property owners our kids also go to your schools and we are members of this community to us our employees and our landlords and everybody around us so thank you please reconsider this my name is Steve Fernandez I'm a kind of I've adapted into cannabis by leasing some of our land out it took me two years to get approved and a lot of money and to have the rug pulled out from underneath us and I also wanted to remind my supervisor cap it that I am also a member of the community I live on my property my wife teaches for the powerful valley unified school district I went to the school district that went to wasa will hide we are all members of the community we all contribute and a lot of different ways our tax dollars might not be as great as the tax dollar the property tax dollars but most of cannabis people are spending millions and millions of dollars to acquire land that wasn't worth millions of dollars before cannabis was approved and that's going to boost your property taxes and everything else in your community we are very much a part of your community community and want to be a part of the community moving forward good morning council and staff my name is Jacqueline McGowan and I'm a cannabis licensing expert I've worked in the state on cannabis policy for seven years I'm also a former Wall Street stock broker what is going on in the current industry at the moment is that people are committing suicide at the rate of once a week in the licensed market I want you to look around this crowd today at all these faces because if you do make this decision to move forward with the moratorium and you cause more economic desperation than they're already facing or someone not being here I'm also running for governor I'm on this ticket today and I did that for my cannabis industry and I did that because one of your operators already did commit suicide and he was a friend of mine this isn't a joke please stop playing with people's lives the pandemic has been hard enough these guys need your help today that's what I'm asking for thank you hi Pat Malo lifetime resident medical cannabis patient I've worked in the what was formerly the medical cannabis industry for my entire adult life it's the only way me and my generation were able to stay in this community I've almost a decade long process now of trying to transition the local good people who are in this industry for years and years into a new legal system I've poured thousands of hours volunteer hours mostly into this building this system and you know as much as I am so happy for the survivors in this room and the problems that they've taken on forcing this system to work and I'm eternally grateful I also think about the 95% of people who started this process with you guys came into this room came to meeting after meeting after meeting and haven't been able to get a license and then I look at that map the one of many many painful maps I've had to look out about zoning through this process and I see not only have we got pushed out of the traditional areas in the hills like where we were neighbors just like everyone and we've gotten now pushed out of seemingly every single district except for yours cap it which has always been a concern of yours and we're not even allowed in rolling hills anymore we're just down in flatland ag that has been used conventionally and poisoned by methyl bromide and a long list of things that we're not allowed to use and might not function for the high testing that we have to get through and good to meet that environmental bar so long story short is if you pass this which unfortunately I think you will let's please have a very very real discussion about how we achieve what we set out to achieve and that's letting people in not keeping them out good morning my name is Heather Schaefer and I'm the CEO of agoracy business services we are a cannabis licensing and regulatory compliance company who represents merced investment company in their journey to obtain a conditional use permit at the 110 Crest Drive property in Watsonville I'm here today to ask that our application be allowed to proceed through the application process and not be included in the moratorium in addition to making this comment today we sent in more a more detailed public comment last Friday and it's my most sincere hope that our correspondence has been made available to the public as part of the agenda packet we have had no intention of pushing this project through without communicating and entertaining feedback from the neighbors in the community although I was not in attendance at the August 24th meeting I reviewed the video and today I'd like to take some time to address a number of the concerns I heard voiced during that meeting the largest concern I heard voiced was regarding odor please understand I've been to the property additionally it was not lost on me that these are multi-million dollar homes with ocean views and there's a reason folks spend that kind of money to live in a location like this they want to smell the sea air we have no intention of imposing on this lifestyle and we've committed to bringing air quality specialists to take Ray Kapahi to conduct both air quality and odor control studies specific to the conditions the greenhouses currently we intend to implement the recommendations made by Mr. Kapahi and bring his group out to the property during our first run in order to ensure that odor control measures have been in place that are in place are working as they should be I have a number of different items and concerns that I addressed in my letter and I hope that's made available to the general public and I hope that you've all read it and please consider not including us in the moratorium since our application has been submitted and we just want to proceed through the process thank you yeah hi my name is Chris McGrown I run an ag supply business multiple counties and we supply farms from San Diego County all the way through Humboldt and the reason I'm here today is that I've been asked to join in the meeting in the conversation by a lot of my business associates friends who have been through this long process with the county and you know I don't know how much people understand that the amount of effort that goes into complying with all the rules and regulations of having licensed farm but to go through and select a site build it out apply it through all the applications the grading water use and all the full compliance for licensed farm is extremely time consuming and to take the 24 licensees that have already been through this process and invested considerable sums of their own money and pull the rug out from under them will be devastating to those people and I think that the county has responsibility to follow through on the on the zoning rules that has had in place that have brought those 24 licensees into position and to change the rules midstream with those 24 licensees is just it's not going to be good for those people or for anybody else involved in this business so I'd like to urge the county to vote against putting moratorium in place until the further studies and to allow this 24 to proceed through thank you morning chair supervisor staff my name is Dale Schaefer I'm a cannabis specialist attorney and I happen to represent Merced Investment Company in the 110 Crest Drive property I have a team of experts I work with including odor specialist, light specialist security specialist acoustic specialist and they work in conjunction with local planning commissions local policy makers law enforcement agencies and they work in conjunction with the needs of the counties or the cities and deal with the complaints of neighbors we are prepared to make our facility as odor free as we can make it which will be below the thresholds we deal with around the state I have projects all over the state my expert Ray Kapahi presented to the board of supervisors at El Dorado County and he designs carbon scrubbers and other mitigation measures so that around these greenhouses there will be odor below the seven dilution thresholds that we deal with in the environmental industry and that the property lines they will be much below that these are public nuisance issues that are dealt with through planning as you go through the conditional use permit we're prepared to deal with that our security guy designs our lights they are pointed downwards regulations require that any greenhouse that emits light from dust to dawn be covered so that complaint from the neighbors we're going to see light everywhere it's not going to be allowed we won't have a license and we will mitigate light through our illumination studies now we are involved in a struggle with what we call the black market and you talk about loss of revenues here law enforcement understands only too well you are bleeding money trying to stop the black market and the way to do this is through the marketplace and allow these businesses to go forward so you can stop the black market thank you very much thank you board of supervisors thank you for the opportunity to speak my name is Manny Alvarez I'm a business owner here in Santa Cruz County thank you for this opportunity I ask that you vote a no a big no on the cannabis moratorium I understand the concerns of some of the inconveniences that a handful of residents are complaining about but a moratorium that will decimate a large percentage of an already fragile industry is not the solution I believe cases are unique and should be should not all be treated the same 500 foot setback will not really solve the problem but only create other problems some of these complaints are a bit dramatic with no real concerns to human health and shouldn't be categorized as such smell really? if you chose to live around farmland you chose to be around all kinds of smells the cannabis community has already been pushed into one part of the county where all the growing has been a part of the whole county for decades and now we're facing another migration only this one would be out of the county cannabis operators have taken the scraps left from the apple industry and turned them into viable farmland again hence property values go up although the current recommendations claim to be for new businesses I believe that this is a calculated move for the obvious agenda of the future to remove cannabis businesses out of the county for good I ask that farmland be left to farmers vote no hi I'm Dave I just wanted to say like yeah we live here too I've seen you at the coffee shop um we're growing plants just like anybody else it's not any difference except for it smells different and seems like that's a big deal but this is going to be an agricultural crop like no matter what we do here it's just where it's going to be grown and what kind of revenue it's going to bring into the county and if we're talking about like jobs and having the next step this is this is it like this is going to beat out berries and you know if we don't I think we're going to be altering so thanks good morning my name is Terry and I operate a regenerative cannabis farm in Watsonville I'm here in the opposition to the blanket moratorium I've read the comments from the community and believe we have an opportunity to make this right for everyone cannabis has been referred to as industrial farming the definition of industrial farming is a form of modern farming that refers to industrialized production of crops and animal products like milk or eggs the methods of industrial agriculture include innovation in agricultural machinery and farming methods genetic technology techniques for achieving economies of scale and production the creation of new markets for consumption and the application of patent protection to genetic information and trade these methods are widespread and developed nations and increasingly prevalent worldwide this is what makes Santa Cruz so special greenhouses and hoop houses have existed here for years compared to other farming practices canvas farming is the least harmful due to the fact that legal cannabis farms are not allowed to use harmful pesticides La Salva Browns Valley Road and most places in Santa Cruz are sprinkled with farmland where is the cannabis supposed to go the solution here is to look at this on a case-by-case basis and not as an overall problem please do not allow a blanket moratorium because it will negatively affect those who have started the painful and very expensive process of licensing could financially ruin some good folks if a farm operates with zero complaints it should be left alone to continue its ability to receive its license if setbacks were needed but not in every single situation should be a case-by-case basis and not a blanket moratorium that is not the answer many folks trying to get licensed are not the problem and have zero complaints you have the opportunity to make this right for everyone please do not allow this moratorium thank you anyone else in the audience want to speak got something to say Darren story born and raised in South County I'd like to frame this conversation for what it's really about it's not tax revenue or the ability to get along with your neighbors this is about class warfare we know the average acre of cannabis grown in California injects over $700,000 into the local community in South County the majority of cannabis workers are Latin Americans so this economic value is injected into that very same impoverished community our cannabis businesses sell goods and other jurisdictions to effectively repatriate that revenue bringing it back to our community spreading that wealth with all the other businesses those businesses are then able to hire more workers which perpetuates the economic value cycle also well known that cannabis has a much lower environmental impact on other crops we use less water less fossil fuels and zero pesticides or fungicides some of you may not be aware that our little county is at the forefront of the nation's compassionate caregiving our cannabis community accounts for over 50% of the state's SB 34 donations for patients who cannot afford to pay for it on their own an affirmative vote today on the moratorium is not in support of neighbors or voices heard or didn't have an opportunity to speak up over the last four years instead your affirmative vote today will be a direct attack on the county's impoverished farm worker community and the state's poor people who depend on medical cannabis I know some of you had the intention on coming here today and voting in favor of Zach's moratorium so you could help them save face and quiet some of the vociferous privileged people anxious to protect their retirement nest egg but I strongly encourage you to stand up and let them know you are not against protecting their property values but rather you are in favor of injecting economic vitality into your impoverished communities a rising tide lifts all ships and we appreciate your need to endure sacrifice so that we can continue building our community to give others a chance for economic freedom and relief from their ills I encourage you to vote no on this moratorium and show people that our county places those in need over regressive racist and hateful agendas Allison the audience want to speak that hasn't spoken if anybody else wants to speak please just get behind this gentleman my name is Christopher John Daly and I've been cultivating cannabis in Santa Cruz County since 1975 and I just want to quote Patrick Henry one of our founding fathers give me liberty or give me death thank you okay the audience want to address the board we have anybody on the phone how many we have 13 speakers 13 on the phone Ben Warren your microphone is available well thanks for listening I didn't realize how many people would speak before we got to some of the neighborhoods so I'm going to change what I was going to say short and a great deal one of the things that I would like to see this moratorium extended for their study I understand some of the arguments of the people with money in this but we all have money in it too we have our homes and I think that's been covered but I would like to bring up two things one is that I did not appreciate the letters from Coralitas I had no idea what was going on over there I don't know how I would have but when I saw them published I recognized that there's a use case study for how this is going to affect us and many other people in the county in quote rural ag neighborhoods so I think if nothing else we ought to take time enough to hear Coralitas people come in and you guys all go to Coralitas because in my earlier presentation I was I put in given the Coralitas letters then our problem is the tip of your iceberg this is not going to change if we keep doing it the way it was done in Coralitas unless we believe all the people in Coralitas are liars and aren't telling the truth I think we ought to at least consider that finally if I can get to it quickly if you take a look at the Google maps and look at the satellite view and go over to the Roundtree Medium Facility Prison it looks a lot like in space and size and security and cameras and fences that this thing they're going to put in on our 30 acres across from us so we don't want a prison and that's what this looks like even though it claims to be this is just another crop we don't think it's another crop we think it's a lot more like this prison so I'd like to thank Coralitas and encourage you to use that as a use case if you extend this moratorium thank you Laura Shepard your microphone is available go to star 6 to unmute yourself last call for Laura Shepard hi there hi yeah so thank you for letting me speak today third generation Santa Cruzian here next to this parcel that's been spoken about in La Salva 33 years ago today we're not big money we bought the place a long time ago so I urge you to vote for the moratorium while you consider the ordinance chains I'm not opposed to cannabis or the agriculture in the right setting but have a number of serious concerns about Canada being grown so close to residential areas and near our children it is a known fact that despite legalization of cannabis in California the black market activity is still a major issue even among many of the larger communities in the space many of which are sitting down today with politicians helping to build new laws to impact the cannabis industry and how it's regulated with this black market activity occurring in the industry it opens up a scary door to criminal activities such as theft money laundering and violent crimes my largest concerns around allowing Canada to be grown in this area are the following proximity to family and children neighborhood character detriments like odor increased need for high security firearms used in security property and roaming personnel not to mention things like the odor licensing of cannabis throughout profit sets are intrusive to our residential communities the safety of our families and children needs to be number one second to that cannabis agriculture to any area should not have a negative environmental and residential impact things like the endangering salamander long-tone endangering salamander come to mind we're not going to be permitted near homes and schools or foul smells of cannabis and chemicals like pine salt are being put into the air to disguise cannabis and causing health issues for people like myself the impact of cannabis agriculture and residential add communities have a really impact environment home values and safety of our families and children I really encourage you to take a step back and understand that we all are a part of this community and what I do should not negatively impact you there is additional time that needs to be assessed to evaluate this fairly holler zero three three zero your phone is available holler zero three three zero your microphone is available you'll need to press star six to unmute yourself this is Susan Williams I'm hoping that you will not be influenced by a group of paid lobbyists and lawyers they do not live here they don't vote here they're not a part of our community and they'll be gone soon they talk about all the ways they'll mitigate the effects of a large cannabis operation in our neighborhood but once it's established they'll be gone and there will be no way for us to enforce what they have promised us we're fortunate to live in Santa Cruz County we have much open land and other parcels that would be very appropriate to grow cannabis it's not that we're against the cannabis industry or that we feel that it should not be grown in our county our neighborhood houses a preschool and it also borders a very popular state park where many families enjoy their time we just feel it's not an appropriate location for a large cannabis operation so please don't be influenced by these lobbyists and support the moratorium on non-retail cannabis within a 500 foot setback so you have more time to consider this situation and thank you again for your consideration and please do support this moratorium for further study thank you Holder 9876 your microphone is available 9876 Hi Sarah Bybin with Watsonville, California first I want to thank you for your vote in the last meeting to consider minor changes to the non-retail cannabis ordinance and to provide similar protections to our rural neighborhoods as our urban counterparts enjoy secondly there's been some communications that contain inaccuracies or maybe emissions that I could take a moment to clarify residential rural lots have been described as large and maybe not needing the same level of protection as the urban community and while this may be the case or some and I really wish it was the case for my property in our neighborhood there are lots and lots consistent in size at those found in cities and definitely less than 5 acres definitely less than 1 acre a moratorium exception request has been made but in this request they failed to disclose that there's a preschool on the project boundary a state park within 500 feet an ecological reserve campground and high school all nearby these sensitive receptors make this project unlikely and undeserving of an exception the applicant also described the project's existing greenhouses is ready to operate they were built decades ago and quite frankly they're falling down to make airtight buildings new greenhouses will have to be constructed on the footprint of the old and this is probably the foggiest place in the whole county they will need to upgrade the entire electrical system for 24-7 lighting heating dehumidifiers this is not farming as we know it our neighborhood will have 22 buzzing cannabis factories at our doorsteps and because of the area's geography the project sits at the bottom of a bowl with hundreds of neighbors looking down and hearing the nonstop noise I want to leave you with one final thought before you make your vote would you or your loved ones want to live next door to a cannabis grow factory without proper setbacks I urge you to vote for the moratorium so that you can continue the process of examining what is fair for both rural neighborhoods and growers thank you can you hear me hello can you hear me thank you thank you Mr. Chair and supervisors my name is Tom Moran I live in Corralitas and I'm here to comment why I'm in full support of this temporary moratorium this action is an important step in addressing the concerns of homeowners who live in residential areas in the county that are interspersed with CA zone properties that can now be used to grow or process cannabis my wife and I moved to the Browns and we are currently seeing the quarter back in 2012 because it's such a wonderful setting here but with cannabis operations coming into this residential area we are now suffering the pungent odors and other bad impacts frankly it reeks to be clear I have no issue with cannabis related operations in general my concern is the impacts when they operate near residences I believe a compromise can be reached that balances the rights of cannabis growers with the negative impacts by the CAO office and its memo to the board in today's materials addresses our specific concerns very well one argument made by opponents of this moratorium is that it would be inconsistent with the prior county policy favoring commercial agriculture and a long established recognition that commercial farming should be preserved well the CAO's memo today addresses this when it states and I'm paraphrasing that conflicts between residential and agricultural uses are not new but that commercial cannabis operations are a recent development in the ag sector that brings with them a host of new complaints the memo goes on to state that these need to be evaluated even a major agricultural bureau and it's letter to the supervisors yesterday recognize that cannabis licensing changes may be necessary the action today proposed in acts of pause so that the county can consider and study proposed code amendments and that's why it makes so much sense to adopt it thank you for your consideration Michael your microphone is available morning my name is Michael Balch my wife and I are long-term residents of the Crest Road neighborhood I want to thank the board for their balanced view thus far and agreeing to revisit the current cannabis ordinance in relation to large cannabis farming operations family neighborhoods such as ours I ask I plead the board to extend the moratorium without exemptions in order to get this right for the citizens of Santa Cruz and balance their interest with those of the cannabis industry the cannabis industry is attempted to portray large cannabis farming operations as just any other agricultural activity the board members were in receipt of a rather disingenuous letter from the Santa Cruz Farm Bureau parroting the cannabis lobby's viewpoint it's simply not true neither in reality or how cannabis farming is treated under the law no other legal farming crop on the central coast has to conform with ordinance restrictions on odor control, lighting and rigid security there are no eight-foot barrier fences and security around strawberry fields here there's not the 24-hour at home of odor mitigation systems in other fields and for those in many other reasons to state that large grow operations are just another agricultural activity is a false narrative it is said self-advance is not like other agriculture there is no cannabis emergency that warrants removal of the current moratorium on new permits until such time that the board has had the opportunity to review the modifications of the cabinet of this ordinance and do the right thing for the families in neighborhoods such as ours don't make the same mistakes made in Carpinteria and Southern California where large cannabis farming was allowed in close proximity to residential neighborhoods schools and parks all of which exist in our neighborhood it resulted in 800 complaints repeated ordinance violations by the growers at least five law students Mr. 40's office will not be able to adequately monitor compliance in the cabinet of the police itself citizens are aching for politicians to do the right thing for the families and that have invested greatly in their home stands and here's the board's opportunity please extend the moratorium on new permitting and amend the cannabis cultivation ordinance to protect us Kirk Schmidt your microphone is available this is Kirk Schmidt I'm speaking on behalf of the Santa Cruz County Farm Bureau thank you chair McPherson and supervisors for having this opportunity to address you we've already submitted written correspondence outlining our opposition to the proposed moratorium and I will only address one issue during today's meeting and that concerns the scope of the temporary zoning that will be enacted by the moratorium many of the parcels in CA land are large parcels many of the adjacent parcels that are residential parcels are also large parcels when development permits are required for agricultural land the proposed development for example a structure is measured from the location of a residence on the nearest residential property not from the property line the proposal before you measures from the property line and indeed is much more encumbering on distant agricultural properties because a CA parcel is more than 500 yards away from the residential parcel may be subject to the prohibition proposed by this moratorium not only within the 500 feet but for the entire parcel which may be several several hundred acres furthermore there needs to be clarification about whether the intent of your ordinance is for CA, R1, and RR or should also include SU which was surprising to me that the staff thought that SU was included in a residential use in this circumstance it would be better if the 500 foot measurement was from a residence and it would include land within the 500 feet not the entire parcel touched by this 500 foot line thank you very much for the opportunity to address you Rose, Mary, McNair your microphone is available hello can you hear me yes hello everyone and thank you very much supervisors for allowing me to speak I am a real estate broker I have been in this community for I don't know 45 to 50 years and I have to say that I think the supervisors need to step back and consider this if you vote for this moratorium what you are actually doing is saying that something that is illegal is not a good idea let us instead not be legal consider this legal versus illegal suppose we had cars and we didn't have any rules we wouldn't have to stop signs we could just keep on going and doing whatever we want legal versus illegal what you are saying about cannabis grows illegal uses pesticides do whatever they want because they don't have rules or regulations what happens to the cartel issues and the policing that has to happen for illegality if you vote for this moratorium you are basically saying what we think is it's okay to be illegal what about odors my goodness is anyone driven by a cabbage patch or a broccoli patch that is being killed in we know there's odors we also signed agricultural disclosures on every piece of property that we ever sell in the county of Santa Cruz please consider the fact that cannabis does not have an allowance for any pesticides illegals do so legal or illegal consider that and make your choice Valerie McGrowney-Carrell thank you honorable supervisors I'm Valerie Carrell I'm the Executive Director of WAM Phyto Therapies and I have been cultivating cannabis for compassionate access for 29 years in Santa Cruz County and I am a resident of the county for 50 years in a fourth generation in California and I thank you for the opportunity to address this urgency interim ordinance to freeze the issuance of this business licenses I've appeared before this board countless times regarding cannabis regulations and I've heard and I sympathize with many of the differing viewpoints it's what makes our community and our nation great that we can speak aloud and hopefully find a way to merge our viewpoints cannabis is the most heavily regulated and highly taxed business in our community and perhaps the nation I question the necessity to exact an urgent measure to create a moratorium on new cannabis applications and at the same time I respect the wishes of neighbors and I honor their concerns yet apprehensions can be addressed on an individual basis as cannabis applications are submitted this should include careful consideration and review of all interests including transparency regarding any and all investor monies including origin and the flow of any funding and as a matter of fact I hope that you will drive a more comprehensive overview of investor monies scrutinizing the origin of capital investment because soon we will be facing a greater demon Jeff Bezos in the Amazon empire your focus may be in the wrong place and in fact the land in South County that WAM Phyto-therapies currently occupies as was a desolate commercially grown bankrupt rose farmland and it was that was a result of NAFTA but my hope is that over time our opportunities will unify us rather than digress remember that the extent of cannabis regulation is uniquely as highly regulated and uniquely high taxation Greg Fernandez your microphone is available Greg Fernandez let's call for Greg Fernandez okay here we go can you hear me now yes hi my name is Greg Fernandez we have a licensed property recently obtained up there on Hughes Road we're going to build out 600,000 square feet we've spent millions of dollars to get to this point and intend to spend millions more this moratorium would not impact our property now because we already have it I'm just concerned about future regulations this 500 foot rule we would decimate that farm and decimate the 300 jobs that we planned to have right now we just started putting plants in the ground and we intend to have up to 300 employees and we're also looking at a neighboring farm about 400,000 square feet that this moratorium would impact severely in fact we would probably cancel escrow and what does this do we took a fledgling rose farm and purchased it for a quite significant sum of money just the tax revenue just on the real property difference is probably about $500,000 a year when it's all said and done additionally the tax revenue generated the marijuana tax the county tax will be significant if we have a million square feet in total canopy we're talking 6% of roughly $300 million that's $18 million just from two farms and I strongly suggest that you do not pass this moratorium thank you for your time I appreciate it caller 2912 your phone is available star 6 to unmute hello my name is Robert Tidiyama I'm the president of Tidiyama brothers we are large cut flower and landowners in South County we've been farming here for over 55 years we also own a 30 acre parcel on Crest Drive that we are currently in negotiations selling it's 30 acres there's 25 acres of field and 5 acres of greenhouse so we're in the process of selling this to a party who will probably use it for cannabis but on this 30 acre parcel only 5 acres of greenhouse would be eligible for cannabis which is 15% of this property if this ordinance is passed it will probably jeopardize this deal and it would erode the values for this property that we've owned for over 30 years by probably 25 to 50% which is very injurious to a company like ours we are marking the proceeds from the sale to upgrade our greenhouses and our facilities which are over 50 years old and if we want to continue to be sustainable and profitable and efficient business people in South County growing cut flowers we need this investment and so as farmers we want to support other farming we believe that cannabis can legal cannabis can be done correctly and so we would ask all of the supervisors to please use moratorium and the proposed setback rules that have been proposed thank you very much Matthew Groves your microphone is available Matthew Groves Hi sorry I was muted Hi my name is Matt Groves I'm the cannabis business owner in Lawsonville I'm urging the supporters to the survivors to reject the moratorium as well to propose zoning changes there are numerous viable parcels that will be unfairly disqualified for example one of our farms the cultivation site is over 3,000 feet away from the nearest dwelling on a residential zone parcel yet this farm would be disqualified based on the property line requirements also many of the remaining sites are located in the coastal zone as well as the south eastern portion of the county that is just ramped with pesticide spray and the coastal zone is unsuited for cultivation due to the climate and is known as a fog belt so while it seems there are a lot of remaining sites in actuality many of these are not viable and are already being taken for visual cultivation lastly we've been to the process on several farms and it's been an extremely time intensive and costly process and I feel for those who are in the last stages of their own process and the county may potentially pull the rug out underneath them in the last minute throwing away all their time and money our heart really goes out for them it's deeply unfair for the county to put forth a regulatory landscape and then change it at the last minute after many many people have spent a lot of time in investment so I urge everybody to reject the moratorium and propose changes thank you Thank you Thank you Can you hear me? Yes Dear city leaders it's with great respect that I'm speaking today we've been an active participant in the conversation about legal cannabis since 2008 and it's one of the few remaining operators that survived the transition to regulated cannabis and has been actively paying taxes since the inception of the taxation on cannabis we've got great concern with the recent proposed emergency moratorium over 95% of the cannabis businesses that operated under medical law have gone out of business in the transition to regulation the government collects roughly 50% of the cannabis consumer dollar and the fiscal impacts of your decision will be felt by many hardworking constituents including heads of households that are responsible for the well-being of others with this backwards approach many hardworking people will lose their livelihoods our farm alone supports around 50 households during peak season COVID has been very hard on everyone suicide rates are at an all-time high let's not bring harm to the innocent hardworking community members that support our local economy the repeated concern about smell cannot be truly addressed because even if you ban cannabis you can't ban hemp it can be grown on any commercial ag property in the united states fence line to fence line now protect hemp farmers who grow a plant that smells the exact same as cannabis there's nothing that can be done to prohibit hemp from being grown bringing harm to our legal cannabis operators is not the solution the status of our local cannabis industries fragile society is dealing with record-breaking unemployment and mental health issues homelessness suicide and crime rates are at all-time high please don't be the cause of more suffering the voters of Santa Cruz overwhelmingly overturned the last moratorium via voter initiatives wasting tremendous resources that could have otherwise gone towards betterment of the community please don't make this mistake again the bottom line is that there is not an emergency and the legal cannabis economy is created the collective effort to create balanced cannabis policies staggering when you think about all the time we've spent on this issue only to ban it all please do not move forward with this hasty decision Kodiga that continues five more speakers hello my name is Chris Kodiga I'm part of the Correlated Coalition for Balanced Land Use our family has owned and managed the property for over 50 years on Browns Valley Road that includes a 10 acre organic apple orchard we support the urgency interim ordinance to freeze issuance of new cannabis business licenses the Correlated Coalition for Balanced Land Use has been working diligently to find a reasonable solution to the intensification and concentration of cannabis in our small beautiful rural community since 2019 and 2019 is when the second district was opened up to cannabis cultivation and public notification was no longer required you have heard all the real very real complaints that have negatively impact the residents' quality of life many times the constant pungent smell of cannabis, public safety, security concerns, etc the Environmental Impact Report from 2016 listed many unmitigated problems which include traffic, noise, water, and smell that have turned out to be very true the impacts from the 2016 ordinance and the 2019 changes are showing up now it's time for the county leaders to take a pause and enact fair and reasonable solutions for all interested parties the main goals when cannabis cultivation was allowed in Santa Cruz County was to minimize environmental damage to have no residential conflict and ensure a supply of medical cannabis a moratorium and an updating of the current ordinance which includes minor changes is consistent with the goal of residential protection thank you very much for supporting the moratorium Trevor Luxon, your microphone is available Hi there, my name is Trevor Luxon lifelong Santa Cruz County resident and also local attorney I've been involved and watched this cannabis process go on since it began several years ago this is an industry that people felt early on could be a real economic driver for this community and provide a lot of jobs a lot of tax revenue instead it's been absolutely strangled by over regulation, over taxation and the majority of the businesses are either gone or the remaining ones are struggling to survive as Ms. Serino pointed out in her excellent presentation this moratorium would result in a pretty significant loss of tax revenue to the county there's also there's really no reason why this needs to be treated as an emergency ordinance or emergency moratorium this could be handled in November as is already planned there's no reason why it needs to happen within two weeks the way that it has also I think the existing applicants who have already submitted applications that are currently pending should be allowed to continue with their application process they've spent a lot of money time, effort to get to the point where they're at now and essentially they're going to be have the rug pulled right up from under them and I also would like to note that as Mr. Groves said this is going to result in a loss of a lot more parcels than just the 789 that are remaining of those remaining parcels many of them are either in inappropriate areas or adjacent to major roads and couldn't be used for cannabis cultivation thank you Antela Doria do you have microphones available hello I would just like to say that I am a local cannabis business owner wife mother and a supporter of the community at large I want to suggest the projection of this memorandum and to just sort of talk about how cannabis is feared a little bit and it scares me to talk to the people who are opposed to the location of it but I think maybe that's what she has been brought to us to sort of do is like bring it out and have us all talk about it so maybe and instead of accepting a memorandum that is out of fear we can do this patient and realize that this is an evolving industry and that with that it's just going to come with communication and actually talking because it seems like this is just a communication breakdown on some level and then on other levels that can be you can go into a huge broad spectrum that affects a lot of people in an industry that is wanting to heal the planet which we have seen in soil tests as well as tests of the flower it's if you want to be in a community how wonderful it is to know that you are in a community pesticide free because you are actually part of a company that is getting those results and I can say that to people so I hope that with this the families and the areas that are so scared don't be scared this is just an issue to talk about and your kids will need to talk about it and how beautiful that you get to talk about it in your backyard and I think that it can involve into something that's better where they can see the remediation of the earth and the forest out there and everything will get better thank you Shani Ginsberg Shani Ginsberg your microphone is available thank you my name is Shani Ginsberg I live in the neighborhood adjacent to the farm at 110 Crest Drive and I'm calling to speak in support of the moratorium I think it's clear from the extensive comments that this is something that requires further study and that's what the moratorium would allow for I appreciate the supervisor's time I appreciate you reading our letters we are a neighborhood of people who have lived here for decades some of us built our houses with our own hands you have heard from us in letters there aren't more of us on these calls because we are working and that's what we do we earn we work we earn a living and we participate in our community excuse me we really appreciate you your thoughtfulness in taking more time to study this issue more thoroughly thank you so much for listening this is the last speaker chair call her 4497 your microphone is available good afternoon my family has lived worked in operated farms and other businesses across Santa Cruz County for over 30 years we're also raising our children here we recognize that the commercial cannabis industry provides an economic benefit to the county and that the end product is lawful and desirable by many of us however we would urge this board to carefully consider and balance the significant and unique impacts the commercial cultivation industry has on our families our neighborhoods and our sensitive environments for example no other farming industry has resulted in regular law enforcement seizures of guns from the farms as has happened with cannabis farms by the county's own reports there were dozens of illegal guns seized by the sheriff pursuant to search warrants at cannabis operations around Santa Cruz County quite simply cannabis is not a typical crop this fact alone suggests that the board should go slowly consider the precise details of the proposed ordinance amendments and the scope of the future commercial cannabis operations near our families in addition no other industry we are aware of in this county has ever generated such diverse ongoing and consistent public comment and concern about the noxious odors illegal activity and the general disruption to the quality of life for all of those affected in closing there is a delicate balance that this board should strive to achieve between reasonably supporting the commercial cannabis industry while simultaneously ensuring that our families and sheriffs natural environments are protected this effort demands a slow and methodical approach and I would urge this board to adopt the temporary moratorium on new licenses as you thoroughly research and undertake this critical analysis thank you we will return the issue to the board calling supervisor friend who brought this to the board of supervisors thank you Mr. Chair and thank you to everyone who spoke both from the cannabis industry and from the community I would say that other than perhaps the CZU item that is in this afternoon I don't think we have ever received so many letters and calls and participation from rural residents as we have on this one on this specific issue in particular just for today's item even previously when we have done some of these iterations and we started this quite some time ago when I was first on the board many of you remember there was actually a moratorium preventing all commercial cultivation pending a state supreme court decision about seven years ago we started this process actually determined that the cultivation side was too difficult to really balance at the time so we just went down the dispensing road eventually picked up the cultivation side I'm sure supervisor Koenig is thankfully wasn't on the board since today is an indication of what we dealt with for quite some time but this is a very fluid process right I mean the board has made multiple multiple modifications to the cultivation ordinance it was always intended and has always been stated and committed to the public that it would be iterative and it would be modified the idea that the board has created a set of regulations and is modifying it has actually been the one thing that has been constant associated with all of the cannabis related ordinances beyond dispensing, manufacturing or cultivation so realistically there were ordinance changes that both had prohibited or allowed the activity that we currently have in fact we had a as you may remember an entire ban on the second district for outdoor growing we have a lot of conflicts in the hills on environmental issues and residential conflicts and the board had decided to move this down into the CA zoned areas which are disproportionately in my district and supervisor campus district that was an item that I had supported with additional requests that we consider these setbacks that we have in other elements of the ordinance as well as a notification element that happened in mid 2020 it takes a while as many the cultivators noted to get through the process so the first ability for there to really be any sort of issues that were raised with neighborhoods within this last six to eight months and that's exactly what's come up this is much broader than just a few neighborhoods I mean over the course of this process we've heard from not just a lot of people in correlators in fact I've in the nine years I've been on the board I've never seen an issue that has united and received so much input from correlators than this but also in the salva hazel del which I share with supervisor cap at 129 area which is actually within his district as well the day valley and pleasant valley area have all expressed concerns over the course of this process and want to address something that Valerie said she's somebody I admire very greatly within this industry because of her dedication to those that compassionate use she brought up about the idea of allowing for community input well since we moved into a principally permitted use there isn't an ability for any community input no mitigations can actually be proposed and so some of the speakers were saying there needs to be a dialogue that dialogue was actually removed by this board for their ability to actually have any mitigations proposed from community members by the time this is actually in place is by the actually there's no there's no ability to provide any sort of mitigations for input so what this is doing is actually moving those conflicts and creating a noticing component moving forward in the actual ordinance that actually allows there to be the same input that actually it sounds like some cultivators think that there should be but a lot of this talk was on balancing competing interests and I totally agree if this was I think that what we should be able to agree is that given this level of dialogue it's not in balance right now and it had been we've been it's been a very iterative process throughout the last seven years we've been working on it we've been trying to find an equilibrium we're getting a lot closer I do think that commercial agriculture we zone districts are the right ones but being next to within a setback of residentially zoned areas really is not the solution I mean if this were simply a financial consideration and I think it's important to think about the money for a second which is to say some of the numbers that staff presented on what could be lost with these license are just theoretical in the last three years alone during the budget times staff has come back to say that we never met any of the projected estimates associated with licensing fees so that two and a half million in and of itself is not is just at best a guess it was a number that the board budgeted but last year you may remember we were nowhere near the numbers that we said that we'd budgeted so we don't actually know whether but there's also a significant cost of compliance associated with it as a couple of the speakers noted you know this is not akin to a standard agricultural product we don't have a very licensing officer or a lettuce licensing officer compliance office we spend millions in compliance and in our quarterly reports we see that there's a lot of compliance issues associated with this it is heavily regulated for a reason and that's because it is viewed fundamentally different by both the local state and federal approach to this and so I think it's very reasonable the board trying to find what that balance is but if we were only interested in money then there were a lot of other decisions the board could consider I mean we could for example we have hotels that pay a significant amount of transit occupancy tax some of them are single story in the live oak area or other places in the county maybe they should be five six seven stories immediately adjacent to residentially zoned areas but we would never do that because we would say that that doesn't strike the balance and even though the historic use has been you were living next to a hotel the expectation wasn't that the intensification would be that significant those elements of conflict between financial inputs and historic use are throughout our code I mean so we always make these balanced land use decisions throughout our county and I think that this does exactly that I'm fully supportive of what it is I hear the challenge I mean the reason that this is something that the county has permitted to create these issues and how do we start to mitigate some of those issues I think allowing for hundreds of additional parcels to still exist on top of the ones that are currently already permitted but prevent future issues and these conflicts with with residentially zoned districts is just part of the promise we've made the community from day one I mean if the board wants to keep its word and and and all the people that participated in the process were told that this would not have residential conflicts would not have environmental conflicts we're seeing that both are occurring then the board needs to support this more and also the ordinance revisions moving forward I do appreciate the boards the respectful exchange of ideas that was that occurred today I recognize that people are very passionate about this on both sides of the issue but what I do hear is is a common theme that the cannabis industry is inextricably linked with both the agricultural industry and the greater fabric of Santa Cruz County and I don't think that's that's being changed or denied as opposed to what's being proposed here so too though is the fact that we're trying to mitigate any sort of residential or environmental conflicts and that that is what's being proposed here so Mr. Chair when it comes time obviously I'll be willing to make a motion in favor of the recommended actions but obviously I'd like to hear from my colleagues as well thank you I'll probably ask Mr. Caput if you have a comment you don't have a comment okay do you have a comment Supervisor Koenig? Sure thank you Chair you know I just start by saying I do agree with everything Supervisor Friend said as far as the setting here right that the policy needs to be iterative that we clearly need to balance the interests of both parties that we heard today I also think that we heard strong argument for the fact that 500 feet from the edge of a residential parcel is too severe and so I mean during this the extensive public comment we heard was looking at the two particular problem parcels that we know for sure I'm not familiar maybe with all of them you mentioned a few others on Hazelbell etc Supervisor Friend but the ones on Browns Valley Road and Crest Drive if we made this 500 feet from a residential dwelling I think that both those parcels the problem parcels we've heard about would fall under that and so we'd have a moratorium on the kinds of problems we're currently seeing but you know when you hear from a long time agricultural growers in our community like Robert Kidiyama he's got a 30 acre parcel I mean why should all of his parcel be completely exempted from any kind of cannabis grow just because it's within 500 feet of the edge of a residential parcel I mean so I think that we should look to change this from to residential dwelling some foot amount so that we provide a little more flexibility I mean again Supervisor Friend you're completely correct we need to fine tune this policy but I think they're going you know if we pass the ordinance as written it's not going to be fine tuning it's going to be moving radically to complete alternate extreme I mean a policy that could eliminate half of all the currently eligible parcels I think is too extreme right Supervisor Coonerty yeah thank you Mr. Chair so I think Supervisor Kodak just sort of outlined my position which is I understand Supervisor Friend bringing this forward I think he's doing what he's like to do just to represent the concerns of his constituents and then it's the job of the rest of us to look at this in the context of the overall county and hearing the competing needs and values that we have you know when this is brought forward I sort of in my mind thought it was we're talking about a half dozen, a dozen parcels in the Corralitos area and a sort of an incremental iterative regulation to address some specific issues this is a wholesale change in our cannabis policy and in people who have invested a lot of time in trying to play by the rules that we created and so you know a very narrow change I'd be interested in but this change is just too big a leap when we've tried to finally bring some continuity and security to this process I also believe that as the point that many people made which was that if you force people to move to hemp which is unregulated you have many of the same impacts but without any of the additional compliance that we do have put a lot of conditions on cannabis cultivators with the idea of reducing impacts on the environment and neighborhoods and creating a stable industry but we need to create a path for people to be able to comply with the law so that we can enforce against people who are not complying with the law and this seems like an over-correction so I can't support this moratorium as it's written today I am open to small targeted changes to address specific neighborhood impacts Thank you Mr. Chair if I may Thank you and members of the community who have contacted my office in each of our offices on the impacts of cannabis I also want to thank those who previously shared of my office how critical it is that our county continue to remove not add barriers to this industry so that it can realize the goals and objectives that we have set out this has been a controversial issue throughout and it's been an area of policy that requires frequent adjustment I believe and to address those concerns our county has spent a great deal of time over seven years I think ago we started getting into this to get it right and I think we need to continue to work on the challenge I can support this moratorium for 45 days but I don't know if I will support an extension without there being further analysis by the staff I think some changes are needed but I think this will give us pause to see how we can get those changes included in discussion on October 19th otherwise I think we're going to be discussing this issue in November one way or the other so I would entertain Mr. friend you wanted to make a motion sure actually I wanted to ask supervisor Koenig a question we did have some discussions regarding setbacks regarding residential parcel or excuse me residences themselves dwellings so what it sounds like that was something that you were interested in proposing what distance setback do you think there already are some setbacks already that are baked into our current code we have notifications setback excuse me notifications at 600 feet etc as one person spoke they said that they were over a thousand feet from an adjoining residence and they would have been precluded so what setback distance from a residence were you interested in supporting maybe we can move can you hear me now I'd be willing to support a 500 foot setback from a residential dwelling and as I said having measured that distance it seems that that would affect both of the problem parcels that we've heard the most about on Crest Drive and Browns Valley Road okay let me just clarify one point with council based on what's being proposed today would it be feasible to modify the recommended actions to a 500 foot from a residential structure yes it would because we're dealing with an urgency ordinance so you can make a change to what's been suggested and not have to come back to do a second read on it okay well I mean Supervisor Koenig also recognizing that you grew up in the heart of this area that's being discussed I think you would have some intimate knowledge and do you feel that a 500 foot setback would be a situation from your previous community that would be supportive you know in the interest of again iterative policy and this being a moratorium that you know will basically affect it's kind of a prequel to as we go forward into November I think it's a good first step to you know addressing the concerns of the Browns Valley community alright thank you so Mr. Chair based on that information thank you Supervisor Koenig welcome to the discussion on cannabis that'll never leave I promise you I will move the recommended actions with a modification to change it from a 500 foot setback from a parcel one to a 500 foot setback from residential structure second parcel one move is seconded any comments by the board does this require four or three four requires four votes okay any other comments from the board this is to move this from a 500 foot setback from the property line to the residents that's the that's a change in the proposal that clearly I understand it yes okay please call the roll Supervisor Koenig aye friend aye community no mcpherson aye normally I would like to continue with our regular agenda but we do have a set item on 130 and so we're going to adjourn until it is now 1220 we'll come back at 145 we have a scheduled 130 meeting that will start at 145 and we have a closed session now County Council do we have any reportable items yes I expect that there will be reportable items okay I think that when we come back at 145 we will address what has been discussed in closed session and then we'll move on to the 130 scheduled items so the 130 scheduled item will probably be closer to two o'clock okay can that be is that that sounds about right okay alright okay we'll recess until 145 maybe I I'll go ahead and get somewhat started with this first of all I want to thank you in the audience I know we had a 130 scheduled item we went along this morning and we had a closed session that went along as well so I appreciate your patience and even more so for additional patience we had a closed sessions and I want to ask the County Council if there's any reportable items yes there was one reportable item the board approved by 50 an item to file litigation against a defendant in one matter that'll be disclosed later and I understand that you also have something to report out yes it gives me a tremendous amount of pleasure to announce the first public defender for Santa Cruz County reporting out of closed session I am pleased to announce that the Board of Supervisors has appointed Heather Rogers as the first county public defender following an extensive recruitment Miss Rogers is a resident of Santa Cruz County and brings over 17 years of litigation and management experience as a county and federal public defender as well as over a decade as trainer and teacher she has represented hundreds of clients at all stages of proceedings manage the defense teams and work collaboratively to promote client centered programs that reduce recidivism rebuild communities and result in better outcomes currently Miss Rogers is a supervising and felony trial attorney as well as lead immigration resource council for the bigum Christiansen and men's law firm which serves as the county's contract public defender she is a graduate of Stanford law school with distinction and serves on the Santa Cruz County juvenile justice and delinquency commission Santa Cruz County Trial Lawyers Association Board of Directors Santa Cruz County Defense Bar Board of Directors and National Association for Public Defense Wellness Summit Working Group Miss Rogers impressed the board with her vision to build a public agency that provides impassioned client centered holistic defense promotes equity diversity and inclusion and work closely with county court and community partners to reach the best outcomes we'd like to welcome Miss Rogers as the county's newest department head beginning October 1st and look forward to working with her as an indigent defense services transition from the BCM law firm to the county in nine months on July 1st Miss Rogers congratulations and welcome to the Santa Cruz County Thank you supervisors for putting your trust in me to lead the Santa Cruz County public defender through this time of tremendous growth change and opportunity thank you also to our community county and our justice partners to our county administrative officer Carlos Palacios to the county transition team the share of Jim Hart district attorney Jeff Roselle and to everyone who is supportive of this new agency and is wishing our success moving forward and a special thank you to Larry Bigum, Jerry Christensen and John Menzloff and to our community for 45 years as the public defender building a team of dedicated, talented compassionate defenders who will help move this new agency forward over 17 years ago one of my first clients was a goat herd found wandering in the mountains near the border of the United States and Mexico he was charged with illegal re-entry after deportation a federal crime with severe consequences I met him in the visiting room of the Federal Detention Center he was slumped over crying he wasn't interested in the charges against him he wasn't interested in potential defenses he didn't care how much time he was facing all he wanted to know was que paso con mis chivos what happened to my goats he described the goats by name in loving detail and he asked me to find them to make sure that they were safe getting across from a goat herd in my new suit with a shiny briefcase full of books I realized that little I'd learned in law school had prepared me for this work as public defenders were not so much in the business of law as in the business of people people with sad complicated incredible stories people with hopes and dreams and fears people who signed fears people who sometimes feel like they've lost everything that they've hit rock bottom that there's no way forward over the years I've defended hundreds of clients facing charges ranging from shoplifting to murder but that lesson I learned from a goat herd stays with me our clients aren't cases they're people to do this work well we have to hear their stories we have to amplify their voices and we have to honor their humanity Karen Santa Cruz that often means honoring the humanity of a client who's struggling with mental illness substance abuse poverty homelessness or hopelessness aggressive courtroom advocacy is the cornerstone of a strong public defender's office but we've learned that we can't litigate our way out of the issues that drive our most vulnerable clients into a cycle of recidivism the only way to break that cycle is to address root causes and the only way to do that is to work together to find real solutions to our community's most pressing problems I'm grateful to serve here in Santa Cruz County where we're already thinking outside the box to solve these problems in our schools and neighborhood courts we embrace restorative justice as an alternative to prosecution and incarceration our collaborative courts including veterans court packed and behavioral health court use compassion and accountability to empower clients to turn their lives around and we've invested in diversion and record clearance programs to support second chances but we know we can do more and our public defender's office will combine aggressive courtroom advocacy with a holistic defense model that offers culturally responsive interdisciplinary support we'll zealously defend our clients with courageous, compassionate client-centered defense and we'll work together with all of you to reduce incarceration reduce recidivism and offer real solutions to the root causes of system involvement thank you I'm honored thank you this is a big deal for Santa Cruz County and it's going to be great to have this in our judicial system to have it under the county oversight so we welcome you with open arms and can't wait to really get on the job in July that's going to be great thank you very much okay now we will go into the scheduled 130 item it now being almost two o'clock but this item is to consider options and resolution to allow CZU August lightning complex fire survivors to rebuild without evaluating and mitigating potential geological hazards direct ordinance amendments and take related actions that's outlined in the memorandum of the acting planning director we have a resolution from the the CZU rebuild directive 9.921 attachment and a declaration of covenant for geological hazards 9.921 attachment B we will have a staff presentation at this time giving us the presentation will be Pyle Levine of our planning department you can introduce those who follow you thank you very much ready for the first slide good afternoon members of the board and members of the public in the room and also online we're here today at the board's request to respond to concerns regarding rebuilding in the CZU fire burn area we were asked to present options for allowing rebuilding without evaluation and mitigation of potential geologic hazards in order to address the hardship and the ongoing displacement that's being experienced by people who have lost their homes we are here today to present those options for your consideration to discuss the tradeoffs inherent in these options and to receive your direction on proceeding with a plan of action to begin with the staff want to acknowledge that the recovery process is indeed a struggle for victims in addition to the loss of a home families had to deal with last winter's weather threats right on the heels of the fire and thankfully there were no significant debris flow events last winter following that there's the working through the debris removal and the building permit pre-clearance process now we're about to prepare for winter weather events again all of this has been time consuming it reignites the memories of loss and all of us as public servants and community members we must and we do keep in our minds and empathize with the difficulties that really underpins all of our staff work and we just want the community to know that so last September the board acted quickly to create the fire recovery permit center in order to assist in the streamlining of permits for fire rebuild victims and survivors in the streamlining process and typical 2B building permit turnaround and approval for many of the road recovery and rebuilding still remains difficult I have personally spoken with dozens of fire families and heard firsthand how the challenges they are facing are many and numerous and challenging currently our county code Chapter 1610 does not have provisions for rebuilding after a natural disaster which we will discuss in order to address the significant hardship and emotional and financial stress of rebuilding after a traumatic event and the increased housing insecurity associated with the delay and expense of producing the specific reports on August 10 your board directed staff to develop options for allowing rebuild without evaluation and mitigation of potential geologic hazards next slide this is David Reid the screen director of ROR 3 thank you the Santa Cruz mountains are a complicated geologic environment many locations are subject to various hazards including landslides debris flow, flooding and hazards related to earthquakes the purpose of the geologic hazard ordinance Chapter 1610 is to minimize injury loss of life and damage to public and private property in a dynamic kind of an environment the strategy in the code to accomplish that purpose is based on firstly technical investigation of individual building sites in order to fully understand what the hazards are avoidance of the identified hazards wherever that's possible where that's not possible mitigation to lessen the risks is required also disclosure so that future owners have an awareness of the situation we point to the geologic work that's been done so that anybody can see the technical investigation and we ensure that the property owner and future property owners are aware that they need to maintain mitigation measures over time to keep their effectiveness over time this emphasis on avoidance comes out of the experience of our community where we have in the not so distant past had repeated years in landslide and debris flow we experience the disruption of disaster after disaster up to and including loss of life in many locations throughout the Santa Cruz mountains as we discuss the difficulties with implementing the current code as applied to the fire rebuilding it's worthwhile to recall the genesis for the code and the why it was set up the way that it is as we go through the discussion we'll be emphasizing that this is the situation of balancing multiple worthy objectives there is no single right way to answer these questions there's only careful consideration and weighing of the factors after disaster that creates widespread displacement up to and including housing insecurity the protection of health and safety becomes more complicated than thinking just about avoidance the displacement itself can be a major impact to public health and safety it has been very difficult for fire victims to find stable affordable places to be one of the trade-offs is balancing the avoidance of risk through the geologic report and mitigation process with allowing residents to assume risk in order to rebuild more quickly whichever way the alternatives are balanced it's important to acknowledge that public safety is always the goal and the intent regardless of the approach an element of assuming risk is balancing the type of development in this case mostly single family residences and the appropriate amount of caution it's a well established principle in land use planning that public buildings and critical buildings must meet a higher standard than a residence in this case Chapter 1610 does make that distinction for seismic hazards for example but it does not make that distinction for geologic investigations and mitigation those requirements as the code is written now are for all residences all habitable situations equally another balancing is between the clear and present need of the impacted property owners to rebuild on the one hand and the principles of long-term resiliency planning on the other future disasters are expected to occur and they're expected to be more likely than they have been in the past so it's desirable well to build resilience into the rebuilding and the recovery we're turning over a significant part of the housing stock at this point and at the end of the day we want the community in a better position and safer for future occurrences so all of this there are many things to consider as we go through the presentation we're planning on describing the options and the challenges in a high level manner but a discussion about geologic hazards can become fairly technical fairly quickly so I'd like the board to know that various staff are here to address technical as well as land use planning issues next slide so as noted chapter 1610 is organized around the principles of investigation avoidance and mitigation there are several regulatory mechanisms that are available to your board to accomplish a policy change to allow rebuilding without that evaluation and mitigation the options differ in terms of how soon they can go into effect and whether they are narrowly focused on just CZU rebuilding or whether they express a broader emergency planning perspective the three main options are one the board can simply direct county staff not to consider the provisions of 1610 that call for those site specific reports review of the reports and the mitigation for CZU rebuilding two the board can amend 1610 itself to remove CZU rebuilding from the category of development that dictates what the code applies to or three the board can approve broader policy amendments to the code and to the general plan that reflect resiliency policy generally and would apply to a range of natural disasters that might occur in the future next slide at this point I would like to introduce Carolyn Burke she's the planning department senior civil engineer she'll take you through the options good afternoon the first option will present today is for the board to direct county staff not to apply the provisions of county code chapter 1610 in their review of permit applications for CZU rebuilds if this option is chosen the board can provide such direction via adoption of either resolution or an uncodified urgency ordinance with either path the direction would become effective immediately to meet the time constraints faced by fire survivors the main difference between a resolution and ordinance is that a resolution is typically used to address issues of a temporary nature on ordinance is a more formal permanent enactment of law passage of a resolution by the board requires a simple majority passage of an ordinance requires a four fifths vote for approval by the board resolution has been included in the board agenda packet that provides details regarding how the board's direction would be applied in addition to eligibility requirements which will be covered in the next slide the resolution includes requirements for those choosing to opt out of further geologic investigation to sign and record a covenant on title that acknowledges the potential of developing an area subject to hazards and indemnifies the county a copy of the recommended covenant is included in the board agenda packet the practice of recording such a document on title in areas subject to hazards is not new what is new in this situation is that owners would be accepting an uncharacterized risk related to geologic hazards in the case of those rebuilding pursuant to board direction the covenant as written states in the broadest way the potential hazards that may exist on parcels and acknowledges that no geologic report was prepared pursuant to the board direction considered today this informs current and future property owners that hazards may exist and it is incumbent upon them to get a geologic evaluation done if they would like to better understand their individual risks further future property owners are also made aware that the director received a building permit certain provisions of county code were not applied to our review the recommended covenant also includes the clause whereby the property owners acknowledge heighten near term geologic risks be an agreement to evacuate if an order is issued to do so in summary the decision to issue building permits without geologic review is what creates the need for a covenant a resolution is included in your agenda packet if the board so chooses if an urgency ordinance is the preferred direction staff can return in two weeks with an ordinance for adoption by the board whether a resolution or ordinance is chosen by the board staff recommends supporting the board direction with a codified non urgency ordinance in general plan and local coastal program amendments as necessary to this end the attached resolution includes a sunset clause with a direction effective for three years at which time it may be extended by the board it is anticipated that the follow-up non urgency ordinance will be in place well before the three-year expiration date eligibility requirements to not consider evaluation and mitigation of geologic hazards focus on allowing property owners facing immediate hardships related to time and funds to replace their loss structures in kind and assume their risk level as they had before the fire board direction would apply to property owners on title at the time of the CZU fire applying for in kind replacement of the structures destroyed by fire because geologic risks are tied to topography the criteria for in kind structures includes replacement in substantially the same location and of similar size up to 10% more than the previous structure requirements with the same legality provisions applied to other CZU fire rebuild policies which requires that eligible structures be permitted or legal non conforming if you want to sure this is just a graphic that shows how we determine whether a structure that does not have permits is indeed legal non conforming if a structure was built before permits were required and that date was in 1956 there are no questions the structures treated as legally non conforming after the fire in response to the difficulties your board extended that 1956 state to include everything that was constructed through 1985 so those structures if built without permit will also be considered legally non conforming if a structure was built in 1986 or later and does not have a permit it doesn't have any permit to be included with it and at that point it needs to meet all the current regulations and standards of the zoning code the second option before the board today is to amend current counting code chapter 1610 to remove CZU fire rebuilds from the definition of development subject to the provisions of the chapter the current definition of development includes construction of residential structures and does not provide for structures rebuilt after wildfire removing CZU fire rebuilds clearly recognizes that rebuilding homes destroyed by wildfire is fundamentally different from new construction and can be crafted to include provisions regarding eligibility and assumption of risk similar to option one the difference between options one and two is that this option requires a formal amendment to our current code before it can take effect the process for which takes time and cannot meet the immediate needs of those rebuilding as a local coastal program implementing ordinance and amendments chapter 1610 requires approval by the coastal commission and possible amendments to the general plan and local coastal program which can take up to six months and slide will be Dave Reed thank you in this option option three the board could direct OR in the planning department to explore broader policy amendments to our Santa Cruz County code in general plan reflecting resiliency and adaptation policy strategies applicable to a range of natural disasters that may occur in the future well this option would begin a larger regulatory conversation on the implications of climate change and the potential for recurring natural disasters allowing us to discuss and explore ways to build preparedness and processes to be in place for rebuilding in the wake of future disasters it will require the development of a significant plan and work program requiring staff and time resources that would not be accomplished quickly it may be considered by the board to include this option as additional direction in conjunction with the options that provide immediate relief next slide the majority of the rebuild proposals flag for further geologic evaluation are in debris flow hazard areas these areas are prone to debris flows due to geography topography and climate and their risk of impact is elevated for two to five years after fire when it returns to background risk level that existed prior to the fire before the CZU fire was even fully contained a rapid assessment of the burn zone was performed by the watershed emergency response team or work to identify immediate life safety risk to those still occupying structures within the burn area and inform evacuation planning the work report broadly defined debris flow hazard areas using conservative assumptions and field evidence and clearly stated that further study was needed to refine the hazard areas upon receipt of the report county geologic staff immediately took to the field walking the individual basins identified in the work report to chart the course the debris flow may take this refinement reduced the number of properties subject to evacuation but it did not incorporate the computer modeling necessary to estimate the inundation area boundaries and provide site specific data necessary to design mitigation measures recognizing the need for CZU rebuilders to mitigate the debris flow hazard in their home designs the community foundation of Santa Cruz County generously commissioned a flood study by Atkins engineering to provide the quantitative analysis missing from both the word report and county mapping the products of the report a refined debris flow inundation areas and technical design parameters that can be used by rebuilders to avoid or mitigate the impacts of debris flow the Atkins report is not yet final but the county has reviewed draft data and confirmed the report achieved its intended goals of refining and reducing the number of burned and unburned structures and identified debris flow hazard areas and providing depth and velocity data within debris flow inundation areas that can be used by engineers and other design professionals the final results of the study will be presented in further detail at the September 28th board meeting next slide please on board direction the permitting process for eligible projects would begin with an application for a geologic hazard clearance as is current practice to determine whether geologic evaluation is required in most cases the presence of imminent hazards in the need for a geologic report can be determined through the clearance process though in some cases a geologic hazards assessment is necessary to determine whether a full geologic report is required those projects that need a full geologic report to comply with the requirements of county code chapter 1610 may proceed to apply for their building permit application provided they record the recommended covenant on title prior to permit issuance those who do not wish to record the covenant may opt to meet the requirements of chapter 1610 by submitting a geologic report for peer review and incorporating the recommended mitigations into their project designs next slide please it should be noted that the options presented today only relief property owners from requirements of county code chapter 1610 as it relates to the permit process there may be circumstances where private technical professionals such as geotechnical structural or civil engineers determine that geologic information is necessary for them to complete their professional work and to adhere to the provisions in the California building code that address slope stability minimum setbacks from slopes and foundation design separate from Santa Cruz county code chapter 1610 in areas subject to debris flow it is anticipated that data from the Atkins engineering study may assist with meeting the needs of technical consultants in this respect but this data will not apply to sites subject to other types of geologic hazards further pursuant to county code chapter 7.38 in limited locations the proper design and installation of the septic system requires geologic information that must be reviewed by the geologic staff in the planning department chapter 7.38 is currently in the final stages of review and acceptance by the state as part of the local area management plan or LAMP for onsite sewage disposal systems revising the chapter now would risk significantly delaying approval of the LAMP and because approval will streamline the review of all fire rebuild septic permits by allowing them to be reviewed locally rather than by the state chapter 7.38 is not proposed to be revised but next slide in conclusion we have presented three options for the board's consideration to allow those rebuilding after the CZU fired to do so without evaluation in mitigation of geologic hazards as required under county code chapter 1610 a resolution has been provided for adoption today that suggests eligibility requirements and conditions for opting out of further geologic evaluation that may be modified at the discretion of the board should option one be chosen by the board it is recommended that the board direct staff to pursue codification and amendments to the general plan and local coastal program to that end staff is available to answer any questions the board may have regarding the material we have presented today thank you for your presentation I'm going to get some comments from the board I can open that up I made extensive comments to the board on August 10th about this item so I'm going to be brief today we now have twice unanimously approve bringing options back for addressing the negative impacts of our geological hazards code and what it's having for our fire survivors who want to essentially rebuild what they had before the fire I really do appreciate the community members who have contacted me in this and that patients that they have demonstrated as we try to work out a solution and I thank you for sharing your stories to the board again today as you will do now I know I want to support the resolution pathway that provides immediate relief to those wanting to rebuild now while staff work out details of an amended ordinance general plan amendment and other steps during the coming months we can't wait any longer even if survivors choose not to rebuild until later as we know many of them may do it will be reassuring to know that they will not have to spend the time and money evaluating geological hazards and this is what we're talking about today with that I would like to open it for any maybe opening comments from any other board members supervisor Coonerty in the third district whose district was impacted like mine in the fifth district do you have any comments that you would like to make yeah I look forward to both community input as well as the board discussion but very briefly just to frame this a little bit for for folks who aren't who haven't been involved in day to day we obviously have a huge number of families that were impacted by the fire and the goal has always been to get them back home as soon as possible we've as we've gone through we've tried to reduce the barriers that we have control over so we reduced permitting costs and time looked at options for places like last chance which were almost entirely unpermitted and then worked with some of the areas that we don't have control over which is some of the Cal Fire rules around access and septic tank rules that are significant impediments to people getting back to their homes and obviously as people also struggle with insurance companies the high cost of building materials lack of labor and a variety of other challenges and so this is one step in moving things forward I want to sort of put into context that I recognize that this is not necessarily where the staff would have chosen to land had had they been given to themselves and I also recognize that we've heard from the community that this isn't this isn't where they want us to go and they have some concerns around the covenant and so we are trying to balance these interests we're also trying to balance the interest for future future homeowners as well as the county itself as an organization and the liability that we assume so I too like see resident Pearson support resolution going forward so that we can get some immediate relief and a pathway for people to go forward I think the broader conversation that director talked about about this being our new normal and developing codes and systems and operations that reflect an increasing number of natural disasters and challenges especially along our coast and our mountains is really important but there's time of the essence people's insurance money for housing is running out there's an anxiousness to return home and so we're trying to thread that needle today thank you supervisor supervisor friend do you have any comments just very briefly I mean first I want to really appreciate the work of Mr. Reed and that of planning staff being very responsive to this issue is a very complicated issue just as a reminder the board is the one who adopted not this board but the board is the one that adopted the construct by which planning was interpreting the codes on it anyway so it's a it makes sense that the board would continue and this is an iterative process as we discussed extensively on our last item as well I also want to recognize that these are very complex circumstances people that are living in these conditions we need to do everything we can especially in advance of winter to ensure that we can protect people looking forward to rebuild or then provide some sort of interim situation for those that were living in the burn situation and you know while this may have impacted supervisor McPherson and Kennedy's district the majority of fires in the last 15 years actually been within my district and there's nothing saying that it's not that our situation isn't next fires and floods for that I'm supportive of what's come forward today I'm also particularly supportive of the additional review of the item of the actual ordinance so we can get something over time to look at this moving forward recognizing that the whole reason why we created our three is the recognition that things the fundamentals are changing on the ground and we're going to need to have codes that recognize what that is moving forward so I think that we have an immediate component through the resolution but we also need that long-term look we also have to have that these are due to extenuating circumstances that there will not be a situation where the board is just waving codes during due to any specific issue moving forward but what happened throughout the rural areas in the third and fifth district is nothing short of absolutely catastrophic and that's what the board is trying to respond to today thank you Mr. Chair. Thank you. Yes thank you chairs a few questions um you know I understand that we're talking about a covenant that the owner would put on their deed deed recorded so that they're saying that they recognize the risks associated with rebuilding without the geologic hazard report and that anyone who owns the property in the future will be duly noticed at that as well is there any potential risk though to folks who live nearby of a structure being built without the geologic hazard report I mean are we endangering folks who maybe their home didn't burn down or they live in the area because someone rebuilds without this geologic hazard report. I would say there is not we're focused on the particular property and we would not allow a situation where the way the replacement was built was different it's in kind really so that's what covers that we wouldn't allow something to be built that would deflect mud or create some other difficulty on an adjacent parcel. Great thank you. Then you did mention or I think Supervisor Coonerty mentioned the pilot program on last chance road um and what being proposed today would exempt or I should say would not include structures built after 1986 without a permit. Do we have a sense of how many structures that would be? We don't have a number and that's because of course they've never come into our system and we don't have any record of them. So the answer to that is no we don't know the number. Okay I'm just going to curious how many people might be left out of out in the cold you know with today's actions then how would the the pilot program on last chance road were allowing people that didn't have a permit whose structures burned down to rebuild as long as their owner occupants to kind of summarize that how would that program interact with Yeah maybe to clarify something about that program that pilot program is about implementing a version of the building code that doesn't have the same standard as the regular building code and it recognizes different ways to build and has fewer required inspections and just the bar is lower in general and that's because of how rural those properties are but you still need a building permit. Right well I'm saying so are they already exempt from 1610 and the geologic hazard report? No that addresses only construction related building code issues so they're not exempt from other than this applying to that area as well as where else in the burn area that doesn't apply to geology that pilot program doesn't apply to fire access or to septic it's only for construction related questions. Okay so it's possible that someone let's just say living in the last chance area under this pilot program with an unpermitted structure built after 1986 would still would basically still have to do a geologic hazard report it's more like the two programs layer so this would apply to everybody in the burn area including last chance and then in addition last chance has some opportunity to do things differently relative to the code under the low density building ordinance program that we're talking about so they layer they're both in effect there but this one is in effect the same way there as anywhere Okay but the last chance pilot program doesn't sort of doesn't afford any additional it doesn't address geology geology yeah okay thank you Supervisor Caput do you have any questions? Thank you very much for the report and I you actually answered the report almost every question I had I just want to extend my heartfelt feelings for the people that went through the you know a doubly terrible year for most people were dealing with COVID-19 and other issues and you had to deal with losing your home and that's really rough so we're trying to make it better streamline everything at the same time I did notice that there's safety measures in there that we don't we're not looking the other way and ignoring the fact that when they rebuild that we're not actually setting them up for a second disaster down the line meaning like let's say go ahead and rebuild and then we have a big flood year you know a heavy rain and their house part of it washes away or something you can just clarify the safety measures that we have in place I heard most of them but you know make it clear to the public what we would be doing would be approving rebuilding into essentially the same circumstances that structure was in prior to the fire so it's for an in-kind structure in the same footprint or approximately the same footprint so any risks that exist from flooding for example would affect them the same way going forward as it would have in the past does that answer your question? yeah it does and some of the safety factors that remain in effect include the California building code which does have requirements that address foundations and slope stability etc. so that still exists my math is correct but 911 homes is pretty much like 1.5% of the entire housing stock in the county does that sound about right? I didn't do that calculation county-wide think about it it's a significant number of homes of the whole county which is unbelievable that's not structures that's homes, peoples lives thank you any other questions? that's it after having many conversations with residents in my district and I know supervisor Coonerty in his third district I have some questions and concerns from survivors about the proposed covenant recorded on properties that do not do a deep geological hazards report my questions are going to be the county council to get some legal so far the county council and other staff can you please discuss more about what these covenants mean and their impact on the future of these properties number one? thank you I'll take that one first I think Ms. Burke and supervisor Coonerty and some others have spoken to that issue and I'll try to attack it in a little different way which is that the staff and the board are trying to develop policy here that helps fire victims and at the same time doesn't hurt anybody else and the concern is that people are going to be in these homes later someday there are buyers even buyers in our own community who are going to purchase these homes someday and they need to know whether or not county codes were complied with in the building of these homes so that they have a choice of whether they want to go through and determine whether there are any dangers associated with the property so that's a very important aspect of the covenant because without the covenant being on title nobody knows, no future purchasers know whether or not those county codes were complied with the second thing that's important is we want to protect the entire community which is why we need the indemnification provision because should something happen that's unfortunate and that's disaster related that's a result of not complying with county code to be insured that that financial risk isn't going to eventually come back on the entire community this is a choice that fire victims are making to not comply with certain county code provisions and I realize it is a difficult choice and nobody wants them to be in this situation as many others have expressed we have so much empathy for what people are going through right now so we're trying to again thread that needle of providing immediate assistance and help to fire victims while at the same time not harming anyone else very well thank you and you've answered this probably but what immunity is a county already have with permitted buildings and how does this compare well the county has something called discretionary immunity that's associated with permits with issuing permits but that's really a separate issue that arguably protects the county from liability as opposed to with the covenant what we're talking about is protecting other people in the future who are good faith bona fide purchasers of these properties thank you council I'm going to open this up now to the public how many people want to speak okay well just please maybe two or three or four when you get in the line and then we're going to limit comments to two minutes which we normally do so thank you for your attention and for your comments that are about to come thank you good afternoon my name is Julie Lucia I lost my home in the fallen leaf neighborhood 390 days ago today 390 days and not one of them has gone by without the sick feeling in my stomach that we may not be able to go home the other day my daughter was watching a video of herself playing in our home and she said excitedly mama that's my first home try explaining to a four-year-old why we haven't started building our new home she doesn't understand why it's taking so long and frankening either do I it doesn't have to be this way at first it felt like the county was making logical decisions by spending six million to hire four leafs but it seems the planning department keeps halting forward progress and now that so much time has passed and we're continually navigating this information now it feels personal because the point is is that if my house hadn't burned down we wouldn't be here the planning department would not be putting us through such turmoil over non-fire related pre-existing geological features we wouldn't be asked to put a covenant on our deed lowering our property value plus we're up against a very strict timeline and the insurance companies don't care if they make us homeless ironically just this morning I got an email from nationwide stating that we have till April to build our home that's eight months from now and now that this has taken so long and we still don't have permits we will be forced to wait to build until the spring because of the winter moratorium because like so many others we are underinsured and cannot afford yet another extra expense for the winter permits I applaud the board for asking the planning department for a resolution to get fire victims home why in support of a resolution the one put forth here today needs to be reworked honorable supervisors I would hope that you would want a system in place for when not if a fire happens in your district it's time you held the planning department accountable and forced them to put forth recommendations that are actually in support of fire victims I ask that you come back in two weeks with more reasonable proposals show good faith and give fire victims some relief some peace and allow us to go home thank you my name is Larry Green and my own property in Boulder Creek was built there for 38 years my home was built in 1969 and weathered 5 80 plus inch rainfall years 1 20 inch is a rain in 24 hours in the 1989 earthquake the house was built with a permit in 1969 but it was a piece of junk the foundation was a joke and none of the walls were plumb I spent 38 years upgrading remodeling and modernizing that house my family and I never felt unsafe on that property now I'd like to ask each one of you to use your imagination for just a moment assume each of you live in Santa Cruz County and that you went home after this meeting and were told you had to evacuate your home immediately you rush around throw whatever is important to you that will fit in your car and you leave 48 hours later you get a call at 10 30 p.m saying that your house is burned to the ground I wanted to take a minute and try to let that sink in I know it's difficult because you haven't been through it you have lost everything you owned everything that you spent all your life building all your memories, all your dreams in an instant I cannot describe the devastation and psychological toll this will take on you and your family I have more but I want to talk you have another minute left it said 30 seconds I want to talk about the covenant the problem I have with the covenant is first it's an assumption that there's risk on my property despite the fact that there was a house there for 50 years so if there's no risk I don't have to it's already there the risk has been proven I think you should change the code to his point for us that would get around the liability issue and if you issue a permit you change the code so that we can build in kind on a piece of property we've been on for our whole lives that never had a problem despite all these natural disasters hello my name is Antonia Bradford and I lost my home and sees you fire in the last 13 months I've been working nonstop to try and get my family back home on track to break ground early this last spring until geology then everything came to a screeching hull I haven't come across anyone outside the planning department including professionals in the field who think fire victims should have to do non-fire geology surveys on their land this isn't treating fire victims fairly since the county hasn't retired a single home that survived in the burn scar so while I support this resolution there are a few things that few changes that need to be made the covenant that is to be recorded on our deeds will lower our property values I understand that most properties up in the mountains have some kind of disclosure as far as geology but this covenant has every single worst case scenario possible we have no idea how this will affect lending options for resale or refinancing or insurance it truly feels like fire victims are being penalized for our homes burning down additionally the arbitrary and discretionary power of the planning department's piloting that is embedded all over this item needs to be lowered those of us in the situation have not seen advocacy or compassion besides this speech at the beginning of this meeting in this entire and that within the code as it stands there are aspects of flexibility that could have been afforded fire victims but the choice was made not to how can we trust that our best interests are going to be met with this is the culture this is especially important because our county is going to be spending millions of dollars with our contract with for leave within the language of that contract it explicitly says that the consultant rather than the county has the right to control the manner and means of accomplishing the result contracted for there are many other points within the contract that point to the point that the county is going to be spending millions of dollars on this this is a step of the way the planning department in geology are interfering delaying and causing harm to the fire community why waste our taxpayers dollars on this if they aren't going to listen to the people with experience you're risking bankruptcy and homelessness in this process I will end with this so the board can see how this is affecting people after the fire I started support page and I recently shared my latest article with one of our local residents and I said I would like to go back to my home I had no idea would be a full year into this and basically no one has started rebuilding I'd rather go down in flames good afternoon my name is Andrea Tishler and we lost our home on Swanton road to the fire actually we lost two places our original home the big house and I art studio which also burned which was only the 750 square feet art studio is where we would like to build an ADU unfortunately we built that in the early nineties without permits and we tried to get a permit from the building department but well we know about the building department and I built this art studio for my partner and and now that house burned we'd like to build on that in kind structure like that the art studio was built conforming in that all the building codes were followed but not with a permit now that was built in 1992 so I want to address and I think the supervisor over here talked about like what about the buildings that were built after 1986 well is not an arbitrary year what's magical about 1986 why not change that to make it 2020 I mean or why is 1986 because with that requirement is part of the option one I won't be able to build without a doing a geologic report that's extremely expensive to do a geologic report I've already inquired about that so I'd like to know what's magical about 1986 and if we could possibly amend that to make it something other than that so that I can build my little ADU on the in and in kind structure there thank you so much my name is Mandy and I want to thank you for hearing me today my husband and our children and I lost our home located in the forest Springs community in Boulder Creek this is my family's second time dealing with the loss of a home due to fire and our second time trying to obtain a building permit from the Santa Cruz County in the CZU wildfire we lost the home we had rebuilt after a house fire we had had 15 years ago and back then after much effort on our part treating us like a new build rather than a rebuild you questioned whether or not our build was even possible it was one of the most stressful times in our life and because it took over a year to finally obtain the building permit our insurance ran out we had to move six times and a total of three years living on the living room floor in relatives homes with our two small children and pets to eventually living in a camper in our driveway which also was not easy to get permission to do I thought for sure this time we're well insured and the county would be helping us more this time because this time we're not alone and this is not our fault we paid all the fees and we built a home that Santa Cruz County required this time it was a wildfire but instead of helping us get through this process quickly like promised once again our home and our livelihood is on the line and once again I'm scared our insurance will run out before this project is completed once again I'm worried about where we'll live and how we'll afford our mortgage and rent at the same time once again it's been over a year and I don't have a building permit all this stress while mourning the loss trying to work and go to school I really thought things would be different this time treating fire victims like new builds needs to change now and it's long overdue adding to our deeds when our neighbors who didn't burn don't have to we'll lower the values of our homes and it's not fair please help my family and my neighbors rebuild and keep the livelihoods we've worked so hard for thank you my name is Vince Cortina senior and I would like you guys to raise your hand if you know who I am anybody no because I've sat across the table from you and the rest of you guys just don't get out enough I'm a Boulder Creek firefighter and I'm proud to be a Boulder Creek firefighter I spent 12 days fighting that fire to find out my home was no longer I'd do it again I was a part of a small part of something way bigger than me you guys now have my attention and that's hard to do because I'm a pretty laid back guy I don't complain about much I just do what I got to do my son Vince junior joined the department right after the fire like literally right after he was in backgrounds came to help us put out spot fires so in essence I helped save your homes you owe me nothing I want nothing but what I demand is a right to build my lawful home in my footprint and you guys are offering we're going to help you fix your car but we're going to put a salvage title on it it doesn't work are you going to buy a salvage title car I mean you literally stated that there's a clause in an amendment already built in that relieves you of liability but yet for the past 13 months all you guys have cared about is your liability not our homes not our citizens and I'm pretty much not judgmental I don't like to judge people it's just not my thing it's not my shade Rhea which I believe that's her name planning committee which I believe you're in charge of what have you guys done why are we here why are we disgruntled why are we not being heard I met with David he's a nice guy cool guy jw cool guy I went on a hike with him I prove that I live on a rock I don't live on a landslide I live on a rock you would have to give a very big effort and go beyond the deepest you're going to get on my hills four feet and for you guys to sit there and say oh you can build like kind I'm not going to charge you for your permits we're going to fast track you we're going to stream you and then you just pulled it just straight pulled it that's what hurts and I'm aware my time is out I'm a very smart individual my resume is pretty impressive and what I'm going to do with that resume is I'm going to study each and every single one of you and I'm going to figure out who I'm going to replace thank you okay if I have it down a little bit thank you my name is Mary Simon and I lost my home 33 years in the CZU fire sorry my dream is to rebuild my home so I actually appreciate all the county's efforts to support the fire recovery in the Santa Cruz mountains it took four months for my property to be officially cleared by environmental health and I was so excited when I applied for my pre-clearances at RPC I'm very nervous too and then everything came to abrupt halt in April when I was denied geological clearance because of debris flow so I've been in limbo since then unable to make any decision despite doing all the reports necessary and the delay has been heart breaking however I think I'm going to surprise you by saying I would like to request that you delay your decision on agenda item 12 until we have more information and community input since the county is combining both pre-existing and post-fire geohazards I believe if we had the Atkinson report we would have a better understanding of the potential hazards maybe and this is what I pray it's not as dire as we all think also in the sample covenant the county recommends that property owners not sign the waiver that should give us all pause I would be willing to work together with county representatives and the community to re-examine all options and possibly come up with option four again thank you for your efforts towards fire recovery and all I ask is you take the time to make sure your decisions are fair to the county and to the property owners thank you well my name is Adam Pierce I can't pretend to know more than the average Joe about building a house because it comes to codes, permits all the stuff that needs I know I could help, I could frame pretty good I could do things like this but what I do know is over a year ago this community was devastated devastated amongst the scariest pandemic we've ever seen what I do know is that my son his mother, ex was my ex-wife great co-parent and an amazing teacher in the community, his stepfather who is a hard working honest man and his little sister, the brightest, cutest little four year old you've ever seen I do know that they deserve to be in their home and comfortable there's no question about that not only does this gravely affect a teacher who's going to shape the community the future of this country helping teachers sorry I'm kind of nervous she's dedicated her life to helping thank you I know she's dedicated her life to helping the children tomorrow but if that isn't worse enough it affects our children of the community our community, the children don't have their home they don't have the solidity it wasn't their fault that the fires happened to them it happened to these families so if they're not just signatures they're not just dollar signs they're not just numbers on a page this is the children of our community I've been displaced imagine your grandchildren who one day woke up and they didn't have their blankies their stuffies all their favorite pictures and toys the comfortability of a home was taken from them and now due to signatures and question marks they're still out on the streets we have to do better for our kids we have to do better for the community we have to, thank you my name is Jessica Brady and I lost our home in the Forest Springs neighborhood in the CZU fire last year and I'm here today to plead with the county to help us and the other families who lost their homes we are 13 months post fire and still do not have a definitive answer from the county if we will be allowed to rebuild and it is mentally exhausting to live in a constant state of limbo being at the mercy of a county that doesn't seem to care about the families impacted by their lack of action we were on track to break ground this fall until the county announced the start of the GHA which was started almost a full year after the fire and is now holding many of us up and moving forward even once it is complete the proposed options are less than favorable to the homeowners the declaration we are being asked to sign will impact the value of our properties and our insurability which is already a challenge in the mountains and it feels like we are being penalized because of a fire none of us had control over we're glad more families did not lose their homes in the fire however the homes still standing are not being held by the same expectations that we are their homes are at no less risk than ours yet only certain rebuilt homes are being required to record the risk on our titles in fact there are two fellow forest springs neighbors just a stone's throw away from us that have made it through pre-screening without signing the declaration so again why are some homes being treated differently than others the county and the board needs to do better we were promised an expedited process we were promised we would not be treated as new builds we were promised fees would be waived and are lowered and we were promised the county would do everything possible to help us rebuild but so far none of these promises have been kept the county even posted a fluff piece on Facebook patting themselves on the back obviously not anticipating the 156 comments calling it out for what it was a slap in the face to those who lost their homes for us we're anticipating that taking a year to build since we're already 13 months post fire with no idea of when we might be able to break ground our insurance funds are quickly running out and we are concerned that we will be pushed out of our rental long before our home is ever completed due to county delays we ask that the board revise the options and come back within two weeks with a more reasonable transparent proposal please do what is right and help the fire community rebuild we love our mountain community and we want to get back to it hello my name is John Silva thank you all so much thus far in identifying the problems that we're dealing with with geology why couldn't the planning department just simply do a release a liability form and a variance to proceed as long as hazards that were pre-existing and not directly affecting the building envelope as the county representative stated in August meeting a small percentage of people are being affected by the geologic restrictions if this is in fact the case then it seems only logical and fair to make an exception in a timely manner and simplifying things with a variance that is case by case why put a deviated effect on our titles when there wasn't one before when homes are purchased when homes are purchased and sold in this county a geologic hazard clearance is not ever an issue why are not we are not developing we are simply trying to R&R what we had before the fire by the way I have hired a geologist and he performed a DHA and soils report on my property and the geology department refused it they are requiring a geologic assessment to be to the full degree of the law as it was an entirely new development I'm not sure that the planning department I'm sure that the planning department wants the power to do what they decide and what they want to do however as civil servants of us the people this county I wish that they could be compassionate for long enough to understand we need this and by now we deserve this our homes and lives back they ultimately have the ability to make it easier for us and they don't it would not surprise me at this point please be our voice to the planning department as they cannot hear us the people the victims we do not matter we do not have enough power as individuals they need to be governed by you please exercise your authority don't let them make you look like as insensitive as they are my name is Tracy Walker and I'm a CZU fire victim my home was in the Riverside Grove community of Boulder Creek and it was in a low risk to reflow area apparently we're not even included in this basin study that I keep hearing about a large portion of our neighborhood used to live and survive the fire most of which are in a high risk to reflow area but they're all still allowed to live in their homes where does the concern for life come in to me that just sounds like an excuse to make it sound like you're doing something without actually working on a solution for us anything we build will be safer than the 81 year old cabin we had which would still be deemed safe if it didn't burn down there is still a house maybe 50 feet from where my house used to stand is there no threat for them because their house didn't burn after we submitted our pre-clearances we were told we also needed to submit a GHA we hired a geologist who came to our property he took boring samples that he tested in a lab and wrote a report that we submitted to the county in May in his report he gave us his professional opinion on how to safely build our home and we obviously thought we would be good enough to be able to pass our geologic hazard pre-clearance but apparently we were wrong because the county denied our report in his report it states it is our opinion that from our geotechnical viewpoint this site is suitable for proposed construction provided the recommendations presented in this report are followed during design and construction the report also states based on our analysis we conclude that the potential for slope instability impacting the proposed house is low there is no evidence the slope has moved for a very long time including during the Loma Prieta earthquake and then 1806 earthquake I'm no geologist but the man who wrote our report is and that sounds like our land is safe to build on so where's the problem why were we denied why is the county geology department now telling us that we have to bring back our geologist and take more boring samples from a 100 foot hole this time that's not even going to be on our property this is ridiculous something needs to change our lot is not unsafe we have the proof please fix this my name is Melinda Silva I signed on with the geologist with the walkers and the 100 foot hole is actually going on the footprint of my home it will be they also are requesting mapping of an ancient landslide that has not moved in thousands of years there's people above me that are more on the landslide than I am and they are not requiring a GHA report or newer than mine my house went through Loma Prieta it went through the 82 floods these other homes did not and it is not fair that we have been denied and we have to do this hole and the people right next to us do not I don't see the reasoning I don't see why my geologist was shut down and just told no and has to come back and we have to do more testing it does not seem fair I don't understand what the logic is we get to make these decisions and mess with our lives we have been out for 13 months now with no sight of being able to get any answers I want to know why I want to know why I can't simply get a permit to put my foundation in I want to pass pre-clearance I want to move on with my life please help us do this thank you hello I am Chuck Boffman I lived in a Riverside Grove and I lived near the person who just spoke so I am one of the lucky ones I am through geology I initially was declined and I was encouraged to sign on with the same geologist that the speaker just spoke about and I am glad that geologist did not want to take me on it was too far away for him to travel because I waited long enough and my circumstances changed and a couple of months later things were reevaluated and according to when my house was built I am now clear and these people for the vast majority are not anywhere near as lucky in that sense as I was so the county seems seems to be trying to go in a direction that is good that is worrying about its liability its loss its financial risk in this and the financial risk to all the families and people that are here today is enormous they are running up in many cases against insurance limits and their ability to even stay in the county may be threatened so try to justify to yourselves why you are requiring something from somebody who who is probably going to rebuild a house that is better than the one that was before them so they are improving the safety in their neighborhoods but they are being held to a choice that requires them to sign off on liability when I think the county should be taking some of this liability itself hello my name is Chris Lucia we lost our home in the Fallen leaf neighborhood on August 20, 2020 I have worked in the solar industry for about the last two years with the largest presidential solar company in the nation and without a doubt Santa Cruz county is the hardest to work with when it comes to permitting in San Jose an online permit takes about a week or excuse me about a minute to process online through our solar project excuse me in Santa Cruz before daily to submit the permits and it took about two weeks this whole process to unfold for the permit to come back I feel like it really speaks to how I antiquated this whole system is with the county my wife is probably killing me right now because I am going off script a little bit right now but hey it is what it is I feel like I grew up here I moved here when I was 8 years old people in my class got to buy a home in this area I am trying to raise here and I feel like we are at the right there we are at the goal line all we have to do is get the okay to move forward excuse me I don't understand why we are being held up I have a friend that is already putting foundation in just right down the road I play softball with him and I told him if the mud slides down I would write it down to your house the same as a joke because it is not going to happen we are going to rebuild with or without the okay I will put a trailer up I don't care it is going to happen we are going to do it with or without you guys so please help us it is time to move forward thank you ladies and gentlemen of the board thank you for hearing our comments today I lost my home the proposed options presented are a step in the right direction however the current draft is unacceptable for the fire community for reasons that you have all been listening to today that we have submitted at length in our comment section on the agenda through emails you know the reasons we are standing here you know why this is unacceptable this is still being treated as a new build not a rebuild the process of rebuilding feels like the county is working against us with no one interest rather than working with us there needs to be exceptions and exemptions made here I would support passing a resolution as it is a good faith effort in moving along the CZU rebuild process quickly however the proposed resolution needs to be revised if I may offer a suggestion that could benefit all of us try working with the fire community to come to an agreement no one knows what it is like to go through this process better than all of us who are living it perhaps the draft can be revised and submitted for comment by the fire community within two weeks I would also be in support of working on a more permanent solution as we likely won't be the last members of our community to experience life after natural disasters thank you my name is Julie Wiest and I'm a fire victim I lived in the fallen leaf neighborhood I lived in the valley for about 17 years and I've been involved in CERT I'm a CERT trainer in Boulder Creek I used to teach Mapier neighborhood to help improve the safety of our community I've been on the board of the Valley Women's Club to help improve our environment and community and I'm currently working in a community driven development team that is working to also improve the quality of the lives and the recovery of fire victims so I'm I'm on lots in lots of community Facebook groups I've been involved in lots of different meetings and I've been here before to talk to the board about the atrocities of PG&E this was a few years ago and I remember listening to somebody talk to the board and planning department about the challenges they were having trying to rebuild and the money they had spent and the time and angst that they had spent and I thought that poor person you know that poor man standing here kind of begging for help nobody helped him you know the planning department of this county has got one of the worst reputations in the state of California and at this point after you've heard all of these people and you've seen all the comments it's time to bring a mediator in to resolve some of the issues that are going on with the planning department and the relationship that they've had because it's from what I've heard it's been 30 years that they've mismanaged their responsibility to this community and they're not managed effectively to help resolve the issues here so I would suggest that we take two weeks involve the community in helping solve this I used to teach structured problem solving it's time to bring a geologist and mediator in that is not reporting to the planning department and not be holding to the planning department and works for the county and the people to help get a resolution that's effective and timely Thank you very much My name is Karen Wilson-Dixon I lost my home up on Swanton Road my parents lost their home on Swanton Road and my daughter lost her home on Swanton Road and we lost our commercial kitchen on Swanton Road so home and business kind of gone in one swoop Thank you for letting me speak I look at these three options you guys have presented to us I feel like we need all three of them not to just choose one I think that all of them need revision one of them I will sign a waiver that you guys are not responsible for my rebuild but anybody who would buy my property which wouldn't happen anyway because it's a fourth generation property and although I would love to not have the value be removed from it in case I needed to take a loan so please don't make us put it on our title I don't understand why that would be necessary anyone who would be purchasing our property would have to go through a geological investigation themselves anyway that's typical there's no need to put something on our titles in that case the next one is go ahead and give us a waiver for that first option and then go on to option 2 and change 610 so that the fire victims are immune from now whenever you can get that off of our that revision made but both of those things need to happen one first now one as you get it done and third all of us rebuilding are going to be models for that future option 3 how do we rebuild in the future so that there is more fire safety more geological safety etc what is the model for the future we are your guinea pigs so I think all 3 should be looked at and all 3 of them revised and thank you for letting me speak is there anyone else in the audience who would like to speak to us do we have anybody on the phone yes I do have speakers on soon thank you Alison Breeze your microphone is available can you hear me thank you for the opportunity to speak today my name is Alison Breeze and I come to you as a homeowner from within the burn scar who is very fortunate to not lose their home as a community member I have been closely following the obstacles experienced by the fire community as they struggle to rebuild and return home I appreciate that options are finally being considered to disable some of the geology roadblocks option 1 removing the requirements for fire rebuilds would provide the fastest approach for families to return home therefore I have profound concerns and oppose the requirement for a covenant to be recorded to the property title as part of this process this action would have significant consequences on the property value and is inherently inequitable as a result surviving homes in the burn storm burn zone under exactly the same pre-existing geologic conditions and under identical risk are not being required to either record the same document on their titles or to pursue expensive studies while I do wholeheartedly support safety and disclosure principles this particular action will create two distinctly different and unequal classes of properties in our county all for the sake of pre-existing non-fire related or temporary risks is the Board of Supervisors willing to force fire rebuilds to become second class properties in perpetuity is the steep price for returning home to create a precedent for inequality in Santa Cruz County after future natural disasters we are a community and what hurts some of us hurts all of us as a homeowner who did not lose their home I urge you to support option one with a covenant requirement removed it is not removed then the only equitable course of action would be to enforce these requirements on all properties in the areas and not solely on fire builds all of us are watching closely for how you will decide thank you first in Flynn okay hello my name is Kirsten Flynn and I lost a beloved family cabin in the CZU fires first of all I want to acknowledge the loss that this community has faced we have lost our homes we have lost our feeling of safety we have lost our neighbors and our neighborhoods we want those things back secondly I want to thank all of the people that have been so helpful since the fire my neighbors on Clear Creek in Brookdale Angie Bruiz and the RCD the county of Santa Cruz planning department especially Jessica Degrassi the new R3 department especially David Reed and the Santa Cruz community foundation all of these people have taken the pain of what happened to their neighbors and turned it into positive action when dealing with complex situations I find it is super useful to constantly check back in what is the goal so what is the goal here we want to make it possible to allow people who lived in the mountains and were affected the fire to be able to build a place to live however that goal runs parallel to a second goal shared by all of those I thanked above the goal to make our neighbors safe to keep the land safe to keep our houses safe that is the overarching reason for codes for laws in general to pass rules that we all agree are to the benefit of society it benefits society to build safe housing geologic time is long and dangerous situations often come in cycles much longer than a hundred years these two goals have been in conflict because of the increased risk of debris flow your goal is to try to find a solution to these as much of both goals as possible to find a middle way the science is clear on the risk and we have to find some way to convey that danger associated with all the land in the valley two land speculators investors developers who might see any loosening of safety codes as carte blanche to build crappy home in our mountains I'm out of time so I stopped there are other speakers on zoom chair again there's nobody from the public that wants to address this hasn't yet I'll bring the issue back to the board I know if there's some questions there that you might be able to briefly answer the 1986 in particular a few questions that were yeah I can do that Andrew Tichler talked about the magic of 1986 what's magic about that it's not magic but it does represent something it's not arbitrary that was about the year when the computer systems at the county become reliable to the point that we can say if we have no record of a building permit then there wasn't a building permit before 1986 there's some possibility that in the old record keeping systems and some of these permits we'd be talking about would be 1960s that we could not 100% say you didn't have a permit so the benefit of the doubt goes to the property owner and that's why the board went with the 1986 I don't know if there was any other question big issue was about the covenant I think the county council had addressed that somewhat any questions from the board I just just wait for a motion we have three options that are before us entertain a motion to move ahead if we can but want to see any supervisor might want to recommend I'll move to approve the resolution as proposed Mr. Chair well before we there's a second to that I'm supportive of the resolution but I think that the board also needs the direct staff to come back with modifications the ordinance long term which is number three so I think it's like a combo of one and three so I don't know if the maker of the motion so this allows for the expediting of the rebuilds now and it also allows for a better look moving forward on resiliency for the ordinance moving forward so to the maker of the motion I'd be willing to second it if that's what the intent of the motion was is that Supervisor Caput is that Supervisor Coonerty I don't want to put you on the spot do you have any because I can't make a motion so yeah no I sorry I'm happy to move the recommended action which is the adoption of the resolution as attachment A as well as provide additional direction to the OR 3 staff to they're already doing this but to continue to work on adjusting our ordinances in terms of to build for more resiliency going forward Mr. Chair Mr. Chair assuming the first motion also I know I think it would be a recommended addition to your your motion I think that's the way to handle that Mr. Chair we can just say that the first motion died for a lack of a second and then Supervisor Coonerty introduced a follow-up motion that I will second we can do that way that's fine okay so this is to accept the recommended action about the resolution and to have additional direction to look into the third or it's about optimizing or updating the ordinance related to the fire or emergency situations that happen in the county is that basically what you would that's your motion Supervisor Coonerty yeah that's correct okay and I guess let me just say that in two weeks we'll have the Atkins report and better understand the nature of this area and this is a process so we're trying to some people will fall into the category where this resolution works well and so we want to get that on the books as soon as possible right I agree I think it's important we act now to move ahead and we're going to have more information in depth information we get the Atkins report in two weeks but we might as well I think it's better that we move now and look at that and then move from that day forward so with the motion on the floor please call the roll Supervisor Koenig aye friend aye Coonerty aye Abbott aye McPherson aye thank you motion passes unanimously with additional direction okay thank you and thank you for your input we appreciate it thank you very much but you left the Covenant in that's correct there's no discussion about it going forward it could be it could be in the future can I join me out of the box we gotta figure out a way to give us some some way to build on a property that will save for our whole alliance we're going to move to number nine Chair could I make a quick comment on the Covenant you know there's already a high risk wildfire area the value of your homes is going to be based on the demand for them someone who wants to buy them the value is set by the markets and you already are required to have a natural hazards disclosure report which will probably say that your home exists in a high risk wildfire area now you all know because you live in these beautiful places that that alone is not determined whether or not someone wants to buy or live in one of these beautiful locations so any buyer of a home is going to buy nature weigh the risks of which this is simply one notification of a potential risk against the rewards of the beauty of living in these beautiful places that you live now so I don't think that if you feel strongly that this is going to have an impact on the value of your homes I think you should come back with some evidence from real estate professionals or expert knowledge and facts will help drive the discussion I'm going to lend on houses with this on the deed I'm in complete slingers I'll turn it to you in terms of this those kind of professional opinions from lenders or insurance agents would probably also be very helpful as we continue to improve this how do we convey them to you I didn't hear any real insurance professionals we're going to go talk to them we'll go talk to bankers we'll talk to insurance people we'll talk to real estate people how do we convey what they're telling us to you I would have them write a letter themselves why aren't you guys wondering if the problem now is that impact looks like this you guys should know this before we pass the bill exactly, you don't understand the rest excuse me excuse me we're going to be with discussion on this issue in two weeks and we will have further testimony then we've made the action on what we're going to do today we're going to move on to the schedule agenda on item number nine we're moving on to the word now something neutral something neutral okay we go to do we close the kitchen item number nine you can consider an ordinance amending the Santa Cruz County Code section 2.124 0.040 to better define the membership criteria for the Santa Cruz County in-home support services advisory commission at large membership consider amendment to the Santa Cruz County in-home support services advisory commission bylaws and reflect the code amendments and schedule an ordinance for second reading and final adoption on September 28, 2021 as outlined in the memorandum of the director of human services ordinance amendment amending the chapter 2.124 Santa Cruz County Code strike out on that chapter ISHS advisory commission bylaws clean copy and strike up copy Mr. Morse human services director hi good afternoon Supervisor and Chair McPherson and board members and county staff and public listening I feel like I need to take a deep breath and pause mindful and I'm about to present something for the first time in my tenure here that's actually maybe simple and straightforward particularly given the morning and the last agenda item appreciate the exhaustion and the energy that's playing out that I'm walking into so yes I'm the director of the county human services department and one of the programs that we administer is the in-home supportive services program which is more often referred to by SNAP acronym IHSS state law mandates in California that every county IHSS program has an advisory board which is predominantly of consumers of our service and in here in Santa Cruz County that's through a formal commission that exists under bylaws and Santa Cruz County code that your board previously has approved what brings this to your board today is that the commission itself has been and this is not unique to this commission but the commission itself over the last many years has been struggling filling the seats and they've been consulting across the state looking at the way other commissions organize themselves and with our own county council's office to see if there's something that could be done with your board's approval to make it easier and more streamlined to keep those seats full the commission itself has not had all seats filled since 2014 so what's in front of you and the written materials which I'm not going to detail I'm just trying to frame this for you so you understand what the vote is in front of you today is some modest what I believe are modest and reasonable amendments to both the bylaws and the Santa Cruz County code that would effectuate the change they're looking for which is to try to help fill those seats a little bit easier I do want to take just a quick minute particularly in light of all the emotions of the topics that you've all been looking at today to explain to you the human element of what in-home support services is and why I'm so supportive as the human services director of doing all we can to help bring the voice of consumers of this program to a commission to help give us feedback in-home supportive services is a medical program so by definition all the customers that we serve in the program are on Medi-Cal which means they're low income and they are also either aged blind or disabled and those are Medi-Cal aid codes and we serve about 3,000 Santa Cruz County residents in this program and if they were not getting this service it is arguable that they would then not be able to live in their home and we also have about 2,500 providers of in-home care to come into the home of these aged blind and disabled Medi-Cal recipients and this advisory commission by state law meets with our staff regularly to look at evaluate and give us feedback on whether or not we're delivering the best service possible so it's a very important effort a very important commission the board action in front of you today is actually broken down into three parts the reason why this requires a board action and is required to be on regular calendar is because this is a change to the code which requires an ordinance which that means there needs to be two readings by your board to make a change to the Santa Cruz County code and the first one past practice in this community has been a regular session and a presentation by the department so of the three items in front of you for a vote the first one is to accept and concept the proposed changes to the code which essentially make it simpler to fill seats more quickly and to more focus who it is that's being targeted for recruitment that's people who have a stake in participate in her experience in the program second it's related but a separate action is as to make the related changes to the actual bylaws themselves and then the third of these concepts are agreeable to you to schedule a required second reading on consent at the next board hearing on the 28th and if that is all approved then we're allowed to make those changes to the code and then the commission can proceed with trying to fill the seats that they've been struggling to fill so I'm here for any questions I hope indeed this was a less heavy item but you've all been dealing with today but I am here for any questions you might have Any questions from the board? No Mr. Chair assuming that there's no public speakers on this item I'll move the recommended actions Let me see any public speakers I see somebody you know There are no speakers on Zoom No speakers on the phone Friend moves the motion Second by Koenig Supervisor Koenig Friend Unity Caput McPherson Item number 10 is to consider Thank you Mr. Morris Consider proposed ordinance adding chapter number 8.53 prohibiting discriminatory reports to law enforcement to the Santa Cruz County Code Title 8 Public Peace Morals and Welfare to address bias and discriminatory crime reporting as outlined in the memorandum of the Sheriff's Corner Ordinance adding Santa Cruz County Code Chapter 8.53 I don't think Sheriff Hello Good afternoon Chair Good afternoon Members of the Board I'm Chief Deputy of the Sheriff's Office and Operations Chief And on behalf of Sheriff Jim Hart I'm pleased to speak with you today with regards to soliciting your recommendation for adoption 1553 or discriminatory reports to law enforcement So over the next few minutes I'm going to kind of explain some aspects to this ordinance that I feel are really important. One What's going on nationally and locally with regards to discriminatory reports or bias based reports to law enforcement and that intersection between the victim of that and law enforcement. So I'll be talking a little bit about what's happening locally and nationally. Secondly What is the crux of this ordinance do? And then lastly speak about importance of this and trying to explain the gravity of what we're trying to do and why. So as you may be aware there are current statues on the books that talk about knowingly making a false police report where someone calls 911 and then makes a series of just creates a series of facts and so that's against the law as you know there are there are statutes with regards where someone discriminates and it commits a crime against somebody because they're protected class and you're aware of that but there's nothing in the space right now that really bridges that gap and so that's being worked on at the state level but what this ordinance does in essence is it does bridge that gap and it focuses on the caller themselves and really looking at is the reason why the caller is calling is because of a bias against someone and the person is just engaged in lawful activity without anything else going on right and then that obviously creates that intersection with us and those in our community so with that what we've seen locally and nationally is really what you've seen on TV you know there's been people at the park there's been people walking dogs there's been someone painting a mural expressing their beliefs in front of their own home and then a 911 call gets generated where someone says they're acting aggressive and specifically because of a bias makes this call and then that sets in motion obviously a police officer or a deputy then coming out to talk to that person and that creates real harm it creates harm to the person being contacted by law enforcement it creates harm and it erodes from our community policing mission to have one of us have to speak with somebody for really no apparent reason other than the person's acting aggressively and it's coming from a position of bias what we're not suggesting is reporting suspicious behavior where there's other actions by the person right really what this involves is it is a bias but the person may not be known to a neighborhood but they're not doing anything else they're not checking door handles they're not looking in windows they're not doing these other sorts of behavior they're not looking in to somebody who might be engaging or are looking to engage in criminal activity but really it's a bias against from the person who makes the call against a protected class this person engaging in lawful behavior so locally what we've seen with this and it's fairly disturbing I saw this when I was on patrol yet people selling newspapers and magazines in a neighborhood and they just weren't known but they were there soliciting different people for subscriptions they're not doing anything suspicious they're just not known to the neighborhood but what this does is it looks at obviously bridging that gap and it provides redress for the person being victimized in that situation that person engaged in lawful activity and then provides our deputies with a guide for looking at how do we look at what happened here and see whether or not it violated this ordinance what I mean by that is that our deputies in the public can look to this this ordinance and see wait a second I was engaged in lawful activity but I felt intimidated humiliated made to move from a certain area or financially or personally impacted and if our deputies look at that and they're able to determine that based on that caller that the call was made from a position of bias that person was left to feel or experience what I just suggested apply and what that does is it provides a civil process where the person can then seek punitive damages and then monetary damages upwards of over a thousand dollars plus attorney fees it gives that person a mechanism to seek justice in that situation that doesn't currently exist and so with that we're not the only ones that have done this so this isn't necessarily nothing new but it's definitely a space that needs to be addressed and one that we're looking to address in your consideration for adoption of this ordinance and so importantly really what this does it furthers this ordinance furthers our commitment to public safety it acknowledges this issue and that this issue exists and then empowers victims most importantly and then because of those reasons we we really ask your consideration your adoption of this ordinance to affirm our commitment to fairer and impartial policing for everyone in our community thank you and I'm happy to take any questions thank you any questions from the board Mr. Chair let me just first compliment Chief Clark and Sheriff Hart on this this is something that they took very early from community input there was a very strong willingness within the agency to do some research and to put this forward and while as Chief Deputy Clark acknowledges that we may not be the first for actually one of the first in the country that has implemented or is proposing to implement this this is an absolutely essential proposal and I appreciate the Sheriff's Office leadership on it I'm very supportive of it very good any other comments from the board I'll just echo that I appreciate the fact that the Sheriff's Office truly took the initiative on this and has brought it before us I'm very supportive of the actions today thank you any questions from the public any comments on the phone speakers I just want to share my colleagues you know praise of the Sheriff and Deputy Clark here for bringing this forward being proactive and thinking about how do we reduce these incidents of hate and bias in our community and I'll move the recommended actions I see a second move my career second by friend please call the roll Supervisor Cunnick friend Unity McPherson thank you motion passes unanimously thank you we go to item number 11 is the Board of Directors of Santa Cruz County flood control and water conservation district zone 6 this is a continued public hearing to accept the certification of the vote results of the Rio del Mar drainage flats assessment district and direct zone 6 staff to retain the ballots for two years is outlined in the memorandum of the district engineer we have the Rio del Mar flats assessment statement of the vote and I think Kent Edler is going to present this the Public Works Department it's correct good morning chair and directors I'm Kent Edler assistant director of public works and also assistant district engineer for zone 6 so the item before you today is regarding the Rio del Mar flats benefit assessment district on August 24th 2021 the board of the zone 6 conducted the public hearing and heard public and heard objections and protests and directed the elections department to tabulate the submitted ballots and continued the public hearing to today to allow for tabulation and certification of the ballot results elections department tabulated the ballots and certified the results 321 ballots were received of the of the valid ballots received 38.8 percent voted in favor of forming the Rio del Mar benefit assessment district and 61.2 percent voted in opposition to the formation so the formation of the assessment district did not pass since the assessment district did not pass the Rio del Mar drainage improvement project that would have alleviated flooding in the Rio del Mar flats area will not be constructed staff will contact the grant agencies to let them know that there is not a funding source for the ongoing operations and maintenance so the $4.2 million in grant funds construction will not be accepted and the project will not be built to accept certification of the vote results for the Rio del Mar flats benefit assessment district and direct zone 6 staff to retain the ballots for 2 years following the certification and I'm available for questions thank you any questions supervisor friend your district do you have any comments yeah I don't have any questions but let me just issue some appreciation of public works Ms. Fatouille Mr. Edler you've been working on this and even those that preceded you for quite some time and really were able to thread a remarkable needle of actually getting the resource agencies of the state and federal government to find a project that they would support is a very limited ability in there because of federally protected species and water recharge requirements and etc. environmental concerns etc they were able to do it they were able to get funding for it and obviously while we respect the will of the majority that voted this way it is unfortunate it's disappointing because there really is no other option and it just means that we're going to have a continued issue with flooding down there moving forward obviously public works will continue to do what they do with the standard clean outs but it's been shown not just leading up to today but moving forward from today with climate change that that work was inadequate this was a proposal to help address that but the residents the homeowners excuse me down there have elected to have chosen that I guess have chosen to continue to have the flooding in exchange for not paying the fee and that's that is absolutely within the right but there really is no plan B to the situation and so I think moving forward it's just going to be unfortunate I recognize that not just myself but any future forward sitting in this position are going to be addressing a continued and increasing problem in that area thank you I don't think there's any motion required do we I think there is to certify so I'll move the recommended actions pardon me chair I do have a speaker just I have a speaker excuse me go ahead Dale Flowers your microphone is available they blowered their hand we have a motion a supervisor friend made of motion I'll move the recommended actions I'll second I'll just say it maybe a little more directly than I'm not sure who has a friend can because it's constituents but like in a world where we're talking about resilience and increased floods and weather to pass up these resources it's a penny wise pound foolish and it's going to impact people for decades to come it's too bad thank you and I guess I need to formally close a public hearing I don't forget that okay please call the roll sorry for clarity was that it was supervisor friend the second was that Koenig or Coonerty Coonerty supervisor Koenig friend Coonerty Appett McPherson now we did finish the public comments or delay the public comments if anybody is still waiting to have public comments okay from my telly the majority have spoken and there's one less speaker to this item there's one more speaker Dale Flowers your microphone is available okay go ahead I'm sorry I was lost there can you hear me yes the idea that there's no plan B it's really kind of unacceptable the look at the report there was a notion that look at the pipes can the pipes be in large can the pipes keep clean and then so the notion that there's no plan B it's kind of hard to accept I think we need to look at that closer but here's a plan B with a small B the day that this happened I sent a photograph and there was a lady standing out in the street who was there for about an hour asking cars to slow down so the wave action wouldn't fly into their houses and it just seems to me that at least we can anticipate that there's going to be a problem and the county get out there and put the signs up early close the road and clean those gutters and the drain before right before those predictable episodes happened and when I looked at the study what was kind of perplexing was when they assess all the water that goes in there there was no how much of the water comes from the ocean the runoff from the ocean and it seems to me that that ought to be taken into consideration when we're dealing with this and then who can be responsible for that but that the idea that we can do I think we can do a better job of maintenance frankly neighborhood down at the bottom the person who lives at the bottom of the hill every time there's a rain is down there cleaning that drain now and it works it takes longer to get the water out of there but it's a resident cleaning the top of the drain who God only knows what's on in the pipes so I really kind of hold off on the idea of a plan B I really would like to hear a better discussion of how we can deal with the main that's here thank you very much and by the way I thank you supervisors for your service I can't believe how much you have to deal with in these two days been a great job thank you thank you okay that completes our agenda today for September 14th 2021 our next meeting the County Board of Supervisors will be September 28th at 9 a.m. on the board chamber and virtual as well thank you this meeting is adjourned