 I'll order the October 17th meeting of the Board of Supervisors. If we could begin with a roll call, please. Certainly Chair, Supervisor Koenig. Here. Cummings. Here. Hernandez. Here. McPherson and Friend. Here. We'll begin with a moment of silence before the Pledge of Allegiance. Would any Board member like to dedicate the moment of silence? Supervisor McPherson. You know, I'd just like to say generally, let's have a prayer for peace on earth here and everywhere in this little baller. So we need it now more than ever. Just hope people can communicate and really, well, just peace on earth. Thank you, Supervisor. Goodbye to the Cummings. I also wanted to dedicate this moment of silence to Laura Nadell. She was sadly passed away in her sleep on Saturday. She was a community member who was loved by many in this community, did a lot of volunteer work, made nonprofits in our community. She was a social worker. She was also a small business owner and she's gonna be deeply missed. Thank you. All right, we'll begin with a moment of silence before the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join us in the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, on the nation of God, with liberty and justice for all. Good morning, Mr. Flascoe. So are there any changes to today's agenda? Yes, Chair Friend, members of the Board. We have one correction. This is on the consent agenda, item number 21. There are additional materials. There's a revised memo, packet page 219 is replaced. Recommended action number two should read, accept and appropriate $81,811 from the county fire to transfer administrative support to the general services budget and approve addition of one full-time equivalent position to support county fire administration. That concludes the corrections. Thank you. Would any board member like to pull an item from the consent agenda to the regular agenda? The advisor comments. Yeah, I was gonna pull item number 63. 63. Okay, item 63 will become, is it something that you just wanted to add additional direction to look at addressing consent or is it something you need a more in-depth presentation on? I think we might be able to address it on consent, but I was not sure the best way to approach this. I'm happy to make my comments and see if they can be. Let's try it on consent. If that's acceptable, I was gonna make additional direction on it as well. We could just try it on consent. So we won't pull 63 at this moment. Any other supervisor on an item to pull to the regular agenda? Okay, we're gonna open it up for public comment. It's an opportunity for members of the community to address those items that are not on today's agenda or within the purview of the Board of Supervisors as well. The comments need to be made about items that are within our purview or we may need to move on to an additional speaker. Also for items on consent agenda or on the regular agenda or closed session agenda if you're unable to stay for those items. Good morning and welcome back. Well, good morning. My name is James Ewing Whitman. What is it? October 17th, 2023, 1989, 504. Pretty special example of plate tectonics. Today would be my grandmother's 100 and 11th birthday if she were alive. I don't know if she would smile at this or you guys will either, but at Bilbo Baggins, 111th birthday, he started the speech. I don't know half of you as well as I should like. And I like half of you, half as much as you deserve. Yeah, she probably wouldn't be initially smiling either. So I'm holding up this thing, your city government. You know, I was able to pull four items off the consent agenda in the city council. My public comments were at 1313, which is just a really funny random number. Could make reference to a place in Chicago on 60th Avenue. My first item on the consent agenda, number eight and 10 kind of had to do with the role of city and county managers that control all of you, all five of you like slaves. Since before 19, yeah, Justin, don't pay attention. That's business as usual for you. Um, they started at 35 minutes. You know, I was able to talk on number eight and number 10 was kind of similar because it had to do with how an unelected official is control of our emergency preparedness, including FEMA. So I was able to talk to us for three minutes back to back on a consent agenda item number 12, which had to do with the frequency weapons and consent agenda item number 16, which had to do with the poisoning of the water, pumping sewage by standards that any intelligent person would question of the EPA into our system. So wouldn't it be interesting if this circle was one millionth of a constitutional republic as the city of Santa Cruz? Thank you. Thank you. Good morning and welcome. Good morning. My name is Mr. Benjamin Hart and I've prepared a masking for consideration to incorporate conservation courses into the round tree facility. I have a doctor's recommendation in Santa Clara that I was going to work at Elmwood facility, but I have a property in Abtos, which I'm doing with my dad and I prepared a schedule of, it's an introduction to Cal Fire. I haven't got my doctor's recommendation yet, but I was wondering if it's something you guys could review and maybe consider to teach classes at round tree and to unite fallers and sons and trail maintenance and stuff. Exercise. Yeah, but if you have something you'd want to leave for so you can definitely leave it right here. Okay. I appreciate you coming forward on this. Thank you. I'm going to try to see if I can make my, come back on the next day with my recommendation and stuff. And if you guys have any wisdom to incorporate or any considerations should be much appreciated. Thank you. Thank you for coming to speak to us. Thank you. Good morning and welcome. Good morning supervisors, administrators and staff. I want to thank you for the work you're doing to improve our behavioral health services. Seven years ago yesterday, October 16th, my son Sean Smith Art was wrongfully shot and killed by the Santa Cruz city police. In part due to the fact there was no non law enforcement mobile crisis response services in our county. So I wanted to talk about consent agenda item 41, the DHS crisis act three year plan pilot program grant for non law enforcement mobile crisis response teams it's another essential step to ensure that families, members of our community and our law enforcement offices will have services they deserve wherever they are. And whenever they need them to appropriately respond to behavioral health crisis calls. And as the secretary of the mental health advisory board we support your moving forward with accepting this multi year award of $2.4 million and to direct the health services agency behavioral health division to negotiate a multi year agreement with the family services agency of central coast to provide mobile crisis response services to describe as described in the crisis pilot program grant application. The mental health advisory board thanks our county behavioral health team and the family services agency for their dedication and work and successfully applying for and being awarded this grant to enhance 988 services by creating 24 seven non law enforcement mobile crisis response teams and thank you all. Thank you. Morning, welcome. Good morning Juan Magana. Good morning chair, friend and members of the board. My name is Juan Magana program manager with human services department. I'm here this morning to on behalf of the human services department to thank the board for proclaiming November 2023 as in-home supportive services caregiver month in Santa Cruz County. I would like to take the rest of my time allotted to read some of the experts from the board's proclamation. Whereas over 2,800 in-home supportive services caregivers provide home care services and support in Santa Cruz County making it possible for over 3,100 low income disabled and elderly Santa Cruz County residents to remain independently in their homes. And whereas providing services and support for the disabled and elderly to remain living in their home is a humane dignified and compassionate alternative to hospitalization or other potential institutional placements at that disabled and elderly adults become susceptible to without viable IHS care and whereas the County of Santa Cruz IHS professionals who provide these physically demanding and emotionally challenging home care services to low income disabled and elderly Santa Cruz County residents do so with great sensitivity, honesty, patience, trust, commitment, dedication, and compassion. Once again, I wanna thank you for recognizing the work that IHS caregivers do to help some of the most vulnerable members of our community remain safely in their homes. Thank you. Thank you, thank you for your work. Good morning, welcome back. Yeah, good morning, all of you. So, mostly my name is Antonio Ribas from City of Watsonville. I just wanted to reiterate that as part of the Mental Health Board, our advisory board, I just wanted to support moving forward and accepting the money you're gonna apply for $2.4 million and to direct to the Health Service Agency behavioral division. And to negotiate in the multi-year plan is an agreement, is important that we have that to apply because it will help our community and help the City of Watsonville residents and well, his Santa Cruz County. So it's important that you apply for that and it's important that to go forward for that application. And I thank you. Thank you, thanks for coming for that. Is there anybody else in chambers that would like to address us? Adam Clerk, is there anybody online? Yes, Chair, we have a speaker online. Matt, your microphone is now available. Good morning, my name is Matt Farrell and I'm here today speaking on behalf of Friends of the Rail and Trail. And we wanna speak in support of items 51, which has to do with the non-infant structure grant for the North Coast Rail Trail 52, which is continuing legal support from Remi Mlaw and Manley. And finally, item 53, the cooperative agreement between the RTC and the County of Santa Cruz for maintenance of the North Coast Rail. We're very glad to see the progress that's being made on the trail and we look forward to additional work being brought forward to Council. I mean, to the Board of Supervisors. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Farrell. Colin, user one, your microphone is now available. Well, I'm here and I'd like to open with a quote from Rachel Carson. The road, the author of Silent Spring. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy. A smooth super highway on which we progress with great speed but at its end lies disaster. County policies proceed with more and more wireless microwave technology touted as being fantastic at the end lies disaster. And again, this quote from the film 5G Apocalypse, the extinction event. It's important to understand what the 5G is doing and what they say it's doing. We're told on the IEEE beam forming document that this technology cooks your eyes like eggs in World War II. We all need to understand these are military weapons. These are assault frequencies. If you garner nothing more than that, that's what you need to know. It's microwave radiation warfare. That's what it is. End of quote, LED street lights are also emitting 5G. So the county in voting for changes to the wireless ordinance and allowing radiation emitting assault weapons everywhere is doing harm to the public, not providing for the general welfare as you're supposed to. Justin Cummings, you said on the coastal commission and voted for launching a board of these. Chair, we have no further speakers online. Okay, seeing no more individuals in chambers. I'd like to address this in public comment or close public comment and bring it to the board for comments and consideration and consent. Supervisor Hernandez, do you have any comments on consent? Yeah, just a few comments on the 251 and 64. Supervisor Hernandez, just your microphone please. Thank you. So 42, I'm always happy to see any funding for any health programs in South County. And so I guess this is approval of some roll over funds for the ENTIS program in South County. So kudos to making that happen and on item 51 I'm always excited about any of the additional trail segments that we're getting on the rail trail corridor. So that's always exciting news. And on 64, I'm always glad that we're getting advancing on Westridge to bring more county services to South County as well. That concludes my remarks. Thank you, Supervisor Hernandez. Supervisor Cummings. Yeah, just have a few comments. Item number 29, I just wanna thank the mayor of Imperial Beach for taking the time, our last call to commission meeting, we were actually able to go to Imperial Beach and get a tour of this area where many of the wastewater treatment facilities that are along the Tijuana River have not been functioning. And as a result, they've had a lot of the effluent being dumped directly into the ocean, which has now rendered many of the beach access closed. I think when we were down that the beaches were closed and it's been over 650 days that these beaches have been closed. And this is the extent of natural bridges to about seascape in terms of distance of closed beaches. And just as a close to community, I want to lend some support to their efforts to try to help get more funding to repair those wastewater treatment plants so that they can have access to their beaches. And item number 41, I just wanna thank staff for all their hard work on continuing to support the mobile crisis response programs. This has been something that the community has really been asking us to try to push forward. And so it's just great to see that there's continued progress on this item. Item number 53, I just wanna thank staff for their work on this as well. But I also hope that staff can consider alternative funding opportunities that are included but not limited to the solid waste funds to support by trail maintenance moving forward in the future. So just really trying to think about how we can continue to fund trail maintenance moving forward, I think is really important. And then on item number 63, I've intended to pull this item but hopefully we can get through this. I guess the one concern that I have is that the board would not be having any role in approving special events moving forward with this action. I think it's important when new events are coming forward that the board is able to have some kind of input and review. Maybe if they're repeat events and it's just kind of ministerial, that can be something that staff can just approve. But I know that for example, we had the Iron Man go through my district this year and a number of folks who were really complaining about the roads being closed and the impacts on businesses. And so there are times when events can't have impacts on people within our districts. And so I just think that it is important that the board maintains some kind of role in approval. So hopefully we can maybe talk about that a little bit more, but that's kind of where I'm coming from. So I guess the only recommendations I would have for that is that new events should be approved by the board. And also that there may be an appeal process if the staff rejected an application that they can appeal it to the board in case there might be some difference in opinion on a specific event. Thank you. I think that we can add that additional direction when it comes time for a motion. I had a similar, I'll speak to that item when it comes, but my concern was similar that new items should come, items like the Wharf to Wharf that have been coming for years, there's no need. And that also provides public works with the ability for us to review so that they don't also have all the responsibility in the same way for new events. So I agree with you and I think we can make that amendment when it comes. Supervisor Koenig, thank you, Chair Friend. On item 26, additional outreach to disaster victims to understand obstacles in rebuilding and determine their interest in a transfer development rights program. One thing Supervisor McPherson for his partnership on this item. And this item really seeks to address the issue or in question of when natural disasters destroy people's homes. How do we rebuild in places that are safer? That's sort of a question that it's pretty obvious when you look at places like New Orleans or Florida that were separate from them and we can see that there's a repeated risk there, but it becomes harder to look at objectively in our own community when it's our homes or our neighbor's homes. And when we are really awash in all these different problems from financial to legal. So what this item would do is first of all reach out to some of the folks who recently suffered from disasters to CZU fire victims, flood victims. We know that almost half of all CZU fire victims have not initiated any rebuild action and this would outreach to better understand what's preventing them from doing so. Of course, some of those things are completely outside of the county's control, fire insurance rates going up under insurance to begin with, new state standards for septic or road widths. And then the other item that would be included in this outreach is exploring the possibility for a legal tool called transfer development rights. This has been used in big cities like New York or Chicago or even San Francisco to preserve historic properties and transfer the right to build from a store property to another site. It's been used in places like Maryland to preserve farmland from urban sprawl and it's been used in Florida to preserve Everglades and even in the Tahoe Lake region to preserve some the creeks and other sensitive environmental areas. So there's a potential to use it here to allow people to rebuild on sites other than maybe where their home was originally and where it was destroyed and vulnerable to sea level rise or storm surgeries or within the flood plain or vulnerable to fires. The service is the first step and see if it is something people would be interested in if we can use it here and if it's worth further investment in creating this policy resource. On item 27, a resolution in support of California property tax apportionment reform. I wanna thank supervisor friend, chair friend for partnering on this. You know, one of the things I'm sure that supervisor Hernandez and Cummings realized in their first budget season is that our financial situation is a little bit more bleak than most people realize from the outside. We're reminded of this pretty consistently. I think most recently in a presentation by assistant director of roads, Steve Wiesner at the Transportation Commission, which said, you know, we really should be investing $24 million every year to keep our road network in shape in just where it is today, if not improving it and we're only investing $8 million, a third of what's needed. And that's a trend that cannot continue. I mean, our road network is already in poor condition. And unless we do something, it's basically going to fail. We have to reverse the trend line. And that's not just our road infrastructure. It's the same as true of our other facilities. I mean, the very building we're sitting in, our health centers at Emeline on the freedom campus and our county parks. I mean, there's hundreds of millions of dollars of deferred maintenance between it all. And it's to no fault of the county. It's simply because we get a lower share of our property taxes in most communities, 13 and a half percent of every property tax, the tax dollar that people pay comes back to the county and that's less than 20%, which is the statewide average. The difference is close to $70 million a year in really discretionary funding that the county could be using to maintain our infrastructure and directly invest in needed programs. So this ultimately is going to take a change in state legislation to make the difference. But I think right now we can only be described as a dream team in the state legislature between senior members like Senator Laird, great new members like Assembly Member Addis and Gail Pellerin, and of course, the Speaker of the Assembly, Robert Rivas, who has a good share of Watsonville. So I think if there was ever a time to try to change this legislation, it's now. And I hope that with this resolution, we're taking the first step, not only working and reaching out to our state legislature, but also working with other counties who are in a similar position. And finally, I just wanna plot item 41, the Crisis Act Grant Family Service Agency, Mobile Crisis Response Services. I've said since the beginning of taking office that we really needed an alternative crisis response model with 24-7 availability. I know lots of people in the community have asked for that and it's just fantastic to see us taking this concrete step towards actually staffing that outreach. And of course, it comes on the heels of the other initiative that we recently undertook using the Crisis Now Innovation Project Grant to really coordinate services and ensure that when people call 911, we're going to dispatch the correct outreach service, including potentially this 24-7 Mobile Crisis Unit. Thank you. Thank you, Surveyser Connick, Surveyser McPherson. Yeah, thank you, Chair. I have several and some repeat items, the number 26, the Transfer of Development Rights Program. I wanna thank Surveyser Connick for bringing this together with me because we're trying to identify ways that we wanna help disaster victims recover and rebuild and the Transfer of Development Rights Program is what might be a very good option. We look forward to having a lot of input from the public on this proposal. Also on item 27, the support for California Property Tax Apportion Reform. As was mentioned, and Chair Friend and Connick brought this together, we are really a low property tax, probably the lowest in the state of what we get back for 13 cents, and it's a big reason we often see most of our local tax measures and we're gonna see a lot of them this next year in Santa Cruz County from one district or city or county to the other. And we just seriously are underfunded compared to other counties through no fault of our own. That was something that was put in place many, many years ago, but it'll take a lot of work and statewide cooperation for us to be able to increase that site. And on item number 31, I will abstain from that item. And I wanna thank, it was also mentioned on item number 41, the Crisis Grant. I wanna thank the Health Services Agency for pursuing this program and the Family Services Agency of the Central Coast for taking on this pilot project as our partner. It's important that we work toward ensuring that people experiencing behavioral health emergencies receive the most effective response and that law enforcement and fire responders are best utilized for the kind of emergency that through their services. On this item, I would like to, this is just going to go into effect. I would like to provide additional direction that the Health Services Agency return to the board within a year after the contract is signed. And so that would probably be December of 2024 to provide an update on how this pilot program is progressing. I think it's a tremendous program and I think it'd be good if we had a review of that in a year from now or just over a year from now. Item number 50, this can't be overstated. A brief thank you, but a huge one for our parks department for their terrific work on the strategic plan. It's especially exciting to read all of the great accomplishment for the past five years. It's been really a wonderful to see the inclusion of new spaces like Felt and Discovery Park, the Leo's Haven, Live Oak, all with the department that just years ago was not even its own entity. And I see that Park's Director Jeff Daphne is here. I just want to thank him and his whole staff for and really a lot of community volunteers came to the front too on this who are responsible for the success of this. It was particularly important with our COVID crisis which may not be over, it seems to be coming back and forth, but having a great park system is a truly valuable asset to our Santa Cruz County and they've done a phenomenal job of, shall we call it a comeback for the parks department and providing so many services. So I want to thank them for that. And on the number 61, the Felt and Sheriff's Substation lease, this is a good opportunity for me once again to thank Sheriff Jim Hart and CAO, Carlos Palacios for their commitments to keep the Sheriff's Substations open in various areas of the county. We now have some stations in the fifth district of Santa Rosa Valley and Boulder Creek and Felton. It's really created great relationships and better response times and people have a lot more confidence that their law enforcement agency from the Sheriff's Department will respond to Santa Rosa Valley. So thank you very much for extending that substation release in Felton. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. I'll speak to a few items on item 27. Again, appreciation from Supervisor Koenig for bringing this item forward with our office in regards to the property tax apportionment. Our community pays tens of millions of dollars that doesn't actually stay with the unincorporated county because of a state formulation that was created in 1978. This is money that could be used for parks or public safety or for roads or for a number of other community-based services. And so I think it's reasonable to take a look at a formula that's over 40 years old and clearly isn't serving the needs of our community very well in a lot of actual rural communities that counties throughout the state of California that we intend to reach out to to see if there's an interest in working on changing the state legislation around this. I'm on item 29, appreciation to the Supervisor Cummings on this item, even though this item is not in our county, as we know with the Pajaro and an item that we're gonna be talking about later on the flood protection. When you have environmental injustice issues, it's nice to have as many communities as possible, amplifying the message to both our state and federal delegation and leadership that these issues need to be addressed. And this is a pretty significant environmental crisis occurring in the southern portion of our state, in particularly impacting disadvantaged residents. On item 34, just appreciation for the board in supporting this project, Greenlight, which will support veterans that are returning to civilian life. We'll actually light our building here green during the Veterans Day week. And so that's a way to acknowledge veterans that they are seen when they return back to civilian life. On item 51, 52, and 53, which deal with the rail corridor, I need to recuse myself. I live within 500 feet of the rail corridor, so I have a personal, potential personal financial conflict items regarding that. On item 63, just a brief question for council. I'm in support of Supervisor Cummings additions, but this is a resolution. So is this an item that needs to actually come back with the modifications or is this something we can do today? Yeah, I would recommend that you take a vote on the entire consent agenda other than 63 and then take up 63 in a second motion that just directs staff to come back with a revised resolution on November 14th, and we'd be happy to do that. Okay, so I'm supportive of doing that and changing the directing staff to that on all new events. The second you wanted an appeals process for tonight events that it could come to the board, also a reasonable, is that part of the resolution as well? Yes, that would be when we come back, we'll put those two things that you wanna see. The board wants to see first events and wants there to be some kind of appeal process to the board. Okay, is there a motion for the consent agenda with the additional direction on 41, the abstention on 31 from Supervisor McPherson, the recusal that was noted, I'm sure, for 51, 52 and 53, not including item 63. So move. Second. Do we have a motion from Supervisor Cummings and a second from Supervisor Koenig? Madam Clerk, are we clear on what the motion is? Yes, we are. I was thinking I have a roll call, please. Supervisor Koenig? Aye. Cummings? Aye. Hernandez? Yes. McPherson and Friend? Aye. And on item 63, Supervisor Cummings, would you like to articulate the motion for the direction to come back? Sure, I'll move that item 63 come back with a revised resolution to give the board authority for approving new events and appeals process for events that are rejected by staff and repeat events to be approved by staff. Is there a second? Second. And then at the point of clarification to come back on November 14th, correct? To come back on November 14th. And I apologize, I missed who was the second? Supervisor McPherson, okay. The motion from Supervisor Cummings is second from Supervisor McPherson. If we've got a roll call, please. Supervisor Koenig? Aye. Cummings? Aye. Hernandez? Yes. McPherson and Friend? Aye. And that passes unanimously. And that'll end the consent agenda and we'll move on to our first item of the regular agenda. We are gonna combine items seven and eight. They're related items for the presentation purposes. Do we need to take the motion separately though, Council, in regards to it, can they also be taken as of all one? You have discretion to combine the items and then whatever motions come out of the combined items will track. Sounds good. All right, so seven and eight will be combined and we could most likely take that into one motion. We can begin with a presentation. Ms. Coburn, welcome. Good morning, Chair Friend and members of the board. I'm Nicole Coburn, Assistant CAO and I'm joined today by Rita Sanchez, who is Assistant County Clerk. Together we've worked on the Santa Cruz County Like Me project and we'll be presenting both items seven and eight on today's agenda. Before I begin, I just wanna acknowledge a few folks who have contributed to this work. First, Ventures, which partnered with us on understanding who serves on the county's boards and commissions. The Santa Cruz County Like Me committee, which facilitated community conversations over the summer and dived into the data. Our intern, Chaska Farber, who spent three months researching county commissions, preparing for county conversations on commission restructuring and analyzing potential stipends. Chief Assistant County Council, Ruby Marquez, who incorporated committee and staff feedback to update Chapter 2.38. And our Chief Deputy Clerk, Juliet Burke, who has created more structure and better systems for supporting staff liaisons and new commissioners. So with that, I'm gonna go to the next slide. All right, so at the October 3rd meeting, as you are aware, the board adopted a statement on equity as shown here. We want to let you know that the work of the Santa Cruz County Like Me project embodies the statement and is an extension of that work. The recommendations that we're going to present and ask the board to approve are a step forward in ensuring intentional opportunities and access, fostering an environment where everyone can thrive and belong. The recommendations don't encompass everything that we want to do, but establish specific actions to begin to transform representation on county boards and commissions. We fully intend to return with additional recommendations. So this is our agenda for the presentation. We're going to start by talking about the Santa Cruz County Like Me project, and then we're gonna transition to the Chapter 2.38 updates. And with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Rita Sanchez. Good morning, Chair and Board. As Nicole mentioned, I'll be presenting on the Santa Cruz Like Me project and the community engagement results. In 2021, this County Administrative Office partnered with Santa Cruz Community Ventures to survey the composition of county boards and commissions and its representation of the county's population to ensure that policy is informed by diverse voices. The survey led to the a Santa Cruz Like Me report which highlighted critical variances between the demographic makeup of commission members and county residents. Specifically the report highlighted under representation from residents who reside within the 95076 zip code, who self-identify as renters, identify as Hispanic or Latino, or identify as having a disability. The report also highlighted no young adult representation in the makeup of county commissioners and over-representation of college graduates as compared to county population. That same year the board accepted the report along with the recommendations within it which included the creation of a committee to review the variances and proposed solutions. CAO staff began the work of establishing the committee in 2022 and over the past year we've had the privilege of working alongside Antonio Rivas, current member of the Mental Health Advisory Board, the seniors commission and former Watsonville mayor, Cesar De Santos, current member of the Dino Affairs Commission and Santa Cruz County Deputy, Elaine Johnson, current member of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Commission and executive director of Housing Santa Cruz County, Verena Moreno, current member of the Human Services Commission, the Women's Commission and program and leadership coordinator at Milpa Collective, Mireya Gomez-Contreras, deputy director at the Arts Council Santa Cruz County and administrative co-leader of Esperanza Community Farms and Yadira Flores, current member of the Latino Affairs Commission and Parks Activities Designer with County Park Friends. And if the committee members are here, I'd like to ask them to please stand so we can recognize them. The committee and CAO staff conducted initial factor analysis work to identify current county practices and activities that could be potentially contributing to the current disparities and engaged with community leaders to inform them of the work that was being done and obtain their feedback. And this includes the circle on anti-racism, economic and social justice group, or CARES-J. And recognizing that community experience and voice were key to validating any factor analysis results the committee and CAO staff designed and facilitated several community engagement activities. Community engagement efforts consisted of an online survey in both English and Spanish, which was launched in June for about six weeks. Close to 100 community members throughout the county responded to the survey, which gathered data on community interest in commissions and the resources and support needed to increase participation. Additionally, three community workshops were conducted during the month of June. And each workshop provided bilingual materials, Spanish interpretation, childcare, a light meal and a gift card to participants. Two workshops were held in Watsonville and one workshop was held in Capitola. And the objective of the workshops was to facilitate conversations around county commissions and their purpose, including how and why to participate, to discuss the lack of representation and how this impacts the community, and to hear about the resources or support needed from the community. And finally, the county and city of Santa Cruz collaborated to present their work on representational government during an online coffee court chat in September with a similar objective. And the chat was attended by over 25 participants representing local organizations. Both the survey and workshops asked participants about the resources and support needed for their participation in county commissions. And the online survey participants identified the following top needs. Increased awareness on why to participate, financial support such as stipends, information on where to apply or learn more, and resources such as childcare, and accessibility of meetings, locations and times. And this can be seen on the graph on the left. South County workshop participants identified similar needs with accessible meeting times and locations arising to the top. Followed by stipends, community outreach to raise awareness on why to participate and childcare resources. And the graph on the right shows the results from the Watsonville Arts Center workshop, since it was the most well-attended workshop. And participants were the most representative of our target audience, which was South County young adults between the ages of 18 and 24, who identified as Hispanic Latino, identified as rate renters, and self-identified as having a disability. And Nicole will touch on the recommendations that were informed by this data later in the presentation. But I will mention now that providing accessible meeting times and locations, including the ability to hold virtual meetings, is being addressed internally by staff through the work of the clerk of the board to provide structure and support to staff liaisons and new commissioners, as well as through County's legislative efforts. The data from the online survey and workshops, workshops was informative in validating the committee's prior work and informing their recommendations to address current disparities. But we believe that the most meaningful and revealing part of the workshops were the conversations with the community, which brought up some important themes listed on the screen. And I'll touch on a few of them. Alternative forms about reach was one common theme. CAO staff use multiple social media outlets and relied on community-based organizations to help promote the workshops. But it was the work of committee members and community leaders acting as trusted messengers that really got people to show up. Another common theme was youth engagement, engaging youth early and often, collaborating with schools and colleges, creating mentorship programs where part of conversations had at each of the workshops. And one more theme I'd like to highlight was around the transformative process of building relationship and trust. And I want to take a moment to thank each community member that participated for their openness, honesty, and trust in us during the workshops. And I'd like to read some of what was shared by folks when asked at the end of the workshops what needs to happen next. Provide information about what commissions do. How would a new person joining be supported? Incluir a los menores de edad, incluir a gente como yo. Include young adults, include people like me. There needs to be changes to make commissions more welcoming so those who join don't feel so lost. Advertise the meetings or more participation and awareness on how people can make changes to their community by participating in commissions. And these last two comments from community members really stood out because they touch on relationship and trust through the active commitment and accountability. Deguir teniendo estas pláticas con la gente para informarles de este compromiso con la comunidad. Continue to have these conversations with people to inform them of this commitment to the community. Reponerse una meta para ustedes que les comprometan para servir la comunidad. Propose a goal for yourselves that shows your commitment to serve the community. And with that, I'll hand it over to Nicole to talk about the recommendations. So the Santa Cruz County like me committee ended up focusing on the top three needs identifying through the survey that Rita went over and they used these needs to develop their recommendations. In addition, because youth participation was a predominant theme at all three workshops, one of their recommendations is targeted at youth. So their first recommendation deals with establishing a youth advisory task force. As you heard, many community members expressed a need to involve youth early and early on in local government. The committee agrees with this. They recommend the creation of a youth advisory task force supported by CAO staff. Over an 18 month period, the task force would be charged with reviewing youth participation within commissions and proposing recommendations for increased involvement of diverse young adults between the ages of 14 and 24. Their work would address the potential creation of a youth commission designated at large youth positions on existing commissions, continuation or expansion of the Young Supervisors Academy and other forms of youth participation in county government. Recommendation two has to do with outreach and education. Many workshop participants also shared with us that they were not aware of county commissions and the opportunities available to participate as Rita just discussed. The workshops succeeded in increasing awareness and engagement, participants left energized and committed and many voiced the need for more. To raise the bar on community awareness and outreach of county commissions, the committee recommends the creation of outreach and education activities and policies that are actionable and focused on increasing diverse and inclusive government bodies. CAO staff are currently looking into creating an annual commission's workshop that would be held over the winter before spring appointments and reappointments are made. The third recommendation has to do with commissioner referrals. During workshops, many participants shared that they were already involved with nonprofit groups at school sites and local organizations. Participants mentioned that working with community organizations to identify community members who would be interested in participating in commissions and building out what could what exists could be a good start. The committee recommends the county create a framework for partnering with local organizations that leads to an active interest list of community residents and creates a pipeline of referrals from the community to local government. The final recommendation from the committee relates to onboarding and mentoring. While workshop participants were interested in learning more about commissions and many were inclined to join and we actually had a couple pursuit applications. There were concerns about the support and guidance that would be provided to new commissioners, especially participants from underrepresented groups. Participants shared that onboarding and mentoring focused on the needs of underrepresented groups would be necessary resource and support for continued participation. The clerk of the board continues to work on a phased project to provide standard onboarding procedures and guidelines for new commission members. While this is important work, we heard from commissioners that more needs to be done. The committee recommends that staff support new commissioners through onboarding and mentoring, such as exploring the creation of a mentor buddy program that addresses the specific needs of members from underrepresented groups. And with that, I also wanna transition into a proposal for a commissioner stipend program. On April 25th, the board directed us to return on today's agenda with a proposal for commissioner compensation to help increase diverse commissioner participation. The board also included $70,000 in the fiscal year 23-24 budget to help support efforts to increase diversity on commissions. Stipends were identified as you heard as a necessary resource among workshop participants. The county has over 40 commissions, committees and advisory bodies. About 11 of these already offer a stipend or governed by an outside group. Existing stipends range from $30 to $200 per meeting and we included the table and our staff report that outlines what they are. This leaves about 29 commissions to be included in the stipend program. We're recommending a stipend of $75 per meeting for community members who are not currently employees of the county or other public agencies and make less than the median household income of $115,000 and this would be done through self-certification. Self-certification is a low barrier form of achieving this where commissioners can state whether they make less than the county median household income and wish to opt in or whether they wish to opt out because they don't meet that threshold or for some other reason. Based on available information, the stipend would benefit approximately half of current commissioners or about 113 members. The proposed stipend aligns with what we found within the county and our research in other counties and allows the implementation of the program within the board approved budget of $70,000. There are additional steps needed to operationalize the stipend. So assuming the board approves proposal, we have county code changes in chapter 2.38 where we actually have language in there to allow for a stipend that you would be approving that in concept today and we would be bringing back that for adoption on November 14th. There would also be a board resolution that would be needed that would authorize the stipend and potentially contain other details and there might also need to be a county policy. So we would be bringing back the resolution and the policy in December. In addition, while not in official direction, the board asked us to review the county commission structure, including staff and fiscal resources dedicated to supporting commissions. Over the past five months, we have collected information on county boards and commissions to create an inventory of their authority, membership, meeting frequency, and departmental support. Based on this research, we've learned a number of things. One, county staff provide an average of 13 hours of support as liaisons to commissions. The position of a staff liaison varies widely across the county anywhere from an administrative aid to the director of environmental health. The annual fiscal impact of staff resources allocated to maintaining commissions is close to $200,000. Some of the major challenges faced when staffing these commissions were obtaining a quorum and filling vacant seats, as well as engaging commissioners and being productive and purposeful rather than performative. About 240 non-employee county residents serve on those commissions. The majority of these commissions advise the board on topics related to housing, environmental, planning, and land use issues. Due to the board's interest in restructuring commissions, we have met with department heads and staff liaisons to discuss our ideas for restructuring. These conversations have been very informative, but we need a bit more time to continue planning and coordinating with departments and commissions. They appreciate that they've been included in these conversations. We anticipate presenting a variety of recommendations beginning in January that include commission consolidations, particularly related to some of those housing, environmental planning, and land use commissions, retirements of various commissions, particularly commissions that rarely or never meet, and transitions of committees to other methods of accomplishing the same purpose or duties, such as appeals that can be handled through our administrative hearing process. So with that, I'm gonna wrap up and show you the recommendations for item seven shown here and move on to the chapter 2.38 updates. So with this, we coordinated closely with county council based on all of the feedback and information we heard that we just presented, as well as working with staff on various clarifications that need to be made. The changes to chapter 2.38 that have to do with the Santa Cruz County Like Me project are in particular, the youth members. We added language to suggest that youth over the age of 14 may be able to serve on commissions. This will require the board to just help us decide which commissions that involve. So there is language in there that says that it is determined by the board. We hope that this can also be done in collaboration with the Youth Advisory Task Force that we have recommended to you. In addition to the youth, new youth language, we've also made some updates to clarify that election of a co-chairperson may be made in lieu of a vice chairman and also officers are limited to up to two consecutive years. And there's an annual election of commission officers. As previously mentioned, the updates include the language to allow the board to establish by resolution, a stipend for commission members for compensation for their public service. The clarification items have to do with the changes to definitions, adding bylaws and staff liaisons, clarifying that there is to be a calendar designating the time and place of regular meetings, clarifying the duties of staff liaisons, as well as the vacancy process and clarifying ethical obligations and codes of conduct. Advisory has also been replaced throughout the County Code Chapter 2.38 with the word subordinate to differentiate between subordinate bodies such as commissioners and committees and advisory bodies such as departmental advisory groups. So with that, these are the recommendations for item eight related to the Chapter 2.38 updates and we're happy to answer any of your questions. Are there questions before we open it up for the community on this? That's Professor Hernandez. Yeah, you know, I was, I liked all the recommendations. I was looking at the times and locations. And I think for a lot of folks in South County, I think location might be first. So it's location and times because of, you know, most of the time, you know, a normal nine o'clock meeting first in Watsonville, you know, it's like you start your day at eight or something, unless you got kids, you started at five a.m. But if it's a meeting in North County, it's a six a.m. start time just to get ready to make a hit year on time. We made it at 822 and we left at seven today, for example. So you really, you know, do start a lot earlier and you also, you know, have to spend a lot more gas as well. You know, it's six bucks a gallon and it's like 20 bucks a trip. So it's good to look into those things, you know, taking it in taking into account the drive time over here. A huge inconvenience of a 9 a.m. meeting for folks to travel here for commission meetings or even 10 a.m. or 11 a.m. because there's still traffic till noon here in going to Santa Cruz. And I think some of the some of the telecommuting meetings or South County meetings or being able to rotate the meetings from North County to South County is a great idea for folks. If not some type of additional stipend for travel time to get to Santa Cruz, if the meetings are going to remain in Santa Cruz, right? For folks in South County, there's no way for them to actually change the meetings to rotate or to have them in Santa Cruz or to telecommute to actually pay some kind of additional travel pay for folks that are having to do those meetings. You know, I think that initially when we started the young supervisors, I was a little worried that we weren't going to get the turnout for the students. We only had, I think, nine days to let folks know. And surprisingly, we had like 19 applicants and we had to turn some away actually somewhere out of the district and somewhere out of the county, Monterey County. But we ended up with 14, 15 students and we had the opportunity to actually have a segment to talk about commissioners and the roles of commissioners and just the whole gamut, right? From commission to council to board members and assembly. So it was good to have them there and have them kind of see that at a young age to participate with that and talk to other commissioners as well. So I appreciate all the work that you guys are doing but my question was about considering some sort of travel pay for meetings that can't be moved to South County. Can't be, you know, through Zoom or something. Yeah, that was not something we looked into but we are happy to research that. I don't think anything like that is currently offered across, you know, any of the counties in California. I would hope that we would be able to provide more meetings throughout the county so that it's more equitably distributed. I was just wondering if you could do my question. I think it's off. I think it's not staying on, there it is. I think two of my commissions that I go to as a board member actually do pay the travel time. I think it's in Barden and bag. So I was just wondering if, you know, this was considered as part of this study. Sure, Supervisor Cronin. Yeah, I'll just to build on Supervisor Hernandez's comments. Certainly it'll be helpful when we have 500 Westridge as a place for some of these commissions to meet a South County location and maybe you can look at, you know, encouraging commissions to meet in a South County location in the morning so that people go in there and not fighting traffic. And the other thing is that there, you know, I know some of the teleconferencing rules are a bit confusing right now since we're sort of operating under two sets of rules. The one from pre-pandemic and post-pandemic, but in some ways actually the pre-pandemic rules offer a little bit more flexibility. And as long as there is a quorum of the commission in one location, you could have one or multiple members dialing in via the old teleconference rules from another location. And so it's possible again that you could have, you know, a South County contingent calling into these commission meetings from any location. I mean, it could be the library or 500 Westridge, but that might be something just to include in the onboarding and educational elements for these commissions and encourage. Kind of a few comments, but I am interested in getting the feedback again from the community on it. Just looking at the survey and the in-person results, the accessible meeting times and locations, the awareness is why to participate, I think a real key takeaways here. Even though I recognize that the stipend element is going to be the thing that is the greatest focus, the number one issue people are talking about was accessibility to these meetings. And to me, to Surveyor Koenig's point and Surveyor Hernandez's point, as the county moves forward with a consolidation or a restructuring of commissions. Part of this is we need to know what commissions will even exist for this discussion. I think that we're sort of a little bit backwards on this discussion. It'd be useful to know what commissions there are going to be, what they're going to look like, what their purposes are going to be. If the number one reason or number two reason that people are not participating in commissions is because they don't know why they should participate in the commission as they self-stated, then it'd be useful to have only commissions that serve a purpose, a clear, we define purposes people feel value in. With that said, we should have locations under our current structure in South County that don't require people to have to travel at all, irrespective of where it's quote unquote being hosted. We've got a government building that we can partner with in the city of Watsonville currently. We've got the Westridge building coming on. We just need to, from a technological standpoint, need to make sure that this is something that's provided. But it's not just South County. I have a handful of seniors that participate in commissions in my district that are uncomfortable traveling at night. They're uncomfortable driving in traffic in general and would like to be able to participate remotely. And we shouldn't be creating any rules. And this is a very important takeaway, in my opinion from this. We shouldn't be making any changes that also disadvantage other populations. So the point here is expanding access. We shouldn't discriminate against any subpopulation in regards to that. We should only be finding ways to expand access in. And I have a concern with some of the recommended actions that they are not thinking broadly about how something, a decision on one end would impact a subpopulation on another end that may currently be participating. We just have to be careful that as we make changes to commission structure or meeting times or meeting locations that we're not also disadvantages other folks from being able to participate. Because I don't think that's the goal of the board. I had a question though in regards to there's a recommendation here about allowing in April or the nearest meeting near April the commissions to choose their meeting times and locations. And I think that consistency of when a commission meets is kind of an important element for somebody wanting to join a commission when we make appointments. I make 62 appointments for commissions here and on other bodies. So it's, you know, in and of itself like a secondary part-time job to maintain those being full. The first question I get is when do they meet? Where do they meet? And if every April that's being changed at the window of the commission that's a problem I think for trying to establish that when someone might, for me, the last two commissioners that stepped down be had childcare issues. If I couldn't give them a consistent answer of when or where the meetings would be that'd be problematic. So I want the commissions to have some flexibility but we need to have some stability as well within that. So the question was Coburn up. How would you recommend then that we provide additional direction on that issue in order to ensure that there is a consistency in these meeting times so we don't end up actually removing members from the commissions that would normally be able to meet in these times? Yeah, that's a good question. So my understanding is a lot of the commissions have general, you know, guidance in their bylaws as to when and where they meet. I know of, you know, like for instance the Justice and Gender Commission incorporated that into its bylaws. There are some commissions that are changing the locations, you know, every year when they set their calendar if we want to provide more consistency and structure I would suggest that we as staff could, as we're doing all of this commission support work through bringing staff liaisons into with us and providing them with the tools and guidance to better set up their commissions and support their commissioners. We could either look at making, working with all of them to make sure that that's documented in their bylaws and or setting something up as we're exploring county policy and procedure that might need to be established related to commissions putting that into that document as well. So I think that's something that staff can work on and we can figure out the best way to make that consistency bringing that forward. So you wouldn't need specific directions saying that that would be something you'd be able to bring back that would. I believe so. So on the, thank you. On the commissioners stipend issue, I do, I'm supportive of the stipend. I'm not supportive of the self-certificate. So you had mentioned that it's a low barrier. I would submit that research has made it really clear that those that are the least likely to participate in any sort of self-certification or language barrier issues, those are not English speakers, low income folks, et cetera. I would rather see for me, that this is just a pure opt-out that applies to all commissioners and you have an opt-out. It's a much easier way for staff to actually implement it and two, it removes all barriers. We shouldn't have a low barrier. We have no barrier. Either we're trying to increase access or not. And so I think that we should move, we should change that direction to eliminate any sort of income or means component to it, eliminate any sort of certification or anybody's making any claim about their income on it, which I think is a barrier in general. So I would hope that when it comes back to the board for that action, we just allow it to be a stipend. If somebody doesn't want to receive it, then they have an opt-out capability, but they're not making a certification whether they're low income or not low income about the money they make. I think it's uncomfortable to me to have to, I always dislike that when it came to broadband or anything else that I had to say to people, I don't make enough money for it. I mean, it feels like it's a barrier and we shouldn't have the barrier. We should just remove the income component and just say that your time and service are valued and you're gonna get $75 associated with it unless you proactively say that you don't want it. So that would require the board to make that modification. I'd like to open it up now for the community as opportunity for members of the community to address this on the side. And I know a number of you worked very hard on this and we appreciate the work that you've done on this. Good morning and welcome back, it's good to see you. Good to see you as well. Good morning, supervisors. My name is Maria Cadenas. I'm the executive director of Ventures and we were very proud to partner with the county in the efforts around Santa Cruz, like me. At Ventures, we work with working-class families to ensure shared and equitable economic future where zip code, race, gender or immigration status does not dictate income or wealth. And we are honored to partner with the report of Santa Cruz, like me. What's main intention was really to bring visibility and inform and shape the policy and governance for the county in ways that ensure diverse lived experiences, how to say and how we move forward. This work reflects this county's commitment to creating a healthy, safe and more affordable community that is culturally diverse, economically inclusive and environmentally vibrant. Over the past year, we have seen clear steps taken to address the reports for recommendations, which included creating a community to review the variances and proposed solutions for a choir collection of demographic information, include county data review as part of the onboarding process and work with cities like the city of Santa Cruz and conducting a similar study. We understand that change is not easy nor simple nor fast, which is why today's recommendations are good first steps. They allow for a vehicle to increase youth participation, facilitate participation of working-class families through the stipend, support education and outreach to community members to increase awareness of opportunities. But most importantly, it formalizes a commitment to review and address the structural changes within county boards commissions framework. As stated, change is not simple, not easy nor fast, but it is possible. We applaud the work of the county to date on this important matter. We ask that you continue this journey as difficult as it may seem at times to ensure Santa Cruz continues his leadership and modeling a way to move forward as an equitable representative government. Thank you. Thank you for your work on this. Good morning and welcome back. Good morning. My name is Yadira Flores and I'm here to say that during the work with the Santa Cruz County Committee, we were able to identify practices and activities that contribute to our current despairs. We have done the job, the field job for you. And we promise to continue with this work with the community. It is important to have the trust from the community because it's crucial to have a, to, it's crucial to better serve the community. And today I would like to invite you to take the time to deeply listen and know the community that you serve. Your community is incredibly, incredible smart. They will bring the needs to you but also they will propose possible solutions. Once Salvador Allende says, being young and not being revolutionary is a biological contradiction. Our youth are the future and will determine the future of our community and our country. Let's include them and mentor them for the well-being of all of us. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for your work on this. Good morning. Welcome. Good morning. I'm Katie Spencer. I'm a program coordinator at Ventures. And I'm just here to comment on the Santa Cruz like me item, add more to the voices that are supporting this work. This is a great step forward in creating more representative advisory committees, boards and city processes. I think so often in this county we sort of wring our hands between the gap between what we all say we value and what the reality is for working people here and your representation, our commissions and city processes is one of many ways to start to close this gap. As Maria said, this is going to continue to be a journey. Thank you all for your work. And I look forward to continued focus and potentially additional recommendations as we prioritize this important work. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Welcome back. Good morning. I want to thank Rita and Nicole for taking this opportunity a year ago and gathering the group of us that spent the last 12 months really dive in deep into looking at how we can shift the culture and how individuals join the commission. I would like to invite you to adopt most of the recommendations that was presented here. I do did hear what each of you had to share and I respect that. But I think what and I think what is most important is that if we're really going to stand in what we say we stand in, which is equity and inclusion then we really have to put that in action and right now currently there's a lot of commissions where there is not representation and there hasn't been any space to create that access for representation. And so I think it's incredibly important as the County continues to stand in and say they want to shift in how things have been done that really now is the time. And I say that seriously that now is really the time to start making space at the tables for people that are underrepresented, people that don't look like you to have that voice because those of us who are not invited to the tables are the ones that can actually offer a lot more than people that are already currently at the tables. And I think the best way to make change is to have different perspectives. And so I highly encourage you to support some of the recommendations that were here this morning. Thank you. Thank you for your work on this. Good morning, welcome back. Yeah, good morning. It's nice to be back. My name is James Yehling Whitman. I appreciate the presentation. I appreciate the public comments. We don't have a representational government, you know? It's like trying to balance pool cues and bowling balls and golf balls on a hill. You're not gonna balance them. What's going on right now is a Delphi technique and it's very similar. Everything's being controlled in the past. People assume that the word democracy is in our Declaration of Independence or in any of our three constitutions. Now it is mentioned several times in our constitutions. It's mentioned not to do that because that's mob rule. These gentlemen are controlled by city and county managers. What kind of examples are you really setting, Zach, friend, with that mask? It's gotta say it, you're wearing it. So here, for example, up to six months in jail, our city model creator restricts the elected officials from carrying on the wishes of the voters. Section 809 reads, no interference between county and the city manager. So we don't really have a representative government. I think the people here speaking on the other side of the podium and the speakers have great intentions, but if they were actually educated on what the Declaration of Independence actually says and interpretations of our constitution, there might be some different languages going on. And I'll stay on topic so I won't bring up anything else. So thank you. Thank you. Good morning, welcome back. Thank you so much. My name is Tim Delaney. I've been here a couple of times and I'd like to tell you a little bit about my experience with Placer County last night, which also relates to you folks here in Santa Cruz County as well. I heard a lot of equitable, affordable, achievable, it's interesting to watch. All these different people, they come in and it's a tactic and I'll turn it over to you. And they dominate this discussion here and it's an ongoing never ending slideshow. I felt horrible for the Placer County board folks. I was like, oh my gosh, how could these people possibly sit in the seat for so long? It went on all day long. And anyways, one of the things I sort of, at the end of the meeting I mentioned to them, well, you could have an affordable, achievable, equitable, tiny boat and expand the boat fields, the buoy fields out in Lake Tahoe. And we can have affordable toilets for all the boats out on Tahoe. The thing is, the engineering and scientific community here were trapped between the very far right and very far left. And you even see it in other countries like Argentina, for example, okay? You have your environment and you had just like Tahoe, you have limited resources, okay? All these people are making all these demands on your environment. They wanna build and build and build and have all this achievable, affordable, everything. They're gonna wipe out their environment, okay? So that's something to think about. Also, on the other side of the world, you know that they built 3.1 billion units for 1.4 billion people in China, okay? So that's common your way. So whatever you do, I hope that you have some common sense in regards to zoning codes and you think about your environment and you don't wipe out your community with all these agendas. Thank you. Good morning and welcome. Buenos dias, my name is Karina Moreno and I'm a commissioner and constituent of District 4. And I mean, I was really happy to be a part of this committee. It was a year long process to get it to you, a year long and an hour and 20 minute drive to get to you today. And it was amazing, you know, being able to not just bring in my work as a commissioner but my experience starting out as a commissioner, which wasn't easy. You know, there's not a lot of pipelines from the community to commissioner. There's not a lot of mentors. There's not a lot of places where you can learn what that entails. And it's quite a daunting task to be very honest. And so I appreciate you sitting and listening to these recommendations and already coming up with really great ideas and opening your purse strings wider and, you know, being an inspiration with the Youth Academy. And I think if you take one thing too from what we heard about the Academy and what we learned at these workshops from community members is that there is so much interest for people wanting to participate. It is just learning how and providing those opportunities. And so I appreciate you and I thank you for listening. And also I tuned in two weeks ago at the equity meeting and I really, I just in person wanted to say I appreciated the way you guys, what you guys had to say for that one too. And so I appreciate everything you guys have been doing in terms of equity. And I look forward to what comes out of this partnership. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for taking the time. Morning, welcome back. My name is Antonio Rivas-Hadbram. Everybody knows, it is, I want to thank the board, the County Board for, in a sense, asking the county staff to be able to review the county commissions. Is it important to change that we're doing right now? And also at the same time too, the county staff can be able to include, the staff that needs to be deal with the commissions along with fiscal resources. It's very important to include whatever we do. It is important that as part of the committee that I participated, I went to the one in Capitola, the one in the county over there in Marshall and also in the city of Wansombo. It was so great to hear and feel and understand why they don't get involved in commissions. So these changes are very important. The stipend is very important. The time is important. Location is very important in this matter. And now we have, we can have South County, Mid County, and I know we have Opposed Library. Maybe we can use the Mid County part of it. And then we got the North County. So it's important that we be able to get involved everybody in these commissions. And I appreciate the staff, Nicole, for putting this together. It's very important you to understand why we need to change the structure of the commissions and the important of the commissions and the people that serve the commissions because we have a lot of talented youth and different areas. And I appreciate Supervisor Hernandez for starting the Young Supervisors training. It's important that we get involved. All of you should. I'm sorry. So in conclusion, I support this recommendation, the stipend, location, everything else, and continue to restructure. The interview is going to come out, but it's important that we get more equity within the commissions. And I thank you for your support. So maybe I'll select to address us in chambers. Is there anybody online, Madam Clerk? Yes, Chair. Colin, user two, your microphone's now available. Caroline Guerra, this is an important discussion and to co-use that friend, you said we should have expanding access and have no barriers to access. Friend of mine was on the seniors commission that met in the building where you are. The radiation from all the Wi-Fi antennas, et cetera, on the roof made her sick. And she had to get off the commission. The first thing is you should have safe and healthy environments in which to meet and radiating people causes functional impairment that many of us are aware of and are therefore denied access. So this is hypocrisy. And you want things more exclusionary, remove the Wi-Fi and antenna of radiation endangerment. This is well documented. And also what is represented are the corporations. This isn't a government of form by the people. It's supposed to be, but it's a form by the corporations who you actually vote for every time in terms of cell towers, et cetera. Another way the public is excluded is commenting on consent agenda items. You have a false statement here on your agenda. Consent items include routine business that does not call for discussion. Only you five male supervisors discuss the consent agenda. It should be, everyone can comment like at the city council and like it used to be here. Thank you Ms. Garrett. That is. Thank you Ms. Garrett. Is there any other members online? Yes. Bernie, your microphone is now available. Good morning chair and board. Bernie Gomez here. Born and raised in Watsonville, currently district three constituent. You know, I just want to see, just read the equity statement once again. You know, I've been reading it since it was adopted. You know, equity in action in San Cruz County is a transformative process that embraces individuals at every status, providing unwavering support, dignity and compassion. You know, historically South County has been underrepresented, right? Overrepresented in some spaces. And I think this is just a great opportunity to really think about just that equity portion. You know, South County does have its share of willing individuals, right? That have been thinking maybe, you know, been wanting to get involved, but it's daunting to want to get involved in this process, you know, in this way of governance and the ways being led, you know? So I just think there is room to provide, I don't know, being, you know, provide creativity to engage folks that are usually never seen or don't see themselves in these places or positions or spaces, you know? It was very heartfelt to see an intergenerational space in South County being, you know, yeah, getting involved, being interested, being curious, you know, asking questions, answering questions. And I just think that representation is necessary when historically South County has been left alone, forgotten or dismissed. I appreciate what everything is being done. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Kayla, your microphone is now available. Hello. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today and also for everybody who came out to speak on this item. My name is Kayla Gomez and I'm a constituent of District 3 and previously I worked at Ventures where I worked on this report from 2021 and the city report that came out in 2022. And I just really wanted to thank everybody who worked on this effort to the committee, all the County folks, Brita, Nicole for moving this work forward, for Maria Cadenas for trusting me to help with it when we first partnered with the County. And I really hope that the County will continue to this data collection and also continue to put thought and intention into looking at what can be done to create a more equitable and inclusive government that really reflects the beautiful diversity that we have. And to really consider these recommendations brought forth by the committee who's taken the time and the care to engage with community members, not only through this effort, through these events, through these engagement events, but in their community roles. Thank you so much. Thank you. We have no further speakers, Chair. Right. I'd like to bring it back to the board for action supervisor Hernandez. You had additional comments. Yes. So do we move this update item right now? Is that, can I make the motion now? You could. I would like, sorry, please go ahead. Oh, I was just asking. Yeah. So the only request I have from a motion change because it sounds like the other direction was just things that staff would incorporate in it, regardless specifically to this type. And I think it's just being hopped out and we limited the means test component, but that would actually require a change of the recommended actions. So then I'll just move this first item, number seven. They're combined items. So you would move them both at the same time. And if you want to make a change to any of the recommended actions, this would also be the time to do it. Chair, I can try. So I'd like to move and approve the updates on agenda item seven. With the cash just went through five, but Santa Cruz like me project and improve agenda item eight as well as the ordinance amendments and taking consideration the state, the amendment state chair, Zach Friend mentioned and also possibly the travel amendments. Is that correct? We might have more. What was the other ones? Well, I've pointed out that actually I was just reading the ordinance language in order to double check that, if we needed to actually change that, I think that it says that the board supervisors may approve additional stipends for travel. So there is some language already in there that suggests we could add that on the program. I think we just need the specificity on item seven, recommended action three that there would simply be an opt out for the stipends. Okay. So the recommended opt out for the stipends. But there's a motion. Is there a second? I'll second. Okay, is there an understanding? We're not going to vote quite yet. So is there an understanding from the clerk of what the motion actually is? Just one moment chair. My understanding is that removing item seven and eight as stated with the exception of additional direction to change to an opt out instead of the cell certification. That's what it is. Okay, thanks. Survisor Comments. I just wanted to thank the staff for their hard work on this and for all the community members who were able to help us get to where we are today and help us move forward with really trying to have a more equitable opportunity for people to participate on commissions. Since being elected, I've served on a number of different boards like AMBAG and LAPCO. And I was always, it was nice to see that we got a little stipend, especially when we'd have to drive from here to Marina and back on certain days. And sometimes those meetings wouldn't even be longer than a half an hour. But having that stipend really helped at least feel like, well, at least I'm getting compensated something for my time. And so to be able to provide this opportunity for members of the public to serve on our commissions, I think we'll really go a long way for them to feel that their time is valued. In addition to that, I'm really grateful to see that we're trying to see how we can make meetings more accessible for folks. And I share some of the comments that Supervisor Friend brought up around accessibility because for some, for example, having meetings at night may be good for not having an interview with your workday, but for others, maybe that's a hindrance because of the fact that they, some people don't wanna drive at night or can't. So to the extent that we can continue to figure out ways to make meetings more accessible, whether it's hybrid meetings, I think that'll go a long way. I did have a question I was wondering, do we have any sense of what the representation is like on our different commissions? Because I think that as we're thinking about how can we increase representation? It's really helpful for us to know, well, what's the current demographics of the various commissions? Because in the absence of that, it's hard for us to think about, well, where are the opportunities for improving diversity? And so I think that'll be helpful for us. I still have some commission vacancies that I'm trying to fill in. And I'll just say for members of the public, it is not easy trying to find people who wanna serve on these commissions. So that means that increasing diversity is also challenging as well. And so I think it'll be really helpful for us to have that information. And those will, that concludes my comments. I just wanna be really thankful for all the work that's gone into this and look forward to seeing how it rolls out over time. So that was my first. Thanks to your friend. First of all, I wanna thank all the commissioners and committee members and the staff members who've been part of our commission process, committee process here more than four, I think it's 40 that we have here in the county. And I think this is a great effort. It's our latest effort in the county to see how we can be more inclusive and realize greater participation and access by others. And I really appreciate the idea of offering a standard onboarding process for the commissioners because they really need to, the participants need to understand what they're getting into more clearly. And I think to have that identifiable need that is really important. And I look forward to also the possibility, the recommendations are coming back of the possibility of consolidating some of these. I'm not sure that we need all 40. I think that they can be combined and save a lot of people time and effort at the same time. I have received some concerns about the participation and I want the youth to be involved but the 14 age factor was somebody questioned that. Is that who we really want to have making recommendations to us? We had a youth commission before, maybe that's the answer. There might be other options. I don't know if we should have, and some of those commissions, I'm not sure that would have people that are 14 or so. And everybody said, you know, you should be a voting age, not everybody. Some folks mentioned that to me. So that was a concern expressed by some people contact in my office. But I just want to thank you for the, what you've done for the staff and everybody who has been involved in this. It's another step forward in this County for us getting more people involved of different at the cities and races and so forth. And I think it's a great idea that we have a review of this at this time. Thank you. So those are Conan. Thank you, Chair. I also want to thank everyone who has put so much time and effort into this Santa Cruz, like me report and these recommendations. That's really an exciting step forward for our commissions. Can't stress enough how much as supervisors we rely on our commissions as a source of good ideas and also as de facto focus groups for some of the suggestions that come out of the board itself or could come up from the community that we just want a closer look at. And obviously the County is making a big investment in our commissions already today. I mean, 40 commissions, 240 people and nearly $200,000 a year. It's clearly a very important part of our government infrastructure and we need it to be a vital source of new ideas and suggestions. I'm very encouraged by the comments of Ms. Adir Flores that the ideas are out there and we just need to make sure that our commissions are representative and vibrant to ensure that they're coming to this board and getting implemented in our community in a way that serves everyone's needs in the community. I think these stipends are really a relatively small cost to pay to ensure that vitality and that, you know, I agree with the proposed changes from chair friend because, you know, after all, there are even $115,000 household income can be a hard budget to live on in this community. Maybe you need the childcare, maybe you need it for gas money, maybe you just need it to order a pizza while you're away from your family for dinner. But who knows, it can be helpful in all kinds of ways. It's also really exciting to see the creation of the Youth Advisory Task Force. There was a lot of enthusiasm around the Young Supervisors Academy. The potential for continuing and expanding that is great and also getting youth of all eight is involved. I mean, it was a little troubling that right now we don't have any youth 18 to 24 involved in any of our commissions. You know, I hear that the 14 ages sounds a little bit young, but you know, I don't wanna exclude any Wunderkinds out there that might be really eager to make a difference. And I don't think that we're gonna go from no 18 to 24-year-olds to all 14-year-olds overnight either. So I think there's definitely room for the young and the enthusiastic in our commissions. I also appreciate the inclusion of suggestion to rotate leadership. I know that has been an issue that can lead to just things feeling a little restricted on some of our commissions and so encouraging more people to become a chair or co-chair or vice chair and help to set the agenda for those commissions is really great. And finally, I'll just say, I think this is a fantastic demonstration of equity in action and our commitment to transforming our community. You know, we're realizing that it's not enough to just say, well, anyone can apply for these commissions. I mean, after all, it's equal. And we're saying, no, we need to take a step further to make sure people are supported in being a part of these commissions that they are encouraged that we actively inform people and that we're gonna compensate people for their time to be a part of this. So applaud the effort. Thanks again to everyone who has brought us to this phase and look forward to more ideas and suggestions from our commissions to come. Really brief. I also too, just wanted to thank Nicole Colburn and Rita Sanchez and all the commissioners that worked on this, Karina Moreno and Antonio Rivas and everyone here and online for all your work and on the Santa Cruz Like Me project. So thank you. We have a motion and a second if we get a roll call please. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Hernandez. Yes. McPherson and Friend. Aye. That passes unanimously. Thank you. We'll move on to item nine. Item nine is to conduct a study session on the 2023 update to the County of Santa Cruz operational area emergency operations plan and direct staff to return after the California office of emergency services review to provide improvement actions identified by the state review. As outlined in the memo, the director of the office of response, recovery and resilience. We have the agenda item board memo, the emergency operational operations plan cover sheet and public comment version. We have Mr. Reed. Thank you. Thank you, board. This is the opportunity to give you an update on our emergency operations plan revision to start. I just want to do a quick round of introductions for folks that aren't aware and just tracking there's four amazing humans behind me that are part of the OR3 team. And I just want to recognize them as part of this process, this process and part of keeping our community safe and resilient. So behind me, we have Tatiana Brennan, who many of you have met. She's been leading our Climate Action and Adaptation Plan. We've got two new members to the OR3 team that I'm really excited to introduce to you today. Claire Peabody will be working on kind of all hazard mitigation and resilience efforts. We've got Annie Puckett. She's been working on our recovery effort from our latest disasters and supporting community in the county. And we've got Amanda Gullings, who's just joined us as well from the University of California Santa Cruz and will be supporting our emergency services functions. In addition, we have Chief Jim Frawley, one of our consultants here in Chambers. If there are questions, he'll be available as well as online. The principal and CEO of Mosaic Solutions, our consultant, Kim Guevara, is here as well. So I just want to walk through our agenda. I want to talk a little bit about our planned history today and state law that's driving some of this update. Some of the plan development process and then some key plan elements. It's a big plan, nearly 200 pages. And so I just want to highlight a couple elements for all of you and the community at large as we review this and have an opportunity to provide comment. So in context, our last emergency operations plan was developed in 2015 with minor updates in 2020 but was not brought to the board for adoption. Since that time, we've had, as all of you know, three federally declared disasters. Actually, four if you count 2017. And we've learned a lot internal to the community to the county. But there's been also a lot of state laws that have changed and been amended to ensure that counties in the operational area that we oversee addresses the vulnerable populations that we represent those with access functional needs. That's a nomenclature in the emergency management space that basically refers to all vulnerable populations, whether it be a language barrier, whether it be a physical barrier, or other access issues. The other piece that's of note is that the state is reviewing all county operational plan emergency operations plans as part of state law. We were notified I was called while at the EOC in January that we were selected for review of our emergency operations plan. It was definitely on OR3's mind collectively to update our plan and we were expedited in that process. We asked for as much grace from Cal OES given what we were going through in the first part of the year and have tried to work quickly with our consultant team to meet our deadline in presenting to them our plan for review. So as I said, Mosaic Solutions has been a key partner as our consultant team. We started with them in June. This is a very, very fast timeline. It does not mean that the time and process is done, but it's been basically a wholesale rewrite of our plan and really appreciate and have a lot of gratitude for our consultant team and our community for deeply engaging in the process. So through this plan development process, we've really taken a whole community approach and looked at best practices to ensure we're hearing from all voices as we develop and update this plan. So Mosaic and our OR3 team have had over 50-plus meetings, both with stakeholders, with partners, with community-based organizations to hear from them about what works well in our emergency management and response and recovery efforts, what doesn't work well, trying to integrate that voice, that information into all that we do. But one of the things that came out that's important to recognize is that we have a very close-knit community of hard-working county staff and community-based organizations that have stood up and supported community in disaster. But we have lacked the structures and systems in place to make that sustaining. And the lack of systems and structures in place also makes the risk or the most vulnerable in our community to be disproportionately impacted by disaster higher. So while we have done fairly well in response to CZU and these two disasters, there's always room for improvement. And what we know to be true in the recovery space and in the conversations we have with folks in recovery is that those most impacted are those oftentimes in the rental community, those with the least amount of resources to start, so they have the least amount of resilience to be able to bounce back from those disasters. So it's really important for us to think about building these systems through this plan and actualizing them and implementing them and have it be a living document. So I'm not going to walk you through the whole plan. That would bore us to tears probably. But I do want to highlight four sections in particular, and I just want to outline the scope of the plan and just highlight a couple of things for all of you. This represents the base plan, the base emergency operations plan for the county in the operational area. It helps inform a continuum of resilience so that diagram in the upper corner is really all of the things that OR3 stands for, all of the things that the board created this office to do and that the team is dedicated to doing. And this plan and all of the sections help build that resilience for the community in different ways. And so I want to highlight that. The other thing I want to just walk through for you quickly is four of the sections that highlight some of the structural changes and relationship changes that we're working on currently and that we need to implement more fully to make sure that we are prepared for all that mother nature and the environment and climate has for us. So the first section I just want to highlight is the organization and assignment of responsibility section. And there's three key elements here that I wanted to bring your attention to the county leadership policy group. So that is a functional element that is activated during an emergency an emergency when the EOC is activated. And we want to make the most informed decisions based on the circumstances of the event, but also with the subject matter expertise of our key departments that are being impacted or needing to serve community in response and recovery, and formalizing that leadership group formalizing that expectation of our of our county departments and leadership to support EOC operations and policies and decision making during an activation is a critical element that we want to more more fully form. So this piece is really building our emergency management skills and tools and training through the county emergency management team. And that is a collection of departments and may not be department directors and maybe line staff or others that are deeply engaged and regularly engaged in emergency management preparedness. We're still providing an exercise, as well as policies and procedures that we build into things like our continuity of operations, so that when we're in a disaster we're still providing the critical services that we need to where we're possible, but also supporting So by having a more formalized structure for the participation of key departments through this C met or the county emergency management team, we're going to hopefully strive to being better prepared and respond more effectively, especially with with the concept that you know the issues that we face with staff turnover. So we have a lot of institutional knowledge as an example that has left us from CDI, and we still have a lot of institutional knowledge there, but we want to build the systems and structures to stand the test of staff turnover. The other piece is the introduction of emergency support functions that's a way of granularizing all the things that we need to do in preparedness and response, so that it's a little bit clear in terms of lane development and who who owns and who is responsible for different aspects of emergency response. The second section I wanted to just highlight is really the section five direction control coordination section, and really about the readiness working group, which is is a whole community approach, engaging stakeholders and really that the out out growth of that is is the VOAD development so volunteer organizations assisting in development. And that's not necessarily that they are volunteering their time. It's more that they're they as an organization are willing to step forward and lean into supporting community during a disaster or in the context of recovery. So a key piece of that is really establishing standby contracts with key service providers so that if we need that help at a shelter, translation services, transportation support or other avenues, we have a means of documenting that that relationship so that we can be reimbursed by FEMA if they're providing services at a compensated rate. The other piece that's key is that we have so many nonprofits that are that are passionate about supporting community and we want to make sure that they're in the right lane in support of response and recovery. Section seven, there's been a lot of movement here at the direction of the chair and the board. In terms of our communications and public information, there's a lot more work to do. We have new PIO members that have come on board since the January and March storms. We've implemented the cruise aware system, but there's a lot of development and improvement that can continue in using that tool. And what we recognize is that no one tool is going to reach everybody. Not only from a from a geographic standpoint, where we have power issues or communication issues do the lost cell coverage during and out during an incident, but also members of the community that are not connected through a smart device or through community so through our community learning system. So we need to make sure that we work in close partnership with the informal networks, the community partner networks to push out messages as well. So that there's a relationship there in addition to the hard technology elements to it. So I wanted to say that we we are making progress there, but there's work to be done as well. The last section just to highlight briefly is, you know, restating that we have these new this new system, these emergency support functions. And the purpose of this is to be get begin to align with our FEMA and state systems and frameworks for emergency management so that as the state we expect the state to start to adopt the emergency support function nomenclature more fully as currently adopted by FEMA. But so that we start to speak the same language so that we understand that when the state is communicating to us in the context of emergency support functions. We're speaking the same language as well as I said for those key department leads in each of these areas to understand how they play a role in supporting community in those areas. So in terms of next steps, we have the the plan draft plan as created by mosaic in collaboration with or three community is available on our county or three website. There's a survey associated with it at community members yourselves anyone can take a look at the plan offer some feedback. One of the things that we heard during our community process was even just the definition of resilience. And what that means to different people and especially in the context of Spanish language speakers the word resilience in Spanish does not have the same meaning. As it may for English speaking residents so finding a common definition for resilience is one of the elements of that survey question. But also it's important to get that feedback from community on the on the plan and we'll be integrating that information. I know our prior our prior agenda item talked about councils we'll be presenting this to the the council that we manage or three managers the emergency management council in beginning of November. And then we'll be submitting it to Cal OES for feedback in November middle of November. This is going to be a living document. It will be updated regularly. We will integrate the feedback that the state gives us. We know that it's it's not a pass fail evaluation in terms of the state's review it's more these are the things that you need to do to continue moving in the right direction and we'll continue and we're committed to moving and continue to move in the right direction. And so just in close. I know this has actually been brought up and I'm heartened by how often it's been brought up just today by the actions you took a couple weeks ago. But I wanted to just highlight that the emergency operations plan the mission and directive and the effort of all of us at or three is really the is an equity in action movement. And we are one piece of the puzzle an important one in disaster but the work that we do to prepare community to build resilience to community to address climate change is really embedded. And we are deeply committed to the county equity statement that you guys all passed a couple weeks ago so we're excited by the work that we need to do it's important work. And it addresses everybody in the community in the county but especially those most vulnerable and with that I'll stop and answer questions. Thank you Mr. Reed and congratulations on getting selected for the update. Are there questions from board members before we open up for the community to revise my person. Yeah that's you've got this a complex problem and a tight timeline and I understand that but I'd like to propose an additional direction that this is a 200 page document and considering the importance of it. And the relatively short time frame of three weeks now that that you reach out to each board office and just discuss it in further detail. I think I got you've made a great presentation but I'd like to just get more depth. It's not critical but I'd like to get more work communication with you. Absolutely and in regards to that as well. We only had a brief opportunity to communicate yesterday but it does seem that the role of the board of supervisors a little bit still undefined and still growing. I think that as we saw in both CZU and then again in the floods. There needs to be a two way road with the elected officials where we're information providing we're also information receiving because sometimes people come to us. Oftentimes they come to us first actually and the liaison roles have been eliminated and now it sort of fits all in the CAO and the PIO and I don't know that that's actually the right structure. So I just want to flag that I can see this operationalizing in an unfortunate way come winter and I don't want to go back through that same struggle. So maybe as part of this discussion with each board office we can have a discussion again about ways to ensure maybe the plan isn't necessarily the best place for this. Because it's just sort of our level documents. But I do think that the guide that's referenced needs to make something pretty clear that that can survive beyond staff changes and board changes and really operationalize expectations of what the role of the board is in the communication. I was going to say that I share those same comments that were brought up. I was actually going to kind of ask around the county leadership policy group in the county emergency management team what role board members could play in that just because to supervisor friends comment and based on experience having dealt with a number of disasters. I mean people are really looking to the electives and what their role is within these conversations and and so I think it really is important that the board has some role in these different. Whether it's a policy group of the emergency management team or there's some other role that the board can play. I think it's really critical that there is a space for board members as well. So those are coming. Thank you chair. I want to elevate one comment that I think I've heard over and over again at every meeting I have about disaster preparedness and it's related to evacuation routes. People always ask can you just give me an evacuation route so that I know when I get that cruise aware alert or my neighbors tell me there's something I need to do. I just it's hardwired I can get out and the answer of course we always give people as well. We can't do that because you don't know if there's a fire coming from the east or from the west and you know it might change. I think there is an alternative and it's kind of highlighted here in terms of the community resilience centers right in some cases we might want people to shelter in place for lack of better word or shelter nearby. We're just just get to the closest community resilience center. I mean I've had conversations with folks up around the summit Stetson roads and it's like, you know, they're older they can't really get enough defensible space around their own homes in a reasonable way but there is a church nearby that has a pretty good amount of defensible space that they could reasonably get through in a short amount of time. So we've there's some mention of the community resilience centers in here. I would love to see that explored a little bit more as an option that we can explore in, you know, making sure people know their closest community resilience center when it's appropriate to go there and what kinds of disasters what kind of services are available there, and then maybe even some practice of, you know, people how fast can you get there. You know, in one car and need belongings. We'll open it up to the community any member of the community like to provide us feedback or have any questions here. This is a study session on the operational area emergency operations plan. Yeah, hello my name is James Hewlin Whitman. So we talked about four emergency examples one in 2017 I'm not even sure what that is. I'm glad that we can review that 200 pages of information. I tried to review what I could. So, you know, I don't know it'd been great to have public comments and stuff about, you know, some things that I'm probably going to remarks that are kind of critical. Where am I going with this. So peace officers job became much more difficult about 45 years ago. I mean the problem in our society is not civil disobedience civil obedience. You know, people just go along with authority and not question authority and not actually help each other. You know, the scam demic. This is something I wrote over two years ago about Gail Neil and Mimi Hall. It's really not very polite at all it's direct I should read it if I have time. But actually what's going on with you guys what are you guys actually looking into. You know, I gave you guys a memo gave it to the Santa Cruz police department gave it to the sheriff's department and the city council. You know remedies or is this to do normal. Fortunately this is a terrible example of peace officers happened on June 28 2021. You know it's terrible by nine Santa Cruz police officers. We talk about the CZU fires those are directed energy weapons fires. There's so much evidence about that. So I'll repeat again. I have compassion for you men because you are being controlled by international corporations. And the guy controlling this county is Mr. Carlos Palacios. Anybody can look on top of sheriff's headquarters. You see that frequency weapon on there. You know his answer is it's bigger than I thought it was. But there's a lot of information about what's going on and what's going to happen when there's really an issue folks. But thank you. Are there any comments related to the item. Please feel free to step forward. Yes. Thank you so much. My name is Tim Delaney again speaking on on emergency stuff here. This is really interesting. I liked your comics comments man. In the towel base and you know we have Jeffrey and Ponarosa forest. OK. And they behave a little more like the CZU complex force. OK. You get a little bit of fire in there. And it goes off like a hydrogen bomb. You don't have minutes or hours to get out of there. You have seconds you have to run. So it's harsh. And you've seen it goes and you'll have a huge gigantic cloud and lightning bolts and even tornadoes dropping out of that thing. OK. So when I mentioned these things about you know affordable housing and workforce housing and all that sort of stuff from an engineering standpoint. My main fears are logistics and moving of people. OK. It doesn't matter who these people are if they're black or white or whatever it is. Disaster doesn't discriminate. It's just like a Hina rich or poor. It's going to come in and clean everybody out. So when you're dealing with these activists whether they're on the right or left and they're pressuring you you need to look at it from an engineering and science sort of aspect. How is this going to impact my water table. How is this going to impact my environment. How are people going to be able to move and get out of a disaster sort of scenario. You know you don't want to build a whole bunch of affordable housing and then all these black and brown people that you're trying to like you know lift them up in life. When a disaster comes you kill them all. That doesn't make any sense. You see. So that's kind of the perspective that I'm trying to bring to you today when I'm comparing things to the Tahoe Basin and what they're up against. And what Santa Cruz County is going to be up against in the future. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Are there any other comments from members of the community within chambers. Madam clerk is there anybody online. Yes. Yes chair. Colin user to your microphones now available. The previous speaker just said to look at an engineering and scientific aspect with these desires. I recommend as source of science is geoengineeringwatch.org with Dane Wiggington who talks about and sites. The patterns of weather intervention weather warfare patterns held by Ray Theon and Lockheed Martin. And the role in the fires in terms of and these are emergencies of geoengineering weather intervention were halted. Maybe we'd have fewer emergencies. I don't think these are natural. Also we need landlines. Every liable. Well kept copper landlines. The cell phones do not work when there is a power on it. And to falsely pretend that wireless microwave toxic technology is going to save us only benefits the telecom interests and those that have conflict of interest. We have been or we're still in so-called emergencies like covid. But what what really is going on. I want to refer people to Weston a price dot org miss and truth about covid 19 contagious virus or 5G microwave technology. Making people sick and anyway with emergency declaration people get away with. Thank you Miss Karen. Are there any other speakers online. We have no further speakers share. OK we'll bring it back to the board for action is our motion. Move the recommended actions with the. Additional direction from Supervisor McPherson just that the Office of Response to Government resilience reach out to the different board offices for discuss the plan in greater detail. Second. Motion from Supervisor Koenig in a second from Supervisor Hernandez so we could have a roll call please certainly Supervisor Koenig. Hi. Coming. Hi. Hernandez. Yes. McPherson and friend. And appreciate everybody being here appreciate your work on this chief hall as well. Move on to. Item 10 presentation on the 2023 flood preparedness week is outlined in the memo the county administrative officer and deputy CEO slash director community development and infrastructure we have the board memo. The winter storm presentation and with us today we have the Mr. Wiesner is the assistant director of CDI and Dr. Mark Struidley the executive director of the proper regional flood management agency Mr. Wiesner welcome. Thank you. Good morning chair friend board members and CEO policy us and members of the public. My name is Steve Wiesner assistant director of the community development infrastructure department. And I'm pleased to be here to give you a presentation on flood preparation in our county. As we enter the rainy season you can go to the next slide. Okay. So we're all aware of the atmospheric river event river weather events that we experienced both this past winter and in 2017. We're also aware of the El Nino phenomenon that currently is out in the Pacific Ocean which could bring higher than average rainfall this winter. So I'm here with Dr. Mark Struidley director of the power regional flood management agency and he'll be presenting as well. And in this presentation. I'll cover some of the preparation efforts that the community and development and infrastructure department has been engaged in with the focus on South County work around the power river. And Coralita since also played as creeks. Dr. Struidley will cover some of the work that the power regional flood management agency is involved in as well. I will mention before we get going that this presentation does come just in advance of the state's flood preparedness week, which is October 21 through the 28th. And as such we'd like to remind our residents to be aware, be prepared and take action if needed. Know your risks and know if you live in a flood prone area and please pay attention to the weather forecast. Always have it to go kit and be prepared to evacuate early and have a plan for where you'll go and what you'll do with your pets. And please take action if if you hear any warnings or evacuation orders if and when they come. There's a lot of great information both on the county's website and also the state department of water resources website about flood preparedness. Okay, so some of the work that our county's been involved with October 15 is kind of a magical date for us as as we turn from fall into winter. And we expect to start seeing storms. We've already seen a couple actually come just north of us. So as such our crews are out there busy getting ready and preparing both our county roadways and our flood control channels, creeks and so forth for conveyance of all these storm waters. So we've been prepositioning prepositioning equipment all over the county and in particular down in the South County area at our Roy Wilson yard where we store much of our flood fighting equipment that's stored in containers that are provided by the state department of water resources. There's all kinds of stuff in there, lots of extra sandbags, all kinds of plastic and visqueen just the types of items we use for flood fighting. And we're storing about 230 feet of muscle wall that actually was used last year, but it's been cleaned up and it's back in the yard and it's ready for deployment for this winter. And in addition, our department, the Department of Public Works, distribute sand to regionally to many of the fire agencies around our county. And we've done that already. We've done our regular both sand and sandbag delivery to the agencies that will take them. There's a comprehensive list of where you can find those on the Department of Public Works's website. Okay, just and also just to remind you that the road crews are out there. They're very busy as well all over the county 600 mile road network. They're focusing on cleaning ditches. They've been doing this all summer, inspecting all our culverts and making sure all of our drains are working in preparation for the winter. It's a little bit of a timeline of events. You can see here, you know, post winter, the beginning of summer, our crews go out and they inspect all the channels. And they'll start looking to see where log jams might be obstructing flow. And so they'll start working with property owners to clear those log jams. We also were engaged in a fairly robust flood fighting training course alongside the city of Watsonville staff on the lower power river. We did that in September. We have crews and contractors that are actively repairing some of the erosion sites on the power river levy system. These are sites that were damaged as a result of the last winter's flood. And like I mentioned, the county deliver sand and sandbags to various local fire departments. We've already done all that. And then we will replenish them as needed. And we're scheduled for further training, both the roads and drainage crews for fall protection confined space entry. And then we're doing also swift water rescue training this year with the drainage crews. Okay. And just we are out there working on all the roads throughout the entire county. There has been quite a focus, though, down in the college road area of the county. There are that parallels. This also played as Creek. You know, this area got overwhelmed during last winter's floods. And so we saw a large sediment buildups and all the pipes that convey conveys storm waters to the system. So the crews are out there actively this year, fleshing every single cover we have that goes underneath college road and enter around 152 and Olam. Also, the county road crew is involved in doing some flood control work. This is off San Andreas Spring Valley Road. It's a road that's had increased amount of flooding over the last 10 years. And so the road crews out there actually raising the road up a little bit to try to alleviate some of the annual flooding that we've seen. Okay. So with that, I'm going to talk a little bit about stream bed maintenance that the crews have been involved with. Like I said, they do a lot and do visual inspections. We work with property owners on identifying where some of the debris buildups are and will work to remove those blockages. And this involves oftentimes just very large log, log jams and down trees, removing excessive vegetation and so forth. There has been also the similar type of work, not just down in the South County, but up in the San Lorenzo Valley, Bonnie, June, Soquel, Aptos areas of the county as well. So specifically, Coralitas Creek, actually, we saw a lot of debris come down from the upper watersheds and a lot of tree falls and we had some very significant log jams on Coralitas Creek that were removed this summer. In particular between Green Valley and East Lake Boulevard, large log jams there and then at Scourge Lane. And then we discovered another really large one there near Story Road and Varney, the crossing there and we removed that too as well. This oftentimes again involves working with private property owners. On Green Valley Creek, we cleared multiple log jams on Green Valley Creek and so we're hoping that that's nice and open for this winter as well. And then on Coward Creek, that section between 129 and the Barrow River, you know, when we get big waters in the Barrow, the flap gates close for Coward Creek and so we see it's very typical that we'll see this type of sediment build up. But the crews were able to get out there this summer and remove all that as well. I'm just going to touch a little bit on Zone 7 system, which is really purely a Barrow River levee system. The crews were very active this summer in their regular maintenance program. And so all their pre-winter maintenance has been completed and this involves, you know, compacting levees both on the inside and the outside doing vegetation control. We're working on several cohorts that both need improvements and replacing out there. We did do a small sediment removal project right at the end of spring at the Confluence of Salciplates and Corralitos Creek. So we're able to get at that and that's nice. I kind of opened that over area up a little bit as well. And then I mentioned that we're in construction. We're going to be in construction on a couple of significant erosion sites on the Barrow River levee as well. Okay. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Mark Strudley for his presentation. All right. Thanks, Steve. Yeah, the Power Regional Flood Management Agency is in the transition point right now and assuming operations and maintenance responsibilities. A lot of things that Steve just described to you will transition over to Perthma responsibility in the coming years. But at this point, we've been focusing a lot of our efforts on coordination with the Army Corps of Engineers and the Monterey County Water Resource Agency. To repair the catastrophic levee breaks on the Parra River. So the first one is site one, which is upstream of the town of Parra. This is where all the flooding originated. This one is actually completed now. So this slide is a little bit out of date, but it has actually been completed. It is all buttoned up and there's some little bit of cleanup with the Army Corps contractor. But the site is completely repaired at this point. Site number two is the second erosion spot that nearly chewed through the levee beneath Highway 1. The Army Corps and their contractors are working on this site as we speak. And the hope is that this site is going to be completed sometime before the end of November. And then site number three is where the floodwaters that move their way down through the floodplain on the Monterey County side, ate through the levee at the downstream and trying to make its way to the ocean. That repair site is in construction right now as well by the Army Corps contractor. And again, that's expected to be completed by the end of November. PERFMA has also developed a flood action strategy or action plan that is going to leverage the Governor Newsom's executive order N-10-23, which alleviates some of the state permitting and regulatory requirements for these types of repair and remediation actions. So some of that work has actually started now. We're conducting some vegetation maintenance within the channel system as well as replacing a culvert and also purchasing a new pump station generator for the Power Village pump station adjacent to the city of Watsonville. This comprehensive emergency action plan effort is also underway that is going to amplify the flood action strategy. I'm going to articulate how PERFMA is going to interact through the emergency operations setting with its various member agencies moving forward. That's going to be something that's going to take a lot of conversation and thought to how that's going to work because we are a new agency. And obviously my staff and I can't be in three places at once, so we're going to have to figure out a new strategy. And last year was a very good test case to understand how it might work in the future. We have lots of other ongoing efforts right now. We have a grant application in with the Federal Highways Administration, which we're calling the Pajaro Birds Project, which is a bridge infrastructure resiliency design study. It's looking at improving the Highway 1 over crossing over the Pajaro River. We also have the Pajaro Bridge to Bay project that is seeking some feasibility funding right now and likely to get some from FEMA. That is Reach 1, the section of levy system between Highway 1 bridge and the ocean. We've also just received word with our partners that we're moving forward in our application process for the NOAA Climate Resilience Regional Challenge, which is to offer some potential funding for other regionally significant flood control efforts on the Pajaro River. We're also engaged with the Army Corps and a number of other projects through their engineering with nature and Silver Jackets programs. And we're also pursuing a community-based flood insurance program that will investigate the feasibility of developing a program that will provide immediate relief to victims of flooding based on certain criteria being met. At this point, we have also completed our negotiation with the Zone 7A and have a cooperative agreement in place that will fund the pursuits of both Zone 7A and some of the capital reserve needs of PERFMA. And most significantly at this point, the long-awaited levy reconstruction project on the Pajaro River is now going to be underway. We will be signing a construction contract with the Army Corps later this month or at the very latest November 6th. So this is a huge, huge milestone. We're actually going to construction. It's a very exciting time. And many of you have also seen the governor's signature on AB 876, which just occurred late last Friday. That is something that will smooth the way for this levy reconstruction project to go to construction next year. With that, Steve, did you have anything you wanted to add about the flood fighting last year? No, just to say that the county's prepared to have a lot of rain this winter. We know how bad things can get. We know where to watch. We've got a very robust monitoring system and that if we experience something similar that we saw in 23 or 2017, we're fully aware that we'll be in another flood fight and we're up to the task. Thank you both for your presentation. Questions from board members? Supervisor Koenig? Thank you, Chair. Thanks to both of you and to the entire flood control district and public works divisions for all the work in the various creeks and rubber beds. My question is about SoCal Creek, of course, one of the areas that flooded the worst in my own district. I know there was a lot of excitement from residents in SoCal Village to see that there was some vegetation management happening, noticing the creek and then feeling a little bit underwhelmed that not all that much vegetation was actually removed. Just wondering if you could talk a little bit about, first of all, sort of the process and evaluation that goes into seeing what should be removed from these stream channels. And just in particular, any work done along SoCal Creek, I had heard that there was some larger log jams upstream more from the village. I don't know if those have been addressed to prevent that possibly there was a break and create a surge of water or anything like that. Yeah, so on SoCal Creek in particular, we do have an annual vegetation maintenance program after the Bargera Bridge got built some 20 plus years ago. We've undertaken a regular vegetation management program in and around the bridge itself. And it really is associated with the bridge and we have to work with all the different environmental agencies out there that have purview. So this would be like the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and so forth. And so we're very careful and select and surgical about what type of vegetation and debris that we do remove. We do do it regularly and we try to get as much as we can out. It wasn't identified that that was the source last year of the flooding that occurred on SoCal Creek. But I will remind folks that SoCal Creek is not one of the flood control channels that the county has purview over. There's a lot of private property issues above that bridge that folks need to be paying attention to. Certainly if things come down to the bridge or they look like they're going to impact a look infrastructure, our crews will be out there looking that stuff out. The extent of our work is really in and around the Bargera Bridge itself. Thank you. Questions from Supervisor, Supervisor Hernandez. Yes. Well, first of all, thank you for the report and for CDI improvements preparations for this upcoming winter. You know, I got the opportunity to see our chair, Zach Friend on KSPW last night, reminding us of the governor's order. And it brought a little, you know, concern to me about the some of the risk flooding in the interlakin area of Santa Cruz County. And you know, it did experience multiple floodings in January and March. And it was in the Lakin Orchard Park neighborhood areas in particular, but it did also, you know, the overcresting there in that part of Coralitos Creek also caused some flooding out in the East Lake College and Singer Village area. So given the governor's executive order, I wanted to see if it makes it easier to remove sediment and debris from the creeks. Is there anything that we can do to remove or has there been any cleanup of that area? Or is there anything that we can do to clean that area of Coralitos Creek that where they converge with Celsius? And sort of about 200 and 200 yards back, I think it's adjacent to the creek adjacent to the Lakeside Organics property. Sort of behind that Orchard Park market where it converges. I do have a map showing where the area is at if, you know, anyone wants to see. But I wanted to see if there's anything we can do there to remove the additional sediment in this area to reduce the risk of flooding. You know the area I'm talking about? Yeah. So I think we can both address this question. So some of the images that Steve showed of the log jams being removed are in that area or just upstream of it. So that was, as my understanding, I was done this past summer. A lot of the trees that people see, especially if they're looking at them from the Orchard Park market or from Hulan Road, a lot of those trees are actually up kind of on the cusp of the floodplain. So they don't interact with the water surface until the water starts spilling out of the channel. If there are additional tree blockages that we're unaware of, we can probably collectively address them. But my understanding at this point is that the clearing has been relatively comprehensive through there. The problem with removing sediment is locally is that you just end up creating a divot in the channel that ends up filling back up. It's really a regional issue. And my understanding is that most of those sections are, with the exception of where Corleitas Creek joins Salsa Poitos Creek, most of those areas are scouring naturally. And so the material is being removed by nature. And then I also am aware that the Zone 7 drainage crews did clear a bunch of sediment out of that confluence area with Salsa Poitos Creek last summer. Right? Yeah. Because recently we're still getting a lot of concern from those neighborhoods. The Lakin Orchard Park area from that neighborhood and also the owners of the Orchard Park Center, I guess. Concerns about sediment as well that has been accumulated back through there. Basically where that, not breach, but overflow, overcrest or whatever it's called in that area. And so that was one of the areas of concern that if we can look into, you know, further look into, because we've got these winter storms coming in, and the neighbors there that were flooded, you know, twice in that area are concerned and rightfully so. Yeah. I mean, we can certainly take a second look at some of these spots, but I will point out that part of the reason the Levy Reconstruction Project is prioritizing construction in this reach is because of these acute sensitivities and because it is an unlevy portion of the system. So there are no Army Corps levies between Green Valley Road and East Lake Avenue. That's part of the reason why the creek jumped its banks there is because there is no protection there. Also, it's important to realize that the New Year's storm that we got last year was four and a half feet, water surface elevation four and a half feet above what the channel could contain itself. And there was a creek clearing and walkthrough that was done last December immediately before that storm system came through. So that came through on a relatively clear and free creek and there's just no way a storm of that magnitude can be contained within that natural channel. So that's why we're prioritizing the project to start there. Well, thank you. I think it's a reminder. I just want to thank Supervisor Friend and Dr. Strudley for going back to D.C. Month in, month out to get 2024 Pahoa River really levy improvements are not going to come fast enough, but thank you again for that effort. I mean, it was six years and coming or something like that. And thank heavens that we have it coming now. Thank you. You know, there's been a significant amount, a significant amount of work in particular in the Santa Cruz County side from a maintenance perspective, a funding perspective, a repair and a rebuild perspective associated with this is a 75. At the end of the day, it's a 75 year old levy that was built to standards that were inadequate in the late 40s and are clearly inadequate to protect the lives and property of the communities today. And it took a significant amount of legislative work to get to a process by which we could make this prioritized at the state and federal level. We've accomplished that. Basically a $500 million project, half a billion dollar project. We're having this project covered by the state federal government. With the first segment, because of regulatory relief from Speaker Revis's bill beginning, you know, within the next year, which is a pretty remarkable thing. It didn't. Supervisor McPherson's point, it can't come fast enough that the conditions by which the communities have been living under the flood threat are actually not substantively changed over the last 75 years. The communities because the levy is the same levy. Let's change. And there's been floods as, you know, in 55 and mid to late 90s and 17, it barely held and then broke again. So the underlying elements of it aren't fundamentally different. And there has been significant and continued advocacy to receive this funding. And we finally were able to secure that. It's still going to be a few years until this is fully completed. And so I have a couple of questions just in regards to that, maybe for Dr. Strudley. Well, first question actually for Mr. Weissner, you had mentioned that you'd mentioned the culvert clearing and some of the tree removal in that area as well. If the community, maybe a little bit to Supervisor Renan at this point, if the community sees an area or has a concern of an area in advance, they want your crew to check out what would be the best way that they could, they could submit a request for your team to go look at something. Yeah, there's several different ways to reach us. I'll mention my Santa Cruz app. That's a great way to reach us. It has very specific information about there about tree down trees and so forth. But if you're not technology oriented and you want to just make a phone call, you can certainly just call the department. Department of Public Works at 831-454-2160. That's our main line during normal business hours. And then we have a dispatch number, which operates 24 hours a day. That's 831-477-3999. There's also ways to email us to and our website has all of these very well articulated. If you go to the County Department of Public Works's website. Thank you. For Dr. Strudley, the repairs that the Army Corps are completing will make those segments, those vulnerable segments significantly stronger than they were in the previous storm. I mean, really building it to a modern standard, kind of giving you a preview of what the future levy will look like. What is the top line message that you would provide to residents in both Watsonville or Pajaro or in the South County region on both sides? Or as we're working through what could be a potentially challenging winter and before we're able to complete the rebuild of the levy, what's the message for the community from a preparedness standpoint or an information standpoint? What would you like them to know? So I tell this to everyone in response to the questions, for example, to, you know, what kind of storm scene are we going to have like El Nino? And I say the same thing in response to this question, which is people need to be prepared to react and respond to messaging that comes out from our emergency management partners. If there are evacuation warnings or orders that come out, they need to heed those because as you said, the parts that are being reconstructed right now by the Army Corps and their contractors for these repairs, they are in fact, excuse me, stronger than what was built in the 1940s. But they're just small parts of this levy system. The rest of the levy system is the same old levy system we've had since the 40s, which is undersized and structurally weak until we can build a new levy system. So people in general terms can hope for the best and prepare for the worst, but in specifics as Steve alluded to in the beginning of his talk, people need to have their go bags ready. They need to have their arrangements made and their own self responsibility aspect of preparedness until we have a new levy system built and they can rest easier until that time we're going to be taking every effort we can to bolster the system to provide some extra level of effort to try to keep this system contained and structurally sound until we get these new levies, but we are still living with a heightened level of risk until those new levies are built. Thank you. Thank you. Just one additional question to the point of being prepared. You mentioned that there would be sandbags distributed in October. Is that coming next week to celebrate flood preparedness week? So we do this every year and we have a regular group of fire stations that we distribute to. We'll pretty much take them to any fire station that will take the sand and the sandbags. It's a bit of a lift for them because they have to monitor it and then let us know when they need to be replenished, but we've made those deliveries and you can find a list on our website as to where those are. Great. Thanks. We're going to open up for the community. Is there any member of the community that would like to address us specifically on this item? Good for you, Steph. Thank you so much. I'm glad I showed up today just to tell you a few things about what's happening with my community on the top of Summit there. I don't fully know, but the last time I was out there driving around, maybe like a month ago, I think the road by the church there, Skyland Church, going over towards the fire station, I think that still looked like whore. So there's that road and then there's also the road that's all Santa Cruz. It's in Santa Cruz County. It's in Santa Clara County. I like Santa Cruz County to communicate a little bit with Santa Clara County because I'm looking at these roads, whether it's flood or fire, these are escape routes for my community. And we feel kind of trapped at the top of the mountain here is something's going down. Okay. And also there is a pole that's in front of my home. I think it's on Miller Hill there. PG&E needs to come in and replace that pole. Because again, you know, in event of disaster flood or like the winter storm that we had last year or a high wind event, that pole can go down. It's a fire threat to my community and a communication threat to my community. Okay. Now the Soquel Creek, my apologies, the water from the rainstorms comes from probably from my house, right? And you might want to do some investigative work up around my house around the Silver Mountain winery and in the canyons in there. It's horrifying. There's radical stuff that's pointed down towards Capitola and Santa Cruz County. Just so you know, I don't know if it's all private land, but and how to deal with it. It's like a sandpile with huge massive trees all pointed downhill. And so it's hard to say whether or not you want to disturb it or not. Or, you know, whether you want to try to get in there and mitigate the flow of water. So it doesn't bring something catastrophic down on the Capitola. Okay. Anyways, thank you so much. Thank you. Is there anybody else in chambers? We'll see none. Is there anybody online? Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir, would you, you had wanted to speak to as well? All right, please feel free stuff. I'm sorry, Madam Court, we'll bring it forward. Yes. I was wondering if the soil or the drinking water was affected by the flood and borrow. It was tested. I think you will take that under advisement. Is there anybody online? Yes, sir. Colin, user two, your microphone is now available. I don't question the intent and sincerity and work that people are doing on this. However, so many trees have been cut down everywhere and trees and vegetation help hold the soil in place. So I question the wisdom of like clear cutting along the freeway over the years along the rail trail everywhere. Also, refer people again to geoengineeringwatch.org and to view the film, The Dimming. He states that drought and day lose scenario is a hallmark of geoengineering. Here's just a few notes here. The nanoparticles that are released and 60,000 nanoparticles are the width of a human hair are covering the planet like a layer of glass. And this results in climate ecological collapse. This is huge destruction. 60, 40 to 60 million tons annually of climate engineering particles are distributed and the planet is ubiquitously contaminated. So what we're talking about here today is in huge part caused by geoengineering. And that should be halted. He states there is no natural weather at this point, none. Thank you, Ms. Karen. We have no further speakers chair. Okay, Nick, we'll bring it back to the board. Let's see if it's an exception file. I'm sorry. The action is it's just a receive. So there's no specific board action. We appreciate both of you providing the presentation. Oh, just one quick. The question was the drinking water impacted through the sediment at all. So I can't say for certain we are aware that generically when there are floods, there are water quality concerns that play into agricultural viability in particular organic farming because of potential can't contaminants that can come from floodwaters. But I don't actually I'm not aware of to what extent the water supply has been affected by any contaminants in the floodwater. Thank you. All right. Thank you for the team for that presentation. The final item before closed session is item 11, which is to consider report on recycling and solid waste long term planning progress to direct community development infrastructure return on a report November 19 2024 with a recycling and solid waste long term planning report and take related actions that lend memo the deputy CAO. We have the agenda board memo. And here today we have case across our recycling and solid waste services manager and bill Hawks for the Department of Ministry of Analyst. And who's being who's kicking it off. All right, please confirm the microphones on bill. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, chair friend and board members for the opportunity to share some highlights of the county's recycling and solid waste services. Cycling and solid waste services responsible for all aspects of waste management, which includes preparing for the closure of Wayne of Vista landfill and designing a transfer facility to replace it before it closes. We are regulated by state environmental laws, including the most recent climate action bill SB 1383. This slide in the next were completed during a study session with our consultants HFNH where we mapped out how we are going to accomplish our goals of waste diversion and given the legal trends and chagging economic climate. This was conducted pre COVID or as we have it listed on the slide, the uncertainties. Our vision for the future of solid waste and diversion in Santa Cruz County takes into consideration the values and aspirations of the community. We all want to live in a community that we can be proud of a community that is innovative and a leader in promoting a sustainable environment. While we've been planning for a transfer station to be co located with mechanics processing at the point of this landfill. We have been looking at the potential for alternatives composting such as waste to energy technologies like gasification or even the potential for an anaerobic digester. Both of those types of technologies would help with items that aren't truly compostable, such as compostable foodware cups and bags. In fact, we may want to look at revisiting our biodegradable packaging ordinance to exclude these items as they will not compost in the timeframe that most commercial composting operations take place in. The most recent aerial survey of the point of this landfill took place last fall into 2022 and revealed that at the current rate of space use space utilization, there's approximately five to seven years of remaining capacity at the landfill. It's vital that the county have a transfer station up and running before the time period lapses so that unincorporated county residents continue to have continued access in the South County for their waste disposal needs. In 2022, the county held a protest vote to establish a new recycling and solid waste infrastructure enclosure charge that first appeared on the unincorporated parcel tax last year in 2022-23. This charge was approved for five years and we will have to return to the board every five years with the new engineers report and protest vote with adjustments as necessary. The allowable use of these funds is limited to the Buena Vista Transfer Station project design, construction, and eventually the bond payments. We're also allowed to use these funds for any current transfer operations from the Buena Vista landfill, as well as contributing to the landfill closure costs, which currently are estimated to be between $15 and $16 million. We currently have in the closure fund approximately $12 million. Beginning to assess the charge now, we are able to pay for design and permit stages, as well as to lower the overall amount that we will have to borrow by placing money in a reserve account. This is an informational flyer from our website that we have devoted to the Buena Vista landfill project. As you can see, it's a little bit out of date as our EIR is not yet completed. As of today, a project description is being developed along with the EIR and once ready, we will update the information on this website and this board. The Ben Lohman Transfer Station has been in operation for over 30 years and it's in need of maintenance and upgrades. What began as a project to address some stormwater runoff issues as well as some electrical upgrades quickly escalated into the realization that the scale house needed upgrades and the scales themselves were approaching the end of their useful life. It was decided to add these improvements to the scope of the project rather than to perform each project over a span of time. The legal dumping continues to be an issue throughout the state in Santa Cruz County is no different. One of the best tools that we have in the county to combat illegal dumping is our bulky item collection program that was written into the franchise agreement that's available to all residential green waste customers. Customers receive three bulky item collections per calendar year by appointment. We also have outreach and education staff that do targeted outreach to businesses and residents to help business owners and residents collect correctly sort their waste. Green Waste also has outreach and education staff that our staff works with to better serve the county residents. In addition to our county roads crews and parks departments we also partner with other area nonprofits to conduct litter cleanups and illegal dumping abatement. And with the help of the general services department we recently were able to obtain a surplus vehicle surplus van actually that is being donated to the downtown streets team. And CDI is working with downtown streets team to add a new crew that will be in addition to the north coast and Felton projects. One of our partners the trash talkers which we brought to this board last year has been helpful in bringing many of the jurisdictions and county partners that work on issues of illegal dumping and the same to the same table to discuss and coordinate our collective efforts through their Pitchin Santa Cruz campaign. Park staff have been placing Pitchin signs throughout the county unincorporated areas of the county at parks beach access points and as well at trailheads. The signs have a QR code on them that can be scanned and will take people who scan it to a website with all the local jurisdictions information Santa Cruz City Capitola RTA RTC. The county has also recently procured two high powered cameras along with two decoy cameras that we will be deploying in the coming months after we receive some training from the manufacturer. These cameras are solar powered. They have a five second delay which means that they won't take a picture and unless something's been sitting there for five seconds. And the will only actually be checking these cameras if we find an illegal dump dump at that location. During the most recent storms at the beginning of 2023 the county dispatched disaster debris boxes to the hardest to the hardest hit locations throughout the county. One of the lessons that we learned from the January storms was that need to monitor these boxes and remove them at the end of each day. Unmonitored boxes became overfilled and created a cleanup issue for CDI staff as well as residents in those communities. During the March storms we did use this knowledge and we did not have any boxes that became overfilled as the boxes were emptied more frequently and were monitored at all times. They're also taken away at the end of each day. Santa Cruz County debris management efforts will require improved waste management tracking from the time waste is collected through the time that waste is disposed. This cradle to grave waste management system is necessary to achieve reimbursement of under both state and federal programs. Waste management and diversion really begins with education. With our green business program we are able to work with businesses and not only reducing their waste but also how to properly manage their waste reduce energy consumption and to be role models in the business community. Our partners environmental innovations are excellent at helping businesses achieve their goals of becoming a green business and they promote the companies that become certified on their green on their media pages through the California green business network. Similar to the green business program the green schools program aims to educate young people to be good stewards of the environment. The lessons that are taught meet science state science requirements standards and our grade level appropriate. The lessons focus generally on stormwater runoff and waste reduction SB 1383 implementation began January of 2022. Its primary goal is to reduce methane from the atmosphere. The number one contributor of methane gas to our atmosphere is open landfills that leak methane from rotting organics. Another important aspect of SB 1383 is to collect edible food before it becomes food waste. The amount of food insecurity in California is staggering. We're lucky in Santa Cruz County that we have the nation's second ever food bank and the first in California in the second harvest food bank. They are a great partner and are helping the county as well as the four other jurisdictions to fulfill this requirement. Food waste is now being diverted from landfills in every jurisdiction within the state of California. Our programs allow customers to use their existing green organics cart to dispose of food waste. All food items are currently accepted except for raw meat compostable foodware and bags. Outreach and education continues to be conducted by both county and greenway staff to educate the public. SB 1383 also requires a group effort by many government agencies to meet the goals that the legislation envisioned. TDI has been engaging with other county departments to meet the procurement policies and compliance enforcement and mandated by SB 1383. TDI continues to promote reusable products over single use products and advocate for extended producer responsibility or EPR legislation. We recently concluded a campaign that we partnered with the California Product Stewardship Council to get people to switch from one pound single use propane canisters to refillable reusable ones. And also to petition the store owners to become either refill stations or exchange programs. The campaign was successful in that we were able to obtain nine locations throughout the county that became exchange locations. For the past several years, Gray Bears has been accepting polystyrene at their shanticleer location for recycling from the public. Due to spatial constraints, staff safety concerns as well as cost, they stopped accepting the material for recycling. While TDI was researching the potential places that could continue to recycle the material, we found that all of the options were actually cost prohibitive and quite so. At the same time though, TDI has learned of new legislation SB 54 which could solve the problem of polystyrene for us. SB 54 was recently signed by Governor Newsom and will require all packaging in California to be recyclable or compostable by 2032. It also requires there to be 25% plastics source reduction by weight and unit by 2032. Sorry, by 2025. SB 54 creates a de facto ban on polystyrene. The material currently only has a single digit recycling rate and will need to meet 25% of 25% recycling rate by 2025. By January 2025 and a 65% rate by January 23rd 2032. As you can see by this quote from the Nature Conservancy that's on the slide, the fact is that with such a low rate of current recycling, the chances of them actually being able to continue utilizing the product within California is highly improbable. We all asked that the board take the recommended action and one accept and file the recycling and solid waste long-term planning progress report and recommendations on zero waste planning. And to direct the Department of Community Development and Infrastructure to return on or before October 29th 2024 with the recycling and solid waste long-term planning progress report. Thank you. There are questions from board members. Supervisor Connor. Thank you chair. I just want to make sure I understand that last point you made about Styrofoam, which is you're saying that it'll, thanks to SB 54 effectively be outlawed as soon as 2025 because that's when that first 25% Yes. Okay. That's encouraging. Obviously, it's too bad. I don't have anything to do with the Styrofoam between now and then, but I understand that unfortunately gray bears doesn't want to take on the program anymore and the other nearby options are, as you said, cost prohibitive. I was curious. I mean, the SB 54 bill also points out that, you know, it talks about monitoring levels of, I guess, recycled content or like how much each one of those materials are actually recycled. Do we have any kind of monitoring of green waste and their recycling rates? I mean, you know, they say they're recycling, but I'm aware that, you know, a lot of stuff will just end up even recyclable goods could end up in the, you know, whatever last goes through the last call line. And ends up in the trash anyway. I mean, inevitably that will happen with some amount of the recyclable materials. Do we have any data back from green waste as far as, you know, what percentage of different recyclable material types are actually being recycled? Casey Colasa recycling saw waste services manager green waste does give us quarterly reports and annual reports. They lump all the recycling together as one, you know, data quantity, but we can get breakdowns. What happens is our, our county's recyclables can mix with their other jurisdictions and that they're sorting facilities. So I think they can portion out we can get numbers by, you know, how much is plastic and paper and cardboard so forth. Yeah, I'd be very curious to see that. I think that it's, you know, we should demand some accountability for the people who say they're doing the recycling on our behalf, you know, that that's actually happening. And I think that with some of the modern tools, image recognition and cameras, et cetera, that it is definitely possible to get that level of reporting at this point. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, I don't want to thank you for the staff for this report and see that we're making progress on all fronts really and several months ago I toured the region Marina landfill waste diversion facility with the CDI team and learn about their, its capacity to take the county's organic waste and we learned that in fact it can take all of our organics and regent did agree to include all of our county's organic waste stream and their feasibility study. So that I think that's terrific, terrific news and I hope that's moving along as you anticipated. I also appreciate the progress that we you've made in partnering with downtown streets team, particularly in Felton and the north coast very much appreciated in that organization to be commended. Hardly, and I appreciate you working with human services and Hill Services as well and your collaboration with trash talkers a relatively new agency or new group that wants to make Santa Cruz County the cleanest county in California. The, what's the anticipated timeframe for CDI to finish its analysis of building a composting facility in Buena Vista versus sending our organics to the Marina facility. Do you have a timeline on that? We're close, we're about that 30%. We keep, we have alternatives for the compost facility. Currently we're studying the idea, like you said, of taking all of our organics to continue basically continue status flow with with processing the material, cleaning up the part of the landfill to pay that so we can deal with our water quality issues up there. It's still an option for the compost facility, but it's looking more and more and that because it is expensive. And we do have this local area to to take the material that that will continue. As far as a timeline, I know we're, we were hoping to have that EIR as I mentioned already completed by this this summer. We had a recent meeting with our contract or construction management project management team for that. And it's looking probably I think she said some time we should be able to see a full project description go through some time this this year or this fiscal year. Okay, thank you. Any other questions or comments? I'll start by thanking the presentation on this. And we brought up the potential need to look at the biodegradable packaging ordinance and I'm just wondering if we could speak a little more about that and how we could be helpful with that and or if that's something maybe they could go to an integrated waste management task force for some input prior to coming to the board. It could definitely go to the waste house for us. That's always a good start. It's I mentioned that just in the sense that we can we can use that that ordinance and amend it to ban certain materials complete outright. Sorry, sorry, polystyrene. I don't want to get in trouble. Polystyrene is is on that list that we can, you know, but we really should look what I really want to look at is the the compostable foodware cups and those bags because we've heard from our processor that, you know, they have a 90 day throughput and it those those materials can take up to six months. And it's kind of telling because I so I do the annual report for to CalRecycle every year. And they're for the last couple years they've had a question on there of what where if we've found any murfs or any any facilities that will accept that material for composting. And I don't think there's any jurisdictions in the entire state that have I know anywhere on this region nobody's taking it, not with our throughput rates. So that's that's that's what I was kind of getting out at that that we could take those those materials off of that off of that ordinance and just have to be recyclable period. I think that's probably something worth exploring. So if there's an opportunity for us to have that come back, I think it would be good. And then if there's, you know, also if there's an opportunity for the integrated waste management task force to weigh in on that as well, I think. I think it's probably best to go to the task force first and do like a study session. Yeah, sounds good. And then you mentioned the camera placement. And I was just curious if that if those cameras are going to be placed at just sites where there's frequent dumping and so just to get some. Yeah, my bandwidth in a little bit stretch lately, but I have conversations with our road superintendent Alex and we I'm just working with him to get, you know, the top six hotspots located because we actually have to bring it to the board. We did some cameras as well. So we'll have four total once the board accepts allows us to cut the gift and we have two decoys. And so I want to put cameras at the top four hotspots and then the decoys at the top top two and then, you know, we can move them around. They're not, you know, it just takes a cherry picker to be able to move around. Great. Well, that concludes all my questions. So just want to thank you all for your work on this. Thank you. Open it up for the communities and remember the community. I'd like to address this on this item. It is an action item. I see none in chambers. Is there anybody online? Yes, chair colonizer to your microphone is now available. I think of Judy Barry who worked with the earth first trying to save the forest and she stated capitalism cannot exist without destroying the earth. The corporations are the instruments of capitalism. It's corporations producing all these plastics and other contaminants. And what they do is they privatize the profits and they socialize the cost. So here we in the county with county funds are supposed to try to take care of basically a problem that really can't be taken care of. Microcurrents are everywhere. So the cost of capitalism's corporate contamination is what we're dealing with. You spoke of the illegal dumps make it illegal for the corporations to dump their plastics on everyone. And they got to do it a whole lot more during the pandemic and plastic does not decompose. So I see this as unless the production is prohibited, we're going to always run around trying to be good Samaritans to deal with ubiquitous forever contamination, including cell phones, masks. I heard you're wearing a mask and there are a lot of masks in those ways. It's a myth that mass pose no danger. Wearing a mask and now it says here's a little fact for anyone wearing a mask. You'll probably cut me out analysis. Is there anybody else online? You have no further speakers chair. Okay, I would bring back to the board that we need a motion for this item. Yeah, I'm happy to accept and file recycling and solid waste long-term planning progress report and recommendations on zero waste planning. Then directly the Department of Community Development and Infrastructure to return on a before November 19, 2024 with a recycling and solid waste long-term planning progress report. I'll second it. We have a motion from Supervisor Cummings and second from Supervisor Handerst, Supervisor Cummings. And just for clarification, do we need to include direction on the compostable waste ordinance and having that go back to the Integrated Waste Management Task Force? First study session? Well, we might as well just add it on. I mean, it's an easy thing to add on. So with additional direction that why don't you articulate the additional direction? The direction is to have the Composable Waste Ordinance go to the Integrated Waste Management Task Force for study session. Is it okay with the seconder? Yes. Okay. I'm on the task force as well. So we're directing you to do more work. Well, both of y'all directing each other to just have a good old time. So if we could have a roll call, please. Certainly. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Cummings. Hernandez. Yes. McPherson and Friend. Aye. And that passes unanimously. Presentation, thank you for your work on that team. We're going to move into closed session. Council, do you anticipate anything will be reportable out of closed session? No. All right. We'll move into closed session.