 Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to the December 10th, 2019, Board of Supervisors meeting. I'm gonna call the meeting to order and ask the clerk to call the roll. Good morning, Supervisor Leopold. Here. Friend. Here. Caput. Here. McPherson. Here. And I'm gonna ask you to join me in a moment of silence and the Pledge of Allegiance. I am the State of America. To give an update for the circumstances of a musician, under God, and in the midst of all, of liberty and respect. Mr. Palacios, do we have any late additions, additions or deletions to the consent of a regular agenda? Yes, on the regular agenda, item number nine, we have additional materials, a revised memo, packet page 22, and a revised attachment A, packet page 56. In addition, regarding item 16, which is the continued public hearing to consider resolution amending the general plan, local coastal program, public safety element, we've received a lot of questions and requests for more time to examine the item. So staff is requesting that we continue the public hearing and defer the item to January 28th. That is acceptable to the board. And then on item, on the consent agenda, on item 30, we have additional materials, revised memo, packet page 1038 and 1040. On item 31, we have additional materials, revised attachment A, packet page 1047. And on item 87, we have additional materials, ADM-29, C2 builders, 20D0249. Thank you. Thank you. I'm now gonna see if there's any board members who would like to remove any of the consent agenda items, put them on the regular agenda. Okay, seeing none. We're now gonna move on to public comment. This is an opportunity for members of the public to speak to us about items that are on the consent agenda. These are items 19 to 91. Also items that are not on today's agenda, but are within the jurisdiction of the Board of Supervisors. And you can also comment on regular agenda items if for whatever reason you're unable to stay for when we hear the regular agenda items. There'll be two minutes per speaker, and please go for it. Good morning, supervisors. My name is Steve Kennedy. I'm here today to urge you to pull an item off the consent agenda and to bring it up as a regular department item to give it the consideration it deserves. The consent item is the project funding recommendations from the Fish and Wildlife Advisory Commission meeting of Thursday, December 5th. The proposal that was denied funding is a video project that addresses a trillion dollar issue. PG&E rejected a similar proposal in 2009 for unknown reasons. The issue that's been sidetracked is the issue of suburban forest fires. Sooner or later, Santa Cruz County will be hit by a devastating fire with damages in the billions of dollars. We must have a long-term strategy to create the talent pool that the public and private sectors can draw from. This video project does just that. You can see the larger picture that the Fish and Wildlife Commissioners can't. The Cannibal Express is a video for middle school students, which encourages kids. You still have another minute. To get into the training and education pipeline for the jobs of tomorrow, that will help us build a more resilient grid and prepare for, prevent, and mitigate the next big suburban forest fire. The business manager at the Electrician Union, IBEW Local 234 in Casterville, has endorsed this video because it will encourage kids to apply for their apprenticeship program after graduation from high school. These are the workers who applied to IBEW Local 1245 to work as linemen. Former Supervisor Ellen Perry and several teachers have endorsed this video project. The script in our demo reel has been posted to the web at www.cannonball.org, that's single N, single L. The video project proposal, the 2009 PG&E proposal, and copies of our endorsement are available upon request. Please send the Fish and Wildlife Commission's funding and recommendation back to the Advisory Commission for further study and reconsideration. Thank you for your time, gentlemen. Gary Richard Arnold. A lot of people don't understand the sedition that's going on by the Board of Supervisors. Neither the workers in this building nor your constituents are aware that there's a parallel government being set up. Also the adoption of the Rosenberg rules that are basically run out of the basement with zero minutes kept by the County Administrative Officer. The reduction of people's time before this very podium is outrageous. They can see right in their own agenda, you're supposed to have three minutes. Anytime I'm here, it's two. Community TV plays hide the button and people in the County have been approached by threats from two supervisors in here of both persons and property and the sheriff and the DA ignores it. I think retirement's a great time to talk about whistleblowers and it includes we have a whistleblower that everybody pretends they don't know who it is. And we've got every person in here, you can imagine, from Clinton to Schumer and all the rest of the people, this is the whistleblower nobody's supposed to know about. This is Ed Schiff, right along with side Ed Buck. You probably read in the newspaper, but not here that he had two prostitutes run out of his house, a third one wheeled out of his house, the third one with a hypodermic needle. There's a president head of the Democratic Party of California who just gave up $800,000 because he's been raping women at the annual conventions. This is Ed Schiff's prostitute person. This is a person, LA Times reported is being abused by Adam Schiff. Secret society members include people that Zach Friend has worked for. Skull and bones. There's a skull and dagger of which one of the members on the shift committee is Adam Swalwell. These are deep state, ugly organizations designed to take down this community. Thank you. And replace it with a different government. The Atlantic Council also has a member in Schiff's office that is a member of the Atlantic Council. Your time is up. You need to wrap it up. Thank you. Time's up. And it wouldn't be if it would be the three minutes that you put on your schedule that you gave to everybody here. Good morning, board members. My name is Lisa Peterson. I'm here to talk on agenda item number 57. This is the county local area management plan for onsite wastewater treatment systems. I'm shortening my discussion here a bit. Basically in 2013, the state water board made changes to their onsite wastewater treatment system policy. They recommended that counties submit their own local area management plan. The reason they wanted, they actually recommended that they do this because they said their rules specifically are very conservative, means they're difficult to meet. Currently the county does not have a local area management plan in place. We've had since 2013 to have that in place in 2018. We actually became under state control because we don't have that in place. Why is this important? The state rules are much more difficult to meet for a standard septic system, meaning many residents needing newer upgraded systems can't meet the state rules for the standard system. The state rules can require two to three times the leach field area than a standard system. And also they have stricter requirements for using slopes for leach fields. If the standard system requirements under the state rules can't be met, then residents are forced into installing enhanced systems. These enhanced systems can cost between 50 to $70,000 for the design, permitting, and the construction. Most residents, I would say probably almost all residents, don't understand that we are under the state rules and have been under the state rules since 2018. And they certainly don't understand that they are paying a greater cost because we are under these state rules. Also, many of the designers and contractors are refusing to provide septic services in Santa Cruz County because they don't wanna deal with the state rules. So my request is that the County put a local area management plan in place as soon as possible. County residents are literally paying the price every day. This is not approved. Again, we've known about this since 2013. Please get this approved by next year. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, my name is Rafa Sonnenfeld. I'm here in support of Consent Agenda Item 30. I'm here today. I am a community organizer. I started a group called Friends of Depot Park and we submitted a petition to the city of Santa Cruz opposing a rushed plan to implement a safe sleep and storage program at lot 24. I also serve on the city's Community Advisory Committee on homelessness. The catch, the Community Advisory Committee is unanimous in its support of relocating the shelter, well, not the program, but the shuttle program which is currently at Fronten Laurel. And I'm personally in support of this staff plan in front of the County today. It's going to help improve the ability for the staff and well for health and human services to potentially serve a vulnerable population and makes our Laurel Street Shelter program more accessible. Laurel Street Shelter program more accessible. This, the shuttle program in general directly benefits my neighborhood. And so I'm sure if we can keep this program going and locate it to a place that reduces impacts on the greater community and serves the population better, I think our community will be better overall. Thank you. Thank you. Nicholas Whitehead with liberty and justice for all. That includes homeless people. The state Supreme Court ruled in the case regarding Santa Ana that all the people within the jurisdiction of a city are not the ultimate responsibility of the city. The welfare, under the Welfare and Institutions Code, the court said it is the county within which people reside that has the ultimate responsibility for health and welfare. I've been getting to know some homeless people who are disabled. One of them was sleeping on the bridge when I came into town today. Wheelchair folded up, sleeping on the bridge. That's the coldest urban spot in the whole County right above the water on concrete. That's terribly cold. Another handicapped woman I know got into one of the local shelters. Somebody attacked her and her leg was slashed open. I had to get her some medicine for that. I shouldn't have to be spending my savings as an elder on clothing, homeless people, getting the medicine. Here's what we need. The city and county need to recruit a team of readily available outreach workers. They should be paid some stipend. We need to have that funded so we can outreach and find out what people's needs are and direct them on the street to where they need to go by help. Thank you. Hi, good morning. My name is Stephanie Weingarden. I spoke to you at your last meeting expressing my concern about a planning department code inspector that came to my home, took pictures, pulled in my driveway with an unmarked vehicle. And it was a scary situation for me. I made the recommendation here that they be issued lanyards for ID or where their lanyards for ID and drive clearly marked vehicles. So three days after that, I received a citation tack to the tree in front of my house. After I make this recommendation of professional conduct by the code employees, I find this tack to my tree. This is a two year old complaint. A two year old complaint that they filed. This doesn't feel right to me. It feels like retaliation. It feels like intimidation. And I hope that, I'm hopeful that you'll take this seriously and investigate my claim here. Investigate the circumstances of this incident. You know, I've shared this with my neighbors and my friends. And I'm finding that there's a lot of confusion out there about what the planning department is doing and what they're supposed to be doing, what they say that they're doing. So I think that we as citizens have a right to know and have something that's easily accessible and easily manageable to know what's going on. Thank you for your time. Hello, I'm David Hodges. And first I wanna start out with a belated and much deserved thank you to the board. I was here back in 1983 when I lost my home in the storm of 82. And you were kind enough to transfer my building permit at that time they had a building moratorium. And we built a new home and my ex-wife enjoys it now, but we're very thankful for that. And I'm here today to support the, not changing the mobile home reuse. I'm not cognizant of the exact term, but I'm representing Kerry Jakers and Soquel. I think Mr. Leopold's my supervisor and most of them are not as old if you would think they're mostly young families there and they have to work and can't be here, but that's why I'm here and that's thank you for your time and thank you again for back a long time ago. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning everyone. My name is Travis Huntsman. I'm the deputy sheriff's association president. I represent the deputies and sergeants working at the sheriff's office. I would like to address the board regarding consent item number 30, Park 8083, the relocation of the North County homeless shelter, pick up and drop off. It's my understanding that the request has been made to utilize the space the jail parking lot located at 259 Water Street. First of all, I applaud your willingness and efforts to assist with this community issue. However, I respectfully disagree with the decision to use this space. That is not as it is not the proper location for this community service. Homelessness is certainly not criminal in nature. However, many of the homeless populace in Santa Cruz County are impacted by nefarious activity such as drug use, violent crime, and suffer from mental health issues. These problems create unpredictable individuals who often display violent and irrational behavior demonstrated by countless arrests and calls for service. These issues raise significant safety concerns for the public as well as individuals utilizing community services. It is the opinion of the deputy sheriff's association that relocating the North County shelter, pick up and drop off to the jail parking lot would create an unnecessary safety risk to county personnel using the same space for official business purposes. Use of this space would likely subject county employees to an increased risk of victimization that does not currently exist. Additionally, this move would likely attract other nefarious activity such as drug use, drug sales, theft, and other public nuisances. While it is indicated the memo submitted on the issue that the utilization of the parking lot would only impact certain hours of the day when the shuttle was dropping off or picking up between certain hours, it is my professional opinion that this would not be true. In my experience with these spaces, excuse me, in my experience, these spaces often create a draw for individuals to loiter at all hours of the day regardless of the intended use of space. Some of the individuals using the space would likely engage in previously stated nefarious activities, thus creating a hostile environment for county personnel. I respectfully submit and appreciate your consideration. Thank you. Morning, supervisors. My name is Nicole Young and I'm here today on behalf of first five Santa Cruz County wearing my hat as the Triple P coordinator positive parenting program. And I know David Brody wishes that he could also be here today, but unfortunately I had to be somewhere else. But we wanted to thank the board for designating January 2020 as the eighth annual positive parenting awareness month in our county. As I'm sure many of you know, raising children is perhaps the most important and quite possibly the hardest job imaginable. It's a nonstop often thankless job. And yet we know that positive parenting is one of the best predictors of future social, emotional and physical health. And it has the power to both prevent and heal adverse childhood experiences like child abuse, neglect and other forms of trauma. So it means the world to first five and our Triple P partners and families throughout the county to have the board recognize and elevate the importance of positive parenting each year. This also marks the 10th anniversary of Triple P being available in Santa Cruz County, which you probably know as a huge milestone. And over the years we've heard many, many stories from families about how this particular program has helped them be more confident as parents and build strong relationships in their families. So we're fortunate to have not only Triple P in this county, but many other partners and programs and initiatives all working together to support children and families to be healthy and thriving. And just finally it may be of interest to you to know that this January nine other counties in California will be joining Santa Cruz in celebrating the month of positive parenting. And we're actually currently working with Assembly Member Mark Stone's office to pass a joint resolution statewide declaring January as positive parenting month throughout the whole state. And so that movement which really began in this county with the support of the Board of Supervisors just continues to grow. And again, I thank you for that. Thank you Nicole. Good morning. I'm Corey Vestel and I'm the early Head Start Manager for Santa Cruz County. And so I'm here also to thank you for recognizing positive parenting and Compass Community Services oversees the programs of early Head Start and Head Start for this county. And I wanna highlight how we're uniquely set up to support families with positive parenting. We use a two-generational approach to support not just the child, but the whole family throughout the whole county from Felton to Watsonville. And we provide comprehensive services both directly and through referrals. And just as of this morning, so we serve the most vulnerable population. So as of this morning, 41 of our families are experiencing homelessness. 74 of our children were referred by child welfare. And 94 of our children have diagnosed disabilities. So IFSP's or IUP's. So our staff are doing amazing work supporting both the child and the family. And I also wanna highlight that last month we opened an infant center. So it's our first time providing services to children six months and up. And one parent when she first walked in and saw the space, she said, wow, I'm opening up a world for my child that I didn't get. So that's the difference that's happening out there. And I thank you for your support. Thank you. Thanks for that story. Hello gentlemen, I'm Mike Lambert on the president of the Sheriff's Correctional Officers Association. I'm here about agenda item 30, the use of the 259 Water Street parking lot for the emergency shuttle station. On behalf of my members and our board, we're opposed to this measure. Our parking lot is used 24 hours a day by people going in and out of our facility all the time. Not just our members, we have members of our medical staff, our mental health staff and other various agencies that are in and out of that parking lot on a regular basis. While they say that it's limited in hours to the morning and the evening, again, there will be people congregating there at those hours for pickup and drop off. There was people are often preyed upon by other elements of the society that will be hanging out in that area and loitering and causing other additional problems there. We strongly oppose this item and hope you do as well. Good morning, Monica McGuire of Coralitos. I'm coming to you this election season, which is extremely shortened to ask that the three incumbents, especially who are running, do your very best to publicize to everyone in this county. I've reported to you before that well over half, it seems about 70% of the county has never come to a meeting like this, not even watched it. And that's a pretty conservative number. I've reported it before because it matters so much in the election season. And I'm hoping that all five of you, not just the incumbents, will do your very best to love democracy and ask all of the organizations that have already said who they're endorsing before the public time to propose oneself as a candidate had ended, that you ask them to go back and make a new recommendation now that you use the time in this extremely shortened election season before March, because we have the earliest primary ever, to ensure that there are lots of public forums so the candidates can run with you, with each other on behalf of everyone in this county, as we're supposed to have happen. It's so important that you, who have the most notoriety and the ease of being incumbents, use your really important voices to say that you care deeply, that everyone learn about who they are supposed to be voting for in every possible detail so that we can use our voting rights the best way possible and actually have really good conversations despite the holidays being in the midst of this, despite the shortened time period so that we really know and ask for ways for all these other great candidates to come forward and get to have their voices heard with yours. We're all doing this on behalf of everyone in the county and I ask that you do more than I've ever seen before. Thank you. Good morning supervisors. I'm Marianne Lobalbo speaking on behalf of the SEIU County employees. We are requesting that you remove agenda item number three from the consent agenda and adding it to the regular agenda for discussion. The SEI County employees support services that assist the community. We are happy to work together to help those who are the most vulnerable. At the same time, we do not believe that the proposal before the board to move the warming center, pick up and drop off to the Water Street parking is the best solution. As it is, parking is an issue for our county employees. Many of us spend hundreds of dollars on parking passes, fines or to show up to work early to find a spot. Additionally, we believe that the proposal puts us at risk. Anytime there is a large congregation of people, there are safety and logistic concerns. Adding a pickup and drop off location at the lot will not only exasperate these conditions. Unfortunately, this program has already have been moved because of issues around the safety. We believe that providing the essential services and addressing our needs as employees are not mutually exclusive. We are willing to work with the county to address this issue, to have the following suggestions. Move unused county vehicles to the parking lot to sit unused for long periods of time. Provide additional parking passes beyond the 20 suggested passes for the county employees in city lots and on the street. Full time security to monitor the parking lot, delay construction of the vacant grass lot to the executive parking until after the rainy season. The space will be available for the warming center program. We are committed to working with the county to find a solution to address these needs of our community and the needs of our employees. We ask the board to empower the CAO office to work with the county employees to find us a solution that will fit everyone's needs. Thank you. Good morning, board. Chair Coonerty. I'm still talking about this because it hasn't gone away. I'll be brief. I have 11 more pages of signatures for zero carbon by 2030. I want to thank you for the work on plastics and other things related. And let you know that in January we're gonna be working strenuously on getting county support for regenerative agriculture, also known as climate smart agriculture, which was in the emergency resolution that you already passed. We've talked to Juan Hidalgo and a bunch of other experts and we have some very specific suggestions and we'll be starting by talking to Mr. Caput since he has most of the agricultural land in the county. So we look forward to working with you on that issue and wish you luck on all these nasty complex things. Thank you. Good morning, my name is Becky Steinbruner. I'm a resident of rural Aptos and I'm running for county supervisor in district two. I wanna first say that I still oppose the proposed county service area 48 fire tax in addition to what people are already paying because I know that your board has the ability to allocate some of the $18 million that you get through the state Proposition 172 money to do rural fire protection. And I object to coming to the county property owners yet again for another tax. It will be sizable for many. I also wanna point out to you that the state insurance commissioner has issued a moratorium for insurance cancellations for one year in areas with zip codes that have been fire ravaged. That does not include Santa Cruz County. He did ask for a voluntary moratorium on cancellation but it is up to the insurance companies to do that. This is a problem in the summit area and in the mountain areas. And I ask you to contact commissioner Laura to beef up his language to protect the rural people. I wanna now talk about Consent Item Agenda 77, the county giving two and a half million dollars to support the Barry Swenson Builder Aptos Village Project. This will be a traffic light at Aptos Creek Road, fiber optic all up and down Socal Drive and paving the way literally for the Swenson's connection at Parade Street which holds many legal liability problems. And there are contaminated soil issues that are not yet addressed. I am working and appreciate public works reaching out to me and responding to my emails but this is a bad project. And I really resent the county spending two and a half million dollars to prop up the Aptos Village Project. I wanna support the speaker earlier on item number 57, the sewer septic problems. I think the county service area 12 money should be used to beef up staffing so that this can get done quickly. Thank you very much. Good morning, Board of Supervisors. Chair Coonerty, Jim Hart, Sheriff Corner. I wanna talk to you about item 30 today. And you've already heard from the SEIU, the DSA and the COA, but I just wanna run a scenario by you. Can you imagine if the county went to the city of Santa Cruz and said, hey, we really like your parking lot at city hall where your employees park. And what we'd like to do is move the drop off and pick up center to your city hall parking lot. If we displace some city workers, we'll move them over the county building. We'll find some parking for them. They can walk over to work in the morning. They can walk back at night but we think it's a great location. The city would say absolutely not. That's not gonna work. We need those city workers to run city government. We built that parking lot for them. That's not gonna work. And then we said, okay, what's your most critical piece of infrastructure? And they came up with something, a wastewater treatment plan. And the county said, okay, well, then let's, we're gonna move the drop off and pick up to that parking lot because we think it's a great location. And the city just would say, no, we built that parking lot for the staff to work in that facility and to run it. And so those two silly scenarios are very similar to what we're talking about in moving this drop off center and pick up to the county jail. The county jail is the most critical piece of infrastructure we have and that we house 400 people there every single day. There's prison buses, there's county jail buses from all over the state coming and going, 10,000 bookings, 20,000 visitors a year, not to mention all of our staff that help us run county government use that parking lot to get to work every day. And to expect them to walk from River Street or some other location to get to work is asking too much of our staff. That parking lot was built for our staff so that they could support all of us in running our departments. And so as your sheriff, I'm advising you not to approve this and I'm advising you that we should do some community policing on this. Let's state the problem. Let's get the stakeholders together. Let's figure this out. I get there's a problem, but let's address it and not just put a bandaid on this. We've seen the city make some poor decisions and they've paid for it dearly. Let's not follow that action and make more poor decisions where we're paying for this downstream. Thank you very much. Good morning. My name is Serge Cagno. I was on the grand jury last year and I'm on the city's advisory board on homelessness and the county mental health board with a supervisor cap it. And I'd like to say thank you for all of you for the South County Behavioral Health Center that opened up last week. It was pretty awesome. I am part, I've been hoping and trying to improve services for Santa Cruz. And for the homeless, it hurts me a bit for people to talk about the safety of employees and where assuming homeless are dangerous to them and nobody talks about the safety of the homeless people. So far, the homeless people, the intake site right now is unmanaged at all. It's out in the rain. We're talking about people who are elderly, people with disabilities, sitting in the rain during the winter and now we're talking about, maybe we should have some planning for it. Issues of supervision. The issue of the jail is gonna be a dangerous place and that's an unsupervisible place. I think that it's definitely manageable. If we're talking about parking, the bank has extra parking. Paradox would probably be able to contract with you. You'd probably have to probably get stuff pretty close by. And if you wanted more services and more supervision, we can definitely design that. And if you wanted to say four months into this, that should be a city parking lot downtown. Hey, I support that. But the city hall, that parking lot actually wouldn't be able to take a shelter. That's actually not feasible. But it's just trying to get something. Let's move forward for city and county working together to design something and not every time we have a space, people say yes, but not this space. So thank you. Good morning, chair, members of the board, Juan Hidalgo, Agricultural Commissioner. I wanna briefly comment on item number 29. I wanna thank your board and the CAO's office for your support the last four years. And for the opportunity to continue to serve as County Agricultural Commissioner. Agriculture is an important part of our county and our local economy. And I look forward to continuing to work with our growers and our community to continue to support agriculture in our county and to collaborate on finding solutions for the challenges that lie ahead. So thank you very much. Thank you for your work. If I can make a comment, I was gonna comment on the consent agenda. You're doing a great job and I appreciate all the time and effort you're putting in, especially for South County. And you're also in charge of weights and measures, right? I am. Okay, I haven't given up on skippy peanut butter. All right. And they keep shrinking and getting smaller. And the tyranny. And the tyranny. Thank you. Good morning, my name's Leslie Connor with the Santa Cruz Community Health Centers. And I'm here to also thank you for recognizing January as positive parenting month. In the Live Oak Cradle to Career, I learned firsthand how important access to education and information parents have in the community. When we first went into Live Oak Elementary School and started working with parents trying to find out what they needed in order to ensure the stability and health of their kids and their families, the very first thing they wanted was parenting support, parenting education, parenting information. And so thanks to first five, we brought in Triple P and there have been numerous classes since then where parents go through a series of trainings and workshops, they get certificates and they really get confidence which is what parents need as we all know to be the parents that they wanna be for their kids. And so it's hard to be a parent and it's even harder to be a parent when you are struggling in poverty or you can't navigate the system and don't have resources to access parenting support. So January is positive parenting month and thank you for that and the community recognizes and continues to work with families to support them. Thanks. Thank you for your work. Marilyn Garrett, part of wireless radiation alert network and these tremors I call microwave tremors, also pesticide exposure from teaching in Watsonville. Message helps stop 5G radiation. Currently there are plans for the installation of hundreds of 5G small cell antennas in our neighborhood outside our bedroom windows on light poles and downtown streets which will emit wireless radiation day and night. This rollout of increased wireless radiation is being mandated by the FCC without our informed consent. Scientific studies have shown that the evidence of harm to DNA, neurological damage, breaks in the bloodstream barrier and many other negative health impacts at levels far below what we're told is safe, so-called. Today there's an opportunity to hear Dr. Karl Merritt interviewed on the Dr. Future Show. He's an expert on the biological harm. It will be on 10.80 a.m. at three o'clock and I urge you to listen and I want to object to consent to item 54 which is basically drone warfare. It says approve the purchase of an unmanned aerial system with camera and thermal imaging and the amount of $33,000 plus to top resolution accepting unanticipated revenue from the Urban Area Security Initiative. This is microwave radiation warfare on the public. This is a fact. Cell tower radiation causes cancer. So be our last speaker, I think. Good morning, board. Thank you for having me here. I just wanted, my name is Maria Cadenas. I'm the Executive Director of Santa Cruz Community Ventures and we work on issues of income and wealth inequality within the county and the Monterey Bay region. I'm here today to speak and say thank you for your support of positive parenting month. We work very closely with First Five and other youth workers here in the county and we are committed to making sure that our generations ahead of us can thrive here in Santa Cruz, ensuring that parents have the support they need to support their children and give them the hope for the future they have in this community is important. We've been working closely to develop college savings accounts for all newborns here in the county and one of our greatest partners, Husband First Five and Positive Parenting Month is one of the key stones to making sure that we make their voices and their future heard. So again, thank you for that support. Thank you. So that concludes public comment. I'll bring it back to the board. We'll go to item number six, which is action on the consent agenda. These are items 19 through 91 and I'll ask if anyone has any comments. Professor Brown. Thank you, Chair. And first, I just would also like to congratulate Mr. El-Dago has done a phenomenal job and I'm welcoming him back for the next four year term on that. Regarding item 30, I would like, I looked at the additional direction that was provided and it covers most of what we had heard from concerns over the weekend from the unions, but I think that there is still some more addition that we could create. One of them is to specify regarding the parking permit passes within the neighborhood to work specifically with that to ensure that there isn't necessarily a limit on that. Mr. Plasio, so I mean, we'd had a number, but I think that it's important for the city to provide for adequate replacement parking on that. And the additional component is to meet with these unions, both the DSA, the DA and SEIU, to receive their feedback in regards to this. I think that we've been able to capture most of the concerns on having a security plan, having some sort of security coverage during times that aren't, well, the entire time, but also ensuring that people aren't there during pickup and drop-off time. But the parking component is a real one that our employees struggle with every day. And since it's not a signed parking at that lot, it's hard to just simply replace it on a one-for-one because people don't know what day they will be able to park there and what day they won't. And so we need to actually have a larger expanse of parking permits that are made available to these employees. So the additional direction would be to meet with the unions to ensure that those parking permits are available at a closer location and a larger number, and that we have that security plan in place so that the issues that were brought up on people loitering during non-pickup and drop-off times are addressed. I'd also like to thank the county for the work that they're doing on item 33, especially for the Aptos Branch Library. This additional money that'll be brought into the Aptos Branch Library is essential. And it's one of those things that just because construction costs have escalated and we were not first in line on the construction, this additional funding's needed, but it's gonna be a great project for Aptos to get both Aptos and LaSelva completed. On item 70, this is for the Sequa Village Park skate feature. This is a great public-private partnership with county parks, with the friends, non-profit as well as some private donors that have helped fund not just the plans, but also fund the funding for the construction of a new skate feature, which was always envisioned as part of the master plan. The county couldn't do it on our own to go out to the community and have them be able to do this as a remarkable statement and a remarkable step with new restrooms, a new skate feature, with new shade structures, and a new interest, by the way, in already working on a phase three element of it, which are to do the Amplitheater and other promised components who might actually finish a park that we didn't believe that we'd be able to finish for well over a decade. Now we're only five years in and we're already on the next phase. And this is a remarkable testament to Mr. Gaffney and the friends of the parks and my park commissioner, Ms. Minot, but also to the community that stepped up and said that they were willing to help fund this. It's a great partnership. So I wanted to thank everybody for that. Special loophole. Good morning, Chair. Just a couple of items to talk about in some additional direction on some of them. First of all, on item 30, I take the concerns of our staff very seriously. I think we have to find a good balance. I would recommend to our CAO that outreach to our employee organizations before items end up on our board agenda is critical to a high functioning county administration. And I would hope that in the conversations that go on as suggested by my colleague that we can work out something that actually works out for this temporary situation. I understand the concerns. I think it's a, this is an opportunity to work out some issues and to be in partnership with the city. But I wanna make sure that we address the employee concerns as effectively as possible. I will also wanted to acknowledge the work of the staff on item number 36, which is a lease agreement with the Emeline Preschool Center. There's been a lot of work there to meet the needs of this preschool that serves our employees and members of the community. I appreciate the efforts to make sure that it's a safe place for people to go to preschool. And I'm glad to see this lease agreement on here. On item number 37, I appreciate the work by our county council and one of her farewell items here around the municipal equality index. There's work to do to make sure that our county is functioning at the highest level in meeting the needs of the LGBTQ community. I'll be working with our staff and the diversity center. And there's also interest from the city of Santa Cruz to really ensure that we're operating at the highest standards. But I thank you for your work and everything you've done. On item number 54, which is the purchase of an unmanned aerials system with camera, I understand the concerns that they're out there in the community, but I want to acknowledge our sheriff for his commitment to being transparent with the public about how to use equipment like this. I attended the meeting that was held, where the surveillance report was shared with the community. I heard the engagement that the community had and the thoughtful way that the sheriff and his staff responded. And I think this is an example of good work. We're gonna be using this equipment to help us out. And we have great information about how it'll be used, what will happen with the information. So I want to acknowledge the sheriff for that effort and the entire staff. And I think it serves as a great model, not only for us here at the county, but for communities across the country. On item number 58, which has approved an agreement with Janice for the medication assisted treatment, I would like to add an additional direction to get a report back from our health services agency regarding the reports that we received here about intimidation of employees and their effect on services. We could have that by our first meeting in February. I'd appreciate that. The concerns that we heard were significant. And since we count on this provider to provide such critical services, I want to make sure that we're not funding an agency where we see constant turnover and hurting our efforts to reduce the number of people who are addicted and can best meet the needs of the community. On item number 71, which is a MOU with the mountain bikers of Santa Cruz to maintain the bike pump track at Chanticleer County Park. I'll give you a heads up that January 18th. We will be doing a ribbon cutting for Chanticleer Park and Leo's Haven. This is a great community partnership that the parks has held with county park friends and a bunch of other organizations. It's going to be a great celebration. But the mountain bikers were the first there to come in and build part of that park and build that bike pump track. And I'm glad to see that we're not going to have a formalized agreement with them. On item number 76, which is about negotiating with jump to increase the bike share through the Mid County. I'm appreciative of the staff of bringing this forward. I would like to make sure two things and add them as additional direction. One is that the staff ensure that there's some part of this contract that deals with the illegal parking of bikes on sidewalks and their impact and some consequence for riders to do that. We've heard a lot of complaints already about that. And two, to work with members of the board whose district this is in to ensure that the siting of the bike share stations are in appropriate locations. And just one more item number 89, which is this report on the Live Oak Library annex study. I appreciate the work of our staff in public works who are overseeing this project and the work of Nicole Coburn in the CAO's office to ensure that we have the resources to build all these different library projects. I thank them all for doing it. And I look forward to this great addition of being added to the Live Oak community. With that. Supervisor of here. Thank you, Mr. Chair. A number, an item number 23 on the disposable cup fee. I'm going to support this item today as I did previously, but I want to reiterate that I prefer the 10 cent fee in keeping with Watsonville's fee. And I really want to restate my concern about these ordinance coming to us piecemeal one by one. I don't believe that's the right strategy for us to address this issue. I think we really need an original approach to addressing plastic waste and one that focuses on the manufacturing industry rather than penalizing our retailers and consumers. So I hope in the future we can make that our approach to how do we address this critical problem. Everybody has discussed the North County emergency shelter shuttle station. And I understand the concerns of the sheriff and the general public. I would like to see as well as the employees and the unions to address or try to understand the concerns if there are any from the Blaine Street community too right next door if that's all right too just to so we can accept their input if they have some concerns and they may well do so. And I just like to mitigate those concerns with the surrounding neighborhood. I agree with Mr. Leopold about the M line preschool. The CAO's office worked very well and working out with the preschool to formalize our relationship. But this is a very important service to our families and we needed a plan to provide improvements to the facility. Kudos to the county council's office and we're gonna hear more about that office in a moment. But the municipal equality index I really appreciate the county council making it a priority to represent all of our citizens through the policies to make them the language and practices inclusive. The county's contribution to CSA 48 which was mentioned earlier. We have 87 parcels in the rural unincorporated area that is part of CSA 48 and we're going to be making a contribution in essence if this should pass of almost $40,000. It's really a critical of this assessment I believe passes for effective staff to be responsive to the medical and fire emergency needs of our rural communities. On item number 59, any report on access to medical care. Our community owes a great deal of thanks to Dominican hospitals, Sutter and Watsonville hospital for exceeding, greatly exceeding their contractual mandates to provide charity or uncompensated care to low income patients. I hope that our health services agency can successfully negotiate with Kaiser to provide their fair share of the uncompensated care. And again, I wanna thank Dominican Sutter and Watsonville for what it has done in the past and what it is doing now. Items 56 and 58 through 64 they're all health service related items. I wish we had time to delve deeper into all of these. They seem to be all coming at the end of the year but these are very important programs and the interventions and support we are providing to those important initiatives. And I think I wanna thank the HSA health services agency for bringing those forward. For example, the Together We Care will allow information to be shared among frontline agencies serving the homeless. The application for state funding comes through the No Place Like Home program. More affordable housing will be available with connected essential services to provide a transition for those individuals for a better, healthier and more productive life. The additional revenues from the US Health Resources and Services Administration to help with the quality of our work and add sorely needed resources for our health services are also important. It's a big package, but it's very important that we do that to help those who are in really desperate need. And finally, the road improvements that are listed in item 78 through 86 throughout the county. We continue and our Public Works Department has done a great job once we got the resources through Measure D and the state passage of SB1 from the 2016-17 storms, which were just hit this county more severely than any other county in the state. These projects are all through the county. And I know one in Bear Creek Road is gonna be very, it's very highly traveled. It's been very much appreciated that we're doing our work about ready to go to bed on that. So I wanna thank the Public Works Department for getting on this as fast as they can and doing the great work that they have been doing throughout the last year. Thank you. Mr. Vice-Chair Caput. Thank you. On items 30 and 40, are there somewhat connected, I believe? 30, we're talking about the shuttle services, losing some parking spaces. And then number 40, we're gonna be adding parking spaces. What's the trade-off on that, Mr. Palacios? Item 40 before the board today is to, in the grass area adjacent to the government center, create approximately, I think, 55 new parking spaces for county employees. And then we also will be relocating approximately 20 to 25 vehicles that are in the main lot. So our hope is to create 75 new spaces by summer time. Regarding item 30, our direction that the board gave us is to not only replace all the parking spaces that are being lost, anticipate about 20 spaces being lost, but to get actually more spaces from the city in terms of neighborhood parking permits. So we might get 30 or more parking permits and lose 20 short-term. But long-term, we're gonna be adding 75 new spaces at the government center for county employees. Okay. And I'm trying to get it clear. We did mention that now the sheriff's association is opposed to the shuttle service being located at that particular spot, right? Yes, and the direction was for my office to meet with all the employee groups to make sure that we address the concerns that were raised to the greatest extent possible regarding a safety plan and a timeframe for the pickup and drop-off and the length of the agreement as well. Okay, and then we do have him here, Sheriff Hart, your comment on that if I may ask him. Yeah, there's a couple. There's not a fully vetted safety plan. And so, for example, I think Chief Mills over the police department, historically the police department has refused to respond to calls for service on county properties that are located within the city. And so I just learned about this program last week. So I called Chief Mills on Friday and he said that they would respond to some calls for service around this homeless drop-off and pickup. But I'm not clear on who's gonna respond to the day in and day out drug use, alcohol, drug sales, loitering, trespassing, camping, vehicle break-ins, all of those lower level crimes because my nearest deputy, I have one in Live Oak and I have one in Felton. And so we have one deputy for every 50 square miles. So is the expectation that the police department is gonna handle all calls for service in that lot or am I gonna have to pull a deputy out of Live Oak or Felton to come down and take those reports? And then a second concern is that there's no contingency plan. That lot floods frequently. And so when that lot floods and that context box is floating down towards Blaine Street, where are all those folks gonna be dropped off and picked up? And then the third concern is where I haven't been consulted at all about this. Where in that lot are we gonna put? It's gonna be more than 20 spaces if you're talking about a context box, a covering, bathrooms, all that stuff, but whatever the number is. A big chunk of that property, that parking lot's gonna be taken up. If you put it on the Blaine Street side, you're gonna severely impact that neighborhood in that residential Blaine Street area with foot traffic. If you put it on the Water Street side, a lot of our county staff has already told me, I've been here 31 years, they've already told me they feel very leery about walking under the Water Street bridge. But with all of that going on, I think we're gonna inadvertently force people to illegally cross Water Street, which is gonna create a dangerous situation for our county staff, because that's a pretty busy road. If you put it in the middle of the lot, I've got semi-trucks coming in there, prison buses, county jail buses coming in and out there. I just don't know how we're gonna squeeze all that traffic into that one lane that connects from Blaine to Water Street. So there's a lot of concerns that I haven't been addressed. I've not been consulted on any of this, and it's gonna impact not only all the county staff over here, but it's gonna severely impact the running of that county jail, which is already overused as it is. So I would be correct that the Sheriff's Association and yourself are in agreement. We are in agreement, and we recognize there's a problem, and we know that there has to be a pickup and drop-off area. And if there's county property somewhere else, that's great, but the location in our mind is not a good location for this. Okay, thank you. And is that in line with what was mentioned earlier with Supervisor Friend and Leopold? Am I correct, or are we? You made a comment on item 30, I believe, right? What we had said was we'd added additional direction to the item, and one of them is regards working with the Sheriff. One of them is working with the employee unions and dealing with the parking issues and the safety plan and stuff. So it wasn't to oppose it, it was to address what had been brought up with these additional discussions. So you would like to, are you pulling the item? No. No, we're providing additional direction on the item to address the concerns that have been raised. Yeah, I'm not sure, is that with the Sheriff's Association and Sheriff Hartman? Being that this is our last meeting for a month. Right. We're giving direction to have our CAO work out these issues and address the concerns. So this can be moving forward, why we're not meeting. So it could be a yes or a no, or something in between? Well, I mean, they're gonna have to work out. Plans will need to include the safety concerns, the parking concerns, the contingency concerns, those all have to be worked out. But since we won't be meeting until January 14th, we're giving them direction to attempt to work that out. So we're not saying yes, go ahead, and we're gonna have the shuttle set in that particular lot, and we're putting it off until it can be worked out. Well, if it can be worked out, we're giving them permission to move forward with it, yes. But move forward with having it located at the Sheriff's parking lot, correct. If all the concerns could be addressed. Yeah, the operational details have not been worked out yet. All we're doing is getting direction to go and negotiate agreement with the city over to address these concerns. But the idea, the direction is to go forward with this agreement. That's the direction. And to address the concerns with the city. There's not an agreement. There's not an operational plan in place yet. We're gonna begin discussions assuming the board moves forward with this, with the city to address those concerns. So if I was gonna be in line with the Sheriff's Association and the Sheriff, I would be voting no on this. That's correct. If you want to, if not, you can, we're gonna try and address those concerns. My thought is to address all of these concerns and to work with the city to make sure we address them. All right. We'll all be voting no on item number 30, okay. So just a couple of comments. So one on item number 30, I appreciate the additional direction. And I think this project has already gotten better by input from different employee associations and it will continue to get it better. I think to just be clear, I think the city of Santa Cruz has bared the burden for the entire county by locating almost all the shelter and services within the city jurisdiction. And this continues that trend, but I think it's a good sign to have the county stepping up to try to reduce some of the community impacts and provide better shelter for people in need. And so I'm supportive of this going forward and appreciative that the county is moving this directions. Items 58, 62, and 64 are all about expanding treatment in our community for drugs. Given our afternoon item and the impacts we see daily in our community, I really want to appreciate the Health Services Agency for their work on this matter. But I do think we need in January or February a really complete understanding of what the new programs are, where the gaps are, where the opportunities are, how are things going? We got, this is a large intervention, but we're also dealing with a real crisis on the ground and it'd be worth it for both the board and the community to hear a comprehensive approach to these items. Finally on item number 68, this is an effort that I've asked for to have families have a preference for Section 8 vouchers for housing. We know the lifetime, the impacts of trauma that are experienced on children, for that children experience. And when they experience homelessness, that trauma we need to have a real clear preference to provide housing for families in our community that are experiencing homelessness as quickly and as effectively as possible. I'd also like to add additional direction to direct the HSD to ensure that supportive services are available to eligible homeless Section 8 applicants with minor children who receive this preference. So the idea being that not only do we get housing, but we get them the critical services they need when they serve it. And that would be an additional direction as we work with the housing authority to create that preference. So I believe we have additional directions. I'd entertain a motion at this point. I would move the consent agenda as amended. Okay, so got a motion by Leopold and a second by Friend. And I'll just make one comment that we are gonna add spaces when we do the parking lot here near the county building, but the shuttle could not be located at the new parking lot here once it's finished. Well, the idea is that the shuttle is gonna be temporary from four to six months. Well, we'll be under construction here on this new lot. So there'll be a big gap. There'll be, well, and the idea that this is not gonna be permanent. This is a temporary item. Okay. So we got a motion by Leopold, a second by Friend. All those in favor? For the whole consent agenda. Okay, I'm voting no on 30. Correct. So all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Just item 30. So that passes unanimously with the exception of Supervisor Caput and item 30. Now we're moving on to item number seven, which is a presentation honoring Ellen Timberlake, the chair, director of the human services on a retirement as outlined in a random by myself. I am tempted to permanently table this item and not allow Ellen to retire, but I've been told that's not in my power. I think by someone who has a vested interest in the next item, they might have the same strategy. So I'm gonna ask Ellen to come forward for a moment. And I think the board would like to appreciate your amazing work. And so I'll start with Supervisor Friend. Thank you, Chair and thank you, Ms. Timberlake. We've had a lot of, one of the things that's a great pleasure in this position isn't just the ability to represent a community, but to work with staff that's much more talented than any of us will ever be on, especially on certain subjects. And you by far meet that criteria. One of the things that I would like the community to know as Ellen is retiring is how much she keeps two things in mind. One of them is that there are people in this community that are struggling and we have a responsibility to address that and to change our trajectories moving forward. And that sounds like a very simple statement, but I can't tell you that this is her life's work. This is what she's dedicated her life to. And the second thing is ensuring that policymakers know that. I have probably not been challenged by any other department head more than Ellen has to make sure that I keep in mind other people that need this board's help. She is the most respectful advocate and influential advocate for those with less in this community. I would argue that anybody I've ever met in Santa Cruz County, you have left an indelible mark on people that will never know who you are, but you have changed the trajectory of their lives. You never get thanked enough, but I'm here to say thank you. You are a mentor to board members. You're a mentor to other community leaders. You've been a mentor to my wife who views you as a great community leader. She's now the city manager of Scots Valley, but views you as somebody that she would wish that she could be professionally and personally. This is what you deserve nothing but the accolades of this community and nothing but the love and support of this community. And I think about kids that are being born today that will have new opportunities because of the work that you push forward. They will never know it, but their lives and their generation will be different and their kids as kids will be different because of you. Ellen Timberlake, we owe you a lot. We will miss you so much. Congratulations on your retirement. Well, I've got to follow that. I've had the great pleasure of knowing Ellen for a while before I became supervisor. We served on a board together. She took on a challenging issue. It dealt with all the issues that we see here at the board about class, about ethnicity, about race. It challenged people to think differently. And she was an architect of a plan that thoughtfully addressed all those issues and served as a great plan for how a school can be more diverse. And I saw what she did in that effort to meet people where they were addressed their concerns but think about how the impact of that plan would affect not only those that we saw right away but down the line. And when I became a supervisor, I saw the same kind of work done about something which was pretty sacrosanct before we decided to make some changes and that was our community programs funding. That was a hallmark of the work of the Board of Supervisors for decades. It's a great testament to the commitment this board has had to fund our community partners and to meet the needs of the most vulnerable in our community. But we had a system that was really in need of a tuneup and to make it as effective as possible. And Ellen led the effort once where I thought that we did a lot of meetings, tried to meet people. And then when it came to the board, especially board members who hadn't participated in the process, they got scared of making change because it was the thing that where board members interacted with community partners a lot and they were scared of the change. And I see my former colleague, Assembly Member Mark Stone here, he and I tried to convince the board that we should go with that change. We were unsuccessful. But that didn't stop or slow you down. It came back in another form, maybe even more effective than the first that we now call core. And it has been a great imagination of how we spend our dollars to look upstream at issues to ensure that we're making targeted investments that will actually make a difference, that we have metrics to measure that success so we can explain how we spent that money. And you've done it by bringing people along, by addressing their concerns straightforwardly. And it's become a model of how you do this work. And I had the great pleasure of seeing you present this at a National Association of Counties Conference so other communities could learn how to do this. So that would be enough. But the other thing which I'm just totally blown away by is you've run this incredible department and it's a department as a deep bench and has lots of ways in which it studies what it does. But in a partnership with the Museum of Art and History, you've led two incredible, powerful exhibitions about critical issues, foster youth and seniors. And you've done that in collaboration with the community. And it has served as a testament to what these issues are and it is influenced the way people think about issues in those communities. And I had the pleasure of serving on one of those groups with you and so I got to see it in action. But when I go into an exhibit and I see people tearing up because of the powerful message that's there and take a card about what it is they could do to make a difference, that's a whole other level of the work. It's maybe one of the ways in which we see what it is you get a chance to do all the time. I'm honored to have had the chance to work with you. I consider it a great benefit for myself. I know the county will miss you because there's nothing left undone when you work on issues. And I just appreciate your friendship who you're always there and have answered every single question thoughtfully. And sometimes you call me up to ask me about the questions I haven't thought about yet. So I appreciate that. Thank you for your work. It's really incredible. And I look forward to whatever your next chapter is. Thank you. I could reiterate all of that and more and I will say a few more things but I'm the rookie on this board and so to speak but when you came here and implemented the programs for a very complicated human services department that you made understandable for the community at large it is really remarkable of what you have done. And I as a member of as on the executive committee of the California State Association of Counties I'll mention one program that is statewide the in-home support services. We as the county are a leader in that effort and we were before she maintained it and even put it up a notch for people to know how we implement these services to people who really need them in our community. You've improved the lives of so many residents because of your leadership and the of your staff too who just bought into everything you did and understandably so. And I think that there's three words that really describe you effective, efficient and transparent and transparent in particular of our core programs and services for community programs the breadth of which really covers thousands of people of Santa Cruz County that they have more convenient lives. There's some struggles out there still but they have more convenient lives because of your leadership and the department that you have led to make such a profound impact on so many lives. It has been just a tremendous privilege for me to work with you and for you to tell me what to do. So I appreciate that and how it's gonna get done. And I believed you and you carried it out and in more ways than one. So Ellen, you're a special person and I thank you for everything that you have done for this county and the people in it. Thank you. I agree with everything that's been said. And I wanna wish you all the best in your retirement and you have any plans with the immediate plans would be? That's the beauty of it. I don't have any idea what I'm gonna do. Well, you might be like my sister. You might be busier in retirement than she was when she was working. Okay, thank you. Thank you. So I just wanna take a moment and thank you because you accomplished the impossible which was to get me to care about process. You're a big process person. I'm a big ideas and just get to the outcome and you come in and I'm like here's what we wanna do and you walk me through a detailed, thoughtful, strategic process that ends up with better outcomes for everyone in the community. And in this time I've been here in five years, right? You've redesigned the community funding program not just for us but for our partner cities to make sure that every dollar we're spending is getting a better impact in the community. We've gotten more people signed up for CalFresh for the food, the fresh food they're entitled to which means that families and students and individuals in the community are not hungry. You've figured out a funding stream that I still don't understand for the streets team that gives people the dignity of work, improves the community and puts people back on a path towards careers. And then the childcare facility fee will have dividends for years to come as working families have more access to quality childcare here in our community. And then lastly but never least, Thrive by Three program where we've taken what was a small amount of money and leveraged it into a really a statewide or national model for how we support moms and babies in those first couple of years of life in a way that changes both their trajectory but also the whole community. It's an investment in equity and improving lives and it couldn't have been done without your brilliance and without your commitment to process and your tireless energy and it will have impacts long after all of us are gone because you set up a framework and a structure that few of us could envision so that we could have that impact. I have a official proclamation here from the Board of Supervisors signed by all five of us. It actually was gonna require I think a vote for us to adopt it. But there's many warehouses about your impact. But I should note that during your retirement in addition to spending time with your family, walking on West Cliff, plans to take up both the cello and the banjo and further your fitness level but also dedicate ample time toward chasing squirrels on the Emeline campus. Oh my God. We look forward to seeing you. I'm sure there's gonna be a million ways you're involved but also chasing those squirrels around Emeline. Thank you. I think that would be great. Now it's an opportunity for members of the public who want to comment on this item to please come forward. We were just talking about how I'm an ugly crier. My sister told me I was an ugly crier, so. I gotta get through that. So good morning chair, members of the board. I'm Emily Balli, deputy director of the human services department. And I'm honored to be here this morning to recognize our director and friend, Ellen Timberlake and congratulate her on her upcoming retirement. I never thought I would be up here talking about Ellen's retirement because of her intense passion for this work and it's hard to picture HSD without her. I also never thought this would be happening going into budget season. Ellen's favorite time of the year. As we all know, whether it's developing a system to serve young children and their families through Thrive by Three, working with partners to support immigrants in our community or partnering with the law to generate awareness and engagement of the experience of foster youth and senior isolation, Ellen is fiercely dedicated and committed to making a difference in our community for the entire community. She leads with the values of the department, excellent service, compassion, integrity, partnership and effective practice. She demonstrates these values in her decisions and actions daily. Ellen has always held that how we do our work is as important as what we do. And just as supervisor Coonerty mentioned, processes should be intentional, clear and inclusive. Relationships matter and we should always strive for the mint on the pillow experience for our community, staff and partners. Ellen and I have worked together for many years and I had the privilege to serve as her deputy for the last two years. Together we've strategized on budgets, programs and presentations. We've managed to track down Ellen's missing phone, keys, umbrella and this morning her cup of tea. We've had many Sunday conversations about a certain TV show that will remain nameless and had one-on-one meetings that ended with our favorite phrase, never a dull moment. Ellen, I wanna personally thank you for your support in making these past two years some of the most memorable of my career. I will never forget you and you've meant a lot to me. On behalf of the department, I want to thank you for your work on behalf of thousands of county residents and inspiring staff to make a difference each and every day. I recently came across a quote that read, retirement is a blank sheet of paper. It's a chance to redesign your life into something new and different. We will miss you and wish you all the best in your new redesigned life. And just as you committed to your predecessor to continue the legacy of her work, I make that same commitment to you. Good morning, County Supervisors. Chair Cunardy, it is really a pleasure to be here. I'd like to speak with you both as a county superintendent of schools and also as a co-chair for Salud Palagente. Ellen has been steadfast and generous mentor and partner for Salud Palagente. And she has helped Salud grow so much in the last seven years. She's been there at every turn providing strategies, tool, and guidance. She's been a friend and trusted collaborator for Salud and we could always count on Ellen to help us move an ambitious idea into implementation. Her support and expertise have allowed Salud to make employee development and training a priority and have helped Salud become stronger and more effective service provider in our community. She leads with brilliance, with commitment, expertise, and a focus on equity. She's a systems thinker, a transformative leader who has left a deep imprint on so many efforts across the county touching thousands of lives. Ellen's strategic and collaborative approach in everything that she's undertaken has been an inspiration that we all will strive to carry on. Ellen, you are the data and logic model nerd I inspire to be. With deep appreciation on behalf of Salud Palagente and the County Office of Education, I'd like to thank Ellen Timberlake for being there for us, for Santa Cruz County, for its residents. I wish her the best as she embarks on this new chapter in her life. Thank you. My name is Stacy Garcia and I'm here from the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History to thank Ellen for her visionary, bold, innovative partnership that we've had over the past couple of years. Ellen was one of our instrumental partners in creating the Lost Childhoods exhibit about foster youth and the struggle safe face and creating the exhibition called We're Still Here About Seniors Experiencing Social Isolation. And I will tell you that neither of these projects would have happened without her leadership and support. These projects were made possible because of Ellen's leadership and her trust and her enthusiasm and her openness to a new creative partnership. She is the kind of leader that believes in creative collaboration and opening up new ways of addressing seemingly intractable issues in our community. She took a bold chance with us, collaborating with an art museum about an issue that we face in our community. But she firmly believed that art could open up new ways of building empathy, understanding and action across our community. She also is a leader that knows that the people directly affected by issues in our community deserve to have their story hard and they deserve to have a seat at the table and shaping the solutions that we face. She is largely to credit for the success of these two projects and the impact they've had across our community. And I'm happy to share that she has also been an instrumental part in traveling this exhibition. And in 2020 and 2021, this project will travel to San Francisco, Marin, and Sonoma counties because of her partnership and her leadership. I am tremendously thankful for your creative and innovative partnership. And I want to just personally thank you too for being such a mentor to me and my life and my growth and my leadership. Thank you. I'm gonna turn and look this way. Is that okay? I'm Marielena de la Garza and I have the honor to work at the Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County and I've been the executive director there for six years. And the first time I met Ellen, it was at my reception in South County when the county community was welcoming me into my new position. And I don't know if you remember, we were at the Appleton Grill and there's about 56 people there. And it was the first time we met. And I knew that day that we were gonna move mountains together and I really appreciate who you are and what you've brought to this community, Ellen. I wanna say on behalf of the CAB Board, our leadership team and our staff that we thank you for your service. I appreciate your advocacy. No, I'm gonna need to clean this. Excuse me. You're too far. I'm gonna move. I appreciate your advocacy efforts for the community members who are most vulnerable. Your values of dignity, respect, and equity show every day and in every response to the community that we serve. You stand by your word, tienes palabra and you hold a vision for a thriving Santa Cruz County. You've taught us to be better, Ellen. You've showed us how to be better. For example, when you say that you want our immigrant community to be supported and to feel safe. You reach out to us. You reach out to angry partners and you help share your brilliance and creativity to help guide our work and think about ways how we can ensure that our systems are responsive. You care about people who are invisible in this community. Your brilliance has helped to think creatively on problem solving and reinforcing pathways for service delivery. Your accessibility to local leaders. You're a phone call away. You're a text away. You're an email away. You are available to answer questions and to help us think outside of the box. You are inclusive and you reinforce what true partnership is. I wanna thank you, Ellen. And I wanna thank Ellen's family because without the support of her family, she can't do this work. There you are. I see you now. I wanna thank you for your boldness, your courage, your dedication, your support, your mentorship, your friendship. You have made Cab better and stronger. You have helped me to be better. And you make our county a better place. Thanks, Ellen. Good morning, supervisors. It's an honor to be here and to address you. I'm here for two reasons. The first is to approve the Zach friend that I do own a suit. So I'm right here. And the second is to come and honor Ellen. Ellen, on behalf of the people, the good people of Watsonville, the city council, we wanted to thank you for everything you've done, wish you nothing but the best in your retirement. And yesterday I spent the entire day asking about you. And I wanted to make sure that I represented the community's feelings towards you in the most accurate way possible. And there are three things that stood out that everyone said about you. One is how powerful a convener you are. And they're gonna miss that about you. How you were able to bring so many people together to work together for the greater good. So we wanted to thank you for that. The second one is my favorite. But they called you, they know you as the champion of the underserved in our community. And I just can't thank you enough for being our champion. And third, that you're just the most amazing ally for the city of Watsonville. And echoing what a supervisor friend said about the thousands of people that you have impacted and the number of people that may never know about your impact, I wanted to come and tell you that I wanna represent all those people and I wanna tell you that I am one of those people that you have impacted. And you are one of those people that has allowed me or is allowing me to achieve my potential. And for that, I can never repay you. The community of Watsonville is indebted to you. And thank you. So Ellen, I think everybody in this room will join me in saying that you are probably the most intense leader we have ever worked with. Some other words that describe you in my experience working with you are that you are focused, you are strategic, dedicated, persistent, disciplined, brilliant and fierce. I think the thing that distinguishes you as a leader is especially that you are committed to the public good. And whether it's a population or a client or a family, they are at the focus of your work. That is who you are serving. And all the other work that you do to architect, as an architect of systems, puts them in the middle, which is really special and important these days. You're also, I think you represent a paradox because you are very disciplined and focused and you have this razor sharp mind. But underneath it all, you are incredibly warm and caring and kind. And we need more leaders like that in our community. I'm gonna miss working with you on Thrive by Three. I am indebted to you for working with the Board of Supervisors and First Five to create this whole framework and redesign for a delivery system that makes sense for pregnant moms and babies and toddlers. We're just getting started, but because of you we have this incredible framework to work from. And I won't ever forget you. We'll be calling you for guidance and support. And thank you for being a friend to me, a friend to my organization, to our patients, to the community and to all your fellow partners and leaders. We'll miss you and we will never forget you. For those who don't know, my name is Mark Stone and I had a chance to work with you while you're here. And my first thought is, where do you think you're going? Because there are, you have the unique position of working for an agency that I think we all would hope has no need at some point in the future when people are not hungry anymore, when seniors are no longer isolated, when kids are not being removed from their homes, then we'll have a stronger community and really a stronger society. But until then, there's a lot of work to be done. And until we get rid of or solve adverse childhood experiences, which is really at the core of so much of what your agency has needed to work on, then your work is still necessary and I know you will continue to do that. On a personal note, having watched you work here and on some very difficult issues, the way that you can bring people together, make them not be defensive, make them be cooperative and willing to look for a broader solution is really truly remarkable. And I know how strong you are and how dedicated you are, but you also have that quiet, competent voice. And I can always hear in my head when talking to you about various issues, you would say, well, you could do that, which generally means that's a really bad idea and you better shut up and listen to what I have to say, which you would never say, you would never vocalize. But I think most of us have learned to pick up on that cue from you and to sit and listen on how we ought to do better for those. You are the voice and have brought that quiet voice for those who have no voice in our communities and that has always been so important. You are there for those who need all of us the most and have guided policy makers for years on how best to do our jobs. I couldn't do what I do in Sacramento without having learned from you. So I have brought you a little piece of paper and it can't go anywhere near to express my gratitude and our community's gratitude to you, to all you have done, to all you mean to us. So I just wanna say congratulations to you on your retirement. I know we'll be working together on many other things in the future, but in the meantime, congratulations. Enjoy yourself a little bit, but then we expect you back at work. Good morning board. My name is Caitlin Brun and I'm here as a community member who like many of you has been deeply touched by Ellen's service in our community. Those who know Ellen professionally have and will undoubtedly attest to her strategic acumen, brilliant mind, compelling vision, and capacity to bring people along and get important and necessary things done. All of these qualities make her an extraordinary leader and a tremendous asset to our community. We've been incredibly blessed to experience the real positive changes wrought by Ellen's extraordinary talent from revisioning and reforming the way the county invests in community programs, to mounting a proactive and thoughtful response to changes in public charge. She has exemplified principled action in support of those too often who suffer disproportionate injustice and constrained opportunities to thrive. What I equally admire about Ellen though is the heart that she brings to anything she does, her presence, her seriousness of attention and intention, her love of neighbor, her willingness to extend herself again and again out of love and care. My sincere hope is that she will direct the immense energy of love she has brought to public service, to her own smaller circle of being, to herself, her loved ones, the land and building she calls home, because all of us know that the magnitude of contribution Ellen has made has necessitated some compromises. Maybe in these coming months, she can begin to revision and reform her very own sense of well-being. And I wanna dedicate this really brief poem to you, Ellen. It's called Clearing by Martha Pustlewaite. Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose. Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life and wait there patiently until the song that is your life falls into your own cupped hands and you recognize and greet it. Only then will you know how to give yourself to this world so worthy of rescue. Thank you for everything, Ellen. Morning, Honorable Board of Supervisors. Mimi Hall, Health Services Agency Director. I haven't had the pleasure of knowing Ellen as long as so many of you, but Caitlyn's final words really, really ring true. Ellen has given herself to this community and given herself to this world. And she's one of the few women that I've personally met who is the true definition of a powerful woman. And a few decades ago, I would have defined that in a different way, but coming here and doing the work that we do, she calls us the H's. And she has two really important H's in that she leads with humility and she sees the humanity in every single one of us, be it the people that we serve, our partners, our detractors. And she has made it so easy for me to be successful in my job because she has served this community so well all of these years. There's nothing I can say that hasn't already been said, but I just wanna acknowledge the sacrifices that you've made in over the last few decades because I understand what they are. And I wanna deeply appreciate your support, your mentorship, your friendship. And not long ago, I had some guilt over working so much. I'm a mother of three and I bought one of my daughters a book called A Hundred Women Who Changed the World. And the book of that title is wrong. It's 101 Women. I look forward to telling my daughters more and more about how you've changed the world as my time here goes on, Ellen, and just thank you for everything that you've done. Good morning again. My name is Maria Calenas. I'm the executive director of Santa Cruz Community Adventures. If I look too closely, I'll start crying because I look tough on the outside, but really. So adventures or whole mission was, and it is to really try to catalyze to create communities where everybody can thrive. And we try to imagine what is possible. Not just what's there, but what can we create? Leaning on all our strengths. In order for us to do that, we need partners who are willing to take a risk and dream with us. And one of the biggest dreams we had, and I started with a conversation with Ryan, was really, oh, Supervisor Connery, sorry. Was really about how can we ensure that the future generations in Santa Cruz can make it. And we have been working with the county on providing financial capability education for people re-entering the workforce or looking to start their own job. But it was really through conversations that brought us together that I found somebody across the table, along with others who were willing to risk it. Not for labels, not for glory, not for a feather on their cap, but for kids and for the future of this county. And I have a lot to learn. And in that first meeting, I realized I had to learn from you. See, it doesn't work. I just wanna say thank you for believing enough and willing to stand up for the common good. Because that's rare sometimes when power is attached to a position but you brought the heart. So thank you and I hope you don't take too much time off. Guess we need you, thank you, Ellen. Nicole Young, I wear many different hats and many of those hats somehow involve Ellen. And I actually wasn't planning to get up to speak again today, but just after hearing so many other wonderful stories and just thinking about the many years that I've known you and worked with you, it's like I can't let this opportunity pass. And I don't know if you remember this. I mean, we've known each other a long time, probably fairly early on in both of our careers, while I was still at Defensa de Mojarris and you were, I think, maybe an analyst. And I just did, I remember this experience that was, I think, fairly early on in meeting you, where we were at a child abuse prevention conference. I was sitting across the table from you listening to you. We were just chatting, talking. You were talking about prevention and opportunities and ideas and vision. I just remember thinking, what is she talking about? Like the brilliance and the vision and the kinds of ideas you had were like your mind was operating on a whole other plane. And I remember just being in awe of that. And as our career paths have crisscrossed over the years, I've learned to always take copious, frantic notes when you're talking. So that I can remember and capture the brilliance, take my time to sort it through and mull it over and make sense of it. Because I find your way of thinking, your vision, your never-ending optimism and the trust that you have, both in me as a professional and everyone that you work with, so inspiring and energizing. And the other thing that occurred to me as I was sitting here is I thought about all the projects that I work on that are the most complex and challenging at times, triple P and core and to some extent, thrive by three. And I think what did those all have in common? Somehow they originated with you and your thoughts and your, again, your vision. But it's been so exciting and a privilege really to work alongside you to help bring those ideas to fruition. So thank you. I'd like to call on our County Council and our CIO as well. Thank you, Chair Coonerty. When I first met you, Ellen, I found you extremely intellectually intimidating. I knew I couldn't match what's with you, so I needed a plan. And my plan was to make you laugh. It took a year. Now we are fast friends. And I hope you have really been able to hear all these comments today because they are all true. And I am very honored to share this day with you. I first met Ellen more than 25 years ago when I first became city manager of Watsonville. And many people don't realize that more than half of the people served by the Human Services Department reside in Watsonville. And Ellen always had such a special care and concern for the people of Watsonville. And at a time when we often didn't feel that from the rest of the County, we always felt that with you. We always felt that special care and concern for our community. And that was such an important legacy for me as city manager. And I wanna thank you for those years when you care so much for our community. And now as CIO, my very first decision was to appoint you as department head. That was also, in addition to being the first decision I made, as CIO it was also the easiest and the most popular decision. It's all been downhill since then. But thank you for making one good decision, making me have one good decision. It's been such a pleasure working with you. You are going to be greatly missed. But at the same time, I know that you'll always be a friend and someone we can call on. And thank you for your ears as a public servant. When I think of the word public servant and how that has often been a word that's been unpopular. But yet I think of public servant when I think of you, thank you. Well, first I just wanna say thank you to everyone in the room, actually. And thank you for all of your kind remarks. You know, every day for the last 25 years I have been blessed to work in a community that I cherish with colleagues that I respect and a job that I really love. And it really just doesn't get better than that. And as I reflect on my career, I've been thinking about the question, how did I happen to get so lucky? One answer to that question I found in a New York Times article I read a couple weeks ago and it talked about values alignment with your employer as one of the keys to success. And you know, for me, working for Santa Cruz County for over 25 years, I get to check that box off big time. And that sense of aligning values, it really begins with each and every one of you on the board and all of those that came before you. It's expressed through your policies. It's reinforced by your advocacy for those that we serve. You make us wanna get better. And from the bottom of my heart, I wanna thank each and every one of you. I have so deeply appreciated your support of our department. I appreciate your staff. And I'm gonna miss working with you, but the county owes you a lot of gratitude, so thank you. Of course, the synergy of that values alignment also extends to our state and federal legislators. And I'd like to recognize assembly member Stone and Rivas and Senator Monning. And I wanna say a special thank you to you, Mark. Your leadership at the state level, we might be small, but the impact that you have made along with your colleagues and the difference that you've made in children's lives has been enormous. And I will always value that partnership and always appreciate your leadership. Another one of the answers to that question for me lies in this notion that we play as a high premium on partnership in this county. And it starts with the CAO's office. Carlos, working for you for the last three years has been one of the highlights of my career. You came into this role. You have changed this county so quickly in a way for the good. You've implemented a strategic plan, performance initiatives, but you've made investments in the county and in our workforce. And I know I speak on behalf of the entire workforce to tell you how grateful we are. I'd also like to acknowledge your team. I so appreciate the powerful nature of your team. Nicole, Alisa, Melody, Christina, Jason, Rainey and a special shout out also to Andy and his team, but also to David Brown, who was a HSD colleague and our analyst. I have to acknowledge our fellow county departments. We don't do what we do without them. A special shout out to Fernando and his team at the probation department. They are leaders and innovators at the state and the national level. Kathy Malloy, Julie Conway, I wanna thank you for your leadership in the continuum of care, also in bringing affordable housing to the community. Ajita, there you are. With over 550 employees in our department, you're in our life every day in a really positive way from recruitment to training and development to employee relations. You're there every step of the way and so appreciate you and your team. I also wanna express my appreciation to our labor partners. We are blessed in this county to have SEIU and mid management constantly striving to improve working conditions and supports for our staff. So I wanna thank you. Mimi, you've been here for two and a half years and the difference that you've made in this county and with this department is extraordinary. Together with your team, the relationship between our departments has never been as strong. And I just wanna thank you personally. I have never met someone with as big of a brain and as even bigger heart than you have and I will forever cherish our partnership and our friendship. Dana, I'm gonna have to get to you in the next item. And the final group of folks that I wanna thank for partnering are our nonprofits, our commissions, our education partners, our health partners, our museum, anybody and everybody that I haven't named, the outcomes that you deliver day in and day out to improve the quality of life for everyone here in this community is just tremendous. I can't remember, I can't actually, which has already taken a long enough time. I can't thank each of you individually, but please accept my thanks for our partnership. And final key to a successful career and why I've been so lucky is pretty simple. I work in a place that feels like home. It's the people at the Human Services Department that has kept me energized and passionate about this work for years. They work hard. They inspire me. They energize me. They have integrity, compassion and creativity. We have been through a lot over the years. We've weathered good times. We've weathered bad times, celebrated bursts, watched kids grow up, parents age. Sometimes we've had to mourn the loss of our colleagues. And a nutshell, it's them that have really made my career. And I'd like to acknowledge the members of my team who are here today and thank you for your partnership, your support. I know that together with you and our new director, Randy Morris, who will be coming in February that the department's in good hands. Emily, what was that you said? Don't cry well or an ugly crier. Well, I've been doing that all morning, but I have to say a special thanks to you for what you've done for this community, for our department. And for two years I've had the great fortune to have you as my partner. You've been my rock, my weekend warrior. And you're respected in the community. You're respected in the department. I just can't thank you enough. And before I leave, I have to thank my family and friends. I've been blessed with support from day one. I had parents who sacrificed. They didn't go to college, but they made sure that we did. They taught me I could be anyone I wanted to be and they encouraged me to chase my dreams even if it meant going across the country. My dad continues to be my rock. He provides stead, best love and guidance. My sons, Kita and Miles, thank you for your support and your patience when I wasn't there a lot of times on the weekend. And I'm so excited to watch your lives unfold. And my final thanks, my final thanks is to my wife, Angelica, she by far is the greatest gift that I've ever gotten from this department. I met her writing a grant to Packard 22 years ago. Oh, she inspired me. We got the grant. And ever since that moment, your love, your support and your sacrifice at times has been unconditional. I'm in awe of how you live your life and I'm so excited about our new chapter together. Thank you all so much. Oh yes, we need a whole box. I move approval of the resolution. All right, we got a motion by Leopold, a second by friend, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. That passes unanimously. Let me deliver this very quickly. And then by the way, I should note that one of the great benefits of these two items that are happening today is both these extraordinary women are happening to be my constituents. And so now to have them available for all the county commissions is gonna be really, really wonderful. So our next item is a presentation honoring our county council, Dana McCray, on her retirement. This really is an extraordinary day to honor two people who have committed their lives to public service in the most fundamental ways. And I'm gonna turn now to my colleagues and ask if they would like to have something to say. So, it's a pleasure to have them. Yeah, I would like to thank you for all the advice you've given. You were always fair. And sometimes, you know, I come to you with problems with the trying to figure out what was legal or not legal and everything like that. And I really appreciate what you've done and you've always been available. And I just appreciate everything you've done for me in the last nine years. So thank you very much. Okay. Thank you. I could spend the rest of this meeting. And it's gonna be a long one anyway. Yeah. Describing all the ways in which Dana's advice over the past seven years has helped my office respond to challenges brought before us. And I just want to point out a few examples. One of the more recent ones, but it was a work in progress for about five years. But the first thing that comes to mind was Monterey Bay Community Power, which is now California's largest community choice agency with 34 counties and cities. I mean, to get people from 32 governing agencies to agree that this is the right format legally that we should follow is quite an accomplishment. I don't know who else could have done that. But it's very much appreciated. And I know that the council for that agency is going to be presenting you with something as well today. Also, more recently though, the change in landscape of PG&E, you've been an enormous resource for all of us in navigating this vegetation management, public safety power shutoffs, other aspects. Very intense program that came upon us without anybody's foresight or expectations. And you've just handled it as well as we could do, I think. And I think before my time, we are seeing the impacts today of your work on preparing the county for the end of redevelopment. Your advice on that helped our county be in a position to hold onto assets that have been very, very productive for many, many people throughout this county, throughout. Lastly and above all, it's your legacy of your manner, what you do. You build relationships built on trust, integrity and honesty throughout. And what more could you ask for somebody who's in the legal profession? You make everyone you talk to feel like you, you have their best interests in mind. You, it's kind of like you're at the 30,000 level and you can just zero in on what's down there on ground level in no time at all and say, this is important to me and this is important to you, this is important to the people of Santa Cruz County. You've done that time and time again. And I think we are a very good board, this board has been a very good board of supervisors throughout your tenure. And it's all because, or mainly because of the advice that you give us. If without your advice, it just wouldn't happen. And the other thing is through all this legalese and all, you make it fun too. I mean, it's not unusual for me to go into the office and talk about a serious subject and have a laugh or two in between and then come to the decision and say this is where the position we should take. You're just a fantastic person. One of the few that I really respect, highly as highly as I do of anyone else that I've ever been associated with in government. So thank you. Subhaser Leopold. It's hard to know where to begin in talking about the impact that Dana McCray has had on my career as a county supervisor. Dana has provided great legal expertise, but has always not only looked out after the best interest of the county, but looked out after the best interest of the individual, whether it be me personally, whether it be my colleagues, or whether it be the community. Because your thoughtfulness is greater than just the what's in the legal book and what's gonna be in that brief. It's how is this gonna strengthen our community? How will it make county government work better? How can this set precedent so we don't run into this problem again? And I've just been constantly amazed at the creative ways that you have used the legal system to support people here in Santa Cruz. And your efforts go beyond the normal work of an attorney. And my colleague just mentioned the closure of redevelopment. I obviously cared a lot about that as the agency was primarily in my district. And we chose an outlier strategy and there was a lot of building the cars that we drove down the road. There was a moment at the end when we were racing the clock to get work under contract so the state couldn't take the money. And we had done a lot of work to get the community foundation to take on some work. And at the very last minute, they weren't ready to do that. But it was millions of dollars. And we didn't know what we were gonna do and Dana had just had a construction firm, construction management firm in her office about a different project for the county. And she said, I think they can do it. And she tracked them down in the parking lot before they got in their car, brought them back upstairs and signed an agreement under the same conditions we would have had for the community foundation. And last year, we got to see the last of those projects built over by the harbor that wouldn't have happened if we hadn't had that creativity and just doggedness to get it done. I'm also a big fan of your family, a Soquel pioneer family. And I have the great pleasure of getting to sit with your mother at least once a year at the annual pioneers picnic. And there was a picnic a couple years back where as everybody's going around to talk about their connection to Soquel, Dick Nutter, who was head of the pioneers of the time, said, Supervisor Leopold, we really need your help with the cemetery. You know, it's fallen in disrepair, we need your help, you gotta do something. And there in front of the 100 people, I of course I said, yeah, I'll do something about it. But I didn't know exactly what I would do. And as I sat down, your mother, Donald Dean, said to me, don't worry, I'll ask Dana to help. And the next on Monday, that was I think on Saturday, on Monday I came up in the elevator and as the doors open, there was Dana. And I said, I saw your mother over the weekend and she goes, she's already called. And through your creativity, we found an excellent way to put that cemetery in the hands of an organization that has made it better functioning. And I won't bore everybody with the details, although it is a very exciting story, about what you did to creatively think our way out of that conundrum. And that is, those are just marks, because in your work, you've taken on powerful interests, right? You've assembled this great staff, but you've taken on mobile home park owners, the oil companies, the federal government, the state government, sometimes local government. You've gone after rogue businesses. You've protected us against unreasonable claims and you've taken care of people. You've helped us write briefs that have protected immigrants that have protected our funding from the federal government, that have protected the LGBT community. It's an amazing body of work and I know you respect this institution, you respect your predecessors, but it's hard to imagine someone who has had as much impact on the county through the work as you have. So I will miss the working with you and the great legal mind. I will miss the friendship that you have always shown me and I know that you're already on boards that I'll get a chance to work with you in whatever that next chapter of your life is. So I don't think this is riding off into the sunset as much as you'd like to do that, but I wish you congratulations and great success in the next chapter. Well, the Latin for counselor comes from concilium which means to consult and it's a very interesting experience going into Dana's office to consult because there's nobody better at being exceptionally nice and listening to your entire idea before telling you, no. No way you'll be able to do that. And let me tell you something, I mean from a policymaking standpoint though you actually do need the ultimate check and balance of somebody who, to supervisor Leopold's point of having other interests in mind recognizing not just where the board is but where the community is not just where the legal limits are but this is somebody who shares our value set but can truly in the word council EL actually advise the board in an absolutely ethical and appropriate way and you may recognize that a lot of counties run into a lot of trouble. One of the things that people don't think about is how much this county isn't in any kind of issue and there's one person at the head of that and that's Dana McCray ensuring that we don't get into any kind of trouble but beyond that, if you haven't worked with her there's absolutely no fear in her body. She doesn't know what fear is. If the board or the community needs an advocate and Dana's a firm believer in the law as a tool to protect this community to protect the disadvantage and to fight for what's right she doesn't care how large of a hill that we would have to climb on the legal side. She will front and center put it out in the most justice based and ethical way of really anybody I've ever met in the legal profession but a legacy standpoint isn't just the work she's done it's the culture she's created in her office. I mean, what a beautiful culture of empowerment of non micro management of young attorneys that will constantly say, well, Dana's just letting me do that. I mean, she lets people go out on their own take a risk if they fail she takes the responsibility for it. I have not seen a culture like that in most departments in government but definitely not in a legal world where by definition people tend to be a little bit more conservative in their approach. Dana empowers these attorneys makes them better and as a result, even if they don't stay here they end up impacting law in a more positive way across the state and country. So, I mean, it was an easy hire to replace you because it was somebody that you helped empower to become like you. I mean, the person who's your number two is somebody who's gonna carry on that same culture. You can't speak enough for that level of faith that you have, the amount of self-confidence you have in yourself to allow others to be empowered. It's a really, it's something that all managers should ascribe to be somebody who has this level of confidence and this level of culture but Dana, on a personal standpoint and in all seriousness, you've made me a better supervisor and a better representative for my district. There's no question about it. I come in with a policy idea and my mind kind of made up and I leave there recognizing that I didn't have all the facts and I actually think more critically as a result of the information you present. There's nothing more that an elected official can get than advice that really lets them see a broader picture and you provide a completely unbiased, completely unvarnished, completely honest and completely ethical, broader picture for all five of us in every department in this county. And I think some of the ways that we've changed the state as Ellen Timberlake talked about from a policy perspective and Assembly Member Stone has talked about comes because we had a legal framework and a faith to grow in that legal framework that you provided that I don't know that any other attorney in this county would have been able to do. So I'll personally miss that element about it and I'll personally just miss you being around. So congratulations on your retirement. Yeah, you've made the fights fun, right? Whether it's big oil or drug companies or CMEX or the federal government, we're able, even though we're a smaller county, able to take it on big issues that not only impact our residents but people all around the country and around the world because you've had smart strategic ways to think about how we sort of punch above our weight. But in the punching, the thing I've been struck by is just how ethical and thoughtful you are about how you approach the law and even though I'm not a real lawyer like you, I did go to law school and I teach law school law and we're watching at the federal level today in corporations, the law has essentially been hijacked by people who use it to justify whatever means they want to get to and any of the underlying principles and values that are the foundation of our legal system have essentially been tossed aside. And in every conversation we've ever had about any legal issue, you've started with the values and ethics and then we went from there and it's tragic that it's become more rare in my experience but it's inspiring to see that it continues and it's inspiring, as Zach said, that you've spread it across a department of lawyers so that everybody starts with that premise and so I'm grateful for everything you've done for not only our county, not only for the country and the world where we run those decisions but for reminding us all of what the law is meant to be in our society and our world. So thank you very much. Now's an opportunity for members of the public to come speak on this item. We have a local business owner who happens to be here today. I mean, McRae Dana is my little sister. These are her other two sisters, my siblings Breonna and Kedda. I just realized what she's been moonlighting here at the county doing for the city and state and government. She's been doing for our family for many, many years which and also her community and it's funny, I've been thinking here that how many times, I mean, it's great to have a lawyer in the family, right? If you're not the lawyer. I thought about how many times I've called her and she's always taken my call and I've called her on behalf of other people and she's taken my call and I'm thinking, well, God, she's probably, and I'm realizing she's taken calls from a lot of other people, friends, family members over all these years. You know, why she was helping run this institution. She was also taking care of my father who lived at her home for, I don't know, 12, 14 years and now she's taking care of our mother who's who she's taken in and she's taking just, I mean, excellent care. I can't thank you enough for how you take care of our mother. On a personal note, we had a very threatening letter came to my partners and I a couple of weeks ago because it seems that one of our desserts had been copyrighted and we got a very threatening letter from, I believe, somebody saying that the hula pie, we got a cease and desist letter. We could no longer call it hula pie and my partner said, Ian, can you talk to your sister? And I, man, I got on the phone right away in Dana Center, the notice, the cease and desist letter and we came up with a very amicable solution. It is now called ohana pie, which means family and I think that something has to, that's, I don't know, maybe that's family is, I don't know, the lesson here. Anyway, I appreciate you if, I guess I knew when she took off for Nepal to spend two years in the Peace Corps, we all knew she was gonna do good things, but congratulations. Okay, get this ready. Oops. All right, my name's Gail Pellerin and I'm the county clerk. First of all, I want to apologize for all the grief I've caused you over the years. You have amazing legal advice, always sound, thorough, professional. I followed it most of the time. Sometimes I didn't and sometimes I forgot to ask, which is why I have a big ADF on my whiteboard in my office, which means ask Dana first. I learned that lesson the whole hard way. You're always so calm, professional, organized, thorough. Your decisions are not just from your heart but from your incredible mind. No disrespect to all the men on the board, but it is so important to have a powerful woman sitting in your seat. And Jason, I love you and you will be great, but just the fact that we have a female county council who has been such an incredible role model for so many women, you really are a wonder woman and I adore you. You have a good, amazing colleague. I know that you are an incredible daughter, your daughter here today. You've just been a good role model for her and you're an amazing mother, sister, friend. I'm very excited to be your neighbor now and you can walk over and have tea anytime, fireball for me. And I look forward to dipping in the ocean with you on New Years Again. And if you're looking for something to do next year, March 3rd and November 3rd, I have a few projects you might want to get involved with and you've been there for me on my worst day and on my best. And you are loved and adored by so many. I think we need to start a Dana fan club and I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. I love you. For Dana, thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk a little bit today. My name is Robert Shaw. I'm the general council of Monterey Bay community power authority on behalf of our CEO, Tom Habashi, and myself and our organization. We wanted to present you with this proclamation that says wonderful things, some of which I'm gonna say now mostly more eloquently. As was alluded to earlier, our organization started as a passion of this community. It was fostered by the leadership of Supervisor McPherson and this board, but it was really implemented by the work of Santa Cruz County employees and you were a big part of that. You worked tirelessly in your stint as the general council for our organization, really giving us that structure to be successful through our JPA, our policies, our operating rules, our procedures, that's what allows us to be successful in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, in rolling out programs that switch people to new fuel sources. And I want to thank you for that. I think it's on that foundation that we've been able to grow and I want to thank you and I want to say that for those of us, Jason, you're in the room as well, that we'll be following in your footsteps and also for those of us that have worked with you and those unfortunate souls that have had to work against you, you've really set a very high bar for all of us to strive to accomplish and it's the unquestionable, brilliant legal mind, it's the unrepotrable ethics and integrity, it's the civility in which you do it, but I think what was mentioned earlier sticks out to me the most and that is the kindness. So you have a way of making people be genuinely heard, genuinely valued, even when you have to tell them that what they're proposing is absolutely ridiculous and won't go any further. I think what I want to close with is just thank you to your family. You've dedicated your life to public service and for me, that's such a wonderful thing. I can't think of something that's more rewarding, more impactful. Your impacts go beyond Monterey County, or I'm sorry, go beyond Santa Cruz County, go beyond the Monterey Bay region. It's now the central coast region, just in the small little piece of what I've been able to work with you on. And I think as other CCAs start to form the central value, they're gonna say, in the central valley, they're gonna say what was happening in Monterey Bay that worked so well and they're gonna look at the work that you did as a foundation to get there. I'm just incredibly honored to call you a colleague and as a friend, thank you very much for all of the work that you've done and I'll leave this here for you. Okay, back up here. I first met Dana in 1997. We were on a joint facilities project for Emeline and my first impression was two-fold, brilliant and a really, really good communicator. My early prediction, just a matter of time before you were the County Council. And what I couldn't have predicted at that time was how quickly you would ascend to that role and how important you would become for me personally. Here are just a couple of things that I've come to know about Dana over the last 22 years. Supervisor Friend, you captured this one really well. You know how to hire and you know how to inspire. And we see that in your team and I just really, just as you mentioned, Supervisor, I so appreciate the values that you place on making sure that you just don't hire smart people but that you really nurture and develop and keep people happy. She's calm under pressure even when her client isn't. She'll give you the advice that you need to hear not always what you wanna hear and case in point. She called me last night and she advised me to make sure that I might cry and so she advised me to make sure that I bring a cloth tissue. And so that was the advice, right? So I show up this morning with this. It worked well for me and this box and lo and behold, she shows up and gives me this. So she follows through with her advice. She's masterful at navigating complexity. Her questions and this is really important to me. Your questions are just as insightful as your answers. And Dana, the last thing I wanna do is just say a couple of things to you directly. I wanna thank you for your professional and personal support that you've given to me all these years. I wanna thank you for that wicked sense of humor. It did not take a year to make me laugh. I wanna thank you for our monthly lunch dates. I look forward to them all the time even when we forgot to pay. And that's a true story. No, you did. It was your turn. I wanna thank you for your integrity and your friendship and really lastly, I wanna thank you for helping me figure out this retirement thing. I couldn't have probably made this decision without you and I could not think of a better person to be going out with. I really look forward to the other side. I'll be your first member of the fan club and thank you for everything. Good morning. The fan club has already been formed. It exists and I want to tell you that it's true that Dana's sense of direction, her ability, her kindness, all of that is infallible when it comes to legal work and the legal advice and the direction that she's given the county. However, she's not infallible on directions when it comes to the horse trails. I have spent many an hour with Dana squinting at maps, trying to read the signposts on trails until our horses were so frustrated that they just took off where they wanted to go, which was home. But I am absolutely delighted that Dana's retiring because I looked forward to many, many more hours being lost on the trail. Okay, when I heard about this today, I thought, oh, this is really fun and I've done nothing but cry. Even for Ellen, I didn't even work with Ellen and I'm just like, I need to know her. I have met her briefly, so she is amazing. And wow, if anyone said, you know, back in the C4 meeting that Dana will be one of your closest friends, I just wouldn't even have known what to think. And I'm not gonna cry, but you know, hold on. Yeah, she, from the very first meeting, you opened my eyes, not that I wasn't already an open person, but to the beauty of this county that each and every one of you and all your staff and just everybody in this building that helps to make this county work and it reflects all the way down into my everyday life and that I've had that opportunity through you to meet all these wonderful people in the county. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was at a Christmas party with my neighbors and I let me introduce you to someone who works at the county. Oh my gosh, great, because I've made so many friends since bonding with Dana and your family and she's helped me through a couple of the hardest moments of my life. And when I think you said about no fear, I could call her crying and saying, what is going on? And she would have all the answers and just say, this is what you're gonna do. X, Y, Z, and I would follow. And thank you so much for opening your heart and your family and your friendship to me. You mean a lot to me and I love you so much. It's funny how my wife echoes my sentiment a lot, but luckily I have my own words. I just wanna say that back when we first met was at the C4 committee and I wasn't as accustomed to working with policy makers or lawyers or anything like that. And when I first sat in that room and you actually sat beside me and I was a little intimidated at first. But through that experience, I got to know you and through the process of advocating for the community on a most contentious and still ongoing issue. We got to know you and you showed me that the county has a lot of heart and it enabled me to interact on a more deeper level with all the folks that I needed to work with. And it showed me the human side to policymaking and it truly inspired me and it showed me that just like Josie said, it trickles down into the community, the heart that the county shows really empowers the citizen and it showed me how important our work is as citizens to participate and how that is truly the function of government. As a human being, you've been truly inspiring and I thank you for your service to this county and for showing us how to get it done. Thank you. Jasmine, your mom's in front of the camera this time and we all get to watch her squirm a little bit with all of this because this I know is not comfortable for you. Again, Mark Stone, former board member here and you've become such a friend over the years because of really who you are and how you operate. I think you are the most impactful and powerful person in this county that most people don't know. This room, absolutely. But because you want to be behind the scenes and give advice and help decisions be made in their best frame, that's how you've had the impact. You have never shied from a fight. You've never backed down from making sure that we as policymakers don't do dumb things even though that is what we always want to do. And I should, since you're losing Ellen and you're losing Dana, you're all in trouble here. And Jason, you have very large cowboy boots to fill here and moving forward. And the hallmark, I think of a good, and I've told you this and I've told actually a number of people this, that yours has been one of the best run law firms that I've ever had the pleasure of working with. And it's because of how you lead and how you inspire. You let your people do their jobs. You let your people rise to their levels where they can shine and can perform. And instead of saying no, as most lawyers are want to do, because that's the easiest thing is, oh no, you can't do that because of this, that and the other. You'll point out the challenges, but are always very clever at coming up with a way of making sure we can accomplish what it is we wanted to accomplish. Maybe not the way we thought we wanted to in the beginning, but that we could accomplish what we wanted to accomplish. That's a risk. And for an attorney, that's a risk that most don't seem to take. But you have modeled that for your attorneys and for others of figuring out how to make policy successful, how to make sure every one of us as a policymaker could do what we felt we needed to do, but in a way that was in the end protecting the county, protecting us from our own sort of folly and making sure that the people of Santa Cruz were best protected. So I just wanted to be able to bring to you a state resolution because I can, I can do these things. And as opulent as they are, don't worry, we just deficit this from what we would otherwise said to the county, so these are all well paid for. But just it's small recognition for what you've meant to me, what you mean to the board, what you mean to everyone in Santa Cruz County. And I just want to say thank you. Thank you for all of your help, for all of your advice, for being there, for being such a friend. There's nothing I can say that has it already been said. You've helped out this community probably more than they'll really ever know. Supervisor Friend put it perfectly in calling you a counselor. You've seen me through some really difficult times and counseled me. You also hired me and gave me a chance that I was about ready to pick up my bags and move back to LA. And I've been forever grateful for that. And I wouldn't be standing here if it weren't for you. So thank you. Okay, so I'm the employee other than Bo who's coming up here to talk about Dana. And thank you for hiring her even though a lot of you didn't hire her because you came on afterwards. But I want to tell you what's a little different from what everybody else has to say, which is brilliant, wonderful, ethical, all of those great ults. I've heard heart and that's about as close as I've heard about what it's like to work with Dana because one of the things is we talk about the backup that we get, we've got problems or I got a nut to chew or I got something I want to get done, can we do it? Or I'm in a stuck place and there's always somebody to talk to. So when you talk about making a place, a workplace that's a good place to work, those are good things. But what I have to tell you, there isn't one of my other bosses before that I could walk into the office and say, I need supervision, I'm having a problem. I got to tell you, we go to law school knowing that we're setting ourselves up for going out and fighting. We're kind of built to fight a lot. Some of us see it as being a bulldog, going out and being a bulldog. And some of us seeing is putting on the code of armor and going out and tilting at windmills. But I got to tell you, when you've done the tilting, sometimes you come back and you're really beat up. Sometimes you come back and you're trying to figure out how it is to make the county a better place, how it is, who's your client, how to keep the county out of trouble when you've got individual people that need to know what the rules are. And sometimes your own client is even fighting with you. There is not one person that I could ever go to until Dana and say, I need supervision. And Dana could say things like, oh, sounds like you're triggered. But it was somebody who would give me an ear and deal with the humanness of us as lawyers because we're not just pit bulls and we're not just people who put on a code of armor and go out and tilt for you. We're human beings and sometimes we come back beat up. And this is a person who would take care of us. So I really appreciate being given the opportunity to work with somebody who would do that. And I hope, Jason, that I'll be able to come in sometimes and say, I need supervision. And what that means is I'm beat up and always have somebody who's there to say, you can do this. I believe in you, you're doing a great job. Now go back out. My name is Miriam Stombler and Dana would be happy to know what brought by Claude Hankey. As a retired member of the County Council's office, I'm here to offer a bit of a bridge from Shannon to the other side. And we are wholeheartedly going to welcome you to post-County Council life. Ever since we locked eyes outside the bike enclosure in 2001 when I came to interview for the job, you've been such an important part of my life. And in addition to thanking you for all your service to the public, I want to thank you for your service to me personally as a boss, as a mentor, and as a friend, as Shannon said, you're there. You're there to support us as humans, to help us live up to the best of our potential and to make us smile and offer a cup of tea and a skosh. So I'll always be thankful for that. And as so many people have said, I don't know how you have enough hours in a day to answer all the calls that you get from all of us. So many times I've been confronted with either my own problem or a friend or a colleague, some thorny problem. And we might turn it over for quite a while before we end up where we should have started, which is, I don't know, let's ask Dana. So, and you'll take the call. So you're such a master of bringing like wisdom and compassion from the ridiculous to the sublime. Too often it's ridiculous, and yet you keep us on a path. So thank you so much for all you've done for the county and for being a part of my life. And welcome to the other side. Good morning, I'm Jason Heath. And for those who don't know me, I'm with the County Council's office and I've been there about 16 years. And for the last five, I've been Dana's chief assistant. And, you know, I know how hard it is truly for you to sit here and listen to all of this. I really, I understand it. And I hope that you can hear it. I really hope that you can hear what folks are saying. I can't repeat it all and I won't. And I can't summarize 16 years. You know, I look at Jasmine and her entering young adulthood and taking on the world. And I think back to when you and I were in mother's song together with my son, Miles, at the age of two and Jasmine at the age of two dancing around together. And the room starts to spin and all the years collide together. I'm holding two opposing thoughts in my mind. One is that I'm so happy for you that after giving so much to so many for so long in this building that you're now able to start a new chapter and embark on new adventures that are gonna be filled with new achievements and new experiences. That's something to be very happy about. And at the same time, I'm struggling very much with watching the most fundamental relationship I've had in my personal life and my professional life as a mixture shifting, not closing, but shifting in a dramatic way. You have taught me and mentored me and encouraged me and listened to me and laughed with me for so many years and given of yourself so much, I can't possibly begin to articulate how meaningful it has been for me. And so I'm not gonna try. I'm just gonna say thank you for being you. The work that we do as municipal lawyers, as public lawyers, this is something that Assemblyperson Stone referred to is very much in the background. And that's appropriate. That's where we belong. One of the consequences of that anonymity is that people don't truly understand how much your judgment, your counsel, your guidance, your keen intellect works to help your clients get out in the world and do the good work that they do for the County of Santa Cruz. And I can only hope that in everything that's been said today, that folks, your friends, your family, your coworkers, people out in the world have even the smallest understanding of how much you mean to this County, the people in this building and the people out in our community. So I wish you the best, the greatest, everything good in your next chapter. Carlos. Dana, I just want to thank you very much for the time we worked together. You and I share the unique position of being the only two people who work directly for the board. And so that's a unique position. And the good thing about it is that we very quickly bonded and became friends and supporters. And I guess what I learned in the time that I worked with you is more than your professionalism and your ethics and your integrity is your heart for the disenfranchised and for the most vulnerable in the community. And that more than anything I admire. Thank you so much for everything you've done. Okay. I'm already on my second hand. And I apologize, but I cannot trust myself. I have to read this. I started to rethink doing this with Ellen, especially after Ellen, but thank you. Thank you. It was, I feel better now. I want to begin by thanking my family who have turned out in force here today. And I so appreciate it. My sister got on an airplane to be here. My precious daughter, Jasmine, her partner, Chrissy, my three siblings, my sister-in-law. My mother is holding out for the big party. Which at this point is TBD because for me, this is the big party. And you are the people who matter the most. My mother was a Santa Cruz city and county librarian. And all of her children followed her into public service. Well, my brother owns a restaurant and bar, which when done correctly is a form of public service. Thank you for being here. Coming to work for this county after litigating for a multinational law firm was for me like coming home. And professionally speaking, I grew up here among all of you. There are far too many people to name who shaped and influenced my career, so I won't even try. But if you are in this room, you are one of them. Please know that I have appreciated each of you for your unique gifts. I will mention my practice of finding that certain person in each department who would always take my call, patiently answer my questions or find whatever elusive document I needed in order for me to do my job. Some were records clerks. Some were assistant department heads. You were my secret weapons and you know who you are. I was hired in 1997 by former county council Dwight Her. Coming from a legal environment where women were greatly outnumbered by men and the women who were there believed they had to be twice as tough as the men. It was a welcome relief to join an office that was gender balanced and led by a gentle soul. Dwight modeled for me that attorneys could be both competent and kind at the same time. Dwight also taught me never to get between a camera and an elected official. I thank Dwight for changing the course of my career and my life. First, Rangarcia and I and later Jason Heath and I tried to build on the foundation we inherited from Dwight. The office of the county council is a team of fierce lawyers and support staff doing our best work for the county but trying to do so with respect and kindness. If you are hearing this and remembering a time I was not kind to you, I apologize. I remember being devastated when Dwight announced his retirement and then again when Ron retired. I know people on my team are sad I am leaving and I will miss you too. But remember that the work is the thing and it is bigger and more important than any one personality. I expect that Jason Heath will build on what we have done and make the office even better but don't feel compelled to tell me about all the great changes he has made. I am so proud of each of you and of us as a group. Finally I want to thank the board of supervisors. I thank you for giving us Carlos Palacios. The opportunity to work closely with Carlos these last several years has been incredibly meaningful to me. As for the five of you and those I served before you thank you for the opportunity. It wasn't always smooth sailing. After some controversial decision made by the board an angry letter to the editor printed in the Sentinel said the quote lesbian triumphant that runs the county has done it again. Ellen and I figured we were two of the three but we never figured out the third. Marty perhaps? Or was it you, John? The writer of that letter did not understand sexual orientation or how county government works. All county power emanates from this five member body. There is no gridlock here. On most Tuesdays you make important policy decisions. I think it's important to remember that you are a member of the county and you are a member of the county and you are a member of the county. We are important policy decisions and we as staff have the privilege of implementing those decisions. As Susan Moriello always said staff drives the county bus. The board gives us the destination but we decide how to get there. If we forget that we are lost. In Susan's example she was always driving but Carlos... Carlos lets other people drive. My friend, Buck Delvinthal wrote I love public law because it lies at the crossroads of our democracy. I could not agree more. This is where the action is. Thank you for giving me a job I love in a community I love with all of you whom I love. Thank you for listening. Chair I would move the resolution and I also in addition to the resolution I will share with the community that we've also renamed the annual pickleball trophy after Dana is now called the McCray and I look forward to that competitive nature and I assume you'll be back for each year's game. Alright we got a motion by Leopold and a second by McPherson. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Me deliver this. Okay very quickly a little housekeeping we are going to adjourn for 15 minutes there's a small reception out in the hallway and people should go out there and enjoy. When we come back we're going to take on our 1030 scheduled item which is the flood control zone 5. I also should note for anyone who's shown up who's interested in the item item number 16 which is the coastal element. We have continued that item until January 28th to give people more time to engage so that item will not be on our agenda today so you don't have to worry about that. So let's take a 15 minute recess we'll come back here at about 12.10 and for item the regular scheduled item. Call the meeting back to order. My microphone on. Good. Alright I'm going to call the meeting back to order. We are going to move to our 1030 scheduled item which is the flood the board of supervisors shall recess in order to permit the board of directors of the Santa Cruz County flood control and water conservation district zone 5 to convene and carry out our regular our scheduled meeting and I'll ask the clerk to call the roll. Directors Leopold. Friend. Here. Caput. McPherson. Bertrand. Christensen. Turcunerty. Alright and are there any late additions? None. Are there any additions or deletions? None. Alright this is a first item is oral communications this is an opportunity for people to speak to us about items that are not on our agenda today but are within the purview of zone 5. Is there anyone here to speak? Seeing none. I will come back to item number 2 which is approval of zone 5 meeting minutes. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. Motion by Friend. Motion by Friend. Second by Leopold. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. That passes 4-0. Item number 3 as the board of the Santa Cruz County flood control water conservation district accept and file the first quarter report of the fiscal year 2019-2020 zone 5 expansion construction revenue as outlined in a memorandum of the district engineer. Thank you chair and directors. Matt Machado your district engineer. The item before you is our first quarterly report for FY19-20. The first quarter revenues include $14,250 in drainage fees, $19,080 in permit processing fees and $2,346 in interest and other revenue. The recommended action is to accept and file the first quarter report of fiscal year 19-20 for zone 5 expansion construction revenue and I can answer any questions you may have. Are there any questions? Is there any public comment? Seeing none I'll close public comment. Bring it back to the board for action. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. Motion by Friend. Second by Leopold. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. That passes 5-0. Item number 4 as board of directors of the Santa Cruz County flood control water conservation district zone 5 consider approval of the cooperative agreement with the city of Capitola as outlined in a memorandum of the district engineer. Thank you chair and directors. The proposed cooperative agreement is to allow and enable the city and other and or the Santa Cruz County flood control and water conservation district zone 5 to undertake maintenance or repair on certain facilities in the city without assuming ownership or control for purposes of establishing liability for the future failure of such facilities. I'll comment that this is a major milestone in the step in the right direction to better maintain infrastructure even if the ownership is unclear. And so our recommended action is to approve the cooperative agreement between the city of Capitola and the Santa Cruz County flood control and water conservation district zone 5 and I can answer any questions you may have. Are there any questions? This is a significant improvement a significant change. I appreciate the work both of council and of view Mr. Machado to get this done. All right. Is there any public comment on this item? Thank you. Becky Steinbruner resident of Aptos. Hearing your comment on ownership is unclear. I wonder if you can comment a little bit about that for the benefit of the public. Thank you. Sure. Yeah, briefly. Sure. So much of the infrastructure in this area is quite old. It's in the city limits but it's also within the zone 5 district boundaries and we do not have good documentation on the pure ownership but we do understand the value of the maintenance of the infrastructure. So we are committed to jointly maintaining and improving the infrastructure without necessarily taking ownership because of that maintenance. And so we don't want maintenance to trigger an ownership battle. We would rather just jointly maintain. I think it makes a lot of sense. So that concludes public comment. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. Motion by friend. Second by Leopold. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. That passes unanimously. We're now going to item number 5 consider approval of the 2020 schedule of zone 5 meetings as outlined in a memorandum of the district engineer. So item 5, correct chair? Yes. Okay. Thank you. And so the item before you is a resolution amending rules and regulations for operations of zone 5. Just quickly there's a handful of items that we're considering today. An adjustment to regular meetings. The original document listed us to meet monthly. We are now proposing four times a year. That's the next board item. So it will explain that briefly in a minute. There is an adjustment to the agenda materials to make them available 72 hours before the meeting versus the 14 day requirement prior. Order of business is being modified to include a consent agenda item, which is I think very valuable and will streamline many of our regular items. And then the next three, the election of the zone 5 board chair timelines for budget submittals and collection of zone 5 fees and audits will all are all being adjusted to accommodate the new revised annual schedule that we are presenting our next board item. But with that comment, our recommended action is to consider the changes as briefly described of zone 5 rules and regulations related to section 1.1, 1.6, 1.8, 1.11, 3.4, 3.5 and then to adopt the resolution amending resolution number 4-89Z approving set amendments. And I can answer any questions you may have. Any questions? Any comments from members of public? Seeing none, I'll close public comment bringing it back to the board. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. Let's go motion by friend. Second by Caput. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? That passes unanimously. Finally, item number 6, as board of directors of the Santa Cruz flood control water conservation zone 5, consider amendments to zone 5 rules and regulations related to section 1.1, regular meetings, sections 1.6, agenda materials, section 1.8, order of business, section 1.11, election of the zone 5 board chair, section 3.4 timelines for budget submittals, section 3.5 collection of zone 5 fees and audits and to adopt a resolution amending resolution number 4-89Z approving set amendments as outlined in the memorandum of the district engineer. Thank you, chair and directors. Item 6, we're on is the zone 5 board 2020 meeting schedule. The essence of the item is to schedule board meetings on March 24th, June 16th, September 15th and December 8th, all of 2020. The recommended action is to approve the 2020 schedule of zone 5 meetings. I can answer any questions you may have. Any questions? Any comments by members of the public? Seeing none, I'll bring it back. I move approval. The recommended actions. I'll second. Motion by Leopold, second by friend. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And so that concludes our zone 5 meeting. We will now adjourn to the next regular scheduled zone 5 meeting. We will return to our regular agenda. Thank you, Mr. Machado. We'll now move on to item number 9. But just to remind anyone who may have come to attend and hear item number 16, which is the coastal program, that item will be continued to January 28th. So you don't have to stick around for that. But item number 9 is to consider a public hearing to consider adoption of the California fire code, 2019 edition with amendments, adopt a resolution, finding modification of state housing law, reasonably necessary, adopt an ordinance, amending and updating the county fire code, chapter 7.92 of the county code, except the sequel knows the determination and negative decoration and take related actions as outlined in a memorandum of the director of general services. Do we have... Back to her office. Okay. I think she anticipated number 11 was going to be passed. And so... Okay. I don't know. We can... You want me to go around? No, no. Why don't we do this? That's fine. Well, we will now do item number 14, which is the public hearing to consider application 181263, proposal requiring commercial development permit and coastal development permit to construct a 33,010 square foot, two and three story mixed use buildings containing five retail tenant spaces and a leasing office and 33 residential units subject to a request for a 50% density bonus and two 3,230 square foot one story residential carports on a property located at 3911 and 3946 Portola Drive, a firm that the project qualifies for a statutory exemption from the California Environmental Quality Act and take related actions as outlined in a memorandum of the planning director. So do we have anyone here to present? Chair, I think that's Ms. Jeff's item. And I don't see her in the room at the moment. It's okay. I think Suzanne Suzanne he say is here. And I think that if you wanted to continue on to item. Why don't we do 11 and 12? Okay, we'll find something. Yes, we'll find something to do today. And a item item 10 if you. Okay. I remember 10 perfect. Oh, here's Ms. Jeff's. Okay. Well, you're setting up. Why don't we do it? We'll do items number 11 and 12 very quickly. 11 is to consider final reappointments of Julia Hill and Alan Smith to the Law Library Board of Trustees for terms to expire December 31st, 2020. Is there any public comment? Thank you. My name is Becky Steinbrenner. I live in Aptos. I have really appreciated the law library very much in my work as pro-par litigant against the Soquel Creek Water District. The staff there is phenomenal. The information there is so helpful. And I'm very grateful for this facility. I would ask that your board consider helping fund it better. It is funded by a small percentage of superior court filing fees. That has not changed since the 1800s when the law libraries as required by state law for all counties to have one. Their funding was established. They have a very lively scrabble game in the winter that helps them bring in a little bit of extra money. But this facility is invaluable for many people. I have spent many hours there and I've seen the good service that these people do not only in helping people learn about law and how they can represent themselves, but socially they give them the power to do something when they feel so trodden upon by the legal system or their neighbors. So I just want to put in a very hearty thank you for the law library and for these two people that you're now going to reappoint to heading over it. Thank you very much. Thank you. That concludes public comment. I'll bring it back to the board for liberation action. I move the recommended action. Motion by Leopold, second by Caput. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. That passes unanimously. So for everyone in the audience, we are now going to do item number 14, which is the Portola Drive project. All the other items will probably now be moved to after our 130 scheduled items. So people don't want to stick around because we'll be going break and back for a 130 scheduled item. So just so people can plan the day. So I've already read item number 14 into the record. Ms. Jeffs, do you want to present? Yes. Good morning, commission. I'm to the board. Is the PowerPoint? I do apply. While just take this opportunity, just say that some additional materials have been handed to you. I received a request last night for one very minor change to the project, which we'll talk about in my presentation. The additional materials are the request for an additional concession based on the affordable density bonus. And there are revised findings and revised conditions that reflect that. But I will explain that as I go along. So the project's located on the north side of Portola Drive, one block west of 41st Avenue and Pleasure Point. It's in both the lower 41st Activity Center identified on the Sustainable Santa Cruz County Plan and the eastern portion of the area covered by the Pleasure Point commercial and mixed use corridor vision and design principles. It's also in the coastal zone. The subject property is currently developed with the committed tattoo parlor, the black pearl, and an unauthorized contractor's storage yard. To the south, east and west, the parcel is bounded by commercially zoned properties and to the north by a mobile home park. There are also non-conforming residences adjacent to the north-eastern and northwestern corners of the parcel. The surrounding commercial development consists of a mixture of one, two, and three-story buildings that include a chiropractic office, retail, restaurant, office. Residential and other uses including a vacant lumberyard. But it should be noted that a three-story mixed use building has already been approved on the lumberyard site and that a three-story mixed use project is currently under development for the adjacent chiropractic office parcel. The mixed use building will be located close to Portola Drive frontage with parking at the rear. From the street, the building will be two stories with commercial tenant spaces at the lower floor and residential apartments above. At the rear of the building, there are two stories of residential apartments over a covered parking area. The project also includes one-story carport adjacent to the northern property line. The 1.21 acre lot is located in the C2 zone district, a designation that allows mixed use projects and the zoning is consistent with the site's community commercial general plan designation. The project's been designed in accordance with the commercial uses chart which allows for the construction of residential units in the C2 zone. And as allowed under state and county density bonus law, a density bonus has been requested to allow for the provision of additional units and concessions have been requested to allow the residential portion of the project to occupy 73% of the total 33,010 square foot floor area of the development. The proposed mixed use building has been designed in accordance with all the required site and development standards, although a further concession has been requested to allow for reduced setbacks to the one-story residential carports along the rear property boundary. The mixed use building will be 41 feet from the non-conforming residential parcel in the northwestern corner and 86 feet to the parcel in the northeastern corner. Along the western property line, tall-over green trees are required to ensure privacy at the adjacent home and to provide a year-round screen. So the applicant, as I have said, is requesting a 50% residential affordable density bonus which would allow for 33 residential units and this is in exchange for the provision of four units that will be available to very low-income households. These affordable units will be regulated for a 55-year term and they'll be restricted both through rent and income limits. In addition to these four restricted affordable units, one unit is required to be designated as an on-site managers unit, which means that the 28 units that remain will be available as market-rate rental apartments. Under the density bonus provisions, up to three concessions could be granted to facilitate the development of the project. As set out in the staff report that you have seen, two concessions were initially requested. The first concession, as I've said, relates to allowing residential floor area to be 73% of the total floor area of the development rather than the standard 50%. The second is for reduced setbacks from the rear property line to the one-story residential carports at the rear of the site. However, the applicant has now requested a third concession. This would be that the payment of capital improvement fees to the county could be deferred so that payment would be due prior to building occupancy as opposed to prior to the issuance of building permits which is required in the current conditions of approval, and these are the revised conditions to change that. All the fees would still be paid. Deferral of the payment of county capital improvement fees is appropriate as it would reduce the upfront costs of the developer, resulting in a lower construction loan and interest charges, and thereby increasing the economic feasibility of the project. The granting of the two originally requested concessions is also appropriate because this would allow for the provision of commercial uses in conjunction with an increased number of residential units, including housing for low income tenants, and these would be constructed at a more affordable level. So per state and local law, the added units don't trigger any inconsistency with normal land use, designation, density, or zoning. The applicant has also requested state parking standards for affordable density project. The one-story carports will provide a visual transition between the proposed mixed-use building and adjacent single-story homes, and will screen the larger structure and views from the north. The reduction in setbacks is therefore appropriate, and it will also maximize the efficiency of the proposed parking area. The proposed mixed-use building has three levels. At the lower floor, there are five commercial tenant spaces opening onto Portola Drive, a leasing office, four residential apartments, including one affordable unit and a manager's unit, and entrances to the residential apartments above. The remainder is an elevator and mechanical electrical rooms. At the middle floor, there will be nine one-bedroom apartments, one of which will be an affordable unit, with 33 bicycle storage lockers and a laundry room, and at the upper floor, there are 22 bedroom units, two of which will be affordable, and these are accessed from a central open courtyard, and that building section at the top of the screen illustrates how those floors all stack up. The building has been designed to be visually compatible and integrated with the evolving character of the surrounding commercial neighborhood. The ground floor commercial area is open with lighting with high ceilings and extensive storefront glazing. The upper floor extends across the site frontage over the driveway in adjacent parking. The building has varied wall and roof planes and steps back at either end, as well as from the street, and includes cement plaster and natural wood siding. There'll be new tree planting along the project frontage and around the site, as well as within the parking lot, and this will, together with existing trees along Portola Drive, help to soften and visually reduce the scale of the development. The proposed mixed-use building is conformance with the county-certified local coastal program and will not impact any coastal resources or restrict access to the beach. In fact, it won't even be visible from the coast, and it's further consistent with the goals and objectives of both the Sustainable Santa Cruz County Plan and the Pleasure Point commercial and mixed-use corridor vision and guiding design principles. The proposed project will not adversely shade any adjacent residential structure, including the non-conforming residences adjacent to the northeast and northwest corners of the site. The project includes 4,915 square feet of open space for residential tenants, consisting of private balconies for the two-bedroom units, a landscape courtyard at the upper floor of the building, and a small landscape garden at the rear of the site between the carports. In addition, there'll be tree and shrub planting along the project frontage, retention of existing mature trees in the Portola Drive right away, planting around the project boundary, including evergreen tree species that will ensure privacy at the adjacent non-conforming residence, and landscaping with trees in the central portion of the site. In addition, concrete sound walls or wooden fences will be constructed along the property boundaries, and these will either be 6 feet or 8 feet in height as shown on this slide. Direct regional access to the site is provided by Portola Drive and 41st Avenue, as shown by the Project Traffic Impact Analysis. The mixed use development would result in low vehicle miles traveled numbers due to an improved jobs housing match and reduced commute distances. So as a result, the project will help to create a more sustainable community overall. The Traffic Impact Analysis also shows that trip generation by the project wouldn't significantly impact any intersections in the study area. However, as recommended in the report, to mitigate for future potential impacts at the Portola Drive and 41st Avenue intersection, the conditions of approval require payment of a fee to the county equal to the project's 1% proportional share of the cost of future improvements. This would be in addition to the roadside and transportation fees based on trip generation. The parking lot for the proposed mixed use development will be accessed from Portola Drive via a 26-foot-wide two-way driveway at the southwestern corner of the parcel route onto 40th Avenue via a 16-foot-wide one-way driveway. County code requires a minimum of 76 on-site parking spaces, which would be 53 for the residential use and 23 for the commercial use. As design, the project would include a total of 98 parking spaces, which exceeds the minimum by 22 spaces. Of the 98 spaces, 40 carport spaces will be assigned to the 22-bedroom units. 13 will be assigned for the 12-1-bedroom units and two carport spaces will be assigned to the manager's unit, one of which will be for the leasing office. The remaining 43 spaces will be available for shared use by commercial users and residential guests. To confirm that the proposed parking will be adequate for the development, a parking demand analysis was also prepared, and this study shows that based on the Institute of Transportation Engineers or ITE rates, the peak parking demands for the project are 59 spaces on weekdays and 54 spaces on Saturdays, which is significantly less than the 98 spaces provided. The parking study also includes analysis of potential restaurant uses and determined that even with the most conservative assessment, that there's sufficient parking to allow for a restaurant of up to 2,451 square feet. There's also a bus stop right in front of the property. The project is considered to be a large project by the Public Works Design Criteria and preliminary drainage plans have been reviewed and approved by the Department of Public Works Stormwater Management Division. So in conclusion, this project is consistent with all of the applicable codes and policies of the zoning ordinance and general plan and more further plan goals of attainable housing, a dynamic economy and sustainable environment. Mixed use development would provide community-oriented commercial uses together with 33 small-scale residential rental units, including four of which would be very low income and this is a housing type that's much needed in the community. Staff therefore recommends that your board determine that the proposal is exempt from further environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act and approve application 181263 subject to the addition of a third concession request that the payment of capital improvement fees be referred into a prior to building occupancy rather than prior to building permit issuance and this approval would then be based on the findings and conditions attached to the staff report, all of which would be revised as the conditions and findings already have to reflect that revision. Thank you. That concludes my presentation. Thank you. Do we have any questions? Just one brief question and one request. The trees that are on Cortola now, will they be staying or will there be new trees? They will be staying and then there will be, in addition, there will be new trees, yes. And then just to the planning department and staff, today's meeting has a lot of planning department items. It would be great to spread some of these out in the future. That's not Ms. Jeff's issue, but there's a lot on the agenda and it would be helpful when we receive items like this that we actually get all the conditions of approval because it's just helpful to have that. I looked that up from the planning department and I'm appreciative that you gave that here today but it wasn't actually part of the electronic packet. I believe it was. It wasn't in my packet. It wasn't in my packet. Anyway, just something for us to keep an eye out for. Tree on the site now. Yeah, there are some trees. There are some cypresses that are along the frontage and those will go. They're sort of like a bush. Yeah. So these obviously are very preliminary plans. You can give me that answer later. Yeah, I would. There's going to be a lot more trees in there right now. Maybe when I get, we'll get the answer later. Yeah. Now is an opportunity for members of the public to speak to us. About 30. About this item. Would anyone like to speak to us today? Tim will be speaking for affordable housing now. I would just like to remind you that it wasn't so long ago when we came to you to push the idea of an enhanced density program. And so our tracking this is the first project from that change to come to you and you might remember it was pages and numbers and now we actually have something and the great thing about what we actually have is that the developer is doing the lowest level, the very low income units. And so this is a really great day and thank you for your previous vote to do that enhanced density program and I hope that you approve this. Thank you. Thank you. Hi. I'm MMS Rookie. Support the project, but it's like so short. Like can it be taller? Like there's a huge need for housing and like we could like how how so many more people in here. So I mean, yeah, it's good like it is hope you approve it, but like this could be taller and bigger and like we could have like more stuff in there and they'd be cooler. So yeah, hope it's bigger. Thank you. Speaker Thank you. Becky Steinbruner, resident of Aptos. I have. Thank you for the good presentation and I wonder if there are any plans to include solar panels on this structure. Will there be electric car charging stations in the parking lot? Where is the nearest transit stop in relation to this new dense project? How will on-site stormwater drainage be handled? There's a new and I couldn't really read the piece that you put up from Public Works about that, but there is the requirement that all on-site drainage be handled on-site and with it being so close to the ocean that is a very important thing to consider. And then finally, how much are the capital improvement fees for this project that the developer is being asked to allow to defer? Thank you. Okay. I think we're not going to go through each one of those because many of those were answered in the staff report, but I'm happy to ask Sure, the fees would be great. I calculated that quickly this morning and it's over 504,000. But it would still be it would just be later. Great. For that free additional community benefits that you articulated. So that concludes public comment. I'll bring it back to the board for deliberation and action. Thank you, chair. Thank you for the presentation and thank you for the work of the property owner. This is a project that was originally approved back in 2006. And at the time, our mixed use designations were pretty rigid. There wasn't a way to deal with it. And it caused problem with financing. I met with Abbas. I don't remember 2010 maybe for the first time on this project trying to figure out a way to put it together. It was not a great time to construct and get received financing. And then we've taken actions to think differently about development and provide routes. And this is the property owner has looked at a couple of different routes to get to where we are today. When there was a different proposal for this project it led to a community conversation in which our board asked our planning department to hold a series of workshops on the pleasure point commercial corridor. And those were good community conversations and I appreciate that the owner and his family attended. They were at every single one of these workshops in which over a hundred people participated in each one. And they listened to the community. And they've gone out of their way to engage the community to listen to their concerns and we have a good project here because of that. One that meets the standards that we set out in that public process that standards talk about an articulated third story because there was concern about a canyon being developed there. And I appreciate the thoughtfulness that went into the design to construct this and I think this is going to be a great addition to the neighborhood. The biggest concern is we saw from community members was concerns about parking and they've obviously exceeded the requirements for parking. And there was a additional operational condition that was added as part of the planning commission process if there was substantiated complaints about parking and I just wanted to add just one part of that. I'm not sure there's going to be whether given this parking addition but if there are substantiated complaints that we get a report at the planning commission 90 days after the complainants filed. So there is some way for people to know that someone is working on this rather than filing a complaint and nothing ever happened. To me to have a property owner who is interested in working with the community who participates in the planning process that listens well and is flexible. And there have been a number of issues that have come up. I appreciate the screening for the nonconforming house on the northwest corner. That's also I know you worked hard to make that happen as well. It really represents what good development should be in Santa Cruz. And I support this and I would make the recommendation that we do all the recommended actions and that we just add one thing on the operation and conditions E3 I think that's what it is. And just an additional sentence that says if substantiated complaints are filed a report is made to the planning commission within 90 days. All second. We have a motion. We have to add in the third concession. I would imagine it's a recommended action. So that's included. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. That passes unanimously. Thank you very much. So a quick announcement for those watching at home. We will now take a lunch recess and return here at 1 30 for our regularly scheduled item. We will then hear item number 18 following that. And then we will hear items 9 10 12 following that. Chair with your indulgence the mobile home. I think we will have people showing up for the mobile home. So I just want to make sure we do that right after the SS3. Then we will go to those other following that will be 9 10 12 and 15. Good afternoon everybody. Good afternoon. Thank you for coming out. We are going to do our 1 30 scheduled item which is item number 17 that consider services program policy that manages secondary exchange by allowing clients who only exchange on behalf of others to exchange for a maximum limit of two people except in file and evaluation of syringe litter and direct the health services agency to return in June 2020 with recommendations to improve syringe litter reporting and response as outlined in the memorandum from the director of health services and do we have Miss Hall or Miss Herrera Dr. Newell okay great it is yes it is Miss Hall we are live and you are on as soon as you are ready yeah make sure it is on there we go apologies good afternoon I'm Mimi Hall director of the health services agency and I'm pleased to come before you today with a report back from two items that were left still remaining from our June 11th 2019 by annual syringe services report to the board today I have brought staff along with me that we didn't all have on board at that time I'm very pleased to introduce our health officer Dr. Gayle Newell she's going to be here to provide some introductory marks on the work that we've been doing since June and framing the issues as we need to consider moving forward we also have Jen Herrera our chief of public health the syringe services program sits within the public health division under her oversight we present the findings from qualitative and quantitative data that has been collected to better inform health services agency as we strive to develop impactful approaches to improving our county services and finally we have Rachel McCullis-Anden and she is an epidemiologist with our communicable disease unit under communicable disease manager Dr. Kelly DeBane and she's here to answer technical questions about data collection methodology and findings and with that I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to our health officer Gayle Newell thank you supervisors for allowing me this opportunity to give some background to the issue of opioid misuse the most common form of substance abuse disorder among intravenous drug users in our county as I'm sure you are aware our county is not alone in the struggle to adequately address this issue in 2015 the drug enforcement agency the DEA stated that drug overdose deaths from opioids had become an epidemic in 2016 the center for disease controls director called for urgent action saying America is awash in opioids in 2017 the food and drug administration called opioid addiction its biggest crisis that same year at the urging of the US Surgeon General and especially appointed commission the president declared our country's opioid crisis a national emergency every day more than 130 people in the United States die after overdosing on opioids the misuse of and addiction to opioids including prescription pain relievers heroin and synthetic opioids such as fentanyl is a serious national crisis that affects public health as well as social and economic welfare the centers for disease control estimates that the total economic burden of prescription opioid misuse alone in the United States is $78.5 billion every year including the cost of healthcare lost productivity addiction treatment and criminal justice involvement how did this happen in the late 1990s pharmaceutical companies reassured the medical community that patients would not become addicted to prescription opioid pain relievers and healthcare providers began to prescribe them at greater rates this subsequently led to widespread diversion and misuse of these medications before it became clear that these medications could indeed be highly addictive opioid overdose rates began to increase in 2017 more than 47,000 Americans died as a result of the opioid overdose including prescription opioids heroin and illicitly manufactured fentanyl that same year an estimated 1.7 million people in the United States suffered from substance use disorders related to prescription opioid pain relievers and an additional 652,000 suffered from a heroin use disorder opioid misuse and overdose are seen across the population crossing all socioeconomic strata to include the young and old, the rich and poor male and female the consequences are heartbreaking and very personal right now I'm going to put aside my health officer hat for one minute and speak as a mother three years ago I lost my oldest child to an opioid overdose right here in Santa Cruz he was 38 a beloved dentist a brilliant musician and an artist he was living at home with us in our two physician household he recognized that he was using his younger brother found him unresponsive attempted CPR and watched as paramedics tried in vain to resuscitate him his death has rocked our world our families and a great circle of friends and loved ones beyond that from the belongings and journals he left behind we have been able to piece together his path to self-destruction it started it turns out 20 years earlier as a student at Santa Cruz where he dabbled in heroin briefly before completing a methadone treatment program at UC Santa Cruz student health almost two decades later after graduating from dental school he began to write narcotics prescriptions for himself presumably for recreational use then he wrote the minist patient's name which he would fill for his own use as say prescribing practices came into practice making this more difficult he turned to mail narcotics from the US and Canada the DEA cracked down on those so he ordered from Mexico India and China when this also became impossible he turned to the streets to heroin he went back to the very same dealer he went to 20 years earlier by the Santa Cruz beach boardwalk his autopsy report lists his cause of death as an accidental overdose of opioids and fentanyl the circumstances of my son's tragic death play out over and over again in this country once every 10 minutes in fact since the late 1990s opioid use has skyrocketed across America deaths due to opioid overdoses have quadrupled since 1999 drug overdose deaths are now the leading cause of injury death in the US higher than motor vehicle accidents and the leading cause of death overall in people under 50 years of age and the opioid deaths are just the tip of the iceberg for every death uncounted numbers in our community are impacted by the misery of addiction beyond families the opioid epidemic affects entire communities and presents a grim challenge to healthcare providers law enforcement and our society as a whole not only is our country number one in prescription opioid use per capita but we use 80% of the global supply of illegal opiates in California as in our county the opioid epidemic continues to evolve and impose a serious threat to the health of all individuals in order to effectively address the opioid epidemic it's important to recognize that opioid abuse and overdose are closely tied to other trends in the state as California has seen rising rates of social inequities, homelessness mental illness and despair the state also has seen an increase in opioid abuse addiction and overdose deaths especially among those most marginalized in our society so what can we do opioid misuse affects families and communities it's a challenge to healthcare providers to law enforcement and to society as a whole it's a multifaceted problem that calls for strong partnerships to combat it we need to approach it as we would any other epidemic with prevention, containment and treatment treating it simply as a moral or criminal issue will not work the syringe services program is one part of the solution thank you Dr. Newell indeed this is a reminder of the impact of syringe services and how it is one piece of the larger system of care during HSA's syringe services program biannual report on June 11th 2019 the board provided seven directives today our board item concerns two of these directives directive number one which was to return with a plan to manage the secondary exchange program and directive number three to collaborate with the California department of public health to complete a study of syringe litter and report on the findings we requested a deferral to report on these items from September 24th to December 10th in order to have more time to complete the evaluation which has informed our recommendations today this presentation provides a high-level overview of the county SSP an overview of our evaluation activities since June 11th and our recommendations in addition to excuse me syringe services supports the entire community not just those who inject drugs they promote safety by increasing access to safe syringe disposal methods and by decreasing the prevalence of communicable disease and infections in the community published research in our own evaluation indicate that people will utilize a safe means of syringe disposal when it is accessible in addition to providing clean supplies that decrease the risk of acquiring an infectious disease SSPs collect syringes and encourages safe disposal methods to eliminate syringe litter SSPs are a nexus of services connecting a population that often feels stigmatized in traditional healthcare and social service settings because what good is a system of care if people aren't accessing it our community has mobilized through efforts like the SafeRx Coalition to increase the number of medication-assisted treatment or MAP programs SSP provides a venue to engage and re-engage with people building a trusting relationship that increases the likelihood of accepting a referral to enroll in MAP a CDC-funded study of California syringe exchange programs found that for most SSP participants contact with SSPs was the only contact they had with healthcare or social services of any kind SSPs make our system of care more effective they also promote our community's resiliency and increasing deaths associated with drug use like Dr. Newell many in our community have loved ones struggling with drug use losing our loved ones to an overdose or an infection related to use of unclean needles is traumatizing and preventable they also provide an opportunity and safe space for self-empowerment encouraging those who inject drugs to make small incremental steps towards a healthier life free focus areas in the community syringe distribution and collection safe syringe disposal and enhanced referrals and linkages for SSP participants the program operates at two fixed locations the county's Emmeline campus in Santa Cruz and the Watsonville health center each location has limited hours partly due to direction from the board for our program policy we are a syringe exchange meaning that we do not provide syringes to participants who have no syringes to return we also limit the number of syringes to exchange each participant is allowed a maximum of 100 syringes to exchange per their encounter our program does allow for participants to exchange for others referred to as secondary exchange with the same restriction of a maximum of 100 syringes per person we have unlimited syringe collection through the regularly serviced public syringe kiosk and the exchange sites at times people will attend SSP just to dispose of used syringes additionally our all staff are trained in providing referrals and linkages to social and medical services our staff consists of mat workers nurses health educators and trained volunteers as the board has directed us on June 11th we are also working on improving our method to accurately track the linkages from SSP to the county clinics mat program from July through November we have outreach to the community in order to inform our recommendations today we met with agencies who regularly collect syringe litter in the community this includes the county's department of public works the needle solutions team clean team associates downtown streets team and save our shores we outreach to all city jurisdictions in the county following the board chairs letter to all jurisdictions to encourage collaboration with us to install syringe kiosk and we conducted two community listening sessions one in Santa Cruz and one in Watsonville Rachel our epidemiologist who led the implementation of the syringe litter evaluation will provide an overview of the project thank you Jen I would also like to acknowledge my fellow epidemiologist Jessica Altman and Michaela Katen here today who did extreme efforts of analysis writings and contributing to this evaluation alongside with many other supporters I was hired to serve our county with expertise after working in Cameroon for three years implementing a nationwide HIV survey funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention led by Cameroon's federal ministry and Institute of National Statistics as a proud Santa Cruz county resident it has been an honor to strategize and work with the professionals and experts we have here who care about each member of our community to implement this evaluation it has been an incredible opportunity for all of us to assess syringe litter with our tireless surveyors and inspiring downtown streets team we appreciate the board's support to both count and to better understand the origins of this litter through conducting 133 individual anonymous field surveys across the county and for focus groups in addition to the extensive counseling of the visual inspection through this we can't begin to reduce how much without understanding when who how and most especially and compassionately why I will review some of our key findings after Jen shares our community values in these past few months we have found that there are many shared values in our community one of which is the value of a safe challenges and access many individuals who inject drugs personally express concern with improperly discarded syringes similar to similar to concerns heard in the larger community as one focus group participant shared I've always been more on top of that sort of thing because I stuck myself with a needle even before I started shooting and so it kind of irked me and I go out of my way to dispose of them another shared value among the participants of the evaluation and the larger community is accountability in the words of one of the focus group participants you start somewhere just having clean needles okay I'm taking care of myself a bit sometimes that snowballs into I don't want to use as much as I have been you know it can that's what harm reduction is start somewhere lastly compassion was identified as a shared value most notably through the community listening sessions and the focus group during the listening sessions there were many suggestions to integrate robust programming in the county such as HIV and Hep C testing counseling and peer education a participant in the community listening session said it's not just about the needles make them feel like people SSPs including the county program provide education training and distribution of Narcan a life-saving medication that reverses an opioid overdose this quote from a focus group participant highlights the compassion they feel for their community by being trained to provide Narcan I can't tell you how many people I've had to bring back with Narcan in the past couple years but grateful for the opportunity to do it our outreach to the disposal organizations was centered around identifying the locations of syringe litter in the county the conversation was extremely productive and help inform the visual inspection of the syringe litter evaluation it also led to our partnership with downtown streets team the participants at the meeting noted that the majority of syringe litter is in north county that the current system to report syringe litter and community acquired needle sticks is a confusing for the public and that all of these organizations have a method for documenting syringe litter and are willing to share their data with the county the cities of Santa Cruz and Watsonville have demonstrated a willingness to collaborate with the county to install syringe kiosk additionally the city of Santa Cruz their robust syringe reporting database and dashboard a great model to inform HSA syringe litter surveillance lastly at the community listening sessions there is a clear desire to learn more about the program and for the larger public to be considered when planning syringe services there was a lot of concern and confusion regarding secondary exchange and many suggestions to improve the accessibility of SSP services in the next few slides Rachel will share key findings from the syringe litter evaluation first and foremost we're all here today because syringe litter is not acceptable we are here in part to understand the magnitude of the problem and effective steps to potentially address it with our cross sectional approach to this evaluation we had the opportunity to canvas areas of most concern in our county and compare counts to kiosks in the same area at the same time the slide says 10 and after recent recalculation the correct number is actually even lower at 7 syringes out of a thousand are improperly disposed an overwhelmingly positive statistic this finding can bring us reassurance but not allow us to rest on our laurels we will need to work with the organizations collecting syringe counts to systematize identification telling and reporting so that we are together I don't know which button to use thanks did that work okay great key finding 75% of our survey participants properly disposed of syringes three quarters of participants reported a proper disposal practice as their most common method while some participants also reported inappropriate disposal practices that could contribute to reuse or public safety hazards either way harm that we would like to support avoiding there are barriers to safe disposal hearing from the individuals disposing multiple barriers to safe disposal were common including limited operating hours and locations of designated disposal sites and lack of transportation or mobility to them as a public health professional we have responsibility to prevent, address and control disease including health conditions that can impact individuals and our community we found that fragile health is impacted by limited supplies among survey participants a scarcity of safer injection supplies was associated with riskier injection conditions like reusing their syringes when they didn't have clean ones and sharing with others housing instability was associated with reuse and sharing syringes which are behaviors often indicative of inadequate supply as we approached individuals in public spaces our survey was biased towards finding people who were unstably housed it's also a population we would like to make sure we are serving well and to understand what they are facing also with sharing needles with others we were able to establish networks of people that can both be used also in better situations when they are cleaning when they are sharing clean needles which some participants reported as well can I ask I'm sorry to interrupt but so I understand and this was we asked you to do this report quickly and so it says it's not a rigorous population study but it's a good overview of what's going on in our community so given the practices that you find why is the city of Santa Cruz just the parks department not citizens not public works where are those needles coming from where because if everyone is disposing of them what's going on or when we had the Ross camp we had disposal boxes right there we had needles being distributed on a daily basis and yet if not thousands of needles were found there there didn't seem to be a barrier there so what's going on in your professional opinion from an epidemiologist point of view I love your engagement in questions and my mind is exploding because you just asked 11 and a half and I'm like ooh we could look at it like this or like this what time period who's collecting what methods what database let's get together let's figure out how and so I'm excited to explore all of that I don't have that data on hand I don't know if any of my colleagues wanted to better answer that and I get it it's complicated but when we asked for a needle study we weren't asking for an access study we're asking for a needle litter study to really understand where the needles came from and what we're going to do about it and so it seems as though we have hard reporting of at least 4,000 if you assume all the community finds and the needle Santa Cruz finds we're at 10, 12,000 in a city of 60,000 people that's it seems like we should have some sense as to where where those needles are coming from right and that is exactly why we wanted to also ask access and disposal questions to understand why and where they're coming from to better to better answer directly your litter evaluation question and I understand we're against the clock and we've got lots of opportunities here I'm happy to describe the methods of this evaluation which were we took into account reports of considerations from community sessions from your reports from other organizations of where they're finding needles from expertise of downtown streets team from and the community organizations also described we took the lists of those neighborhoods we canvassed those neighborhoods we made polygons on maps we taught the individuals the surveyors in downtown streets team leading that visual inspection to engage on a methodical route to go up and down certain sidewalks we had tally sheets that CDPH helped us to create to tally and differentiate between syringe litter with and without needles and then what we did is we tallyed them, Michaela Caten mapped them she's very familiar with GPS and sorry not GPS, GIS and we used the resources we had on hand with google maps we counted we juxtaposed those counts against the kiosks in the same neighborhoods at the same time and we wanted to present back to the board as requested an evaluation of the litter found where it is and then speaking with the individuals engaging in injecting drugs in those same areas and asking why are they here why are they not here what are you thinking about what are your problems because we can go and count syringes all day and we don't know why and how what are we going to do about it I don't know I don't inject drugs but I'd love to understand from people who do I just think when we have a data point that 99% of needles are properly disposed and yet there are far more needles in excess than 1% that are found than how do we some important data points that we have collected that are included in the report but we couldn't put everything in our slides of key findings is that there are other sources of needles accessibility besides the county syringe services program and needles are you can purchase them there are other sources one of the things that we do know is we are not just a distribution program we are a collection program and one thing that we do know about the kiosk that was placed at the gateway encampment was that we service that 2, 3, 4 times more often than other kiosks and often it would be full we also notice that folks who are there as well as in other places if they didn't have the ability to use a kiosk they would find other methods put them all in a bucket put 12 of them in a cup so it was their method of finding help inform us of how we can improve safe disposal please continue sorry oh yeah I've got these slides okay thanks no problem we're done with that one we can go to the next one this is my last slide in a common complaint expressed by our survey participants was that the county SSP services are limited in hours and locations leading to scarcity both supplies and safe disposal options which was really rich information to hear from them about how we might be able to help one participant said there's nothing wrong with Emmeline the county SSP site in Santa Cruz right now just accept that there's really specific hours it's not a lot of hours if you're out here in survival mode and if you're on the west side and trying to get to Emmeline it's a long way to go members and leaders in our community may have different ideas about how we should address syringe litter secondary exchange and program services with this evaluations data we can agree that syringe litter disposal and access are inextricably linked when we believe our neighbors who inject drugs when we listen to what they share with us we find that our residents who use SSP are more likely to dispose of syringes properly and care about the health and safety in our community more comprehensive findings and data as Mimi was saying in our reports the summary infographic that's available here today the risk of infectious outbreaks paper that the Communicable Disease Unit put together and other resources are all available on the SSP website okay thank you Rachel Jen and Dr. Newell before we discuss our recommended actions I wanted to first of all thank the staff and all of their hard work and the community partners who showed a great deal of enthusiasm for participation and coming together to address the multitude of issues that come along with having a county syringe services program I'd like to because we didn't have the opportunity to provide this full report and it's rather lengthy although I do believe its methodology is excellent I'd like to present how we look in the board how we arrived at our recommendations recommendation one is to approve a policy that manages secondary exchange by allowing clients who only exchange on behalf of others to exchange for a maximum of two people effective January 2020 this is a very difficult recommendation for me to make as a public health professional it does not follow public health best practice in terms of aids the CDC expect of syringe services programs however we know that in the public health profession we are all dedicated to the common goal of improving the human condition we're responsible for upholding the integrity and ethics of our profession as we try to make very difficult daily policy decisions and we also have to balance the right of individuals who we're seeing in our programs to make informed decisions about their health and minimize risks with also respecting the rights of all community members who hold diverse values, attitudes and opinions the feedback that we got from the community listening sessions, the numerous emails I've been copied on that have also gone to the board of supervisors have told us that our community is concerned with the volume of syringes that are a part of our syringe services program and they're particularly concerned with the volume of secondary exchange the reason that we came up with this particular recommendation is that our data mining showed us that when we look at those who exchange on behalf of others we have three categories of clients one category is a client who exchanges only for themselves, they're the primary user the other category is exchanging for self or others so that's a combination of primary and secondary exchange the third category is exchanging only for others and when we looked at that third category the numbers of clients were very small in comparison to the entirety of our client database but the amount of exchanges were high sometimes 15 to 30 exchanges before we put caps on our numbers and what we're trying to do is a couple of different things we're trying to preserve a method for secondary exchange through peer networks through folks who are exchanging for themselves and others we're also trying to preserve the ability to exchange only for another person because we have many clients who have been coming to us for years who exchange for a loved one a partner, a family member a roommate and for many reasons people don't want to avail themselves directly of using our services and we want to keep that door open but we also have heard that the community is concerned about what seems to be a medium point in legal syringe distribution in California there are two ways to legally distribute syringes one is through a properly authorized syringe services program which is our program authorized by you as our governing entity you can also be authorized by the state the other way is legal purchase through pharmacies or online and and the feedback that we heard is that much of the work of a local coalition has been running a large scale secondary exchange program without the benefit of all of the other resources and services that we have wrapped around our staff I think it's important for me to let the board and the public know about the difference between the county syringe services program and the harm reduction coalition the main difference is that the county is the only legally authorized syringe services program in California however volunteers of the harm reduction coalition have operated under the law by registering as clients of our syringe services program the similarity is that we all work towards the same goal which is a healthier community and I believe that that's a goal that almost everybody in this community shares so acknowledging that our recommendations today do not reflect public health harm reduction best practices we also recognize that our program has limitations and those limitations result in barriers to people accessing our services our goal is that with this recommendation number one we will also work on adjusting our hours we got a lot of really good feedback from the client focus groups about accessibility in our hours and we hope that what we will do is not only affect one end of the spectrum by constraining one area but make efforts to improve access to our onsite syringe services program you will recall that in June we did come to you to expand our services at that time we had hoped to not only expand our hours but also provide mobile syringe services through our homeless persons healthcare project field services team at that time the board was not ready to approve those recommendations but we hope that with the data that we've collected today with the future focus that we are going to have using the evaluation results of our syringe study to work with our partners on a centralized system of syringe reporting and collection that over time we'll be able to come back to the board with those same recommendations of expanding access to services but we recognize that there's a lot of work that we have to do right now to provide the utility of our program with the barriers to access are so that we can come back to the board with recommendations for expansion so I have before you the three recommended actions as in this slide which are to manage secondary exchange by limiting exchange for others only to a maximum of two people accepting the evaluation of syringe litter that we've done in partnership with the state department of health and directing HSA to return with our recommendations to actually our goal we talked about this our goal is zero syringe litter and we are in line with I think everybody in the community including the clients that we serve that public syringe litter is unacceptable and we believe that we can get there with the good data that we've collected and the pledges of partnership with our community partners thank you. Thank you. Now it's an opportunity for questions from the board thank you chair thank you for the report and the research done it provided a lot of information to me which I appreciated I just had a couple questions and I'm sure off comments later you're not coming to us with any expansion of ours although all the data seems to suggest that better access to more hours would actually help could contribute to reducing syringe litter so what you talked about moving hours around but what would be the trigger to actually come forward and actually propose that we have more hours? Yeah actually we may come back to you in June of 2020 once we have a better understanding of what our proposal will be for the syringe study we'll also have a few months behind our belt of seeing what the impact of managing secondary exchange but also making other efforts beyond changing our hours to increase primary exchange it could be that this hypothesis isn't true I think that the I think that there is a hypothesis that if we manage secondary exchange we will increase those who utilize primary exchange I hope that that's true I don't know if it will be and I think that the data will show us if that's true and we're all about data it informs us as to our next steps I think earlier today Supervisor Coonerty in giving kudos to Ellen Timberlake talked about process we could come up with some solutions right now to say this is what we think will work but it wouldn't be based on good information, good data stepwise process and studying the impacts of that stepwise process so that we have a better sustainable longer-term outcome but I do expect to come back to the board after we take a look at how these changes have impacted our program with suggestions thank you one of the other things which I don't see listed in here is recommended actions and was vaguely referred to in the report was those that reported throwing their needles in public places in order to avoid contact with law enforcement and the testimony from some of the focus group participants who said they had received tickets for paraphernalia so my question is are we going to be doing any training with local law enforcement so this is less of a problem so they're aware that people can carry these around that this doesn't become a reason why people might actually dump their needles in places where we don't want them yeah I don't know if you want to answer that Jen or you want me to take it sure I can start so when we outreach to the city jurisdictions both of their in Santa Cruz and Watsonville both of their chief of police were there and this evaluation really opened up doors for us to start developing stronger relationships with law enforcement there is a lot of research that shows the benefits of having a strong partnership not just a collaboration but a partnership with law enforcement and syringe services programs and it's something that we hope to institute here really during the past five months we've just been able to scratch the surface of what opportunities are there between our collaboration yeah I think to me the data pointed to both those things better access likely through our hours and better training for law enforcement that doesn't become a reason why if we were looking for reasons so I'm slightly disappointed with the recommended actions because I'm not sure they get at the core of the problem I understand the recommendations and I look forward to getting the additional data but it just seems like we're missing some gaps in what we were told and what we're actually going to do this is a sad story and I think it's a great frustrating one first I want to really thank the health services agency for the report that they've provided in conjunction with our state and local partners as well I know it's just a new effort to see to get some important perspectives into our IV drug use in our community and those horrible statistics that were rattled off earlier I think many of you who have recognized for their cooperation in collecting survey results for us and collecting discarded needles in our community and to the members in the community who participated in our public outreach sessions as well I support the collection of more data most especially in the number of SSP clients who get referred to medically assisted treatment but we need to do everything we can to strengthen the connections we have in the county with Santa Cruz and Watsonville to help drug users get more treatment and reduce harm to families and that might be an extension of ours as was mentioned or that might be needed I'm also happy to see a better document when community members are stuck with needles in our parks and other public spaces families in Watsonville and Santa Cruz and elsewhere need to be assured that they will have safe public spaces that's something we hear day in and day out and understandably so but I also want to acknowledge that SSP is really designed to deal with the aftermaths of a massive drug addiction problem in our community and throughout the state and the nation as was mentioned in other words our HSA or health services agency really has not caused this drug addiction problem it is trying to prevent our community from the communicable disease outbreak while at the same time trying to protect the innocent public and the general public from getting stuck by a needle in public places like beaches and parks there's really a much broader discussion that needs to be had on how prevention treatment law enforcement and the court system can all work together to come to a reasonable program that we can help alleviate this whole issue and I have repeatedly heard our health services staff tell us that they would like to increase the number of IV drug users receiving primary care that's also something we need to address but the primary exchange is where folks access our professional public health staff and get referrals to treatment and other services we want to encourage that under the circumstances that we face today we have no guarantees that these interventions being offered with the secondary exchange and that is really interesting to me so I believe we need to take action today to bolster our primary exchange program and I have an idea of a motion but I would rather wait until we get other comments and certainly from the public before I make that right. Do you have any questions right now? Yeah, thank you thanks for all of you we're all are most of us almost all of us want to make things better so even people that have showed up they might have a problem with something that we're suggesting but our intentions are all in the right spot so I want to make sure that we're we're not we're not encouraging the use of anything we're just trying to make it public in general and we're not enabling it anyway someone to continue using illegal drugs just like we would not encourage somebody who has an alcohol problem by handing them a whiskey bottle or whatever so we're if I showed up and I missed the opening this is just an example and I show up and I miss the needle exchange or whatever and do any of the other clinics that we have are they able to give out any syringes health clinics like the new one in Watsonville if I miss the current hour. So in answer to your first question are we encouraging attracting enabling drug use no the people who come to see us are in the throes of addiction and what our data shows is that if they don't have clean access to a clean needle either through us or through another venue they have reported that they will either reuse a needle or share a needle so all of the research both our local research and everything else in fact that syringe services programs do not create drug use or enable drug use on the other hand they do if you don't have access to them they inhibit safe practices as far as south county we have we are the only authorized syringe services program in the county and we're authorized by the board of supervisors however we have two locations one is here at the emeline clinic and one is at the Watsonville clinic the Watsonville clinic which is on the same campus of the new behavioral health center that you visited on Friday and thank you for your presence there that has very limited hours it's five hours a week and again we made a recommendation back in June for the potential of providing needles along through our SSP program and our field services but the board did not approve that at that time we believe particularly in Watsonville that would be incredibly helpful but again we know that we have some work to do in terms of collecting data regarding safety utility those kinds of things but there is access in Watsonville through our program it's about an hour a day which is very limited and we hope that someday we could expand that okay now to get rid of the old used syringes the kiosk is open 24 hours they are some however some of the feedback that we got from folks in our focus groups and our survey were that fits in a very open location people were reluctant they didn't want people to see them utilizing them or maybe have law enforcement because of their perceptions follow them from them so as Jen mentioned some people come to our program just to dispose of syringes and they don't ask for more in exchange they don't need them yet so it's important to remember that our syringe services program is both a collection and a distribution how many kiosks would be in the Watsonville area well you talked with the city of Watsonville how many did did they identify locations already I don't think we've gotten to the point of identifying locations just interest in installing a kiosk and so far we have one in Watsonville over at the Watsonville health center okay and some participants won't use kiosks because they have to hold on to their needles until they can exchange for new ones oh so they I see much man they wouldn't drop it off because they wouldn't get the exchange right there'd be no way to exchange for clean ones okay and I guess the last thing I would like to know is when they come in does somebody tell them if they do want to quit the habit this we have other programs that they can sign up for and you know yes that's part of the exchange encounter and they have a one on one when someone comes in for exchange they have a one in one sit down encounter with one of our trained staff as we are asking what supplies they want we always first of all we always offer a safe syringe disposal bin a sharps container and encourage the use of that provide you know any counseling around if they have any challenges around using a container and we do provide linkages to any social medical clinical including medication assisted treatment services it's one of the reasons why we have integrated some of our clinic Matt staff to work SSP in order to engage with the SSP participants so that when they are ready or if they are ready to access medication assisted treatment they have a established rapport with a Matt counselor already okay well that makes me think of with the kiosk back to the kiosk if we had a few more of them somebody putting used syringes in that doesn't mean that they used them it could be the people that are upset about finding it around their neighborhood they go out and pick it up and then they go and put it in so I don't know if that's something that other people would like to do you know in their neighborhood they don't want their kids or anybody to step on them or pick them up and get stuck so I don't know if that would help or not you're the experts so would it help to have more kiosk I think our evaluation showed that excuse me because I have a call meaning I don't want another needle in exchange I just want to get rid of this stuff so our evaluation demonstrated that if kiosk are available in areas that are non-stigmatizing you know for instance not in an open street not in a pharmacy somewhere where they can discreetly dispose of syringes then participants will use them so that's what we found in our evaluation okay thank you so I think it's helpful to go ahead Supervisor Caput you also asked about where someone might be able to obtain syringes outside of our scheduled hours and so there are two ways that they can get them besides from a syringe exchange program or a syringe services program and that is that their physician any physician can write a prescription and if they have insurance or including MediCal or MediCruz the syringes will be covered by insurance or any individual may go to a pharmacy and buy them for cash yeah how much are they 50 cents a piece on Amazon in bulk they're about 20 cents a piece so I think that was a good insight from the report about where this where the chaos would be most effective let me ask did we contact the local pharmacies to find out how many needles they sell in a given year that wasn't part of the this evaluation based on the timeframe that we had not to look at but we have we have actually been outreaching to pharmacies just for our general program planning to assess who is collecting syringes and who's selling them right and obviously that would include people who much a broader population than just IV drug use but it'd be good to know that in the report I think of everyone you interviewed no one said they got them online so I'm assuming that that's not a regular source for people to all the people you interviewed yeah and I would note that the people that we interviewed as you can look at the data the majority of them are homeless so we targeted certain populations so it's not the general injection drug using population but just a cohort that we happen to interact with and did we ask the police departments for how many citations they wrote for owning drug paraphernalia again for the span of this report and the scope of just looking at the syringe litter we didn't get there I mean I understand that there may be fear and stories and perceptions I'd be shocked if barring other than a major case that anyone's ever been anyone's getting excited at all for these for having needles just having needles is the sole citation and I think we in the syringe services program look forward to working with law enforcement to look into this matter more because I can understand your comment but it is the perception leads to syringe litter yeah no absolutely and then finally I think I talked about this yesterday so Santa Cruz County gave out almost 600,000 needles last year San Mateo County Santa Clara County and Monterey County gave out 454,000 needles combined their populations are 10 times our population so on a per capita basis we're giving out 14 times more needles than all three of those are adjacent counties combined so what is going on here that 30 miles in any direction is a totally and their disease rates are lower for the most part than ours are and their poverty rates are higher in two of the three counties so disease there's no the correlation between needles and prevalence of disease isn't there the correlation between poverty isn't there like what what is going on what can we learn from the adjacent counties because it just seems that we are an order to a magnitude greater situation and that the only county that I can find that's anywhere close to the county that we are that we are San Francisco and not surprisingly we are the places where people are talking about needle litter as an epidemic and in other communities while it comes up it doesn't so like what is going on here that is different from every other county around us if I could just give a first reply on a data level and then if there's other strategic responses I did write down earlier to look into comparison data with other counties I'm also interested in that information and why and my mind immediately goes to different biases or sampling or reporting mechanisms you mentioned poverty rates if in richer counties people are getting more from online and therefore it's not reported in those numbers I'm talking about needles dispensed by the county so this is all that is needles dispensed by the county and then the disease rates presented by the county and then and then obviously the overall population but two of those counties have much higher property rates than we do I appreciate you getting a head start on that data and I can think of some reasons why some of those numbers may be related or there may be other considerations and we know that people with and without jobs access needles in different ways and can change the way numbers are looking at I would love to sit down with those numbers confer with my colleagues, reach out to colleagues in other counties I think there's a lot of questions there that need to be answered I want to sit here and pretend like I can explain all of that to you I don't know but I think we need to look into it I mean I think I'm interested in learning I think everyone here is unanimously supported needle exchange year after year after year we believe in it as a disease prevention mechanism we believe in the need of it but there's a question of do you do it and then there's a question of how you do it and then the question is do we have a 14 times addiction problem as everywhere else 40 miles away from us so is it like we had a crisis that is unmatched in the rest of coastal california so I will say I had a meeting with supervisor community yesterday where he posed this question and you stepped out of the room and then he did a little bit of research and so preliminary research that SAFARX did as part of a nationwide network of SAFARX coalitions showed that some of you may know that the opioid epidemic came in waves and in all of those earlier waves Santa Cruz county did have poor outcomes in terms of number of accidental opioid deaths a number of different factors which hint to the fact that yes in comparison to other bay area counties and that data is available on the SAFARX website under HIPC I think it's HIPC.org there's also something called the national opioid dashboard or maybe the California opioid dashboard and you can see how different counties have different experiences and so the answer to your question is yes through the trajectory of time we have had if you could call it a more serious opioid problem than our partner counties in the bay area I cannot answer why I think the answer why is more complex I urge the board to have this kind of thinking the number of syringes that we distribute which also means that we collect just as many if not more is not indicative of how well we're doing in our substance use disorder problems or the degree of there can be counties that have a great degree of addiction but for political reasons or other reasons they simply don't have an exchange or they have a very constrained syringe services program I think when we come from a public health perspective and we're trying to reduce disease transmission and risk we look at the existence of risk and that risk exists if we have people who inject drugs and we do and our data shows that we do and that risk exists when they don't have access to clean needles I mean it's as simple as that so if we can eliminate that we can eliminate the presence of needles the need for a needle exchange and my dream is that someday we get there but really the truth of the matter is data does show that we are somewhat different from our bay area counterparts I cannot tell you why and together we're safeRx working with a lot of other community partners have worked to address that problem I think I also mentioned to you that I happened to work for the county that at the time this early data was collected it was in around the 2010 to 2014 area the CDC ranked counties in California in terms of number of opioid deaths it worked for the county with the highest opioid death rate in California the highest we had more deaths in Santa Cruz county with a population a tenth the size a very rural community with a lot of hard work and effort that included a syringe services program we've brought those I'm talking about Plumas County to zero to zero so it's possible and we did it with a safeRx coalition we did it with safe prescribing practices we did it with a syringe services program but it's a multi-pronged approach and it gives me hope that the public health approach really does work and I believe it and I like as supervisor McPherson said the number of needles we're handing out that's a downstream that's a downstream indicator right and so the more we can get upstream the better it is for needle letter the better it is for people suffering from opioid the better it is for community impacts thought the whole thing but we need to understand where we are and what's going on and to our to your department's credit this morning we approved three or four major investments in medicated assisted treatment and in expansion recovery beds and other things and I think you know we're all on the same page but it just seems as though this attitude this these numbers are worth understanding what's going on again under the premise that we all believe the CDC we all believe needs to be a needle exchange we all know the costs of not having a needle exchange and we can go forward I will say I appreciate your comments and your direction this morning to come back with further information in a study session because I agree I think that there is a broader issue at hand that it's important for us to report back about especially our increased efforts around prevention as well as treatment I'm now going to open it up for members of the community and I want to make just two comments because we got a lot of emails the first comment is as I said that this board is unanimously and consistently exported needle exchange and nothing changes nothing's going to change around that the second piece is there is a community group that has put an application to the state to do a secondary needle exchange with using volunteers that is not before us today that's a different matter right now we're talking about the county's program and the rules and sort of approaches of the county's program so please line up if you'd like to come forward ready? yeah good afternoon regarding the item before you I would encourage you to consider the history shown by the board and the agencies it oversees without listening to people before you give consent to include a syringe advisory commission into the county ordinances and waste everybody's time regarding the secondary exchange proposal and this is not that state application you just referred to I would remind you that SSE in any form contradicts and therefore undermines the primary goal of the syringe services which states the primary goal of the SSP is to work in partnership with the community to help prevent the spread of infectious disease associated with injection drug use to early identification of injection testing referral to treatment community education behavioral counseling and providing harm reduction supplies through a syringe services program none of these aims can be accomplished via SSE it requires that clients actually visit healthcare professionals in a clinical setting and not encountering activists and the weeds it requires that exchange of injection equipment be offered as a gateway to county services and not the primary service offered as is and has been the practice I would stress heavily the need for county program to expend all efforts in blood screening and early identification of infectious disease and to collect this data in order to establish a baseline for best practices unfortunately this is a ground up proposal but our county's health officers much like the rest of the state do not have an efficient means to collect data on infectious disease the report before you states California according to CDPH office of AIDS 30% of syringes distributed by SSPs were through secondary exchange networks this would indicate that 70% were dispensed via contact by healthcare professionals locally however those numbers are flipped by a red flag that our program is failing with all due respect I'm a really visual person and an evidence based medical professional too so one day after winter storm I started this process a year ago because this is what I found last year with my 7 year old daughter walking on the beach I almost lost my brother to drug addiction too I was a drug user on the streets too luckily he had the Santa Cruz AIDS project he dealt with medical people, volunteers who held him accountable one to one exchange every time he came in there was compassion there was training there was professionalism there was accountability you asked a question why Santa Cruz has this problem it's called enabling we have a serious drug culture here in Santa Cruz where when you do this kind of thing nothing happens to you you see that sharp tip you see all that blood in the chamber but a family has to go and now has to take their child to urgent care they can't test this needle to tell you right away if you have been exposed all they can offer is a cocktail for the next 6 months to a year of testing so that then you can figure out if your 5 year old has HIV or hepatitis C it's unacceptable we have enough syringes since 2015 syringes have been available for purchase for 50 cents law enforcement does not cite these people go look at the data 2015 you can walk into any pharmacy right now they will give you a free sharps container with your pack of 10 syringes if you can buy a bag of heroin you can afford 50 cents for yourself this is what gets dumped in your bin community members who pick up these needles if you are aware that there is an existence a single syringe container or pocket container made to contain a single syringe it's puncture resistant leak proof designed to not easily be reopened one field and readily identified by biohazard other cautions, symbols and words with this single sharp container just snap the used syringe into the container snap it and close and it's concealed out of harm's way in California full home generated syringes must be properly discarded by placing them in a syringe kiosk or collection site such as a participating pharmacy police or sheriff department or medical facility the containers are readily picked up melted into non-infectious masses of plastic and then buried in secure areas within landfill in most other states these same full home generated syringe containers or even syringes with sealed bleach or laundry detergent containers can go directly into one's trash but I visualize what could happen garbage truck comes picks up this large container it gets compacted and it's possible it could crack spill apart and you have possibly infectious syringe litter in landfill I doubt though because of the size of a single sharp container that this was dumped in the trash we'd have the same outcome those syringe litter will never completely disappear a packaged syringe convenience kit consisting of a syringe that's sterile and its own sharp container will provide sterile syringes as convenient as possible and will help reduce loose syringe litter the California department of public health is an advocate for safe and harm reduction can I have another minute I can't do another minute because then I have to give everyone else another minute but I think as always you're always welcome to email us set up a meeting with the health department staff no I can't because otherwise everyone else can ask for another minute as well we have many items to get through today but you're missing the whole point well I think if you can find someone else who will finish it or you can email us and when we have a time to read it and I can't have people give up their time so email us set up a meeting talk about it in more depth can I have another minute please no we've got the point I don't think you did no we did we've got the point email us or set up a meeting with the department staff they're happy to talk to you in detail I also live in Seabright and I don't recall anybody asking anybody in Seabright how we felt about this Mimi seven needles this morning and 15 minutes that was just my little walk thankfully I didn't have my grandson or my granddaughter with me we have to do better this is insane thank you good afternoon concerned citizen recovering addict minute actions I would fully support item number one and item number three throttling back the secondary exchange which has poached so many clients from the main primary exchange and the accessibility to medical treatment or advice that needs to happen I would not accept the evaluation of syringe litter in item number two data is from the beginning failed because the returned needles in the kiosks are not counted they are weighted so it's a guess as to the percentages of return needles it's a guess as to whether or not it's garbage or needles in that weighed bag or in those weighed containers that's the best they can do if they're not actually looking at them and counting them you can see the ones laying on the street in item number four five you can't see the ones in that kiosk all you can do is guess the weight and hope that if they're not full of water or a water bottle that's where that data is flawed even with our best evaluations it starts off flawed as recovering addict member of this community that cares I would like to avail myself to the board of supervisors Mr. Coonerty for the committee let's have a member committee that's being established of the voice of an addict who's lived it and been through it and been able to get out of it on that committee to help balance the one-sided reporting that happens in situations like this if you would like to talk to me I'll send you an email thank you good afternoon board I retired yes a year ago from the county health department where I worked as a epidemiologist I worked in vital records I know something about drug deaths from that I worked as the HIV surveillance coordinator and so I know something about the spread of blood-borne disease from that I just want to focus on one thing here there's an ill-informed emphasis on the numbers of needles given out and on the secondary exchange and a key point with regard to both of these syringe services program takes in more needles than it gives out as you've heard pharmacies provide needles pharmacies will provide needles sometimes free I guess pharmacies will provide needles at a moderate price the number of needles being given out by pharmacies is probably responsible for the difference between what's given out by SSP and what's return the concern about the secondary exchange people talk about somebody came in for a thousand needles which seems like an insanely large number I agree the point is they don't get that thousand needles unless they bring in a thousand needles and so they're not being given needles to go and distribute to all their friends to give away and throw away they're being given needles to replace them unless they collect back needles so the syringe services program is a net benefit to the county purely in the sense of reducing needles in the community good afternoon my name is Brad Angel I'm from the Grant Park neighborhood group we've met with most everybody and it's been wonderful so we live near the inline county campus and we started Grant Park neighbors last year almost exactly a year ago largely because we began in December 2018 to directly do the impacts of the existing county programs arguably how they led to the closure of the neighborhood park and that was closed for an extended time the impacts were so bad in the park area in the park itself that many of the actual neighbors wanted to close the park and completely get rid of it because they felt like it was an attractive nuisance and it would never be remedied by anything we did but we did start volunteering and then we worked with the city parks department we also worked with the police department and then we also adopted the park as a group and we feel like it's really helped a lot and now we understand the difficult task that you guys have especially leadership in the county but we would really like to have direct engagement with the HSA in the future especially going forward and in conjunction with the city and the county leadership and for no matter what course you take sorry and then we'd also like to ask directly that you expand the downtown streets team from the inline campus down to the park if possible and then also if we could have some sort of security like we've gotten from the city on the ocean side we'd really appreciate that between the inline campus and the park and that's it thank you so much for your time thanks for your work hi my name is Lisa Bates I live on Emeline I've lived on the corner of Emeline and Button for 21 years and the last six years have been really rough I've had impacts from there being that campus of the street but when I took a leave of absence and returned in 2013 I didn't recognize the neighborhood anymore I was unable to sleep through the night because people are screaming obscenities throughout the night that's the same time period that the SSP was relocated to Emeline campus and the opiate crisis was exploding the location of that campus has a huge impact on our neighborhood which is a traffic corridor for people with addiction services, mental health and multiple other services related to health and poverty public transportation is inadequate to serve the campus currently daily foot traffic brings litter including needles and other injection kit plastics screaming obscenities domestic fights on the street shooting up in our yards thefts, threats, harassment, drug dealing and vandalism I've had people threaten me with knives because I asked them to stop cutting my flowers multiple cars stolen things stolen out of my yard shoes, packages, mail it's just two vehicles stolen, multiple hit and runs my neighbor has had no less than five vehicles totaled on the street there other neighbors have had similar totals I've had experiences of nearly being hit while walking my dog while people are trying to access the methadone clinic when it's getting close to closing they drive extremely aggressively and will not wait for you to get out of the way it's just become very stressful to live there mental health in the community down, people are selling their homes and leaving property values are down I would really appreciate mitigation of the impacts of the Emeline campus on the immediate neighborhoods surrounding it we experience much more impacts from that campus than anybody else in the city and I support the Grant Park neighbors recommendations of engagement and security thank you hi I'm bob card and I'm also with the Grant Park neighbors I think what you heard is an unintended consequence of the Emeline campus I don't think there was an intention to cause all of that but there's a tremendous disruption in that neighborhood and what we want to do as you heard from our director Brad Angel when he came up first is we'd like to more just more engagement we'd like to have maybe quarterly meetings with health service agency and the Grant Park neighbors and local law enforcement because we think that the if we're going to find that humane solution to how do you deal with all of these problems of people who have to go on to campus to get help and make it compatible with the neighborhood we think it takes a neighborhood participation for that and I don't think again there was an intention to create a corridor of special problems but that's what happened and so we're asking for some work with that thank you very much hello Kelly lifelong county resident various parts of the county former prescription opiate addict and semi-frequent volunteer with secondary exchanges I want to share some perspectives first of all thank you for all the data that's been collected it's good to have it on the books even though it's just purgatorily redundant of folk knowledge that people have known forever extended hours would be great different locations the locations are not always accessible those are the biggest problems that have existed for ages with these things but until those things are addressed I believe secondary exchanges are kind of crucial because what we are doing is not poaching clients we are reaching clients who the county is failing we are not taking people away we are finding the people who are not accessing your programs and we are serving them that's why I believe that recommendation number one is ludicrous limiting non-users exchange to only exchanging for two others will directly impede people from helping their loved ones helping their loved ones loved ones people frequently use in clusters you have people whose all their friends are addicts exchanging for only two people doesn't really make sense especially because secondary exchange we frequently interact with people who I like to think of as tertiary exchangers these are people who come to us out of the pogo nip out of other unincorporated areas of the county in the really inaccessible places and they themselves are exchanging for upwards of five people we use sharps containers we collect those things we bring them back to the county restricting that just doesn't really seem effective not going to appeal to a motion there it's just logistically ineffective hi my name is Matt Nathanson I'm here I'm a resident of Santa Cruz city and county for the past 25 years partly I'm here just as a resident and a voter to say that I support the continuation of a syringe exchange program and figuring out ways to expand it and make it work better the last several speakers really talked about unintended consequences and I think some of the conflicts you all are dealing with so on the one hand people are talking about as there are more people accessing services at Emeline they feel that it has an effect on their neighborhood on the other hand what we hear is people saying is don't do secondary exchange we want to bring more people into Emeline so there's and you know there it's just an unintended kind of conflict there I do the last speaker spoke about secondary exchange I really want to support her point which is I think as somebody who's worked as a public health nurse I think what we need to be doing is figuring out how to work with those people in the community are doing the secondary exchange because they are actually people who can extend our ability to outreach people in the community of people who are using substances and in doing this work if you can't build trust with people you're not going to get them into treatment you know I wasn't able to get people into treatment because I was smart about treatment or I'd gone to nursing school I was able to because I worked with people I met them where they were at these are folks who are doing that too so I think rather than saying how do we cut off secondary exchange I think we need to figure out how do we work with secondary exchange to expand our reach as a county it is sad and crazy to me that the that you know I read this report and it says you know restrictions on secondary syringe exchange are not supported by evidence based best practices or findings of the syringe access and disposal but so it's sort of politics over science so my politics says I'm going to vote for a board that supports doing this work right thank you hi my name is Nicholas Andrews I've been living in the county for about 45 years I'm a member of the Grant Street Park neighbors and I'm here to really speak to what's happening downstream that was mentioned and how it's impacting the neighborhood and proposing some of the solutions are anything with regards to expanding the hours of the safe injection needle exchange and part of that would be transportation was mentioned and the idea that there is no transportation that these people are unable to come to the needle exchange and so what's happening I would we would support some kind of studied for transportation needs as well as again the expansion of the downtown streets team to help pick up the litter and the detris that follows the people that are coming to the needle exchange okay and we'd also would like to support security expansion the security that is also available at street to be part of the Grant Street neighborhood because the idea it is the behaviors that are associated with the needle exchange beyond the needle syringe litter that needs to be addressed and be considered by the board by any expansion of the needle program and that's why I'm here here thank you thank you hi my name is Kate Garrett I am a volunteer member of the harm reduction coalition of Santa Cruz County and I'm just here to speak in support of the county SSP and I know that the recommendation made by the county is only to limit just essentially exchange of people only exchanging for others but I just want to say that I beg you to not restrict that middle group of the peer support network that would be horrible that group of people who exchange for themselves and others is critically important peer support is critically important secondary exchange is enabling peer support which is I think a great thing to enable and I heard it mentioned earlier that was like oh these other areas have more problems for less are giving out less needles but they have higher poverty rates but Santa Cruz County has one of the highest homeless youth and child poverty rates in the area and that is a really strong indicator of when there's going to be drug addiction problems I've been a lifelong resident of this county I'm a former drug user and I started using when I was a teenager and I think it's pretty shameful that people who really have mental health problems who are struggling who deserve dignity and our parts of our community are repeatedly shunned as being lesser or that they should be more at risk and that they should just deal with having what I think are basic human rights restricted and limited and there's a lot of people who honestly can't afford needles and like you say oh if you can afford heroin why can't you afford needles I think that that's like pretty ignorant of poverty and like the very very limited budgets that people actually operate in and I just wish we had more compassion for these people who really are at the lowest points in their lives and if we just gave them a little bit of a helping hand they could get up and yet we just keep pushing them back down and I don't really understand it so yeah thank you. Hi there my name is Danny Drysdale sorry I didn't bring any bottles of dirty syringes I prefer to dispose of those properly as we do with the harm reduction coalition of San Cruz County by the thousands and thousands every single week and I want to like lift that up for secondary exchanging and all the different ways that people access the SSP other than primary visits all of those are really critical points for people to be able to dispose of dirty syringes which means less syringes on the street so the more restrictions you put in the more caps that go on to the number of syringes people can get the less people will use the program the more visits will actually go down and the more needles will see on the street and as a addict and as a queer and trans person it's a deeply important issue to me continuing to fight disease fight HIV fight hepatitis C and also just to give addicts like myself some sense of dignity when they are being served they are being given these services you know and it's just really frustrating to come into this room and see all of this dehumanization all of this anger and it's putting a lot of people like our county health staff who are doing terrific terrific work and brought back an amazing report it's putting them in a really difficult position they are totally against best practices like it's just an absurd way to be doing public health and it's really hard to watch thank you good afternoon supervisors monoconic first district a successful needle exchange program doesn't just provide needles it provides information, treatment and connection to more services and I want to just point out a couple shortfalls I see in this report around this so let's talk about testing today's report is long but we still don't know how many patients have received an HIV and Hep C test what are the numbers without testing data we don't have we without testing data to go on all we have are self reported cases and we really don't know if the syringe services program is meeting its goal of preventing the spread of infectious diseases without testing we are also failing to give patients the invaluable service of information imagine you are an intravenous drug user in a tent in the woods with your friend Sally with one needle left between you at 11pm at night what better way to prevent the spread of disease from you to Sally than knowing you have a disease what if I told you that not only is the syringe services program only open three days a week but disease testing is only available on Mondays we should expand that to every day the syringe services program is open treatment is the other part of helping patients and in June of this year this board requested that the program report the number of patients successfully referred to MAT treatment Medicaid assisted treatment today's report says that we can expect that data in 2021 two years later I believe we need that information within a month of today so that we have a baseline for understanding program performance I'll just finish by saying that we should design this program to go to the users of injection drug go to injection drug users rather than forcing them to come into the MLI neighborhood and provide patients with complete care when we do see them thank you thank you so much resident of Santa Cruz county medical family physician have been working with SAFAR in our community in 2015 with the intention of decreasing death in our community related to opioids we've expanded our mission to include all substances I want to appreciate the work of our county and I think the county has been very sensitive to some of the political pressures that you are all expressing where your constituency are asking you to decrease secondary exchange and to not offer evidence based approaches and I really appreciate that tension it makes me very sad that we haven't done a good job we medical providers have not done a good job at sharing what science has told us in terms of addressing epidemics such as the one of the HIV epidemic that we were all part of just a few years ago we need to bring up what we've learned from the HIV epidemic and bring that to the SSP but I really want to honor the integrity that our county has put forth here for you today they're really following your directives and trying to work collaboratively collaboratively with you but I would like to go further and hopefully follow what the CDC and the California Department of Public Health recommend in terms of secondary exchange I think of collaboration and education together I encourage all of you to come to our SAFE Rx meetings so that you can all learn Bruce McPherson Mr. Caput about the questions you asked and what you asked as well let's work together please and use evidence based principles to guide our SSP thank you so much Hi my name is Patrick Fitzgerald I live in the San Lorenzo Valley I'm a graduate from Cabrillo and UC Berkeley and I don't really have an opinion on this needle exchange thing I just want to say that in a lot of ways I don't recognize a lot of what's happened in this county over the past 20 years or so going to Cabrillo here in the 90s I remember we had a little bit of a heroin epidemic there in the Pogo Nip I remember hanging out here in the 80s watching the Mexican gangs move into the beach flats and take over selling their hard drugs there and I don't know what to do about the needles but I'd just like to talk to you supervisors and say the first thing I'd like to see is something about enforcement and get this heroin off our streets get these hard drugs including the methamphetamines out of the hands of our young people and our kids early so they don't become addicts and we don't have this problem that's my take on this whole thing I don't know what to do about needles on the beach it makes me sick to see that my beautiful town and county has come to this it's kind of a sign of our compassion to let everybody come to Santa Cruz and welcome them with open arms but then you have to welcome everybody the addicts, the street people the homeless I don't know what to say that's it, thank you so that concludes public comment I'll bring it back to the board for deliberation and action thank you everybody for showing up today there's no question this is a very intense subject there's a lot of different thoughts but my goal is to return to primary exchange levels stronger levels our primary exchange has dropped as secondary exchange rose or increased and I think that isn't a good target I would like to make a motion in following some of the recommended actions that are up on the screen the recommendation one to do to follow what that says but take out the word only who exchange on behalf of just take out the word only there and I'd like to make a motion also like to see if we could add two additional hours to both the Santa Cruz and Watsonville sites that these exchanges take place accepting the evaluation syringe litter that we've heard from is fine, number two a third recommendation would be to HSA to return to the board on or before February 12 with the contract or contract amendments with providers to collect additional needles in the hot spots and we know where they are we're pretty well identified in the community the downtown streets team has done a tremendous job I don't know what the cost of that would be but I'd like to know that and then I'd like to have an additional section to set a future board study session by March 20th, March 2020 on the IV drug crisis facing our county to include requesting presentations from the sheriff's office the superior court the health services administration on law enforcement a criminal justice system treatment and prevention efforts being made data being made to address this crisis I think we need a collective direction to address this issue which is very complex and so that would be my motion I'll second that and I guess the only thing I'd add is I think we need we need more people interacting with our professional staff because we need to get people and we need to expand treatment options I think expanding hours to see if we can meet some of the need is important and I well I do believe it's the best practice I am told every week by a mother or a grandparent that they no longer take their kids to parks I just was told yesterday by mom that took their kid to a park here there was a needle in the sand and she'll never take her kid to that park again and when we have 60% obesity race obesity rates among our children it's evidence based that you create safe places for them to go and that you create neighborhood parks that they can walk to and we have I am I hear it all the time that the community that I grew up in the parks that my wife went to a quarter mile from here parks that I went to a mile from here as a kid the people I grew up with will no longer take those kids to those parks you heard it from grand street parks where the neighborhood was actually advocating to close a public park to get rid of a city park because they felt like the impacts were too great so while there is evidence based in one category this is a complex problem that we need to look at from a community wide perspective and while we absolutely have to have a needle exchange we have to get more people connected with treatment we have to understand what's going on with some of these numbers and where the gaps are in treatment and what we can do to fill it we also have to understand and have a plan and in place at the county's cost to get these needles picked up it's not the citizen's job to be out walking beaches parks picking up needles it's not the parks department workers jobs to be out picking up needles it's the county's job to be out there across this community and I think this interim step right away a contractor whether it's the streets team or another team to be out there in these hot spots is a good relief but we just this current situation is completely intolerable from a public spaces point of view and we need and in a declining contact among our professional staff for testing and treatment and we need to make some changes in order to do that I the four of you have listened to what they're saying out there and it's hard to it's hard to figure out exactly what you know is going to be the solution but we're going to try and all I can say is that we listen to what they're saying and we try to you know figure it out now what what exactly did you want to change as far as put in the direction okay well to follow the threes that are up here with the elimination of the word only on that number one and then the addition to return before on or before february 12 with a contract or contract amendments with providers to collect additional needles in the so-called hot spots in the community that's really centered in Santa Cruz and Watsonville and then additional direction to set a future board session to by march 20 with the sheriff's office the courts the health services administration to give us an overall view for how we can address this crisis okay what about scott's valley or whatever well I did that up to the so-called hot spots that I don't have the all of them identified but normally I know in my district up in the Felton bridge area by the river usually it's by rivers that's where it is I think in Watsonville as well so I think there are some identified hot spots that needle collection primary I mean the most needles are collected in the community just a quick comment on the parks I agree with you and one of the problems real quick is the schools now are fencing off the schools and locking the gates so kids are actually walking past school grounds and they can't get in and then they keep walking and walking and then they're all going to a park so by limiting the amount of park space we're concentrating it on our parks if the schools would open up their gates on the weekends and after school that would disseminate some of this you know piling up at one spot okay thank you thank you chair thank you for the testimony today thank you for the presentation I I had the good fortune of accepting an invitation to the park neighbors to do a cleanup I see Nicholas here who I was on the street with and I came back with a real clear sense and talk with our staff and we're going to be starting a downtown streets team effort there in February and so that's a long line of what my colleagues suggested the impact of the neighborhood is real I don't doubt that it's hard near any public facility and I think that I was hoping that the maker of the motion might take as a friendly amendment that HSA have some regular meetings with the grant park neighbors to provide an opportunity to exchange information and ideas I'm not sure it would just be limited to HSA but you might have HSD in there as well because the impact is not just from one agency it's obviously from all the agencies that are there would you accept that as a I'd accept that that's one of the spots I was thinking about yeah I also I think that I'm going to go along with this because of the conversation we had at the front end which is we're going to collect some more information and we're going to come back I was glad to see my colleague suggest a modest amount of hours increase because I do think that that goes along with what what we heard in there in the information I think that this is super challenging and I'm not an epidemiologist to have a better sense as to why more needles here than other places I can think of lots of different reasons I don't know what the pharmacy sells here I don't know if there's more pharmacies there I don't know if they sell more needles I just there are lots of different ways that this could cut and so I you know I understand the frustration but I also believe that we're collecting more needles than we're handing out and so people are using drugs in Santa Cruz County and to the speaker who says we should be doing something about drug addition as my colleague noted and what I'm sure we'll talk about in the study session is all the extra effort that we've been trying to ramp up and build capacity of our community to provide more treatment especially treatment on demand in our community and it takes it's not an easy thing it's not just money you have to build a network and it's challenging and I think that our department has shown that you're up to the challenge you are actively on these issues but it's a constant state of growth and change to be able to meet the needs of the community so I will be supporting the motion and I appreciate the acceptance so we have a motion and we have a second all those in favor please say aye opposed that passes unanimously thank you everyone who came for that item we now have our next afternoon schedule item then we'll go back to our morning scheduled items that we didn't get to item number 18 is to consider a proposed ordinance adoring chapter 13.31 a mobile home park closure ordinance to Santa Cruz County code effective January 2020 and to schedule an ordinance for final adoption on January 14th 2020 as outlined in a memorandum of Supervisor Leopold thank you chair and I'll keep my mind to get to this item you know in Santa Cruz County mobile and manufactured home parks provide the largest stock of affordable housing our county had the foresight nearly 40 years ago to create a simple but sturdy mobile home rent control ordinance that also included ways in which to prevent conversions that has been tested on a regular basis in court parks owners have tried to close parks have tried to convert parks have our board has regularly stopped that when it's come to us and we have been sued for tens of millions of dollars we have a very able legal team that has taken cases all the way up to the California Supreme Court to make new law in mobile home rent control law and for that I am grateful um the legal team has never gotten as much applause as they have today ah the we're also fortunate in our community to have some great um legal support around issues around mobile home law and Will Constantine is a local lawyer who's also an expert in this field and he's in part funded by Bay Federal which is the largest funder of mortgages for mobile and manufactured homes in Santa Cruz County for that we are grateful Will came to me maybe a year year and a half ago identifying a trend that he had seen in other parts of the state where owners were trying to close parts completely and so they could leave them empty and then try to build something later on we know that there are lawyers who are trying to figure out every day how to get around the laws that are set up to protect our stock of housing when we didn't think we could do it at the county Will worked with the assembly members Mark Stone drafted a bill AB 705 that would hopefully put those protections in the state law not surprisingly mobile home park owners are strong in Sacramento and that bill why not dead has become a two year bill and we're not exactly sure how it's going to look like at the end so Will came to me just a little while ago and said let's create a separate ordinance let's not touch the mobile home rent control ordinance and create a standalone ordinance that has key protections in the event that a park owner tries to close a mobile home park and specifically it would ensure that if anybody tried to close a park that the residents in the park had to be able to find like housing here in Santa Cruz County to have a rule that someone could find housing somewhere you all like living here we don't think that you should have to move to Bakersfield or Visalia or some other place you're part of our community you should get to stay in our community and so we brought this to the mobile and manufactured home commission a couple weeks ago they unanimously supported I see many members of the commission here they do incredible work all the time and I'm asking our board to adopt an ordinance that we could have in place regardless of what happened with AB 705 if their protections are stronger we get them but more likely their protections won't be as strong and we'll have stronger protections here in Santa Cruz County we have to do everything we can to protect mobile and manufactured home residents in our county we can work for years decades and we will never build a larger stock of affordable housing people count on that to be able to live here we should do all we can and the board will support it so I want to thank you for bringing this to us it's an important ordinance we're going to have opportunities for members of the public to speak to us let me just say that my expectation is that this is going to pass overwhelmingly so if people don't feel in need to speak we can just get it passed and on the books but you but everyone has a right to speak so feel free to speak if you'd like but yeah I want to thank my colleague for bringing this up so quickly and it's another example of how this county gets ahead of the state and what needs to be done and should be done that's all I can say but thank you Supervisor Leigh for bringing this to us and I was going to say we're talking about the unincorporated area I don't know about Santa Cruz but Watsonville does have protection and I believe everybody I don't know how exactly it works but I helped get it through the people in the park would pay a few dollars a month and then they would have a lawyer represent them and also address everything but anyway people in a mobile home parks are kind of trapped there if the owner of the park doesn't have some kind of ordinance or whatever holding them back from just jacking up the price of rent or the price of other services in the park so that's why it's different from all the other rent control regardless of how other people think mobile homes are unique and they do need protection because otherwise they could be taken advantage of so alright now's an opportunity for members of the public to speak to us if they wish we're going to make this real quick and real fast and everybody gets to be involved so Henry Cleveland chair of the mobile home commission Jean Brocklebank vice chair of the mobile home commission everyone who agrees with that proposition the ordinance please stand alright thank you and and a very special thank you to all of the residents and a very special thank you to everyone every resident who came from we probably have at least eight to ten different parks represented here today and you all came out and stayed for two hours and this is how government works thank you thank you supervisors so that concludes the park so that concludes public comment I'll bring it back to the board and supervisor Leopold I will move the recommended actions I appreciate everyone coming out although this board is supportive you show us on a regular basis how important a strong support from the board of supervisors is to protecting mobile home rent control ensuring that your parks cannot be converted and closed and it's a good reminder for us all and anything that we do that we need to work to protect you so we got a we have a motion by Leopold and a second by McPherson all those in favor please say aye so that passes four to zero supervisor friend who had to go somewhere told me that he is looking forward to voting on its second reading in January yes and so thank you all very much folks could step outside we'll keep going ask the fire fire folks to make their way up we're going to hear now item number nine this is a public hearing to consider adoption of the cow fire code 2019 edition with amendments adopt a resolution finding a modification of state housing law reasonably necessary adopt an ordinance amending and updating the county fire code chapter 7.92 the fire code and accept CEQA the notice of termination and a negative declaration and take related actions as outlined in a memorandum of the director of general services we'll give you one minute here chief you can hear him alright go for it thank you morning chair chair Kennedy and members of the board Ian Larkin Santa Cruz county fire chief on September 24th general services scheduled today's public hearing to consider adoption of the ordinance amending and updating the county fire code the ordinance adopts the 2018 international fire code and the 2019 California fire code at this time we're recommending your board open up the public hearing hear any objections protests or comments close the public hearing and follow that with taking the recommended actions adopt the resolution finding modification of state housing law reasonably necessary because of local conditions adopt the ordinance amending chapter 7.92 of the Santa Cruz county code relating to the fire code accepting CEQA notice of determination and negative declaration and direct the county clerk of the board to mail a copy of these findings together with the modifications changes expressly marked and identified to the California building standards commission and obtain a filed stamp endorsed copy of from the commission for retention by the Santa Cruz county fire department we're here to answer any questions you may have is there any questions seeing no questions I'm going to ask if there's any members of the public like to speak seeing no members of the public I'll close public comment and bring it back to the board for deliberation and action I'll move to approve second motion by cap it this is terrific that we're updating but we really have to make sure that the public is aware more than ever about the dangers of potential fires this is going to go a long way for sheriff county sheriff enforcement added requirements on burn locations and so forth it's going to be a help it's a step in the right direction but the general public has to be made more aware and cognizant of what needs to be done for fire protection all right we got a motion and we got a second all those in favor please say aye aye opposed that passes unanimously on a four to zero vote all right we will now hear item number 10 which is a public hearing to consider amending the Santa Cruz general plan local coastal plan and sequa negative decoration ordinances amending chapters 13.10 13.14 16.50 17.02 and 17 and 18.10 of the Santa Cruz county code relating to affordable rental housing and school employee housing in the public facilities zones on and agricultural employee housing in agricultural zones and take related actions as outlined in a memorandum of the planning director good morning for chair and supervisors so this project entails amendments to the county's general plan and local coastal program zoning code I'd like to just introduce Julie Conway our housing manager who's here and who played a really big part in particularly on the farm worker housing side and so she'll chime in a little bit when we get to that part the project really consisted of amendments for two types of workforce housing in particular one which involves housing on public facility zone sites and the other that involves housing for farm workers on agriculturally zoned properties within each of those there's sort of two flavors and I'll get into that a little bit more in some of the next slides so as you mentioned we're amending or proposing to amend three chapters of the general plan and local coastal program and five chapters of the county code most of the text amendments are in chapter 1310 which is the county's zoning ordinance there we go oops what happened sorry about that he's going to call the vote if you keep it up I'm almost at that slide that's what I'm using oh this one okay okay thank you so the supervisors are familiar with the need for this project as you know many types of employers are struggling to find employees for their agencies or firms or schools due to the high cost of housing in the area and that's really the driving need for the project so let's try the other gadget there we go so the amendments related to the public facility zones has to do with defining two distinct project types these are the two types of projects that we'd like to encourage and we're endeavoring to encourage these amendments one is a hundred percent affordable rental housing that would be allowed on public facility zone sites that are located within the urban services line or rural services line these are the same types of projects that are defined in the density bonus code chapter as well so sustainability restrictions, non-profit developer all that sort of thing the other type is a school employee housing project type which doesn't have per say an income restriction but would be restricted to employees of the school or school district that's building the project and those could be on any public facility zone site that is actually owned by a school district or a private school okay so as I mentioned there's several amendments of the county code that are being amended and most of the amendments are in 1310 additional adding these new defined use types to the use chart and some minor amendments to the other two chapters can I ask just a quick question I apologize I hadn't occurred to you before which is at a hundred percent affordable housing you know like if does it will it always pencil to build the housing I'd be happy about 80 percent affordable housing if it meant there was more affordable housing or are we confident that there are grant funds and other funds that will make these projects work regardless I think he's sorry about that these projects presume that they're going to be the non-profit developed type of project such as the recent one at 1500 Capitola where there will be public financing through low income housing tax credits and those I guess the my question is are those public funding sources reliable and adequate enough to ensure that these projects go because sometimes it can take years right they can take a long time to develop that's right but they do go hand in hand with this type of project you can't achieve the depth of affordability without public financing also there it's not like there's a ton of these sites so in relation to the number of potential sites I think the way we drafted the amendments the idea is to make it pencil as best as possible under the given circumstances okay thank you so for the farm worker housing amendments there's amendments as I mentioned to both the general plan and the zoning ordinance and these amendments would apply to three agricultural zone districts CA is commercial AG A is plane AG AP is AG preserve however I'll just make a note that we don't actually have any properties at this time that are in the AP zone district but we do have a sort of functionally equivalent zoning tool which is the P combining zone or P overlay which is applied to properties just on an administrative basis any AG parcel that has a Williamson Act contract that is active or other types of farmland preservation agreement that's recorded against the property that would be in the P combining zone and so wherever you see AP referenced here that is essentially referencing also the P combining zone so the goals of the amendments here were to both bring the county's current codes into better compliance or consistency with state law primarily two parts of the state law which is the Employee Housing Act which is part of the health and safety code and assembly bill 1783 which was the REVAS bill that was passed just this prior session or this current legislative session that made some amendments to the Employee Housing Act as well as a few amendments to some other provisions of state law that affect this type of housing the second goal was to create a path for 100% affordable rental farm worker housing in the Pajaro Valley and outside of the coastal zone that was really responding to the findings in that farm worker housing study that your board considered earlier this year which came up with an estimated need for a certain number of housing units in the Pajaro Valley and that the board adopted a goal to try to address that so this is trying to put the zoning in place to allow those units to be built within these agricultural zones so here's a map that just shows where the agricultural zone districts are in the county so all of the light green areas that you see here on the map now you may be familiar with this a lot of these areas on the north coast are in federal or institutional ownership so we wouldn't really anticipate seeing a lot of these housing developments there but in fact to the affordable projects that I mentioned the way we've structured these amendments is that they would have to be located both within this black hatch area which is kind of our designation of the Pajaro Valley and also within one of the green agricultural zones and also there's a further layer of analysis which would be to exclude any sites that are among a list of sort of areas so fault zones wetlands all those sorts of things would be excluded further from those areas so our recommended actions are that you hold a public hearing on the proposed amendments to the general plan local coastal program related to public facility and school employee housing and farm worker housing and amendments to the county code as well and that you adopt a resolution that's provided in attachment A to approve the declaration and adopt the amendments to the general plan as shown in exhibit one and that you also adopt the ordinances amending the county code chapters listed here 1310, 1314, 1650, 1702 and 1810 and that you direct the planning director to file the negative declaration and transmit the local coastal program amendments to the coastal commission for their review and certification. So let me ask is there any public comment come on up yes Tim will be speaking for affordable housing now we support these amendments also George Wiley who is a board member of the San Lorenzo school district was here earlier and could not stay to speak so he asked me to speak for him the San Lorenzo school district is has been working on a project for employee housing I believe it's 33 units they have a terrible time right now hiring teachers because of the shortage of housing and the price of housing and they think this is really going to help the school district and this is the only thing necessary for them to move their project forward so it will be really exciting to them if you vote yesterday and we support that so thank you. All right that concludes the comment I understand supervisor Leopold has a question and supervisor McPherson has a motion. Yes so I strongly support this I think it's a great that we're moving forward with it you this is fully compliant with the laws that are going into effect by January 1 is that correct because that was a concern is whether it met the little I read and trying to figure out whether it matched up wanted to make sure that we were taking that and making sure that our language is is in sync with the new state legislation that was our intent of course there can be differing opinions always right among attorneys but that we did the best we could and we'll see you know with the reaction and I guess once it's enacted. Got it thank you. Thank you Mr. Chair we all know the critical crisis that we have here in the county I just wanted to mention something about 1783 and you remember you mentioned a assembly member I think we should know that he is based in Hollister or San Benito County but represents part of Watsonville and we should applaud him and thank him for his efforts in getting that passed so we could expand this opportunity for so many and then Mr. Willoughby took the words right out of my mouth I wanted to speak this is going to impact I think it could very well impact each of our districts particularly in the south county but in the north county in Santa Rosa Valley we've been the school district and I've been in the discussions with them I've been talking about this for a long time at the former Redwood Elementary Campus this is going to be a tremendous addition and allowing them to attract some teachers to that great district in the valley thank you. I'd like to make a motion to accept the recommended actions. Second. Motion by McPherson second by Leopold all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed that passes unanimously. Thank you very much we'll now go on to item 12 right yes item 12 which is to consider an ordinance adding section 2.10.030 to Santa Cruz County Code regarding delegation to invest funds and schedule a final adoption for January 14, 2014 as outlined in a memorandum of the Auditor-Controller Tax Collector. Good afternoon. Edith Driscoll Auditor-Controller Treasurer Tax Collector and I come here on tax day so uh I can celebrate bringing in some money as stated this ordinance adds section 2.10.030 to the Santa Cruz County Code which um specifies the ability to delegate to the Auditor-Controller Treasurer Tax Collector the authority to invest funds this section was previously in the County Code as section 2.11 when the offices were consolidated it was removed in error and at the recommendation of County Council we're bringing it back to you to add it back in. Great um and just a quick question for County Council so in the past this board has taken action to direct not investing in certain places would the board still retain that authority under this ordinance? Yes. Okay great any members of public like to speak seeing none bring it back to the board I would move approval of the recommended actions motion by Leopold second by McPherson I'm sure it would have been caught in the County Code updates we just haven't got into this section yet uh all those in favor please say aye aye opposed that passes unanimously thank you very much go down and count the money yes lots of it um so now we have uh item 15 which is a continued public hearing to consider the report on year 2020 growth goal adopted resolution establishing growth rate of 0.5 uh for a year 2020 in the unincorporated portion of the county and to authorize planning staff to file a CEQA notice of exemption as outlined in a memorandum of the planning director good afternoon members of the board as you know your board first considered the proposed 2020 growth goal on September 24th and continue to the public hearing on the matter uh to today pending the planning commissions review so the 2020 growth goal report is before you today for consideration and has been updated with data collected through November 1st 2019 um this report provides an update on the current status of the 2019 residential building permit allocations um as of November 1st of this year 49 allocations have been granted if this rate continues 59 allocations will be granted by the end of the year which is up from the 54 granted last year um however the however demand for allocations has remained low compared to previous decades so we don't anticipate there'll be um any lack of permits available for the remainder of this year as discussed at the September meeting the growth goal report recommends that the population growth rate be set at 0.5 percent for calendar year 2020 which would result in an allocation of 255 market rate permits available for next year unlike previous years allocations will be distributed between the urban and rural areas of the county at a 3 to 1 ratio and this is in order to recognize the greater potential for infill development in the urban area with the addition of unused allocations rolled over um from 2019 that will be carried into 2020 a total of 452 available for 2020 the planning commission considered the proposed 2020 growth goal on October 23rd and recommended a growth goal of 0.5 percent for approval by your board with a vote of 4 to 1 the commission also recommended the filing of the CEQA notice of exemption for the 2020 growth goal the categorical exemption has been prepared and it's included as an attachment in your packet so staff therefore recommends that your board resume the continued public hearing to consider the report on the year 2020 growth goal and close the public hearing adopt the attached resolution establishing a year 2020 growth goal of 0.5 percent for the unincorporated portion of the county and authorize the planning department to file the CEQA notice of exemption with the clerk of the board and that concludes the staff presentation but we can answer any questions if you'd like. Sure are there any questions Supervisor Leopold. Thank you it's always good to give your name at the start of it because we don't run this is your star moment so the question of the 49 permits maybe this is also based on past do we have any sense of where those permits have been urban or rural has it been more 3 to 1 has it been half and half what's been the history of that? That's a good question it is actually included in the report so let me just refer to that really quickly it should be on table 8 the 2019 building permit allocation status so 37 have been granted in the urban area and only 12 in the rural and that's the 49 total looking for table 8 hold on. Sure that's on page 277 of the packet so I don't actually have the projected units in there but we can calculate that. Okay thank you I had missed this in one place and didn't have it in the other so Alright any members of the public to speak to us? Seeing none bring it back to the board I move approval the recommended actions. Motion by Leopold second by McPherson all those in favor please say aye. That passes unanimously we now have to item number 16 we need to take formal action to continue this item. I would move to continue this item to second. Motion by Leopold second by McPherson all those in favor please say aye. Aye. That passes unanimously that now concludes our agenda till our next No apparently not. No. I think we got it. We did it earlier. We did it earlier. Yes I made the motion I know. Miss Steinbrenner commented on it. Yes alright So that now concludes our our meeting until our next regular scheduled meeting January 14th 2020 Thank you all very much.