 Recording in progress. Good morning, everybody. We'd like to call to order the December 5th, 2023 meeting of the Board of Supervisors. So we could begin with a roll call, please. Certainly. Supervisor Koenig. Here. Cummings. Here. Hernandez. Present. McPherson. Here. And Friend. Here, we're going to begin with a moment of silence and a pledge of allegiance. I'd like to ensure that at least part of our moment of silence is dedicated to Roland or Rev Rebley, who quite frankly, left one of the greatest impressions and legacies in our community of anybody that's ever lived within our area and touched so many of our lives in nothing but positive ways, not just during his life, but I'm sure for future generations as well. Are there others that would like to dedicate the moment of silence or additional comments? So Supervisor McPherson, then Supervisor Koenig. Yeah. In my first life in the newspaper business, and that's where Roland Rebley really made his way with weeklies throughout the nation, he was recognized in the community, as you had mentioned, for so many things and what a giving person he was. But in the newspaper business, he was also recognized highly for his steadfast, should we say, pushing of issues to make people live a better life. And he did that in so many ways in Santa Cruz County. But in the newspaper profession, which has diminished a little here in the recent years, of course, with what we have, but Roland Rebley made the best of everything and he was known for a leader in the First Amendment Coalition, always wanted people to speak out, and we can reach agreement and consensus if we talk to each other. We have our opinions and he had many of them, but boy, they were well founded and he was just a tremendous person, a great friend. We're going to miss him. Santa Cruz County has really been blessed to have Roland Rebley in its county for the last several years. Thank you, Suvarsar Khurs and Suvarsar Koenig. Yeah, just a few more memories I wanted to share about Reb. I had the honor of working with Reb on a campaign and even in his 90s, Reb living in Dominican Oaks just managed to organize and whip up his entire community to get engaged on this important issue. Then of course, when the Watsonville Hospital was facing bankruptcy, I reached out to Reb and he wanted to get involved, but he wanted to kick the tires a little bit. And so he asked to set up a meeting with the senior leadership down there at Watsonville Hospital and we went down there and he grilled them. He asked them all the hard questions. They gave satisfying answers and I know he was ultimately convinced that the sort of homegrown talent that cares so much about that hospital were worth investing in. There's a good investment for our community and he gave over a million dollars of his own money and his and Pat's money to that effort. And then finally, just this past year when my daughter was being born we were in the labor and delivery unit at Dominican Hospital and there's a nice courtyard in there and I went outside to sit on a bench and breathe some fresh air and sure enough it was donated by Pat and Roland Rebley. So look around and you'll see the influence of this great man and every part of our community. We'll miss you, Rob. Thank you. If we could have a moment of silence and then we'll have the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join us in the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. Thanks to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God, indivisible for the rigidity and justice for all. Morning, Mr. Plosius. Are there any changes to today's agenda? Yes, Chair and members of the board we have one correction. This is on the consent agenda. Item number 35, there's additional materials. There's a revised memo package 408 which is replaced the financial impact paragraph two should read the multi-year expenditure agreement with the college action. Contract number 24H37056 in the amount of $1,591,130 is budgeted under the account 362800 forward slash 62381 forward slash H34100 with projected spending NFY 2324 in the amount of $397,794. $794 and subsequent annual spending projected at approximately 397,778. That concludes our corrections. Thank you, Mr. Plosius. Are there any board members like to pull an item from the consent to the regular agenda? I'm seeing none. We're gonna open it up now for public comment. This is an opportunity for members of the community to either address us on items that are not on today's agenda but within the purview of the board of supervisors that are on the consent agenda for unable to stay. Good morning, welcome back. Yeah, good morning. It's December 5th, 2023. My name is James Ewing Whitman. You know, although I really do appreciate the kindhearted words that many of you talk about it's, you know, kind of with politicians don't watch their mouths, watch their hands. You guys literally have generations of criminals that are supporting the bullshit genocide and murder that you guys are promoting. And I would like to pull off the on the consent agenda item, item number 29, which has to do with a reappointment of Mr. Jason Heath. Now, what is going on in this county that seems to be completely beguiling to most of the citizens? It might be as easy to explain why am I not standing for a pledge of allegiance to a corporate maritime flag? Why is it that outside these buildings you have California and US flags without the gold pirate fringe on it? You guys are operating on so many different levels of different laws that are not for the health of the community. I think very few people understand what it means to be a charter city or county. You men were elected, whether that was done fictitiously or not, that's not the question. But under charter cities, you guys are under the control of the internationally controlled regulatory commission that was not elected, it was chosen. And when one looks at various people like Dr. David Martin and what he's done to expose the World Homicide Organization, the WHO, more than 110 years ago, you guys are promoting the genocide of the citizens. And it's not just with the frequencies, it's not just with the poison water, but it's with these shots. And so yes, I would like to pull off the consent agenda item number 29, thank you. Thank you, morning, welcome. Good morning, hi, my name is Megan Carroll and I am the volunteer coordinator at the Santa Cruz County Animal Shelter. And I'm here today because you have three representatives. You sit on our JPA board, Emily Chung, Nicole Coburn and Chief Deputy Chris Clark. We are facing an urgent crisis at the shelter that has been blamed in the media on animal overpopulation, but is really about internal disarray and lack of oversight. We have had a 22% increase in animals from last year to this year and we are hitting a critical point, the highest level of animals in 10 years. This is a fact, but it is not the reason for our shelters dysfunction. We are understaffed, there's a lack of resources and a management vacuum that is leading us towards a cliff. This affects the Santa Cruz community because it impacts the level of care we are able to give the animals and the public who visit our shelter every day. In the very near future, these problems will compound and create larger issues involving public health, public safety and also affect family-owned pets. We ask that you check in with your representatives on our JPA board as to what is going on at our shelter and to hold management accountable for the ongoing issues that we are facing. The Santa Cruz community needs a well-run shelter that they can be proud of. We bring this to your attention in order to ensure that the Santa Cruz County Animal Shelter can continue to support our community animals at the highest level in the future. Thank you. Thank you. Morning, welcome back. Good morning. Good morning, Bail Board. Good morning, Chair Friend. My name is David Brody. I'm the Executive Director at First 5 Santa Cruz County. I'm here to thank you and Supervisor Friend for proclaiming January 2024 to be the 12th annual Positive Parenting Awareness Month in our County. As many of you know, Positive Parenting Awareness Month started right here in Santa Cruz County some 11 years ago and since then it has been replicated and spread all over the state. The growing movement recognizes that Positive Parenting is a powerful predictor of future social, emotional and physical health. Acting is a protective factor helping prevent and heal adverse childhood experiences. Last year I reported to you that the importance of Positive Parenting had been reinforced by the release of a request for applications for parent and caregiver support programs from the California Department of Healthcare Services and their Children, Youth and Behavioral Health Initiative, which named Triple P as one of four evidence-based programs that the initiative would fund. I am happy to report to you today that we applied First 5 under that RFA and our application was fully funded for $400,000 over two years to improve equitable access of Triple P services in our County. At First 5 Santa Cruz County, we are proud to manage the Triple P program in partnership with your self-services agency, your human services department, your probation department and many other community partners and agencies. It is a program that has served nearly 50,000 parents, caregivers, children and youth in our County since 2010. Combined with other parenting programs as well as the family of home visiting, that this County helps support through the Thrive by 5 initiative, we continue to build a comprehensive system of care that helps reduce the stigma for parents and caregivers to ask for support that they need and provide support that is built around the express needs of those parents and caregivers. We are grateful to this community and I am grateful to each of you to this board for your commitment to the Children, Families of Santa Cruz County and for declaring January 2024 positive parenting awareness month. Thank you very much. That's part of the thank for your work. Good morning and welcome. Good morning, thank you. My name is Christopher Wheeler. I'm here with my wife Sarah Claus to address a somewhat more limited scope issue. So we're in a dispute with a neighbor on an easement issue which has been in the courts. The court case is references B204587. We have been pursuing building permits on that land that we own that is served by the easement. Our opponent slash neighbor doesn't think there should be an easement about two years into the discovery process. Our neighbor attempted to use SB13 to permit an accessory dwelling unit to make the easement essentially fire non-compliant. So what I'm looking for is advice, guidance, an opinion on whether SB13 can be used in the process of a court proceeding to essentially negate a legal easement. The easement was upheld in court and is now in appeal but we feel very confident that we'll win. So if we could get your input on that at any point we would really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good morning and welcome. Good morning. My name is Kyle Samuels and I'm here to discuss the possible deferral by the County of SB43 which is a mental health bill which would expand the LPS conservatorship to people who suffer from drug addiction or other things like that. The delay could go up for two years and then you have to implement it one way or the other. My question is why they believe the cost is gonna be so exorbitant when section seven of the code actually requires a state reimbursement of funds for any mandated costs under the legislation. Also, the curse will be mitigating costs in the sense that anybody who's not jailed or it has to go like my son has repeatedly gone and been put into a hospital because he's been abused or attacked or hurt. And that's those costs are quite exorbitant but almost all the costs that would be incurred under the LPS conservatorship is borne by SSI and by MediCal. So I'm not sure what the cost would be to the County itself directly. I'm not sure where they come up with this huge exorbitant cost related to possibly implementation of it or administration of it. That still seems quite exorbitant. My son's been conserved twice by the County and he attacked somebody in one of the facilities and they put him back in jail because he had attacked somebody because he's mentally ill and they took him off LPS conservatorship at that point which seemed quite ridiculous to me at that. Why would you say someone who's obviously mentally ill take him out of a facility and then say it decided he's not no longer LPS conservatorship but now the only avenue for us is SB 43 which is supposed to be implemented starting May 1st. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that story. Morning. Welcome. Good morning. My name is Susan Preciado and I hope that the board members read our letter to you about SB 43. I would just say that my son is now in jail and he's been in and out of jail. I'm Kyle's wife. We're talking about the same guy. For most of the time in the last two or three years and he doesn't get the proper meds sometimes. He's delusional sometimes. He's self-harm sometimes. He's undergone suicide attempts and there's a real need for SB 43 to be implemented. And I urge you to implement it without delay. Thank you. Thank you. Morning. Welcome back. Good morning. My name is David Schwartz. I'm a candidate for SAC's position in the upcoming election. I sent the board an email yesterday, fairly comprehensive. I hope you all received it. Many of my comments on the consent items were just questions that I have that could be answered by staff or anybody else by email or what have you. I just would like item 14 removed from the consent agenda because I'd like to know what those claims are and how they came to be. There's a few little things that I'd like to mention about, for instance, the agenda change this morning. It's difficult for people to keep up with everything. And I was wondering if there's some way that people can sign up for advanced copy of things so that we're prepared for meetings like this. If there's a change to the agenda, I know that we can go look up online, but when you're in an hour of traffic coming here, it's hard to get that information. I also noticed that in a previous meeting there was a mention of closed captioning. And I believe we use Zoom for our meetings. Zoom actually does have closed captioning as part of the package. So it may be possible that you guys can initiate that or staff can initiate that and we can have that because I think it's important that all citizens, whether they're hearing impaired or have other disabilities, are able to contribute. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Good morning, welcome. Good morning. My name is Cristal Gonzalez and I'm the Semiitas Director at Ventures. Ventures is a nonprofit implementing transformational programs that ensure a shared and prosperous economy. Economic future for all. We are very grateful for the county support of Semiitas. Semiitas opens a children's savings account for all babies that were born in Santa Cruz County. Currently there are over 6,500 babies in Santa Cruz County with a children's savings account. Recently we completed a survey with our families and we found that 67% of our families aspire their children to complete at least a master's degree. This is about a 10% increase since 2020. Thanks to the support of our partners, including the county, we are able to offer up to $500 in milestones by the time the child turns five. One of our partners is First Five of Santa Cruz, Baby Gateway and Triple P programs. The Triple P program aligns with one of our goals at Semiitas to improve early childhood development. Research has shown that children's savings account have a positive impact on children's social-emotional development. Families that attend Triple P classes and have Semiitas get a $50 milestone deposit into their account. As January approaches and is declared positive parenting awareness month, we want to thank you for raising awareness of the importance of positive parenting and recognizing that healthy and happy families will lead to resilient communities. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. And here before those of you who know how happy I am that policy came to be a youth commission starting coming up thanks to our CEO. That's the best news I've had. If you remember back in 75, the county had one for six years. I'm not in two minutes, gonna go into all of this stuff I have with me. But I want to say that between now and next year, we can do something different if you'll take a look downstairs at one time that space at a restaurant, right in this building. On that possibility, not in two minutes, I'm gonna try to do my best to send an email to you who are supervisors and that we create what here is the invitation over a long period of time. I don't even show this up. Yeah, it does. This is your invitation, a design for youth development policy in California. Let's make it here in Santa Cruz. I was there at Twin Lakes when they announced how much money, one church faith-based Twin Lakes, right by Cabril. I have somebody in the room who's here for your tax of a half a cent. How much money do you think they announced that at Thanksgiving, they had a check for the food bank? Think, what would you answer? How would you say how much money? That one church raised somewhere half a million dollars. You didn't see it in the Sentinel. You got it right here. I am that I am a community organizer. I wanna say thank you to those that have relationships. I'm looking for someone much younger than me at 86. But if we honor Dolores Huerta, just think what Philippe could do to that relationship that he has. If we take on later, two minutes over. Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Beth, thank you for the hard work of the commission. Thank you. That's my message. Hello, my name is Lodi Mila Vojka. And this is the decade, like I'm coming here and ask for help. And I still did not get help. I sent you a message again yesterday and everybody's email on that message, personal email, not just word of supervisors, main mail, and I asked you again for help to my daughter to have assigned professional mental health client service because she doesn't have one. For that decade, she was kidnapped. She was locked up in psychiatric facility to destroy it, to degrade her. And the behavior health division is succeeded with that. They degraded my daughter and now they thrown her on my shoulders to take care of her, which is very difficult without a professional help. I need a professional help. If anyone decent, honest, employee mental health client service specialist insist in this county, because I don't see one. And I was assigned supervisor, Robert Anand to contact him. I contacted him initially. He never returned my calls. His supervisor, Karen Kern, never returned my calls. I just had a phone conversation with Tiffany Cantrell Warren, who is also empty suit, the same like Eric Riera was. And she does not even read my emails. I hope you will do what you already did. So it is very serious. And my last call to sheriff department to come over with mental health worker to do welfare check on my daughter, they refused again on December 3rd. That happened again, again and again. They refused to take an appropriate action and help. So please respond. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. My name is Bruce Holloway. I live in Boulder Creek. There's an election coming up as you all know. And I've been trying to get various kinds of information off of the elections department website. I usually access it by typing votescount.com. There's, if you look down the page, there's a place to click and putting your address and find out who your incumbents are. And I did that yesterday. And there's a number of retired judges there. It's got Judge Gallagher, Judge Burdick, Judge Salazar. Also, it told me the late Judge Maragonda who passed away about a year ago. Then for my local water district, it has the names of six people when I know there's only five members of the board. My rec district, it says there are five members, but I know that there are really only four because one of those seats is vacant. I've been exchanging emails with the county clerk for over a year about some of these issues. And I've come to the conclusion that there's some sort of a communication breakdown between the elections department and the information technology department. I don't know if IT is its own department or if it's under general services. I don't know who's in charge, but I think with an election coming up, you ought to be able to make sure that votescount.com is up to date. And I think there ought to be a 24 hour turnaround if somebody finds an error. I don't think it should take more than 24 hours to fix it. So one more thing that I forgot to say, I've been looking for information about Measure G. It used to be there was a complete set of all the voter information materials. That seems to have disappeared. And that was only five years ago. So I think that should be restored. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good morning, welcome. Good morning. My name is Jeff Vincent. Four years ago, I was a hemp farmer down near Watsonville. My crop was raided three and a half years ago. I have a case against you. So I don't even know if it's appropriate to speak, but you guys go into closed session to decide what my award should be. My crop was worth several million dollars when it was raided by your sheriffs. And we've settled tentatively for much less. That's not really a fair settlement after I pay my attorneys and my taxes. I barely get my expenses out of this. The hemp crops are legal. It's not THC, it's medicinal CBD. I was off to a good business start and my family has suffered because of your sheriffs erroneously raiding my crops. So please, when you do see my case, just wanted to introduce myself and let you know who I am. I've been in this county since 1980. I've went to UCSC, Todd Cabrillo. My son was born here. I've started several businesses here. And this was another one that was going to take off and succeed and your sheriffs, although there's body cam footage of them at my site debating if it's legal or not. And they went ahead and destroyed my entire crop. So please consider that when you look at the case. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, welcome back. Good morning, Becky Steinburner. I live in rural Aptos and I just want to say that I support County Council of holding the rights of this man. And I hope that you will have a proper action to defend his rights as a farmer. And I see congratulations, Mr. Hayes in item, consent item 29, you're being reappointed for another four years. I would like to speak to consent agenda item 34, authorization to seek a vendor to provide bottled water to provide bottled water for the County in times of drought. It is poignant because this on December 15th, the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board will likely approve a permit for the Soquel Creek Water District to inject the treated sewage water that is not distilled water from the Pure Water Soquel Project as it's being reported to be during tours. It has a lot of nitrate in it. It was reduced from 3.5 milligrams per liter to 1.67 milligrams per liter, but it still has nitrate. The ambient nitrate of the area where it will be injected is 0.06 milligrams per liter. What else is gonna get through? If the purification can't get out to nitrate and it will have very, very high chlorine also being injected, what else is gonna be in there? We may need bottled water because of that. I would also like to quickly say that I opposed to item 39, CSA 9E increase because there is no analysis of special or proportional use benefit that will go out. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody else in chambers? Saying no, Madam Clerk, is there anybody online? Yes. Rachel, your microphone's now available. Thank you so much. There is so much happening today. I don't know where to begin. I've been before you before and suggested that the county supervisors and their staff to vote some attention to considering establishing truth commissions regarding every aspect of the COVID era. These might be conceived as teachings they could draw on the strength of community and they would not require an expensive consulting service. I want to speak to you as persons with families who I'm sure at some level are aware that the crisis of legitimacy is breaking out at this time. So much is happening today right now. Just yesterday or two days ago, the esteemed international scientists spoke before a parliamentary committee about all aspects of the vaccine and the terrible crisis with exosmortality. There has been a whistleblower in New Zealand who has released the anonymized data that has been hidden. And scientists from around the world are confirming that there are similarities in the situation throughout the world. And this shows definitively as I have read that the COVID vaccine is the cause of widespread exosmortality. Ken Paxton, the AG for Texas is suing Pfizer for misrepresentation. Rand Paul, Senator is leading the charge against fraud. At the same time, there is massive censorship. It's a crime now in Germany to speak against public health measures. Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger testified before Congress about the collaboration between the federal government and the tech committees to censor us. So we need you to stand up and to help get the truth out. Please, please stand up. Thank you. Colin, user one, your microphone is now available. Garrett, we are living in a destructive, dictatorial, toxic, military, industrial, media, big pharma. You just heard an example. Complex with their manipulated deceptive propaganda, i.e. lies and collusion of elected officials profiting global corporations or destroying the planet. Here's one example. We all see these speed signs that tell us how fast we're going. Utterly unnecessary. These are harmful radar speed limit signs. And you first approve this, so now all over the county on, let's say, December 8th, 2015, giving the bid to St. Francis Electric, LLC. And this is part of the ATP Active Transportation Program that is item 35 today. And I submitted documents that you've probably shredded. And I wrote, include these materials in opposition to a so-called school zone safety project. Stop, study the facts, do no harm. Education, not radiation, contamination from radar feedback signs or any other microwave emitting technologies. These should be removed. I submitted documents, including the evidence I submitted documents, including the amended declaration of Barry Trower, microwave radiation weaponry expert and he states in conclusion, and I'd like to finish the sentence, even so-called low levels of microwave radiation are very serious. It is impossible to microwave, irradiate the body without an effect. Thank you, Ms. Garrett. Thank you. We have no further speakers here. I think I'm going to bring it back to the board for comments on Consent Supervisor McPherson. Yeah, I have some uplifting news to report from my recent, we had the annual conference of the California State Association of Counties or CSAC and Santa Cruz County was highly recognized for some accomplishments that a few counties and the membership of the staff and members of the board received. One of them was to our County Supervisor Chairman, Zach Friend for receiving the Circle of Service Award to recognize County officials for the advancement of some very above and beyond the norm of what they have done. He, Zach Friend is chairman of the CSACs, the California State Association of Counties, Human Health and Human Services Policy Committee and he was recognized on behalf of Advocating, on behalf of CSAC for all 58 counties for his testimony on the Mental Health Services Act and other mental health initiatives. Likewise, this is not CSAC, but NACO, the National Association of Counties. We've known, we've reported on what Supervisor Friend did through years of trips back to DC and everywhere else to get the adequate funding to improve the Pajaro River Levy. So it was really his steadfast advocacy for this and determination that really made this become a reality and I think he should be recognized for that. But getting back to CSAC, we had another award that Dr. Ratner was recognized for. He is the Home for Health Services Division, the director, Dr. Ratner really was recognized for his addressing homelessness effectively and equitably. He'd let the county's housing for health division as it makes a meaningful progress to address homelessness, which is a huge problem as we all know. But I think that the people of Santa Cruz County should know that Santa Cruz County has some terrific leaders. And Zach Friend, our Supervisor Chairman and Dr. Ratner and is recognized countywide of all 58 counties. And likewise, there's a CSAC Challenge Awards. There was 389 entries of these and only of the 58 counties, only 10 received recognition. And the one that Santa Cruz County received was for the collective of results and evidence-based investments or core and how we put that program into place to give funding of just over $5 million to various nonprofit agencies in Santa Cruz County. This is recognized throughout the state of California as a very effective and really meaningful program. And I think the people of Santa Cruz County should know that Santa Cruz County is a leader in a lot of these because of the people we have that are running our county, that are serving you in the county and the programs that we instill in the county. We should recognize that. These are various prestigious awards and I just want to congratulate everybody who's part of making that become a reality. Thank you. I guess I'm referring to Supervisor Koenig. Thank you, Chair and congratulations on that recognition. On item 38, adopting a resolution deferring implementation of SB 43, which expands the criteria for grave disability, I just wanted to suggest some additional direction. I'm optimistic that this new state law will be helpful in addressing the unmet needs of unhoused individuals suffer from serious mental health and severe substance use disorders. And I also recognize that it's going to take a substantial amount of public resources to stand up this program. In Santa Clara County, considered how to implement this, they looked at some language that I want to introduce here as part of the additional direction, which is that we will implement this program no later than January 1st, 2026. And no later than January, 2025, receive report and also quarterly thereafter status updates on each area necessary for implementation, including treatment, the facility expansion, workforce development and funding. So in summary, rather than saying we're going to wait until the final deadline, look at any way we can possibly implement the program sooner and just keep tabs on how we're doing as far as having the resources in place to actually implement it. I know this program is important to our entire community, including many of our city partners to struggle with this issue. And I think this just shows our commitment to do everything possible to implement the program as soon as we're ready. Thank you, supervisor or colleagues. Thank you, chair. I had a couple of questions on a number of items. The first I just wanted to highlight were the minutes from the last meeting, in particular on the item related to the housing element. When I was reviewing the minutes, one of the things that I noticed was that the additional direction that was provided by supervisor friend wasn't actually listed because the additional direction supervisor friend provided was on part three. But what's listed is that the additional direction was on the replacement housing, the inclusional affordable housing. The additional direction related to the inclusionary housing was the direction that I provided. And also within that language it was implied or the intent was that it was for on-site inclusionary affordable housing in rental units at 15%. And so just for clarity, I wanted to see if we could have the minutes reflect the action that was taken because I think it's important for the community to know what the additional direction was that was provided by supervisor friend and then a clarification on the additional direction that I provided. So I think the most appropriate thing to do would be to not vote on those minutes today and instead move those to the next meeting for consideration. It'll give the clerk a chance to review the tape and clarify and get those minutes correct. Great, thank you. So I guess then do we need to pull that item or just take no action on that? You would take no action on it. The maker of the motion would indicate that they are adopting the consent agenda without that specific item on the minutes. And so just to clarify again, what was missing was the direction provided by supervisor friend, the friendly amendment that was what I provided and that within that friendly amendment was the requirement for onsite and inclusionary affordable housing and rental units at 15%, which is the same as measured and the rest of the language is the same. It's just the onsite, no, it's missing. Thank you for that. The next, I'd add a question on item number 19. I just wanted to see if, and this is related to tenant interest on security deposits. And so I'm just wondering if somebody from staff might be able to speak to how that's calculated because looking at the national average, the national interest rate is at 0.61%. And my hope is that we can maximize how much tenants are getting when their security deposits are being held by their landlords. And so I'm just wondering if somebody can just speak to how this is calculated and the differences that we're seeing here. Good morning, Edith Driscoll, your auditor, controller, treasure, tax collector. At the request of the board 20, 30 years ago, we were asked to annually survey local banks, local major banks and determine what their interest rate is for passbook accounts, meaning under $5,000, a simple savings account. And we do that annually on November 2nd. We contacted six local banks, BMO, Chase, B of A, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank and Commerce Bank, Commercial Bank. And their readings were 0.01, 0.01, 0.01, 0.15, 0.01, 0.01 for an average of 0.03. Great, thank you. So I guess I'll just follow up at some point because I'd like to learn more if there's a way. I mean, if this decision was made 30 years ago, is there a way for us to kind of update how this is calculated? But I appreciate it. And just for your information, we recently requested from the clerk of the board that original resolution to determine why we're doing this and what might be changed. Great, thank you. The next item, item number 26, which is the Highway 9 parking. This was a tough one, but I'd thank Supervisor McPherson for bringing this forward because it's gonna restrict some of the parking that's on a small stretch of Highway 9 leading from the city where there's been problematic activities leading to environmental degradation. There's been some criminal activity within the area. And so my hope is that this can help deter some of that behavior, but I do hope we can follow up with the city so that we can figure out how we can activate that area in such a way that we can get people moving around in there that will deter some of that negative behavior. And so I just wanna thank Supervisor McPherson for inviting me to sign on to this one. And then as it relates to SB 43, I actually had some similar concerns with this one because this is gonna be a huge lift for the county. I don't think folks really understand that by having to have a locked facility specifically for people with mental health issues is not the same as having a jail. It's not just putting locks on doors. There's a lot of requirements at the state level to make some of these things happen. And so I just wanted to see if maybe someone from staff could speak to you. There's a mention of a $20 million amount that we need to put up up front to cover staffing costs, but I'm just wondering in addition to that, if there's somebody could speak to you, how much the facilities are gonna cost or have we worked that out? And also how much it's gonna cost for outpatient because when people get released, they don't necessarily have a family to go back to and we don't want people slipping back into having addiction problems or going into homelessness. So I'm wondering if there might be someone here who could speak to that item. Good morning, surprise or comings and board. I'm Randy Morris, the human services director and human services and health services. Monica will speak for herself, both co-signed the letter. So I'll start the costs that are referenced was referenced in public comment. The reason I'm here is the public conservator office is held within human services in one of my divisions. So that's why we're one of the co-authors of this. There are a substantial amount of costs that would need to be incurred that are not leveraging federal and state dollars to expand the public conservator's office. On top of that, the public defender's office to represent clients in court. On top of that, county council to represent us court and then Monica can speak for her staff, but there are behavioral health staff who do evaluations. Most of that is county general fund with a little bit of leveraging and all of that is cost that is not funded through this legislation. It was mentioned in public comment that you can sort of put a claim forward to incur those costs, but those take years and it's unclear whether the states will fund that. That is state law that is not changed in SB 43. We are responsible to go through due process under the current law, which requires a heavy amount of county staff time just sort of go through that process to bring the petitions forward. As to the cost of care, conservatorship as a means to an end. It asks people to have their civil liberty suspended to involuntary forced treatment upon them, but that assumes there is treatment. There is also no new treatment funded in this legislation, which is where health comes in because our conservatorship office files the petition if somebody's conserved, then we under court order refer them to services, yet there's no funding for services, which is where the healthcare agency comes in, which Monica could speak to. Good morning board Monica Morales, Health Services Agency director for the county. There's a couple of things to keep in mind. And so one of the things that we're talking about is in the county, we have about 90 to 100 different beds for residential treatment. However, we actually compete with the private sector for them. So that's in total what you see in the county. So that's something for us to take into account. As we were studying the data, we recognize that potentially about a quarter of the population that will qualify for grave disability will also have a substance use and addiction issue. What that means for us is that we have to think about two things. We have to think about the criteria for residential, right? And involuntary placement for grave disability, but then you have the substance use and addiction issue, which is different. And this is something for us to keep in mind when you play someone in care for a mental health issue, it's a different type of residential formula in management than if you have someone also with a SUD issue. In our county right now, unfortunately we still work under silos. We don't have programs, systems in place that can address both the mental health of grave disability and the SUDs condition. You actually need to have clinical certification, clinical background to manage the actual treatment for folks to be able to safely detox. For example, we don't have those facilities in the county. So that's why, although some of this is reimbursable, the uptake to build these facilities in the county is really a cost that we don't have any funding for. Typically in behavioral health, about 90 of our funding, very high amount comes from state dollars, federal dollars or the reimbursement. So we wouldn't have the general fund available right now to just start these programs. And so that's what we're asking for you to let us think about really what it's gonna take, continue to do the assessment of what we need in terms of residential and what we have. Our care core will actually help us get closer to our goal and then be able to come back and put these in place. Where it makes sense that we have the capacity both in terms of facilities, but also the expertise to manage both issues. And if I may, approximately 70% of the currently conserved clients are already placed out of county. So I just, that would expand. If it's appropriate to make a brief comment since it's our staff memo, this is referencing Supervisor Koenig's recommendation for additional direction. We recommend it if you approve that we come back in a year. And I don't see any reason why at that one year mark, you can direct us to come back quarterly. I'm not sure why now. The reason is the landscape is changing tremendously in this next year. And none of us have any idea what's gonna happen when we come forward in that next year. There might be funding, there might be a class action lawsuit. I would humbly recommend you have full authority to direct us to do anything at that one year report. It's just a lot of staff time spent not implementing and finding funding, writing reports. We, you can give us that direction in a year if you'd consider that. Thank you. Thank you. Do you have other questions? No, that's it for now. I think you touched on the questions I wanted to ask. And so I mean, I was actually gonna make some suggestions around kind of report backs and I understand the urgency with trying to get this move forward. But I do also respect what staff has just brought up is that if they're constantly working on reports they're not actually out there trying to get the grants and the funding that we need. So I would feel comfortable coming back in a year to get a full report would also suggest that maybe during the budget hearings this year we kind of see what funding is being set aside to implement this and make this happen at the county level. So that we're tracking the funding that's gonna be going into making this program or standing up this program. So those are all my comments for now. Thank you. Surveys are handed in again. Just really briefly, I'm really excited that we got an agreement for funding between the Caltrans and health services for active transportation. I think it's important to improve our bike and pedestrian infrastructure throughout the county. Which is recently last weekend had another pedestrian fatality in Watsonville in the exact same location that we had one about three months ago. So there's certainly a need and so I'm really thankful for these funds that we're getting in. Certainly I think that there is a health crisis of bike and pedestrian fatalities and injuries in our county, especially in the fourth district. So really excited about that. The other two I just had really brief questions and comments. I thought I had, I have one commissioner but I thought I was supposed to have two commissioners that were supposed to be on the consent agenda and just notice now that there's one. And then the other one is with the, there's some comments about in the public comment about the San Cruz County Animal Shelter JPA. But I think I knew that we had a relationship but it'd be good if we can get kind of more input on these JPAs that we're involved in especially ones that we're the lead agency in to get more information on these agencies that we're involved with to get more clarification when things like this come up. That's it. Thank you, Supervisor Hernandez. Just as a point of clarification, is that something that you're looking to have a meeting with the CAO to get a better understanding or what is there some specific direction on that? Yeah, meeting or some sort of written report for us, especially new supervisors, right? That we might not be aware of JPAs that we're the lead agency on that we might get approached on. Totally fair. I mean, I'll defer then to the CAO to work with you on that. I'll just speak very briefly on item 29 which is the reappointment of our County Council. It should go without saying that if the board is unanimously seeking to reappoint Mr. Heath, that he's on an outstanding job. But it's a very, very, very challenging and complicated role. I don't know that the community understands or can't understand the complexity of which your team has to work from natural disasters to day-to-day contracts. There isn't actually a single item on today's agenda that wasn't reviewed by County Council and his team to put into perspective the involvement in all County actions. Your team does it very ethically and appropriately and we're very pleased to have you coming back and guiding us for the next four years. We'll move it now to the board for a motion recognizing that there was a little bit of a debate over one of the items additional direction. I just wanted to make a couple of comments on the consent agenda. Oh, please, yeah. I too wouldn't thank Supervisor Cummings and the Sheriff's Office, County Public Works and Caltrans for their collaboration in bringing this item forward in on the parking restrictions on Highway 9. Also, I wanted to mention, as has been mentioned before, the great work of our County Council and his entire staff, Jason Heath and really pleased that we were able to keep them on board for another four years. I won't see them all probably, but anyway, we sure like you've been terrific and your whole staff has been too. One other comment on item number 32 on the Big Basin of Water Loan Request update. The turnaround to report back on this item was unusually fast. I know that, given the urgency of the situation facing our Big Basin of Water community, which is a private entity that serves over 500 connections. So thank you for all the staff and for the work you've been doing up to now. The County might provide additional assistance, giving the loan requests by the court-appointed receiver, something that I have never experienced on this board in my 11 years. And as we'll hear later today related to the sales tax measure, as we are likely to hear next week regarding the state of our cash flow too, there are very difficult times ahead for the County because of all the services we have provided during the three recent disasters. And yet the future of the Big Basin Water Company is really critical issue in my district. And we wanna be as helpful as we can. So I look forward to the report back next week, see if there's anything we might do, but things are limited. And as we were talking about these other things about funding and so forth, is very disheartening. The legislative analyst's office just gave an outlook this year's fiscal, state fiscal picture. They show a $26 billion shortfall this fiscal year and a $58 billion shortfall next fiscal year. So it's gonna be tougher than ever to get funding from the state sources as we need them very seriously, but it's gonna be a tough financial picture that we're gonna have in this County as is the state. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. I'll move to a motion, Ms. Supervisor Koenig. Thank you, Chair. I will move that we adopt the consent agenda accepting item 13, the approval of the minutes and with the additional direction on item 38 that we will defer implementation of SB 43 until no later than January 1st, 2016. And that there would be some discussion during our next budget hearings about the funds necessary for implementation of that state law. Second. Supervisor Koenig, does that meet your also discussion on that item? I believe so. I believe so, the item on the implementation, the one question I have is if it seems like we're not gonna have funding and there's no funding coming from the state, I guess would we intend on trying to extend that or how would we address that issue? Because right now I think the recommendation is just to defer it until 2026. And if we're intending on implementing in 2026, if I heard that correctly, then I think the landscape is still pretty open in terms of how we're gonna pay for this. I think we cross that bridge when we get there and receive the update and the 2025 and throughout the time between now and then. I guess I'm supportive of it. I just hope that we're not sending the wrong message to the community that we're gonna do something. And then turns out we have to circle back on our words. But if this direction of the board is intended to go in, then I'll be supportive of it. I'm in agreement with you, Supervisor Cummings. I think at the end of the day, the staff recommendation is fine. Actually, it brings us back to our report in 2025. There's a goal of 2026, but I think that if we create the expectation and care court ends up costing three, I mean, as somebody who's dealing with this statewide, I can tell you that there's a lot of unknowns in regards to this. And we have a tens of billions of dollars state deficit. So I'm uncomfortable with the additional direction because I feel like it sets us up for a expectation that I don't know that we could meet. I mean, one of it is that we have an expectation that we wanna meet. And I think that that's universal. One of it is the board providing direction that we shall meet it and then having to backtrack on it. So I'm not supportive. So this is what I would recommend. If somebody would be willing to move the entirety of consent minus 13 and we'll pull out 38 and vote on it separately so we can come to some resolution. Let's get consent passed. And then we can just figure out how to land on the language on that. I think that that would be good. Is that would there be someone willing to introduce a counter motion for consent minus item 13 and 38? And then we're gonna come back and have a discussion on 38 a little bit more. Consent agenda and minus 38 and 13. And 13 is for a second. Okay, so that's a counter motion. So we'll vote on the counter motion first. Is there any additional discussion? Can I just clarify who the second was on this counter motion? It was Brut, Supervisor McPherson. Thank you. All those in favoring. Oh, we have to do it. Roll call, I'm sorry, because we have the online. If we get a roll call vote, please. Certainly. Supervisor Koenig? Aye. Cummings? Aye. Hernandez? Aye. McPherson? Aye. And friend? Aye. And that's the understanding that the minutes will come back. I know Madam Clerk in the next meeting that was expected, even though it wasn't specifically stated and then item 30. So we got an additional discussion on 30 that I mean, we could, there's sort of two motions here. I think one of them is for staff recommendation. One's for additional directions. So I'll leave it to my colleagues to make a motion for their respective worlds and then we'll, we'll see where three land. I can make a motion. So I'll move the staff recommendation and that with the only additional direction of bringing back an update on funding at the budget hearings. So just to clarify, you suggest that even having language that says we will implement the program now later than January 1st, 2026 rather than on January 1st, 2026 is too great of a promise to our community. I think so. I mean, there's so many uncertainties with this in terms of how much we're gonna be able to bring in funds and we're trying to go out to get a revenue measure passed right now. And so, I think that we need to show the people for this community that we're gonna be standing up programs and bringing funding in appropriate ways and not promising. And I think saying that we shall implement this in 2026 might be an overpromise, especially with the fact that staff has indicated that there might be some conflicts at the state level. So we don't really know where this is going, but this is a good opportunity for us to start moving in this direction of implementation. And then as we get the updates, we'll see how this landscape keeps changing. Yeah, I agree. I think that's good. I just don't wanna get us into a position like we have been with the homeless problem. We make promises and there's no way we can keep with the funding that we have. And so I think it's good to take a pause or take a clear look in the future. So thank you. Well, currently there's a motion from Supervisor Cummings. There isn't a second. Is there a second? Oh, second. Okay. Is there a counter motion from Supervisor? No, okay. And then if we, with no additional discussion, if we could have a roll call on 38, it's staff recommendation or recommended actions from Supervisor Cummings or the second from Supervisor McPherson. And I'm sorry, it wasn't a Supervisor as I apologize. And to clarify, McClurk understands that it's the recommended actions plus additional direction to return a budget hearings with a funding update. That is correct. I misspoke. That's your correct. And that is budget hearings in this upcoming cycle. Okay, thank you. And specifically the 2024, 2025 budget hearings, not the mid-year, that's gonna be coming up in the next couple of months. Thank you for the clarification. No, thank you for the clarification. Appreciate that. So we have a motion and a second if we go to roll call, please. Supervisor Koenig? No. Cummings? Hernandez? Hi. McPherson? Friend. Hi, and that passes 4-1. Thank you though for the discussion. I mean, I think it's a good one. We'll now move on to the first item of the regular agenda which is item seven, a presentation from the Arts Council of Santa Cruz County. That landed member of the CAO we're very fortunate this morning to be joined by Jim Brown, the Executive Director of the Arts Council of Santa Cruz County. Thank you for waiting for this and we're looking forward to your presentation. Just one moment. You just pressed the button toward the middle there of the base for the microphone, a little higher up. It's a great button. Here we go. Good morning, Chair Friend and supervisors and staff. Thank you for the opportunity to present this Arts and Economic Prosperity Study for the County of Santa Cruz and a huge thank you to the county for supporting the creation of this report. For those of you less familiar with the Arts Council, we see ourselves as the mycelial network that keeps the arts ecosystem and our community healthy. For 44 years, we've worked mostly behind the scenes to keep our arts ecosystem connected, well resourced and vibrant. The primary point of this study is to show that the arts aren't just a nice thing to have. They're not something that we, a luxury that we spend money on when we have it and talk when we don't. The arts are an essential resource that makes our communities more livable, helps define a sense of place and improves community cohesion. They also generate real economic impact. This report conceived and managed by Americans through the Arts, which is a national advocacy organization for the arts is also conducted by 300 communities across the county, including here in Santa Cruz by the Arts Council. And it seeks to quantify that economic impact. In the County of Santa Cruz, the nonprofit arts sector generates over $68 million in economic activity. This includes direct spending by nonprofit organizations like the Arts Council on things like salaries and supplies, venue rentals, and taxes. It also includes spending by audiences. This is spending over and above the ticket price on things like meals out, having a drink with a friend before the event or childcare, travel, a hotel stay. It does not include arts businesses that are for-profit like the Catalyst or the Rio or Artisans Gallery in downtown Santa Cruz. It also does not include spending by school districts on arts education activities. So if you were to do the study that included all of that, the arts sector would be much larger still. All of this economic activity generates 1,437 jobs. These includes jobs for artists and arts administrators like myself, as well as jobs at store clerks, babysitters, waiters, and hoteliers. The study estimates that the arts and culture sector generates $3.5 million in local tax dollars. And that's dollars that go back to governments like this one to invest in a healthy, safe, and vibrant community. Almost $14 million of that $68 million is event-related spending by arts and culture audiences. This spending is over and above the ticket price and helps local businesses thrive. Okay, so last fiscal year, this county invested $240,000 in grants to arts organizations. You also made other investments in the arts through the percent for the arts program that I haven't been able to quantify at this point that I'm working with county park staff to do that. Regardless, we think of this investment as seed funding that organizations like the arts council and many others use to generate tens of millions of dollars of economic activity. The modest investment that you make is multiplied 283 times based on these numbers. For the first time, we did studies for all of Santa Cruz County, the city of Santa Cruz and the city of Watsonville this year. The bar on the left shows the total economic impact for the entire county. Gray is for organizational spending and as green as for audience spending. Next to that, you see the city of Santa Cruz, which represents more than 50% of the economic impacts generated in the county. On the far right, you see the city of Watsonville generates only 13% of the total economic impact in the county. The remainder of the county is that other column, everything that wasn't included in the other studies and that accounts for about 30%. The data is somewhat skewed. This data is organizations like the arts council that do services countywide. Our data is counted in the city of Santa Cruz where we're headquartered. But still the message is clear that the more money you invest in a community in the arts, the more money it generates in return. And the city of Watsonville has been a community where less economic investment has been made in the arts. And that's beginning to change. The arts council has been making some significant investment in Watsonville. And the Watsonville city council also passed an ordinance on private development to invest a percent for the arts ordinance that will invest directly in the arts. And we hope to see these numbers go up at the city of Watsonville. This chart compares Santa Cruz County audience spending and that's the individual audience member versus regions across the country with similar populations. You'll notice that Santa Cruz County audience spending is on the low side for the regions shown. And when you consider that we are on the central coast of California where the cost of living and doing business is so high, these numbers start to look really low. If the green is visitor spending and the gray is local spending. So I think what you'll notice here is that communities like Scottsdale and Monterey very likely have far more hostel stays for their cultural tourists. And we see that there's a real opportunity here to partner with my colleague at Santa Cruz County who'll be presenting that next to really use cultural tourism to generate additional hotel stays. So thank you to the County of Santa Cruz for decades of investment in the arts with all of the changes underway in our community. And with one major funder, the Packard Foundation dramatically scaling back investment in the arts. I encourage you to look for ways to increase investment in the arts to ensure that our community remains vibrant, creative and has that strong sense of place that we have. I'd be happy to answer any questions if you have them. Thank you for the excellent presentation. Mark County is synonymous with the arts and appreciate your work. Other questions or comments from board members? Mr. President Hernandez, please. You know, I'm got all the work you guys are doing and I just, I realized the new facility and the new work that you guys are doing in South County as well. And I got to hear a little bit of the work that the city of Watsonville is doing. I've seen that little bar of, you know, organizations that are doing work, but I think that organization, that the black bar that shows organizations doing the work and sort of the generate, what's generated on that green portion also has to do with the organizations getting the funding to do the work in South County. Absolutely. So I'd like to see, you know, in the future, if we can improve that situation for organizations that are doing arts in South County as well, you know, I think that, you know, participation in the arts really contributes to the wellbeing of the community as well, you know, beyond the economic factor, beyond the, you know, the vibrancy in the creativity. I think there's a sense of wellbeing that's created in participating in the arts and just being around art too really creates a better sense of wellbeing and that's deeply needed in South County as well. So if there's any way that, you know, we could look at increasing funding for South County to get some sort of equity in that segment. Great, we wanna expand those conversations. Yeah, we've been doing a lot of work to make those changes. Our grant making program has really shifted to try to focus on increased investment in Watsonville and South County in particular. We've also gotten funding from the Hewlett Foundation who has a strong interest in equity in the arts and we just got that funding renewed and that is a $300,000 investment that we're gonna allow us to continue the work that we've been doing for the next couple of years but there is still a lot more work to do and as the funding comes in from the city of Watsonville for their percent for the arts measure and they determine how they're gonna make those investments that that should help significantly. Well, hopefully in the future, we can find a way that the county can participate in some funding. I would love to see the currently, what I'm personally hoping is that the county will follow Watsonville's lead and create a developer fee percent for the arts on private development that would allow us to increase investment in the arts across the county and I've been communicating with the Arts Commission about that. Thank you. Thank you, the supervisor comments. I was gonna thank and appreciate all the work that you all do as a musician. One of the things that has made me feel comfortable in Santa Cruz is just how vibrant this place is in terms of the musicians that it attracts and the ability for people to just express themselves through the arts, whether it's auditory or whether it's visual. I know when I was in the city council, we had to see walls, murals get implemented in the city and just seeing blank walls around communities and just thinking about how that can be a good space for art and in the graffiti world, people don't do graffiti on the murals and so just wanting to see us continue to see how we can make our community a more beautiful place with implementing art and so I'd love to follow up with you on this fee for the arts because I think it could be a great way for us to contribute to those folks in our community. We know artists often struggle to live in our community and with the higher cost of living, like really being able to support artists to stay here, I think it's something that we'd all appreciate and so. Yeah, the tannery has been a huge help and the waiting list for housing at the tannery. I believe there's four separate waiting lists with 300 people on each list and they're always full. So thank you. I'll reach out to you and we'll have a conversation. Thank you. Thank you, supervisor Koenig. Sure, so as I just mentioned, I would encourage that we look at an incentive for arts to be included in new developments rather than a fee, sort of contradictory that we would increase the cost of housing, therefore making it more difficult for more artists to stay here at the same time that we're trying to raise money for the arts. Just my take on that. But in general, yeah, thank you so much for the presentation. I know whenever I travel to any place where there's domestic leader or nationally, one of the first things I do is see what's going on with the arts in that community. And we all know, because we live here, just how vibrant Santa Cruz County is as far as an art scene. But I think that as your presentation demonstrates, we can do more to make our arts community more accessible and more of one of the primary reasons that people actually come to visit Santa Cruz and maybe extend their stay in Santa Cruz because there's not many more art exhibits or public projects that they wanna visit while they're here. Exactly, thank you so much. Thank you. Supervisor McPherson. Thank you, I too wanted to just congratulate you for leading the charge on really enhancing our arts community in Santa Cruz County. Very impressive numbers of $68 million in economic activity and over 1,400 jobs and what, $3.5 million in tax revenue. And I think that should be noted too that we take it seriously on the Board of Supervisors. Some of our analysts, former analyst, Mr. Mulhern served on the Arts Council for several years and one of my analysts, Jay Brown, was present for two years and has served on it for five years. So we really get it. We think it's important to really enhance the arts community in Santa Cruz County. I think really when we see the overall picture, it's really a very important part of developing a showcasing Santa Cruz County's positive personality that we have here. And so I want to thank you, Mr. Jim Brown, not to be concerned with Jim Brown, my office, but congratulations on a very successful effort that we've had here in Santa Cruz County. Thank you so much. Thanks for the support. Thank you. This is not an action item, but there's an opportunity for members of the community to speak on this item because it is not on today's agenda. Is there anybody in the chambers that'd like to address us? Thank you, Becky Steinbrunner. I also appreciate the public art in our various places and have supported this board's use of public money in public art, funding it at the new libraries, the Aptos Library, the Live Organics and most recently, the Children's Crisis Center. I would like you to check out a funding source that I haven't heard mentioned here. And I believe it is the Monterey Peninsula Economic Partnership. It is a huge, these are the folks that put on the Laguna Seca Races, the Congress, the Allegans, the Pebble Beach Golf Tournament. They get a lot of money. And I do know that they give a lot of money back to the community, including Santa Cruz County. The Santa Cruz Fairgrounds Foundation has regularly received large grants from that organization. So please investigate that. What I would like some discussion about is how is it decided where this money, who these projects are going to be? I'm hopeful that there will be an increase in the amount given to South County. And I am happy that the Watsonville City Council is now requiring public art. But I think that I would like an explanation of the allocation of the money that you do have and how that can be increased to go to Watsonville. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else from Chambers? Is there anybody, Madam Clerk, online for this item? Yes, Chair. Colin, user one, your microphone's now available. Thank you for the informative presentation. Supervisor Hernandez earlier commented on tracking the funding. And I recommend reprioritizing County's funding. I spoke earlier about the harmful and unnecessary radar speech signs when they were funded in December of 2015. Each sign costs close to $13,000 plus additional costs. This is a squandering of taxpayer money. I'd like more funding allocated for the arts, which also would help the mental health situation. When people are not in dire poverty and they have arts and music and good jobs, they do better. They feel better, of course, and they're not in desperation. Approximately half of our tax dollars go to the military and we need like food, not bombs, arts, not bombs, musicians and music, not bombs, housing for all, not bombs, employment for all, healthy environment, organic farming. You just spoke of the tannery and the number of people on the waiting list. Our money is going to the wrong places in this country. That needs to go to housing. I'm glad we have some art. We need to reprioritize where our money is going. That's my comment. And thank you again for the presentation. Thank you, Ms. Garrett. Anybody else online? No further speakers, Chair. All right. Thank you, Mr. Brown. Appreciate presentation. Thanks so much. We'll now move on to item eight, which is presentation from Visit Santa Cruz County as outlined in the memo of the CAO. And I'll just hand the introduction this item over to my colleague, Supervisor Cummings, because he serves on the board. Yeah, I just want to thank the Executive Director for coming in today. When we met earlier this year, there was an expression by the new Executive Director who wanted to connect with all the different boards and cities and groups. And I'd recommend that he come and give a presentation to our board. And so I'm just happy to see you here today so we can learn more about your vision of how you're gonna lead Visit Santa Cruz moving forward. So thank you for joining us. Well, Supervisor Cummings, Supervisor Cummings, thank you so much for your service to our board. And thank you to this body for supporting our organization, supporting tourism in our community. I'm very excited to be here. I'm gonna give you a little background on myself because I've been here for three months now. So I just recently came here, very happy to come here from Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where the low temperature in the summer was 96 degrees. And I tell you a short story. When I first came here to look for a house, one of the wonderful staff members at the Hyatt Place advised me to be careful because we had an extreme heat warning and that was 85 degrees. So I thought that was absolutely charming. I loved every minute of it. So I have over 24 years of experience in hospitality and tourism. A large part of that is in operations and sales and marketing with branded and independent hotels. And so I feel like I have a really good, broad based experience for what I'm doing today. One of the things that's always been very important to me, whether I've been with a destination management organization or a hotel is community engagement. And so as Supervisor Cummings mentioned, I have been out and about meeting everybody that I possibly can. And we'll continue to do that until such time as I feel like I'm really, really engaged with the community. I will say that the community has been super welcoming and I cannot appreciate that any more than what I'm saying right now. I am very much a dedicated to equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility. I'm also dedicated to tourism, sustainability and housing solutions. And to that extent, I have just been accepted onto the CalTravel Commissions for these things, for EDIA, sustainability and homelessness. And so I'm very excited to move forward with them and hopefully bring back some ideas to our county about ways we can move forward. I like how the description up here, I've never seen this before, a person in a suit and tie. Awesome. So I just wanna let you guys know that I'm new here. I just wanna let you know that I am totally engaged with the community or getting engaged with the community. I wanna engage with all of you. I've spoken to our city councils and engaged as best I can with our chambers and our elected bodies. I've also reached out to our stakeholder businesses, our hotels, our restaurant tours, our attraction operators and other strategic partners and have had a fantastic three and a half months getting to know everybody. I will let you know that from a personal perspective and a professional perspective, my commitment and my organization's commitment are to all the cities, communities and unincorporated areas in this county. We are very committed to attracting visitors domestic and international. And I will tell you that, and I keep saying, I hope I never have to say that year 2019 again, but we are stronger than we were in 2019. We've just made it to that point. And we are seeing an uptick in our international travel, which took a real dive after the pandemic. But most importantly, and I want everybody that all the tourists, all the residents know that the number one customer of our organization at Visit Santa Cruz County are the residents of this county and the businesses in which operate within our county. So even though it's our job to bring people, bring travelers and visitors and celebrate our county and let everyone know about the world-class destination that we have to offer here at the end of the day, everything we do is to improve the quality of life for our residents. So with this renewed commitment with the county, I just want to continue to let you know that I'll continue to work with you guys as you see fit. I'm happy to come and talk to you at any time about anything. I know recently you guys had discussed the possibility of cannabis tourism. So I'd love to be in on that conversation with you guys. I will provide you with regular updates as you see fit. I will continue to engage with all of our stakeholders and our communities. You'll see me out volunteering for events and even my own organization. We're looking right now to engage in a cleanup day so that we can help make our community a better place to live. And one other thing I wanted to bring up to you guys is one of my goals, excuse me for 23, 24, excuse me again, is the Santa Cruz County Autism Travel Initiative. Now this is something that I started before I left Lake Havasu City. I'm very keen to bring it here. I think I have a slide about this. So the Santa Cruz County Autism Travel Initiative is such that my organization before the end of this fiscal year, I hope would become a certified autism center. What that means is that I am already a certified autism travel professional. All of my staff members at such time will engage in a very extensive online training to understand and to recognize and to assist in the case of somebody who is on the spectrum or an autistic person having a meltdown or some sort of issue and to help them and their caregivers in such a case. To that extent, once we are all certified and we become a certified autism center, we are in our current visitor center and hopefully our new visitor center moving forward in the fiscal year 24, we will place a quiet space, a quiet darkened space where those who are on the spectrum and who are having issues can go and rejuvenate and resuscitate themselves and get to a place where they're comfortable being in public. Once that is achieved, then I will get with this board and I will get with city councils and I will go to the incorporated cities and I will encourage them to become certified autism destinations. What this means very briefly is that a certain small percentage of industries, individuals and companies need to commit to this and at such time, the organization you see there at the bottom IBCCES will assist us in helping all of you become certified autism destinations. The ultimate goal is the big audacious idea, if you will, is for the county to become a certified autism county slash destination. There aren't many in this country. In fact, I don't think there are any in California so I would love to lead the way on that. Why is this so important to me? It's because since I've been here for three and a half months I have never in my life felt more welcomed, felt more a sense of place and a sense of welcoming than I have in this county. From every single person I've talked to whether they're individuals, strangers, friends, elected officials, people that own companies, people that work at companies, everyone has been so welcoming. And I understand that it is the nature of this county and to that extent it feeds the values that I have as a person that we are so welcoming. But at the same time, I don't want us to overlook the fact that it isn't just about people of color or people of faith. It's also about people with neurodiversity. And to that extent I have friends, I have family members, I have friends of family members and former staff members who are on the spectrum. And to this extent, I have talked with a lot of people and got a lot of buy-in from this, from the non-profit sector and from the profits for profit sector. So I'm very excited to bring this to the county and to the extent that you guys can support this, I'll get you in greater conversation with you guys on this, excuse me. I know I only have so much time and supervisor Cummings knows I can go on and on. So some recent content, I'll go very quickly through these. I'm not gonna go through all these. I did want to let you guys know some of the more recent content we have. So this is for the Watsonville Strawberry Festival and as you can see, 731 plus hours of total play time. Now I took this about a month ago, this slide. So those hours have gone up dramatically. Here's another content for Scott's Valley on Facebook. As you can see, in this particular case, we did two different posts, received 2.2 thousand link clicks as of October and had a reach of over 112,000 people. And of course we featured all those businesses in this post. More Facebook, here's a stroll through Capitola Village. Again, huge numbers, reached over 183,000 accounts and 4,000 link clicks. And then more Facebook. So we don't just obviously cover the cities, we also cover the county. And here we're showing some of the beauty in our North Coast. And as you can see there at the bottom, some of the entities that we highlighted and almost 140 impressions. And furthermore to the county, discover the Santa Cruz Mountains in Felton. Again, 167 impressions. And as you can see there at the bottom, a tremendous amount of businesses and entities portrayed in our Facebook post. And then Instagram, of course, we don't forget Instagram. Right there, a simple best avocado toast from Honey Luck's Coffee. Got a huge response. And the same day, we love our agriculture too. So we featured that on Instagram reel with some really good numbers. One last thing, we do a blog. And on this particular one, it piggybacked on a stroll through Capitola Village. And so as you can see, we featured the world-class views, movies and concerts and top 20 patios to dine on in Santa Cruz County. So I want to give you some quick, excuse me, tourism market indicators. This is for October. The numbers are very pleasing. 66.4% in hotel occupancy. That's an increase of 6.4% year-over-year. Our airport throughput, now this is not direct to Santa Cruz County, but this is the airport throughput through Manhattan is up 4.7%. Our hotel revenue is up 2.5% in October to $16.6 million. And then finally, our leisure and hospitality jobs are up 2.1%. That's really good news for us at 14,700 for the month of October. So top of mind in 2024, excuse my voice, I got really dry mouth right now. The most important thing for me right now is to find a new location for our visitor center. We're looking at that. I did get some cautiously encouraging news from a particular location. So I hope to talk to you more about that. We are expanding our international awareness and visitation. We are of course gonna maximize our drive market visitation from the 300 mile radius that we consider. We wanna look at ways of mitigating the effects to tourism by our extreme winter weather. And even though it's not a part of tourism, it's very important to me personally and professionally that we help our friends in Watsonville and our friends in other areas develop new assets such as hotel bills, new attractions, help agriculture do more visitor facing efforts. And but as we work on that with that, you can't do that without looking at workforce and housing too. So I've mentioned this to my board and they're all for me being a part of that conversation whenever you guys would like me to be a part of that. And then of course the autism initiative. And again, I can't hammer this home enough. Most important thing to visit Santa Cruz County to myself, to my staff, to my amazing staff is improving the quality of life for all of us that live here and love calling Santa Cruz County our home. So with that, I do thank you for having me here. I'm sorry it took three and a half months to come see you, but anytime you guys want me, I'm just right across the street. So I'm more happy to come back anytime you guys want me to. We appreciate it. Now, thank you for the presentation of our comments. Suvarez McPherson. Thank you, Mr. Cuncan and welcome to Santa Cruz County. It's really great to see your enthusiasm and your innovation too of what you wanna do. And we'd be very interested to hear more about that as time goes on. It can be overstated how important the visitor industry is to Santa Cruz County. I think next to agriculture, it really is the most important that we have here. Education, if you will classify that as a business of sorts is very important as well. But it's really great to have you here. And I think the value of our tourism industry, it sounds like you wanna enhance the opportunities for visitors to have here. And I wanna thank you for your enthusiasm again and welcome to Santa Cruz County. Thank you very much. Suvarez McPherson. Yes, thank you very much, Mr. Cuncan for the presentation. It's great to see that our tourism industry is headed in the right direction. And I would also pay attention to some of the opportunities that could come into play here as the sustainability update for the county hopefully becomes law soon. There was a lot in there really trying to make it easier for small scale, agritourism businesses to take root. And also for events. I have several friends that work in the event planning, wedding space and of course, one event can draw in hundreds of people and there should be more opportunity coming down the pipeline here for more event spaces and more advertising specifically around events and agritourism. So hopefully lots of good growth ahead. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Cuncan. Any additional comments from my colleagues? Two buzzer comments. Thank you again for coming and presenting to the county board and to the community. And just a couple brief comments. If you haven't had a chance already, there's a group called the autism family network here in Santa Cruz. They'll be great to reach out to, especially given your interest in those initiatives related to increasing tourism, making Santa Cruz a safe place for. Maybe the organization again, autism family network. Yes, and I'm happy to follow up with you. And then if you have an opportunity to speak to our disabilities commission, I think that's a great place to kind of bring some of your ideas and get some support from our commissioners. And I think that's it for now. So I'm just really excited to have you. Thank you, thank you. Supervisor Hernandez. Thank you for the presentation as well. And I like the images of South County that you had, you know, speaking of South County, I think that there was a lot of, there was a few opportunities that we have in the agritourism industries. And you mentioned one of them, but I think that we have exceptional wineries out in South County. I think through a lot of more, we kind of share them with SACS district as well. But we have, you know, excellent wines that match anything in NAP, especially the Chardonnays and Pinot's. But, you know, if we can expand sort of the wine trails and kind of build up whatever kind of the economy there for them, you know, I think that that's a perfect avenue for South County wine trails and kind of the promotion of the excellent wines we have over there as well. But we can get in touch later on offline about this as well. Thank you very much. So thank you. I think that I've enjoyed to the extent that I, very many, not very many, let's not put it that way. I've enjoyed some wines from the, you know, your time. I could give you a little tour of them. Yeah. All right, this is a non-action item. It is a very member of the community and chambers that would like to address this on the Visit Santa Cruz presentation. Yes, good morning. David Schwartz. When I hear a presentation like this, it makes me think about how we can make a situation like this actually bring more money in to the county. And I'm thinking, I'm looking at your websites and such and I think maybe you could offer spots in your presentations to allow businesses to advertise and use that to support them. And in that way, maybe the businesses could support us without it coming directly out of the budget. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else in chambers? Thank you. Becky Steinbruner. Welcome. Joy The Fog. I grew up in the Eastern Oregon desert. So I know what a blessing it is to have this fog here in the cool temperatures that we all enjoy and the beauty that we all enjoy. Whenever I speak with someone that has never been here before, they are so taken by the beauty that we all enjoy here. And at a gas station just last week, someone came up and said, they were visiting here. What would I recommend they do? That was a very interesting question. They were international tourists. I suggested the beaches, I suggested the woods, but I also suggested the Santa Cruz UCSC Arboretum, which is a fabulous place. And they were very excited about that. I am very pleased that you are considering those on the spectrum. I too know a lot of people. And autism is on the rise in our population and doing something that recognizes that and supports the people with this situation to come with their families is wonderful. Thank you. I would also ask that you consider those with blind and low-visible, low vision and hearing loss to make our county more friendly for them to be able to navigate. Agri-tourism is certainly a big thing here, especially in the South County. I would love to see the Redmond-Hara-Hara House restored and have something like a central place where people could go for agri-tourism seminars, educational, and really highlight the rich historical history of that place. It is an amazing story I would like to share with you. The history tourism is also on the rise. So if our county can reserve our historic resources, that will help us as well. Thank you very much and welcome again. Sorry, we have some chambers on this item. Is there anybody online? Yes, Chair. Colin, user one, your microphone is now available. Erin and Garrett, welcome to you. I used to teach in Watsonville for over 20 years and some of the problems in the county. I came up here in the 81 and it was much more a nature scape with more trees and not all the microwave technology. I am not at the Board of Supervisors chambers because it is too painful with all the wifi and the cell tower outside and that's why I call in. And you stated and I share this goal. Everything we do is to improve the quality of life of our residents and how do we do that? Some of the ways are to remove the harm of these radiation-emitting sites that kill the birds and bees and not those two to require ecological, organic agriculture and remove the pesticides. I used to have to take my children in from the playground because the pesticides adjacent to a nasty school were coming over the playground and they're coughing. We shouldn't have these poisons. Autism, some of the causes are the vaccines. You might look into correlating when did autism come on in children? There are many books on this. Also, autism is linked to exposures of the mother during pregnancy and high. Thank you Ms. Gerard. Is there anybody else online? We have no further speakers, Chair. All right. Thank you for your presentation. I appreciate it. That was an on-action item. We do have a 1045 schedule item, and it's 1040 so we're not gonna be able to do item nine right now just because of the timing of it. My understanding is item 10 should be pretty quick. So I'm gonna take item 10 out of order, which is a public hearing to consider application 231402, proposal to rezone portions of APN 089 121-82 and 089-121-83 from the special use in timber production zone district to determine the proposals exempt from the requirements of CEQA and approving concept and ordinance amending zoning plan and map pursuant to chapter 13.10 of the Santa Cruz County code changing for one zone district to another and schedule the ordinance for final adoption on December 12, 2023 and take related actions as outlined in the memo that FPCAO director of community development and infrastructure. We have the agenda board memo, the CEQA noticing the exemption and the ordinance amending the chapter of the planning commission resolution and staff report. And I apologize because I don't think they were anticipating that. I was gonna take this out of order, but Mr. Plosios. I'm sorry, the staff is not present and so we'll have to come back to that item. That's okay. People like listening to me reading items. Okay, sorry about that. Yeah, no, I've got that kind of radio thing going. So what I'll do instead is there's, maybe we really need to wait until 1045 because there's notice for 1045. So the board's gonna take just a five minute recess and we're gonna come back at 1045 to hear the green building item or the other green program, excuse me. Can you? Sorry. Everybody, welcome back. Thank you for your understanding of patients. We have a 1045 schedule item. We'll just pretend the clock says 1045. This is item 11. It's the presentation of the 2324 Santa Cruz County Green Business Certification or Recertification Awards. It's a very positive event that we have here. And as outlined in the memo, the Deputy CAO Director of Community Development and Infrastructure. Oh, Hoxford, I believe, is the Department of Community Development and Infrastructure Cycling and Solid Waste Services here as well as Claudia and Jackie from Environmental Innovations, the County Screen Business Partner Program. Mr. Hoxford, I turn it over to you to kick this item off. Thank you for your patience this morning. Good morning, thank you. Good morning, Board Chair Friend. On behalf of the Department of Community Development and Infrastructure, we are pleased to be here presenting the Green Business Awards. All of the recipients here today have received their certificates for completion of certifying or recertifying as a green business. However, we would like to formally recognize them today for their achievements. I would like to give a brief history of the program before yielding my time to our partners in implementing the program, Claudia Villalta-Mahia and Jackie Castorena-Devila with Environmental Innovations. The County's Green Business Certification Program is an incentive-based program designed to encourage businesses to meet and exceed environmental standards and to conserve natural resources. The businesses that have been certified have voluntarily reduced water consumption, retrofitted lights, and made other electrical modifications to reduce energy consumption. These businesses have also reduced solid waste through recycling and smarter purchasing and have gone above and beyond regulatory requirements by implementing pollution prevention practices in their businesses. The County certification process involves a series of rigorous audits by environmental and conservation experts to come up with the best available technology to prevent pollution and conserve natural resources. Certified businesses have invested significant time, effort, and financial resources to ensure that they meet the criteria for certification. These businesses are the industry front-runners and that meet and exceed environmental exceptional environmental standards. The County of Santa Cruz began its green business program in 2003, which means this year marks the 20th anniversary of the program in Santa Cruz County. California Green Business Certification Program is endorsed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Toxic Substances Control. Funding for the Santa Cruz County Green Business Program is provided by Recycling and Solid Waste Services, Sanitation, Zone 5 Flood Control District, Countywide Flood Control District, and the Pajaro Storm Drain Maintenance District, it's hard to say. Environmental Innovations has been consulting green businesses since 2007 and we're excited to be presenting again this year. We would like to thank this board for your support to keep the program alive and successful. So now I'd like to hand the presentation to Claudia and Jacqui, who will give a presentation highlighting the accomplishments of the green business program over the last year. Thank you. Good morning, board and chair friend. Environmental Innovations is a local consulting group who manages and supports sustainability programs for the city of Watsonville, Santa Cruz County and the city of Santa Cruz. We specialize in regulatory compliance, including SB1383 and pollution prevention, which we conduct in the city of Scotts Valley and city of Capitola. Our partners and outreach approach are community-based, which is shaped by our equity committee. Being community-based ensures we are providing resources like rebates where they are needed. We staff mostly bilingual coordinators like Jacqui and I to best serve our diverse community. The California Green Business Network is made up of individual programs within cities and counties across the state, three of which are located within the Santa Cruz County. Environmental Innovations coordinates and supports for the city of Watsonville, Santa Cruz County and city of Santa Cruz's green business programs. We are a resource hub for the business community. The outreach we do allows us to provide local tools that help small business owners achieve sustainability. We connect them to financial opportunities like grants, rebates, as well as introduce them to partners like Ecology Action and GreenWaste, who provide EV chargers and organic spins for compliance as examples. With our expert support and technical assistance, we help businesses save energy, waste and water, all while cutting business costs and greenhouse gas emissions. Because we've worked with hundreds of businesses, we have experienced problem solving and working through environmental hurdles without using too much of their time. These three distinct examples show the extent of our green business programs. For Bonita's fashion, we connected the business owner to resources that provide additional funding, including a $1,000 mini grant from Intuit for an electronic point of sale system that helps reduce paper use in her office. For Katalpa Street Garage, they pushed above the envelope and earned our highest level of recognition, which is Innovator. Lastly, we certify a variety of businesses, including government buildings like the city of Watsonville's administrative offices. The city wanted to set a good example to its businesses and decided to enroll and complete our green business program. Another component of our program are recognition events like this Ford of Supervisors meeting and celebrations, including mixers and networking events. So here is a video of our most recent county mixer at discretion brewing. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you all for joining us tonight and celebrating Santa Cruz Business's shared commitment to sustainability. We welcome you to food and fun. Tonight, we have the privilege of hearing from three distinct players in the sustainability game. My name's Gail Pellerin. I was elected to the State Assembly in November. California has a long history of driving innovations for climate, climate energy, and environmental sustainability and is committed to 100% renewable energy by 2045. Thank you for everything you do in the business community to make sure that we're able to meet these goals. 175,000 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions avoided each year. That's in the city. Six times that in the county. That's like taking 108 cars off the road. You also have conserved almost. Sorry, we will make that video available on our website so that everybody can finish watching it. There we go. So when we look at the environmental outcomes of one business, the number seems small. But when we look at our entire green business community over an extended period of time, we have some really high impact outcomes. So over the last 12 months, Santa Cruz County businesses have saved the CO2 equivalent of planting over 7,000 acres of urban trees. When looking at a business's solid waste diversion, this could be adding organic spins or properly training employees. We can see savings that equate to over 240 garbage trucks worth of trash diverted away from the landfill. In terms of water, we can see that businesses saved over 150,000 bathtubs worth of potable water. And finally, looking at hazardous or universal waste, things like batteries, bulbs, and other items that shouldn't go into the trash, we can see that our educational approach is key to helping businesses and the environment be healthy and sustainable. We've certified 62 businesses a combination of new certifications and recertifications. This success demonstrates the longevity and commitment that many of our businesses, partners, and local governments have to the sustainability of our environment. That concludes our portion of the presentation. Now we turn it back to the board who will acknowledge their businesses. Thank you for your time. Thank you and thank you for your outstanding work, all three of you. The names of the businesses that have qualified for this year's Green Business Award will now be read by Supervisorial Districts so that representatives of these businesses can stand together as a group to be recognized for their efforts. As your business is called, please stand up and remain standing until we've read the names of all the businesses. And just as a note, please hold your applause until the end of the reading. We're gonna start the businesses and my colleague's first district here announced by Supervisor Koenig, please. Thank you, Chair. I'm excited to announce that the first district businesses that have received certification include Main Street Elementary, Catalpo Street Garage, Santa Cruz County Sanitation District, Mountain Elementary School District, Discretion Brewing, Monterey Bay Mortgage, Two Birds Books, Wild Beauty Cosmetics, Deborah Lindsay Company, Extraordinary Construction, the Penny Ice Creamery on 41st Avenue, and Harbor Health Center. Please. Thank you all. I will move on to the second district and the businesses here include the Capitola Veterinary Hospital, Ad Manor, Ethos Santa Cruz, the Maynard Group, Avakero Winery, Kickback, and the Penny Ice Creamery and Aptos Village. All right. Supervisor Cummings. All right, so in the third district we have the Coastal Watershed Council, with Shoppers Corner Incorporated, Davenport Resource Center, UCSC FLEEP, Liljax, Environmental Innovations, Socks Shop and Shoe Company, Stacey Mitchell-Realtern, Alta Coffee, Time People Santa Cruz, Gazelle Bikes, and Braedwork LLC. So let's give them a round of applause. The wonderful fourth district, Supervisor Hernandez. And in the fourth district, I want to acknowledge and thank all the businesses for the commitment and sustainability and for sustainability and conserving natural resources. The first business is Beebe's Threading Salon, Mount Madonna Center and Institute, Slice Project, Starlight Elementary School, TBH Studio, Revive Hair Salon, Oasis Beauty Salon, Rosalind's Jewelry, Tropicana CSI Services, Powell Valley Travel and CSI Services, Watsonville Senior Center, Hernandez and J-Sports, Hernandez Toy and Gift Shop, no relation by the way, Valerie's Crafts, Yeggy's Clothing, Lucy's Fashion, Second Harvest Food Bank, and Bonita's Fashion, City of Watsonville Administrative Offices, Forever Fly Skate Shop and Apparel, JC Jewelers and Designers, Queens Shoes and More, and Freedom Tax Service. Let's give them a round of applause. Thank you for what district representin' at their Supervisor McPherson, the fifth district. Thank you very much. I want to thank each and every one of you for making this just an environmental protection center of California and the nation that takes a village to really give us the environmental protection that we need and each and every one of you are to be congratulated. In District Five, we have the Steel Benet Brewing Company, Eric's Deli Cafe, Scots Valley Chamber of Commerce, Christine Painting, Santa Cruz County Office of Education, Scots Valley Recreation, the Penny Ice Creamery, Scots Valley, and Soul Hot Yoga. There's always a wonderful program every single year. So on behalf of the County Santa Cruz, I want to thank obviously all these businesses that were recognized today and also those that have been recognized for multiple years of your certifications. We're inviting all of you to a reception that's being hosted by CDI right outside here. I want to give an opportunity for my colleagues to make brief comments before we have a final round of applause and an opportunity for people to have the reception and any additional comments from my colleagues. Sure, I'll just add that. Again, thank you for making these investments in our community. I really enjoy this opportunity to recognize you guys and I hope our community in turn continues to invest in your businesses by frequenting them. And it's really impressive not only then what each of you guys are doing individually, but the collective impact that this program has. So thank you for being a part of this. All right, beautiful. So, oh, please, Supervisor Cummings. I just want to thank the staff for all their work on this and also the community members who have made the commitment to really trying to make our community as environmentally friendly as possible. I mean, we recently received a report on NOAA and the amount of waste that we see going in our oceans that we see in Monterey Bay, some of which is plastic from tobacco waste and some of which is from food retailers. And so I just hope that we can continue to use this data to help us continue to push this message out to the community that collectively we can all make a difference. And, you know, you all are the start to that. And so I just hope we can continue to inspire other businesses in our community. And so thank you all for all your hard work on this. Supervisor Hernandez and the couple of businesses you apparently now own in Watsonville. Well, first, I'd like to thank, you know, all the Green Business Organization, with Claudia and Jackie, all the hard work that they do. I see them throughout district for talking to businesses all the time, hard at work. And I'd like to thank, you know, our county's TDI, city of Watsonville for all their work that they do. And most of all, I'd like to thank all the businesses that are participating in here today. You guys are the ones that make this program and you guys are the ones that make our county green. So thank you for all the work that you guys do as well. So thank you. Thank you. It's a non-action item, but are there any members of the community because this is a public item that I'd like to address us on this presentation, please. Yeah, David Schwartz, just real quickly, you guys do a great job. I really appreciate what you're doing. I just want to think about a way to make that revenue neutral so that actually the business community supports you 100% and we can really make it a bigger program. Thank you so much. Thank you. Anybody else? Oh, Tim Delaney, I live up at the top of Summit. Thank you so much. I really, really like what I saw in the presentation. I think the environmental work is fabulous here in Santa Cruz County, just so you know. And I want to point out on the presentation for Aster County, TRPA, those folks, you might want to make that red on that map up there. What they're doing up in Lake Tahoe is terrible, okay? The lead cable in the lake, it's been there for multiple decades. We know it's poisoning the lake and the fish over there by a fallen leaf lake and so on. And now it's tied up a court with AT&T. If I was a politician, I would have knocked that out. I would have got that out of there a long time ago. That's how I operate as a human being. Also, the way they're treating Native Americans in the Tahoe Basin, it is absolutely terrible. The whole concept that you would carve a bike trail, so a Lance Armstrong e-bike guy can go sailing through East Shore Forest where golden eagles and bald eagles are there, okay? Historically, and this is sacred Native American land, okay? That's appalling. That would irritate the entire U.S. military and every Native American in the entire country. It is ridiculous and also healthcare-wise, just so you know, about three weeks ago or so, crime healthcare that runs St. Mary's Hospital and Carson Tahoe Hospital, they unsafe discharged a 50-something Native American lady and it was multiple times and also a VA nurse tried to tell them to cut it out and they did it again and this Native American lady was found in an alley in short ways from the hospital, dead, so they killed her, okay? So that's not the way you treat Native American people and I hope that you folks can recognize that and motivate the state of California and the federal government to change the behavior in the Tahoe Basin. Thank you so much. And the item before us are Green Business Awards in Santa Cruz County, so if we can make sure that we keep our comments relevant to the item. Thank you. We are one planet, aren't we? So thank you for your work. It's a lot of work to go through all of these applications and make sure that things are making a difference. I appreciate your work and I appreciate the efforts that all of these business owners have done. I mean, stepping out to the plate on their own, I would like to see some sort of a real outreach to the people who are out there shopping. We vote with our feet, so let's support them in their efforts and support others who may be wanting to step up to the plate and make these good changes in their businesses. Let's give them an incentive to do so and have people vote with their feet to support them. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody else in chambers? Is there anybody online? Yes, Chair. Jenny, your microphone's now available. Jenny, go ahead and if you still wish to speak, you can accept the unmute. And if you no longer wish to speak, feel free to lower your hand. I'm going to go ahead and move on to Colin, user two. Carolyn Gareth, this is green business or greenwashing corporations privatize the profit and socialize the cost. So we're to recycle their toxic products, plastics, which are everywhere, micro-plastics everywhere, endangering people. I have a book here called Toxic Sludge is Good for You, Lies, Damn Lies, and the Public Relations Industry by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton. And the lights that are energy-efficient are biologically harmful. Some people can hardly go into stores because of the LED lights now. Here's a quote from the book, Toxic Sludge is Good for You. Bruce and Marsteller says that international operations are linked together electronically and philosophically to deliver a single standard of excellent, unquote, excellence. It claims that, quote, the role of communications is to manage perceptions which motivate behaviors that create business results. We are totally focused on this idea as our mission. Bruce and Marsteller helps clients manage issues by influencing in the right combination public attitudes, public perceptions, public behavior, and public policy, unquote. I think that's what's going on here. Awards for what is perceived to be good for the environment, but in fact, it's the opposite. Thank you, Ms. Curran. Is there anybody else online? Yes, Chair. Jenny, your microphone's now available and as a reminder, it's star six to mute or unmute yourself. Clerk, we have somebody here in chamber so we can come back. Would you like to address us on this item? Yes, please. Thank you. My name is still James Ewing Whitman. I want to start out by saying the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The people behind me, I believe most of them have good intentions. They may be well informed. Anybody can listen to my public comments this morning in this room that were really quite direct to different intentions. So, Gail Pellerin, I believe was reinforcing that we're going to be carbon neutral by 2045. I don't expect anybody to believe a word I say, but if you talk to anybody who does greenhouse work, who grows plants for food and wants to accelerate their growth, it's a higher CO2. Right now, my understanding is we have a CO2 of 419 parts per million. When you go back through geologic time, that's planet holocaust and genocide. So the previous caller was correct about the technologies that are going on. When you look up in this room, in the lights there are about 27 Kelvin. You go outside in the street lights, there are 5,000 Kelvin. They're designed for you to look down. They're not healthy. We are in situations of control grids. And I would assume many of the businesses that spoke and you guys are calling out are only in business because they kiss the asses of government to keep their businesses in line and open. The amount of businesses that have been destroyed by the practices in this room, where these supervisors, this is a charter county. These individuals that are supposedly supposed to support the people, they're being controlled by the county manager. And the county attorney is supporting that. So I think that people have good intentions but a little bit of education could go a long ways because who knows how difficult the next years are gonna come. Thank you. Is there anybody else in chambers? And we'll try one last time online. Jenny, your microphone is now available and it's star six to go ahead and mute or unmute yourself. You can also go ahead and click the accept unmute that I'm sending you. We will close public comment on this item. It's a non-action item as we're saying. First off, a round of applause for all the businesses. You're encouraged to participate in a reception out. Unfortunately, the board has a couple more board items that we need to continue on, but thank you for your outstanding work and all the local businesses. I will take item 10 out of order because I know that he's here now. I know that the item is gonna be brief, which is a public hearing to consider application 231-402 proposal to rezone portions of APN 089-121-82 and 089-181-83 from special use to timber protection zone district to determine the proposals, excuse me, the proposals exempt from the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act and the proven concept, the ordinance amending the zoning plan and map pursuant to chapter 13.10 of the county code changing from one district to another or schedule the ordinance for final adoption of the December 12th, 2023 meeting and take related actions to the outline of the memo of the deputy CAO, my director of community development infrastructure of the agenda board item, the sequel notice of exemption, the ordinance, the planning commission resolution, minutes and the staff report. Mr. Dipmars, welcome back for this item. Yes, good morning. Evan Dipmars, Development Review Planner. This is an application to rezone one parcel with two APNs, it's approximately 60 acre parcel. The proposal is to rezone from the special use zone district to the timber production zone district. The project area is roughly 2.2 miles east of the highway nine in Bear Creek Road intersections. And this land is quite steep and rugged, resulting in limited development potential. The existing zoning is totally 60 acres is bisected by a tax boundary. That's the north-south boundary you see adjacent to 089, 12183. It's one parcel with two APN numbers and there is a swath of land across from these parcels that carries a PF zoning public facilities, which is not proposed to be rezoned as part of this application. So the proposed zoning in this image here shows that approximately 50 acres of TP zoned land would include the 10 acres of PF zoning on the north parcel. There's no proposed or required changes to the zoning plan or to the general plan designation on either of these parcels. It's strictly zoning from special use TP with the PF portion unchanged. This is a TP adjacency rezoning, which your board may be familiar with. There's been a few recently, but there were some members of the public who were interested in this section of code. It's facilitated by California government code section 51113.5, which allows an owner of TP zoned land to add additional land to their TP, to their timberland. We've evaluated this project for consistency with the applicable code sections, including that the criteria is contiguous with the adjacent TP zone property and under the ownership of one person, that the property is timberland, which means it is capable of producing a minimum cubic feet of timber per acre. In this case, the forester, an applicant for this project has demonstrated that it can produce an average of 55.3 cubic feet of timber per acre annually. And finally that the use is on the parcel, which is currently vacant are, including watershed wildlife habitat, timber management, comply with the timber production uses in county code, and as determined by the forester. Prior to and during the public comment portions at the October 11th planning commission hearing, there was quite a bit of discussion from the neighborhood adjacent to this property. They were concerned about the noise, the whole traffic and the status of the biotic easement on the PF zone portion of the property, and access to where the relevant timber harvest permit information was, where that information was available. At the direction of the commission, that timber harvest permit application information was provided on the public noticing cards to the neighborhood prior to this meeting, and was provided to any neighbor that reached out to me following that hearing. And it's important to note the application under consideration today is strictly to evaluate that the proposed rezoning is consistent with that aforementioned California government code and the applicable county policies. And that in that this proposal is facilitated by that government code, the county is limited in the scope of the approval to the extent that we're compelled to approve the application to rezone without additional conditions. The timber harvest itself is subject to its own review process, which is similar to CEQA, and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection or CAL FIRE is the responsible agency for reviewing and administering those timber harvest plans. So that timber harvest plan and that process is available to anyone interested through CAL FIRE, it's called CAL TREES, the website is called CAL TREES, that information is made available. The timber harvest plan, the contact information for the forester and the applicant is all available online, but the scope of this proposal is simply to rezone and allow them to pursue that timber harvest permit application. So therefore staff are recommending to conduct a public hearing on application 231042 to make a determination that the proposal is exempt from further review under the California Environmental Quality Act to approve and concept the attached ordinance amending the zoning plan and map pursuant to chapter 1310 of the Santa Cruz County Code, changing from one zone district to another to approve this application 231042 based on the findings and conditions contained in the staff report to the planning commission and to direct the clerk of the board to schedule the ordinance for a second reading and final adoption at the December 12th, 2023 Board of Supervisors meeting. And that concludes my presentation, available for questions. Thank you, are there any questions from board members on this item? We'll open it up to the community on this item. This is a public hearing. So if you'd like to officially open up the public hearing for any questions or comments on this item, we'll get that morning, welcome back. Yes, good morning, David Schwartz. I think that this application is a good application. I don't see timber harvest tax in our revenue, but I know that we receive some of that and any timber harvesting that's done from any of these, there's a tax that's generated from that and we are going to benefit from that. I don't know how much we benefit from it, but this is important. We need to use the natural resources we have responsibly and correctly. And I believe this plan is not a clear cut type of plan. So their goal is to manage the forest in a proper way and in a way that's going to be better for our environment. My only concern about this, of course, is traffic in the trucks and things like that. And I hope that you've reached out to all the neighbors so that they're aware of what's going on when and how this is going to impact them. And I know our roads are in pretty bad shape. So this kind of activity causes more destruction of that area. So we better be prepared to go back and make repairs to these areas when this is all done. But I applaud you for coming forward and I hope it all works out for you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Is anybody else like to speak to us during the public hearing specific to this item? Sure. My name is Tim Delaney, can now speak on this. And I think what you're doing is pretty, pretty good. I don't fully understand it. I do know a lot about forests, you know? So hopefully if it's thinning and stuff like that and designing a forest so once again we can have an old growth forest, that will be acceptable. You know, I know I always compare things to the Tahoe Basin going up there just so you know I had all kinds of land. There's only like 80 to 100,000 people, for example, living in Reno when I was a kid and now there's like 800,000 in that valley. So I saw land in the desert and in the Tahoe Basin as a kid. I was walking through huge forests and I would backcountry ski and hike and camp behind these mountains that were over 10,000 feet during the winter. So I know firsthand what a natural forest looks like and what a forest looks like that was once clear cut and the Tahoe Basin is one of the earliest forests that was totally stripped. And so you can see a good example of a forest trying to recover. And it's difficult to get society to accept that and to manage these forests and to not come in there and over develop and prevent these forests from coming back. So anyways, it's beneficial to wildlife and that's the kind of work that I would like to see. I'd like to see Tahoe's forest come back and also the Santa Cruz mountains that have larger trees once again in the future. So it's a couple of hundred year, maybe a thousand year process in order for that to happen. If man can kind of encourage it along instead of having fire burn out all these areas and do this naturally. Thank you very much. You take it easy. Thank you. Anybody else during the public hearing? Thank you, Becky Steinbruner. I live in the Redwoods. And I appreciate that environment very much. I think I want to trust in Cal Fire and their evaluation of the timber harvest capability of this property. I have heard that it is very steep. My concern is how the harvesting would be done and would like to make sure that it will do the least amount of soil disturbance as possible to prevent erosion into the creeks. In that light, I hope that the harvester will be big creek lumber. They are very responsible and do things in always the best way and they are a local family owned business. What has not been mentioned is that with thinning the trees, it will also provide a sense of wildfire risk reduction to that area. And perhaps that point can be made with the local residents because it can maybe help their fire insurance problems that we all in the mountains are experiencing. And perhaps they can get some money from this partnering with the property owner adjacent to help them do additional fire defensible space work around their homes. Thank you very much. Thank you. Anybody else in chambers? Is there anybody online? Yes, Chair, we do have speakers online. Michelle, your microphone is now available. Hi, I wanted to put in a public comment. For me personally, my experience of this whole thing has been one of frustration trying to access the information. All the concerns that were raised at the October 7th meeting are still there, proximity to housing, compromise of the stability and integrity of the hillside, noise, habitat destruction, ecosystem disruption, impact on the wildlife and truck traffic, increased fire potential. I'm hoping that CAL FIRE can address this. I also hope that there are other professionals who advocate for the environment who are looking at this. So far, I haven't seen anything as far as things are being signed off on by the professionals who are not invested in the project. So I would say that I would like to see more accessibility of what's actually happening. I don't think anybody in the neighborhood really understands what's gonna happen, how it's gonna impact. There's rumors, they're gonna just strip the trees and leave the branches, which are fire hazards. I don't know if that's true, but there's a lot of confusion and there's a lot of inaccessibility for information. In fact, I could not find the harvest plan online and I sent Evan Dittmar's an email and he basically said it's posted. I can't really tell you I had to go through back channels but it's there. That's not good enough for me. If I can't find it, it's not posted. So I wanna see more active interaction with the neighborhood or at least accessible postings of information for the neighborhood. So thank you. Thank you. Anybody else online? Colin, user two, your microphone's now available. Marilyn Garrett, the previous speaker really listed the negative impacts of this project, which seemed to be many. My guiding rule, if I were to governor, were to say whatever project is proposed, where is your proof of safety and not harm to the residents and the environment and the wildlife? And if you can't provide evidence of first do no harm, the rule should be you can't do it. I've seen that's my opinion. Many negative declarations to California Environmental Quality Act that shouldn't have been there. Many of them was cell towers that are known to cause environmental harm. Other areas as well. The potential for landslides later erosion into the creeks is great. Everything's going forward by money for certain interests. Also the wording timber land, land timber harvest instead of forest land, you know, nature scape and reference geoengineeringwatch.org about why the forest are dying all over and the weather is so catastrophic globally. Thank you. That's my comments. I urge no vote. Thank you. Is there anybody else online? Yes, chair. Jane, your microphone's now available. My name is Jane Wilketer. I live at Five Meadow Drive in this neighborhood. I appreciate Michelle's thoughtful statement that in fact, information has not been readily flowing to us despite the kind of glad handing by the forester and the property representative at the October meeting indicating that yes, maybe we could have a walkthrough or maybe just get in touch with us and we'll provide some more information for you. That has really, there has really been no degree of outreach. In the meantime, we are talking about what sounds like some sort of foregone conclusion based on the criteria being met for the state law that necessarily indicates this is gonna be re-zoned. That's really problematic. I remember at the planning commission meeting one of the commissioners said, well, this is a great time for you to become legally involved and make a change to the law if it's not working for you. In fact, I see this as a matter for the county to say the best way to actually protect locals and the neighborhood in particular, this neighborhood, but also maintain local control here is to maybe say no to this, what seems like a foregone conclusion. There might be a lawsuit. Who's better to deal with that, the county or the residents of this county, individuals. In the meantime, yes, there are traffic concerns, there are wildfire concerns. I don't believe that the wildfire mitigation is gonna happen. I believe that we're going to remove meaningful redwood stands that are marketable and will be stuck with undergrowth and the Tinder box. Thanks again. Thank you. Amy, your microphone's now available. As a reminder, Amy, it's star six to mute or unmute yourself. Hi, this is Martin Weedemann. I'm also a resident of this area. And I'd like to echo some of the things that the previous speakers talked about saying that we have gotten very little information from the forester to what they're actually planning on doing. The sign where they are proposing this change of zoning is a very small sign that is very, you would never come upon it unless you're walking right in front of it. My main concern is there are two access points to this property. And the one that is most likely going to be the area where they are gonna be taking the logging trucks is a very small road and it goes over an even smaller bridge. And this bridge being impacted with giant lumber trucks is not gonna, it's gonna destroy the bridge. And there's no, in all of our roads up here are so fragile. We still have our fixing roads that were damaged one, two storms ago or two years ago. Bear Creek has just opened up after two months and it's still a one lane road. Our roads, Bear Creek Road and this neighborhood roads and the bridges in this area cannot sustain the type of logging trucks that they are proposing to do. Thank you for hearing me. Thank you. Phillip, your microphone's now available. Hi, my name is Phillip Chagrin. I'm also a resident of Bear Creek Estates. I wanted to thank several of the previous speakers, Michelle and Jane in particular. My main concern with this proposal is that as other speakers have said, we have very few details about what the foresting plan is and I'm very worried about the increased wildfire protection. I know one of the speakers suggested that timber harvest actually decreases wildfire risk and countless studies show that it's not the case at all. They're gonna come in and take the big market of the lumber and leave the smaller trees and the underbrush, which is in danger of burning. This is not going to help our fire insurance. It's not going to help our fire protection. This is going to help the loggers only. So I would like to hear more details about what their plans are to mitigate fire risk following their timber harvest. Thank you. Thank you. Bill, your microphone is now available. Hi, my name's Laurel and I am also a resident of this area. And I wanted to reiterate a lot of the things that have been said. And one of the things that has been, I was at the other hearing as well. And one of the things that was talked about, particularly by the owner and the forester that got up and talked was that we would be, as neighbors, we would be invited to go on a walk of the area. I haven't had any response to any correspondence that I've attempted regarding any information on a meeting as they suggested that could happen so that we could see a little bit about where they're going to be taking these large trees. We have very, very steep slopes behind our houses that last year we were very impacted with all the rains and the water and the mud that came down the hills and onto our properties has required a lot of us to do retaining walls. And I think that will further with decreased timber on the hillsides to keep it stable. So along with all the other suggestions or issues that people have brought up including the traffic and the roads is a big one and the fire danger. I just wanted to reiterate that we really haven't heard much from the forester and I'd love to know what the plan is. And I agree also that if there's any way to not approve this, I'm up for not approving this. So thank you for listening. We have no further speakers, Chair. Thank you and thank you for everybody that shared their comments during the public hearing. I see nobody else in chambers though would like to participate so we'll please step forward. This was the opportunity has been set as this. Are there any additional speakers here in chambers would like to address this during the public hearing? Please set forward. This will be the last speaker and then we'll close the public hearing. Hello, I'm Bartley Carlson. I'm the forestry technician that did most of the work out on here. I would mostly just like to make my presence known so that if there's any questions I have seen this property from both the bottom to the very top. And if there is any questions regarding the reason of this property, I'm not sure that I can be of huge help. That's mostly a discussion of the Forest Productivity Act but if there's a question about the property I can help you. Thank you. Thank you. We'll close the public hearing and bring it back to the board for consideration. Is there a motion? Yeah, this is in the fifth district of course. And I think the issues that have been mentioned here I think this has been adequately addressed in planning and public safety agencies. And I think it complies with the timber production zone. Like to thank the planning commission staff and the work for the work on this and like to also notice that the land trust is approved of this. And I would move that recommended actions that this be approved. I'll second it. We have a motion and a second. Is there additional discussion? If we've got a roll call vote please. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Hernandez. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And friend. Aye. And that passes unanimously. Thank you for your presentations. Mr. Jivars and for everybody's participation in the public hearing. We'll move on to the last item, the regular agenda before we move into our closed session which is item nine to consider adopting resolutions calling for a special election on March 5th, 2024 for a countywide measure to increase the unincorporated area sales tax by one half cent and establishing budget priorities that the sales tax measure passes and take related actions that line of the memo of the CAO. We have the agenda item board memo resolution calling for an election, the resolution supporting budget priorities, county sales tax measure fact sheet and the county sales tax measure FAQ and we have our assistant county administrative officer Nicole Coburn here. Welcome back, thank you. Hey, good morning. Almost afternoon, Chair Friend and members of the board. I'm Nicole Coburn, assistant county administrative officer and I'm here to talk about agenda number nine which is regarding an unincorporated area sales tax. So a little bit about our presentation today. I'm just gonna cover some background on the county and talk about some of our accomplishments. We have numerous things that we've been able to accomplish in recent years as well as some top priorities for the public and things that we wanna work on moving forward. And then I'll move into the proposed measure as well as our fiscal stewardship as a county. So as you know, the county of Santa Cruz is somewhat unique and that we serve over half of the county population. We have two rules here at the county of Santa Cruz. We have both our state mandated countywide services that we provide as well as more city-like municipal services that are similar to the cities. We like to say we are the biggest city in the county because of the wide breadth of services that we provide in the unincorporated area and that makes us somewhat unique. We are also serve a much higher portion of the population than some of our peers. As you could see here, we serve about 50% or more than half of the population compared to a peer average of almost 16%. At the same time, we receive a lot less revenue per capita than our peers. Here, as you can see here, we have about $460 per resident and property tax compared to a peer average of almost 4,000. This creates some challenges for us just in terms of providing those dual functions and serving the county both in our unincorporated area and providing those state mandated services. While Santa Cruz County is a really a beautiful place to call home, the county faces a variety of difficult challenges. I know it's no surprise to you, but we are facing a housing crisis here in our county. Frontline workers like nurses, teachers, childcare providers, first responders, emergency personnel and other essential workers are really struggling with the cost of living and the short of homes in our county. Four in 10 residents are renters with nearly half spending 35% or more of their total income on housing. Since 1980, the Santa Cruz County has added 80,000 people, but only 26,000 housing units. And we have a great housing dashboard on our website that I encourage everyone to go to that has some good graphical displays of what's happened in our county as well as what we're doing to address the housing crisis. Additionally, as climate change continues to threaten our community, it is becoming increasingly critical to fund and provide wildfire, flood and emergency response, prevention programs and disaster recovery services. To date, the county's climate change driven disasters as well as the pandemic have cost the county $242 million. We've had to issue some debt to pay for some of those costs. And this year alone, we issued debt of $61 million. And then we have at least another $80 million in damages that remain unfunded and that we're figuring out how to fund. This situation has depleted our available cash balances and severely limited our ongoing recovery efforts, as well as limiting our ability to prepare for and respond to future disasters. As you can see on the chart on the right, just in terms of the general purpose revenues that we have as a county, it comes to about $210 million. So those $242 million of disaster costs is 115% of what we receive annually here as a county in just general purpose revenues. Despite our challenges, we've been taking a lot of action here at the county to invest in our community and we've been seeing results. As you know, we saved Watsonville Community Hospital and we as a county had a $5.5 million investment in saving that hospital. We've also partnered to build affordable housing and medical clinics on Capitol Avenue. We purchased the Westridge Building and are establishing a South County Service Center. We've secured funding for the Pajaro Levy Project. We've invested in library and parks improvements across the county and we fortified first responder facilities and services such as the DNA Lab and the Recovery Center. With respect to housing, we completed our sustainability update, worked on code modernizations and completed the housing element to promote housing development. Also recently, we established the County Office of the Public Defender, which is working on providing holistic defense. And we have our Housing for Health Division that's working on various housing initiatives and serving our persons who are unhoused. In addition, amidst our climate change-driven disasters, we proactively established an office dedicated to addressing these issues. The office is the Office of Response, Recovery and Resilience. They have established a climate action and adaptation plan that they're working on operationalizing with departments that's gonna provide a roadmap for mitigating against climate change field events. They're also working on updating our Emergency Operations Management Plan to be more effective in increased multi-agency coordination and they established the cruise aware system to advance public notifications for our emergencies. So moving forward, I wanna touch on based on a recent polling that we conducted over the summer, the public has a high interest in seeing the County invest in these three areas, wildfire and emergency response, roads, potholes and parks, and then issues that relate to being a healthy and safe community. Providing disaster response, prevention and recovery is the public's top priority based on our polling. 86% of County voters rate it important with over half calling it very important. This polls higher than anything else. As I've discussed, we've done a really amazing job in responding to pandemics, wildfires, floods and more, but there's more that we can do and should be done. Repairing streets and potholes and providing parks and recreation is also important to the public. As you know, we manage over 600 miles of roads that connect us to schools, libraries, parks and businesses. And for every $2 in local investment that we make into transportation in our road network, the County gets $9 in state and federal funds. Lastly, supporting frontline workers, including nurses, emergency responders and educators is a major public priority. We can accomplish that by working on our providing competitive compensation, providing affordable housing options through a pre-development work, especially as it relates to our County campuses, by providing internships and apprenticeships that will help foster the next generation to link people within our community to the County in public service. The public also sees a need for expanding mental health services for children and vulnerable populations. And we are doing this through the efforts of our public defender, as well as our health services agency. And most recently, we've been working on building a state of the art crisis residential center in Mid County for children who need these services the most. That gives you an idea of things that the County still needs to work on. So I wanna touch on our local sales tax. So the County sales tax rate is currently 9% and this is tied with the lowest rate in our County. The city of Capitola is currently tied with us at that 9% rate, as you can see here. The city of Santa Cruz is currently at 9.25% and both the cities of Watsonville and Scotts Valley are at the statutory cap of 9.75. The city of Santa Cruz just last week recently placed a half set sales tax measure on their ballot, which will appear in March. It's important to know that if the County and the city both appear on the ballot in March, these taxes are independent of one another. People who buy goods and services in the city of Santa Cruz will pay that rate and our rate will be only applicable to the unincorporated area. Our measure would be voted on Countywide, but there's just one rate that's paid depending on where you are in the County. In August of 2023, the County worked with EMC Research to conduct a survey of Santa Cruz County voters who are likely to vote in March of 2024. This measure uphold on increasing the unincorporated area sales tax by a half a percent or one half cent. Key findings show that initial support for the sales tax measure is above the majority threshold for passage. This is consistent with our past polling when we've gone out to voters to see what voter sentiment is like. Staff recommends that the board place a half cent sales tax measure on the ballot to provide a vital resource for addressing many of the community needs, including those that I just went over. A potential measure could be used to provide wildfire, flood and emergency response, prevention programs and disaster recovery services. It could also be used to repair streets and potholes and attract and retain frontline workers, including those nurses and emergency responders, provide mental health services for children in vulnerable populations and then maintain and improve our neighborhood parks. The anticipated annual revenue that would be raised by this measure is approximately $10 million, and it would ensure that we as a County have the necessary financial resources to execute local programs and services. You can see the proposed ballot measure here on the slide. If approved, the sales tax would be effective 110 days later, so we're estimating that would be July 1st of 2024. So in the next fiscal year of 2024-25, we're estimating that the annual revenue, just based on when we would start to receive the cash, would be about seven and a half million or three quarters of what we would receive annually. They're concurrent with this ballot measure that you see here. We are also recommending that the board adopt a resolution that's also attached to the item that would establish some key budget priorities for the county to address the key challenges we're facing. These priorities areas are housing and essential workforce retention. We're asking the board to prioritize a million dollars in this area of County-wide homelessness services. We're also asking the board to prioritize another million dollars to support year-round 24-hour navigation centers and services throughout the county. Climate resiliency in county parks is a third area with an equal amount that we're asking the board to prioritize to support those disaster response and recovery prevention programs as well as our neighborhood parks. And then the fourth priority area is the road repair and infrastructure projects. We're asking the board to prioritize, again, another million dollars to repair streets and potholes and address some of our infrastructure needs. And the remainder revenue would be used to support any other essential county services that we have, including our mental health services that we're planning to provide in mid-county and improving public safety. While the proposed sales tax measure would be voted on county-wide, it would be applied exclusively to unincorporated areas of Santa Cruz County, as I mentioned. It's important to note that public disclosure of this funding would be made through the county's annual budget and financial audit. Also purchasing essential items such as groceries, prescription medication, diapers, feminine and hygiene products are all exempt from the sales tax. All of this revenue would stay here in Santa Cruz County for our use based on our priorities and they would address our challenges and needs, helping us to invest more in our county. So with that, I'm happy to answer your questions and I would ask that you approve the recommended actions in the staff report. Thank you. I imagine there may be some questions. I'll start with just a brief question just to make sure that it's exceptionally clear on the ballot language, it says that it'll bring in when fully enacted, I should say $10 million a year and you had a previous slide that showed that not 100% of the sales tax goes to a local government because there's split between the state and special districts. So is the 10 million specific to the county as an entity or is that the gross just to make clear the community and then there's a split from there? Yeah, the 10 million is just, it's our portion based on the half a cent that we would get here in the county that would be added to that pie chart that you saw there. All right, thank you. Are there questions from my colleagues on this item? As you've asked, Hernandez? You know, I think you had me at the three piece, right? The parks, potholes and public safety. But one that I'm really interested in is the workforce retention. I think that that's been one of the things that we really have to address at the county level and making sure that we have proper staffing levels for, we had this report that we had for behavioral health. And so we haven't had proper staffing levels there, but also in our public, in our sheriffs, we haven't had proper staffing levels. So I really hope that this really does meet the demand to properly staff a lot of our departments and a lot of our workforce that we need. Thank you. That's the Vazra Connor. Sure, thank you, Chair. You know, the thing for the fantastic presentation, I think it really makes it clear why we're considering doing this. The most common question I get when talking about this potential sales, sales tax measure out in the community is, well, we know there's inflation, but sales taxes by definition increase when there's inflation. So shouldn't the existing sales taxes be keeping up with the increased costs? And I think what you demonstrated very clearly is that the county is actually being asked to do more than ever before. The county is really left holding the bag dealing with the externalities from the climate crisis and the housing crisis. We have to, I mean, as you showed, more than a year's worth of our general fund revenues are have been spent just in responding to recent climate disasters. And then as also been mentioned, with the cost of housing increasing as rapidly as it has in recent years, we have to ultimately increase salaries in order to stay competitive and attract people to our area and fill those positions to provide services to the public. So fundamentally, that's why we need to consider a new sales tax measure is because the county is actually doing more than it has in the past. We should bet, of course, with the board approves this today, it will go out to the public to vote on whether or not they wanna approve this. And I don't think it's a unreasonable proposed increase. I mean, the county would still be, still wouldn't be the highest taxing entity within our region. And a lot of people, we live in such an expensive area, it seems like sales taxes even are ridiculously high here, but look across other parts of the state, I mean, in parts of the Bay Area or Los Angeles County, sales taxes are as high as 10.75%. And of course, those are areas that are dealing with a lot of the same issues that we are in high cost of living and then high cost to provide services. So ultimately, this will be a question that the community decide, I'm supportive of putting it on the ballot today, but it'll be our community decide what they expect from county government and if this voters don't approve this, and I mean, the reality is that we're not gonna be able to show up as much as we would like to. Thank you, that was my first one. Yeah, I'm supportive of putting this measure on the ballot to begin with. I'd like to hear the public comment, of course, but for many reasons stated in the staff report, the county does not have the proper funding streams to provide the level of services that we have as we represent the population in this county. And we have a very low property tax rate which compounds the situation for revenues for us, which is a big reason we have to ask voters for approval of measures in the past like GED and S for library, public safety for roads. And I really wanna thank the voters for doing that. We'd be in a bigger hole if we wouldn't have approved those. And as mentioned, the county spent a great deal of funding to be proactively responsive to COVID and the CZU fire and the Lightning Complex fire, the CZU fire and the atmospheric river events that we had last winter and we're spending a much larger federal share for that support, but it hasn't come. I mean FEMA has run out of money and there's been disasters throughout this nation and certainly in this state that it is not giving us and those are over a hundred million dollars total one way or the other that we've been paying for and we're just hoping that they repay us. And I think they will, but it's they're not doing it now and it really complicates the situation for us. I think this measure will help us provide the quality services that we want to do. I think I know there's a question as you've mentioned and why do all of the Santa Cruz County voters, including the city voters, vote on our sales tax measure of the county? Well, it's because we are the agents of the state to provide healthcare services, human services and people pay into that and that's part of our budget. So that's why everybody has to pay into that and that's a legal requirement as we've seen from past cases. And also as you've mentioned too, I want to make sure that the city of Santa Cruz voters realize that this is not going to be a half set, half set compound for a total of one cent. It'll only be a half cent for the incorporated area of the county and only a half cent for the city of Santa Cruz should they both be approved. I think those are very important issues and I think respect to by Konig's thoughts on inflation, but the cost of inflation or inflation results in higher prices to bill bridges or whatever the case may be. So we're trying to keep up with it and inflation is at the highest point it's been in, well, some time decade or more. So that's really put a pinch on us. We're in a tight squeeze here in the county and we're gonna hear more about that next week, but if we don't have this half cent sales tax approved, we are not gonna be able to provide the increasing services that people want from this county. I think it's a responsible thing to do and the voters will decide, but I think it's a legitimate request and from some very, very multiple cases of reasons why we need to go for this, but I'm gonna be supportive of this. Thank you, Survisor McPherson. I'd like to open it up for the community. Is there anybody in chambers that'd like to address us on specific to this item? Good morning again, David Schwartz. I'm opposed to this and I'll tell you why I'm opposed to this. We have so many families in this county that are one paycheck away from homelessness. If we add this cost to their daily living, we may create more homelessness and that's a big problem we have already. So we have to think about this. The other thing is we have opportunities for other sources of revenue that we might wanna look at. One suggestion, let's put together a task force to look at the former redevelopment agency debt that's sucking up 22% of our property tax revenues. That's a much larger piece of the pie than we even get. And I don't know if that can be reallocated back to us and all the other agencies within the county or not, but I think it's worth looking into. One of the other things that I had mentioned earlier is any opportunity for programs that we have to generate revenue and make themselves revenue neutral would allow us to then re-put that money to work in other areas. Finally, as you probably know, your county is actually a nonprofit as well. Why don't we ask the public to donate when they make their property tax at $100, they can actually deduct that as a charitable contribution. Now I know we give a lot of money to charity and we might be taking a little bit away from them, but people out there have money, let's ask them to help out as well without mandating it with a tax. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, welcome back. Good morning. Ms. Coburn and Mr. Heath, both talked to me a little bit before this item came up, so I appreciate that. I don't think I learned anything new though. My problem with this as the way it's framed is I don't think it's fair for the whole county to be voting on a tax in the unincorporated area. I think most ordinary people could understand just the basic element of fairness, but the way it's been described, Santa Cruz city resident will be able to vote on the tax rate where I live, but I will not be able to vote on the tax rate where that person lives. And I think that sounds like an equal protection issue to me. Both Santa Cruz and Watsonville have district elections for city council, I believe because lawsuits were brought in the past, raising the equal protection issue under the US Constitution. But I don't think we even need to go there because the state revenue and taxation code has section 7285, and that has a fork. If you read the very first sentence, it's big mouthful, but there's a fork in section 7285. So the county can either put on a tax that applies to the whole county and have the whole county vote, that's one prong, or the tax can be in the unincorporated area and the unincorporated area can vote on it. So I don't see how this is consistent with section 7285. Also, I think the county can save about a quarter million dollars by not running this election in four cities. I looked at the measure G results from five years ago and the measure G passed by a three to two margin in the unincorporated area. So I think this could still succeed, even if you run it in the unincorporated area. And my last point I'd like to make is I think this is gonna make it more difficult to pass the Santa Cruz tax measure if Santa Cruz residents have both measures on the ballot. Thank you. Well, again, thank you so much for allowing me to speak. My name's Tim Delaney. And the last two gentlemen, they brought up some very interesting points. You know, I kind of like, I can't, I'm not sure if I should be totally supportive of the sales tax. You know, the one thing I can say though, you know, in speaking to some of my other relatives, including international relatives, they were mentioning stuff like, oh, you know, what state should I live in that doesn't have a state income tax or sales taxes and so on. And I pointed out to them that, well, those states, you know, they don't always have jobs and the economic conditions are not very good over there. So there's a reason why we have taxes over here in the state of California. Okay. Now, so even though I don't know all the ins and outs of these type of measures and everything, I'd like to also point out to you, just when I walked out of the room there, I talked to the timber fellows and they'd never seen an old growth panorosa force or not, I'm not sure if they've even seen an old growth redwood force. So maybe you should be so quick to prove some of these sorts of things. So I have a challenge for all of you young men, okay, including Bruce. You should go down to Emeril Bay, go all the way down there and stand there and take a look at those trees. There's only about 10 old growth panorosa trees left in the entire Tahoe basin. And in the entire city of California, there's only about one to 3% old growth redwood left. And you can see that up in Northern California. You folks should take a trip to Tahoe and go down to Emeril Bay and take a hard look at that and think about the environment and taxes and all these things that you do before you make any more decisions. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you folks allowing me to speak. Thank you. Anybody else in chambers like to address us? Good afternoon. Welcome back. Thank you, Becky Steinbrenner. Why should we trust you now? When you came to the voters in 2018 with these very same arguments, support, and you didn't follow through with any of the fire support that you promised, you haven't followed through with the parks funding that you promised. Aptos village park was supposed to get $435,000. Now I'm told by the parks commissioner that was only a recommendation and there's no plan to do so. Why should we trust you now? The Santa Cruz County grand jury did a very good analysis of what happened and what has not happened. That was a 2021 did measure G mislead voters. The Santa Cruz County grand jury said, yes, you did. And they urge in the front page that the title is words matter. For future revenue measures, the grand jury encourages the County Board of Supervisors to review this report and consider adopting a policy requiring County staff to provide clearer, more succinct language explaining the nature of each tax and how it may be spent. Simply saying, oh, yeah, we're gonna give a million to this and a million to that. That is not clear or succinct or anything that lends trust to the taxpayer. Fire has received zero of measure G funds. And yet here it is being touted out as the big cause for this. You have the ability to provide fire, county fire funding with reallocation of Prop 172 money. There's a half cent statewide sales tax that was passed just for that. May I have one more minute please? But 30 seconds please. Thank you. So you have the ability to reallocate that and you do not. County fire gets a zero of that money but you have the ability to change that. You also have the ability to pursue a reconstitution of ERAF to get more of that money coming back from the state for fire and emergency services. You also took a very interesting stance to fire Rosemary Anderson, the county's emergency operations manager as a cost cutting and instilled a whole new bloated department, the OR3, which has caused a lot of expense to the county. FEMA money may have dried up but when these things happened, what happened in the county is that spending went crazy. Warehouses, renting in Monterey County to store equipment. I am asking you when disasters come to be more prudent for you. Thank you, Ms. Sebrner. Thank you, Ms. Sebrner. Thank you, Ms. Sebrner. I think we provided the additional time. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Sebrner. Is there anybody else in chambers that has not spoken to this item? Madam Clerk, is there anybody online? Yes, Chair. Colin, user to your microphones now available. Thank you, Becky, for that skating reality factual check. Why should we trust you? I don't, I live in the unincorporated area and pay plenty of taxes and what they're going for, the taxes are very disturbing for me. And of course, the overall tax in the equitable system in the whole country, we're part of it. Where the wealthy and the corporations don't pay and our tax money goes for Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and other military production corporations to kill people all over the world. We need the money to go for beneficial projects in our own communities. You talk about providing for the public health and safety, all this radar, wireless technology, murder towers, cell towers, and column murder towers when you know how dangerous it is. What assault on the public health and safety, and here just quick facts, so you cut me off, cell phones, cell towers, Wi-Fi, wireless, smart meters, emit microwave, radio frequency, radiation, and children are especially vulnerable. Independent research shows this radiation causes cellular stress and damage, DNA damage, blood brain barrier disrupted, increased cancer and tumor risk, decreased melatonin, insomnia, abnormal heart rhythm, strokes, altered brainwaves, cognitive difficulties, memory and concentration, headaches, links to Alzheimer's and impacts to wildlife. Stop squandering our money on assault weapons. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Garan. Is there anybody else online? We have no further speakers, Chair. Okay, we'll close public comment and bring it back to the board. Supervisors are coming. Yeah, I just want to thank city staff for their work on this and for highlighting all the great work that the county does. And I do also want to thank members of the public who spoke today. And I just want to highlight too that this is not, it's not as if we're being fiscally irresponsible here. The county's done a great job at managing the public's money well. What's happening is that over time costs are going up, the cost to provide services are going up and we're expanding the services that we can provide here in the county. And in order to pay for all that, we have to find a revenue source and the sales tax revenue can greatly help us as we do that. We've been very responsive after the storms where crews were out fixing roads and clearing roads as quickly as they could to get people moving around again. The county was responsible with getting the OR3 office up and running, which has been really helpful at helping to address issues around disasters and how we can be more responsive to disasters. As was pointed out earlier, they've helped with getting funding for the Power Road. We have a lot of people in the county who have been helping us move forward with how we can address equity within our county. And so I think that the county's been really demonstrating to the public that we want to do the best we can to use our money the most effectively as we can. But what we're going to the people saying now is that in order to provide better services in order to continue to serve you, we need to raise some more money. We need to make sure that our workers have a place to live and that they'll stay, that we can retain them so they're not going over the hill and in order for us to continue to operate these services and have a functioning county, we need revenue and we're hoping that we can get the voters to support us as we're moving forward with this. And so I'm very supportive of this tax measure. I also want to point out that this is something that doesn't just fall on the backs of the residents. We heard a lot about how Santa Cruz is very open to having visitors come from other areas. And when those people from outside of our community come to our community and they spend money, that money comes back to us in the form of sales tax dollars. So I think it's different than like a property tax where the individual who lives here is just solely paying that. This is a revenue measure that yes, people who live here will have to pay into but all the other visitors who show up here will also be paying into this as well. So I think we should just keep that in mind as we're moving forward with asking the community to support us on this because people always ask how can we get more money from people who are coming into our community? Increasing our sales tax is one way we can do that. And so I just want to encourage our county-electeds, members of the community and community groups to help us as we move forward in this endeavor so that we can continue to provide good services and keep really talented workers here in our community. And so I'm happy with that. I'm happy to move the staff recommendation. I'll second. We have a motion for the recommended actions from Supervisor Cummings. And a second from Supervisor Hernandez. Any additional comments, peers? No, if we could have a roll call, please. Supervisor Koenig. Hi. Cummings. Hi. Hernandez. Hi. McPherson and Friend. All right, and that passes unanimously. Council, we're gonna be moving into closed session. Do you anticipate anything to be reportable out of closed session? No. All right, well then that'll close the open portion of the meeting. The board will move into our closed session.