And everybody would like to call to order the March 14th, 2023 meeting of the Board of Supervisors. If we could bring it on the roll call, please. Thank you, Chair. Supervisor Koenig. Here. Cummings. Here. Hernandez. Here. McPherson. Here. And Chair Friend. Here. I'd like to begin with the moment of silence. Does any board member like to dedicate today's moment of silence? Please, Mr. Vice-President Cummings. I'd like to dedicate this moment of silence to Ellie Tershey. Ellie passed away at her home at the age of 100. I was a child with a great depression who lived through COVID pandemic and recovered from COVID and was a fierce fighter for social justice and access to medical care for all. Thank you. And I'd like to just acknowledge all those that have been infected by the recent storms in particular those in the South County and in Pajaro who are facing significant challenges for the coming months and years with the loss of not just their homes but their income, their way of life and that disastrous flooding. So if we could also hold everybody in the South County in our hearts as well. Thank you. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and the Republic for which it stands one, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and indivisible. Morning, Mr. Palacios. Are there any changes to today's agenda? Chair Penda, members of the board. Yes, on the regular agenda, item number seven, staff requests this item be deleted. This is packet pages 14 through 18. Item 12.1, the board is being asked to add this item to the agenda in accordance with the government code section 549, 5.2B to consider resolution, ratifying the proclamation of a local emergency for the March 9th, 2023 atmospheric river winter storm event as proclaimed by the county administrative officer as the director of emergency services on March 13th, 2023. Thank you. Before then we move on to the next item. Do we need a motion to add this onto the agenda council? Yes. All right, so in order to add item 12.1, is there a motion from the board to just add it to the agenda? So moved. Second. Do we have a motion from Supervisor Koenig? A second from Supervisor Hernandez. If we could have a roll call on just adding this item to the agenda, please. Certainly, Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Cummings? Aye. Hernandez? Aye. McPherson? Aye. And Friend? Aye. And that'll end item 12.1 to the agenda. Thank you, council. Thank you, Mr. Palacios. We'll move on to item four. Are there any board members who would like to specifically remove an item from consent to the regular agenda? Okay, seeing none, we'll now open up for public comment. This is an opportunity for members of the community to address those items that are not on today's agenda, within the purview of the Board of Supervisors, or that are currently on today's consent agenda, or even on the regular agenda, if you're unable to wait for the regular agenda. Good morning, and welcome, Mr. Brody. Good morning, thank you. Chair Friend and members of the Board, as you most of you know, my name is David Brody, and while most of you know me as Executive Director of First Five Santa Cruz County, I'm here today in another capacity as a commissioner of the Santa Cruz County Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Commission. I want to extend hello from our chairs and through Drulla who very much wanted to be here today, but is traveling out of state. As many of you know, the mission of our organization, our commission is to advocate for and protect the safety and well-being of dependent and delinquent youth, as well as to promote intervention and prevention services and programs in our county. The commission is mandated to conduct a yearly inspection of the Juvenile Hall and oversee implementation of SB823, evaluating county's strategy for real-time Department of Juvenile Justice Youth. Our annual inspection this year included in item 29 of your consent agenda today uses the nation's highest standards, the Juvenile Detention Alternatives and Self-Inspection Tool established by the Casey Foundation. As noted in the full report, the inspection and application of the tool showed that your Juvenile Hall and your staff employ the best practices for youth, for the benefit of our kids in the hall, meeting over 96% of the 863 separate items that were reviewed in the evaluation. The report includes a number of recommendations on ways that we can better serve youth in the hall. And we're very happy to report that staff have been really good working partners in implementing some of those recommendations and many have already been adopted. In fact, we learned just yesterday that one was adopted with respect to COVID isolation when kids enter the hall and we're really happy about that. In all the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention fulfills an incredibly important job for young people in our county, including about how limited to the mandates that I've just talked about. This work is intensive and time-consuming and in that light, our chairs and to truly be reaching out to county administration to explore the possibility of additional administrative support for the commission to enhance our efficiency and our ability to effectively meet our mandates. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Rodey and thank you for your work. I see why I'm... And as director of First Five, I want to thank Mr. Rodey for his work in First Five Commission, but this is tremendous news in what we're doing in this county. And I think we're... We hit 96% I think of the plateaus that everybody wanted to reach. I don't think very many others do that. So congratulations to everybody and to our Juvenile Justice system itself. It's very much appreciated. Thank you. Especially to our department staff. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, sir. Welcome. Hello, my name is John Silva. I'm a fire victim from the CZU Lightning Fire. After two years of struggle with the county and doing everything necessary to get back into my home after several attempts with geology, me and my wife decided to sign the covenant which was offered to us to move forward with our rebuild of our home. We were not more than a week away from final inspection. When I looked outside my window to see Jeff Nolan from the geology department, he was called out to investigate a pipe break above my home from SLV Water District. As I went outside to see what was going on, I was alarmed by the commotion and people congregating in the street and the entrance of my property. I was told that the landslide was now active and that the geology department would not final my home. I stated that I signed the covenant and I was told that it doesn't matter anymore. Everything has changed now. I was asked by Jessica Degrassi of the geology department if they could walk through my property and I told them no. Jeff Nolan took it upon himself to trespass on my property to meet up with the Water District and Fire Department at the lower end of my neighborhood. I don't understand how the document that I signed assuming all risk to build was taken away from me without any geologic study. Later that week, a letter from the county geology department, I was told I would be responsible for producing a geologic study now in order to carry out with my building project. I was also told that the geology department was going to try to find and receive funding to buy our properties because there was too dangerous to live on. Unfortunately, since that was said, I've had no communication or outreach by any of the county staff members letting me know what is going on and how to proceed. I do not think that they should have stopped me from being able to final my home when there is nothing that I could have done to prevent water pipe breakage or land movement. While I'm left sitting, waiting till the county figures out whether or not they're going to buy my property, my completed home is sitting there waiting to be lived in. This has been complete torture. I ask you to please intervene because nothing seems to be working to move forward. I understand now that the land is potentially jeopardized but me and my family need somewhere to live. Thank you. Thank you for that. Good morning. Good morning, my name is Justin Walker.  The geology department mainly. We were required to do geology. The first geologist that we hired did his report with Jeff Nolan and Jeff Nolan would not accept it. Nolan requires a soils test, not even on our property. We did the borings anyway. The state licensed geologist did his report and found no problem with this building. However, the port was denied. Months later we hired an attorney, a new geologist and at this time more soils testing and they filed the report. After they filed the report, the county changed that it guidelines on the reports and denied the report again even though it was filed before the guideline change. So again, I was hit with additional fees due to lack of communication with the county. Finally, the report was adjusted, resubmitted in pass signed off by Jeff Nolan and Rick Parks. This took about two years and $30,000. After the recent storms, I was up building when I noticed someone trespassing on my property. It was Jeff Nolan. I went out to talk to him. He automatically became aggressive and harassing me. My geology report saying that my geology report is no longer valid and the land is no longer buildable. If I have an issue, I should go ahead and contact my attorney. He stated this in front of witnesses. Jeff was going door to door telling fire survivors their homes were no longer buildable. I feel Mr. Nolan is out of line and taking his position to draconian levels. Later, the geology department, Jeff and Jessica came back out to the site and they brought a representative from FEMA who said that they said that our properties were unbuildable and they're working on a buyback program and they were explaining how it would work. Since then, I've received two letters that contradict the geology department, what the geology department was telling me. I have not received any information on this. In fact, I received a documented message from the geology staff stating they've been instructed that all communications should go through from my attorney through to the county's attorney. This is another problem because now I'm forced to pay attorney fees. I'm a disabled veteran and the harassment that I've received from the county is worse than any harassment that I've ever received. I hope that you guys can figure out a way that we can at least get some answers and move forward. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. My name is Greg Bangson. I'm an unhoused individual who tents at the City Overlook Armory outdoor encampment. I was a resident of the Benchlands Encampment chairman of the camp council. But we are creating a resident council up at the armory. I'm registered to vote in district three. We're going to have a voter registration drive and a couple of people are helping with that. We're going to do some interesting things. The budget is so tight there and the Salvation Armory underbid it like crazy. So the staff is amazing, but they're just so we're just trying to pick up some of the slack and we want to have input that we also want to give input. Anybody here is welcome. We're going to invite Fred Keely, anybody, and Major Marcos from the Salvation Army. It'll take more time to discuss the budget-wise and the intricacies of the bizarre situation that were in homeless and atmospheric rivers. I'm very grateful to have a tent up at the armory. I feel bad for my friends that are out on the street. I feel bad for the situations that they've stuck themselves in as well. But this is a time when resources are being made available and like in the past, and I'm urging my friends to hit while the iron is hot and I'm urging you guys to dig deeper. I know you guys already do, but dig even deeper. Some people are ready to move on and we need your support and I will pass the information on probably to you, Justin, as far as when we do schedule something and but you're always welcome to stop by, of course. Have a great day, thank you. Thank you. Morning. Good morning. My name is Richard Lewis, not the first time, but no accident. I'm here to ask you to ask your friends, what is a homey? Please, we have the domain name for a union, homey's union. I'm gonna talk about Roberto Reyes, the power of one family, Roberto. I was two days, the only vanilla homey with 200 people at a funeral for two days. Economically, this one person here in Santa Cruz at his automobile shop built family. I'm honored to be part of family. I can't talk in three minutes in for you to all get it, but one person who's in this room would know that he could change those young people who in that family have made mistakes. So, I'm happy that last night, well, if you remember how few people, when you walked out at the end of the meeting at Cabrillo, three people were there. Please, if we're gonna see what Roberto did as people came from Mexico and all over because of one person, it's his family. Roberto Reyes didn't own Coca-Cola, but he was my homey. So, a homey, if you ask me, is your best friend. Please, I know some of you up there could help take on the name of a union in the name of what this one family did to create jobs. The solution is not gonna come with seven minutes, it is gonna come from your vision and what we can do at Cabrillo. So, thank you for listening. Hope you did something with what I shared before. Gang for good. Thank you. Your invitation. Good morning. Welcome. Hi, my name is Tracy Walker and I am also a CZU fire victim. The geology department does not want us to build, but instead of just telling us no, they keep changing the guidelines and requiring we do more, causing more unnecessary stress and financial burden. On March 23rd, 2021, somebody from the county put a note on our parcel report saying, see attached active landslide notice to that. This date is prior to any geologic investigation. So, why did the county think there was an active landslide on our property? Five geologic reports later from two separate firms and nothing about an active landslide, only an ancient one. It took two years, five reports and about $30,000, but we finally passed geology. Now, Jeff Nolan is trying to say a report that he and Rick Parks passed is no longer valid due to ground movement in the area from recent storms and water main raking four times, pumping thousands of gallons of water through the ground. In the state's geology report from this new movement, it does not once mention our property, so why has the county tied ours into it? The properties across the street aren't affected, why is ours? Nothing moved on our property, but the county geologists declared our lot unbuildable to my husband while he was trespassing on our property. According to County Code 1610, he does not have the authority to declare our report invalid. So, why is he making this happen? We have since been told the rebuild directive is no longer an option for us and that with RPC is no longer handling our rebuild with no explanation as what we need to do to move forward. So, what do we need to do to continue to move on with our lives? Because we are about $100,000 in the hole on this build with nothing to show for it. What are we doing? What can we do? Can I go home yet? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Welcome back. Hey, thank you. Welcome back to YouTube, Mr. Friend. Yeah, I don't really stand to a page of allegiance to pirate flags. At least the pirates were honest the way you guys are divviding up stuff.  Everyone is equal, but not to the elite class using the peasants to slaughter for our needs is worth it to lose 90% of them. That's okay. Maybe the Ukraine will open other's eyes. There have been members from three different families about properties that were destroyed during the CZU directed energy weapons fires. This is all part of the sustainability. Your new subject 12.1 about the recent fires, those are all from directed energy weapons as well. You know, it's interesting to stand before such evil. You don't think I don't have information on all of you and couldn't describe it? What purpose is that? I'd like to see change. Now, something I learned more than 25 years ago coming into this county doing building stuff is that you don't often go, you get better results when you go in there and you show them the answers based on actual codes. These three different groups from different families have a beige or silly rules that are all part of the sustainability and the genocide of agenda 21, 2050.  You know, the land grabs that are going on right now and other parts of the United States. Look at the East Palestine deliberate attack. If any logical person would see that that's worse than Chernobyl or Fukushima for reasons I don't have time to explain. You know, what's going on now is outside of Oakhurst, which is about 120 miles from here. There's hundreds of fuel containers right there and in less than two weeks, 80% of the bees in the United States are gonna be there. If there is another land problem, that's really gonna affect things. I'd like to see you guys do some different things and I'm here to support your change. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Welcome back. Good morning, Co-Britain, Matt's Britain Architects. I'm here for two reasons now. The first reason is to reiterate the complaint regarding 1099. Mr. Schifrin is a public official by government code. The position appears to be incompatible by government code. I respectfully request a respectful response. Mr. Heath has dismissed it or opined that he believes I'm incorrect but provided no substantiation. I think it's appropriate question to ask if I'm wrong, mi culpa. But somebody besides Mr. Heath is the one that should answer the question and that's the attorney general for the state. It's certainly be part of the litigation that this continues this way. That's an unfortunate way to resolve things. Also hearing the CZU fire victims. My office with clients have tried on numerous occasions to do repairs, to bluffs, landslide repairs. And when we were blocked by county staff, we appealed to the building appeals board, happens to be you all. To one point it was litigated and rather than bring the issue to the appeals board, county council decided to overturn the rescission that Mr. Nolan made on his acceptance letter. There's a poison pill in it. But to give you an idea, these people have the right to appeal to the building appeals board denial, their geology and geotechnical reports. So under section 1.8.8 of the California building code, it cannot be revised. It is adopted by the county. Yet Mr. Machado will block any appeal to the building appeals board. But there's no acceptance, no language that allows him to do so under section 1.8.8. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody else like to address us? Good morning. Good morning, Becky Steinbruner. I'm a resident of rural Aptos. And I really want to thank Public Works for their hard work during these storms. I have been curious about why the bridge sections that the county owns that are stored and have been stored for a number of years near Farm Park and Soquel at the end of T Street are not being used. I was happy to hear from Mr. Machado that the Bates Creek culvert failure was quickly repaired with a replacement culvert of same size. I'm happy the county was able to do that. But I want to make sure that the county uses these bridge sections that are just sitting there and could be put to use quickly to provide return to egress for stranded communities. I also want to take a moment and recognize that your board rejected supervisor Cummings nominee for the planning commission, his analyst, Mr. Schifrin. I thought it was quite hypocritical that you would do so when supervisor friend, your analyst sits on the planning commission, Ms. Allison Villalante. Although she's done a very good job and I've written compliments for her thorough work in the general plan amendment update, she should not be there either. If Mr. Cummings analyst cannot be there, yours should not be there either. So I propose to you that there's a bit of hypocrisy going on here. And personally, I think no one's analyst should serve on any commissions. Supervisor McPherson, your analyst, J.M. Brown served on the housing advisory commission. And while he did a good job, I think it is the citizen's job to be on the commissions, not your analyst. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else in the chamber's elect to address us? Okay, we'd like to open it up for Zoom. Madam clerk, anybody? Yes, Chair, we do have speakers online. Call in user one, your microphone is now available. Good morning, supervisors. My name is Diane Nicol.  But what I'm actually calling about today is the spell towers that are being placed on top of the utility poles all throughout our county, particularly down various locations, including Seabright Avenue, right outside houses. In 2021 and the Pellet Court ruled that the federal communications FCC regulations since 1998 have not protected people from the health effects of radio frequency radiation after the FCC ignored thousands of studies. It ruled that the FCC has to rewrite these regulations. They are still in process of this. Meanwhile, there have been thousands of studies showing the health effects, the adverse health effects of these radio frequency radiation from cell towers and cell phones. For example, this document by Martin Paul PhD, Professor Meridus of the Biochemistry and Basic Medical Sciences in Washington State University documents eight types of effects, including against our nervous systems, endocrine hormonal systems, attacks the DNA of our cells, producing single-strand and double-strand breaks and cellular DNA, and oxidized bases in our cellular DNA, produced elevated levels of programmed cell death, which can cause neurodegenerative diseases and infertility, lower male and female fertility, anyway, and others, including cancer. So I wanna encourage people who see these little mini cell towers on top of utility poles. They're usually brown in color. They're about two or three feet in height. Do contact the Board of Supervisors and let them know that you don't want those outside. Thank you. Barry, your microphone's now available. Thank you. First, I wanna thank the supervisors for all the hard work you do, especially in these trying times with floods and everything. The reason I wanted to speak today was to express my disappointment that Justin Cummins' selection of Andy Schifrin to the Planning Commission was rejected by three supervisors. And I followed Andy's career and actions for a while and I feel like he has the experience and the qualifications and I felt the opposition was without cause. And I was going to ask that this be reconsidered. However, now I see that it looks like on this, today's agenda that Andy will be reconsidered to serve a term not greater, not longer than six months. And I hope that's the case. I'm not sure I understand the six month limitation, but I do hope that you all will respect the selections that our new supervisors make. As they've been voted to serve by their constituents and it just seems unusual to reject their appointment. So I hope you'll reconsider. I hope that Andy Schifrin can be added to the Planning Commission. And again, thanks for all the work you do. Rich, your microphone's now available. Good morning. My name is Rich Goldberg. I was a member of the 2019-2020 civil grand jury and served as four person of the 2020-2021 grand jury. On behalf of the California Grand Jurors Association Santa Cruz chapter, I wanna thank the board for issuing the proclamation included in your written correspondence item J declaring March 2023 as the civil grand jury awareness month in Santa Cruz County. The grand jury provides oversight of government of the County, cities and special districts and improves the effectiveness and efficiency of government operations through its investigations and reports. And the grand jury's made up of 19 citizens who volunteer. And in a recent talk I gave at Puglio College to a political science class, I was asked how much the grand jury has compensated and I did the mental math and it came out to about 75 cents an hour. So the members of the grand jury do their work for the betterment of a community and not for compensation and they are to be commended. The success of the grand jury and the relevance of the reports are also supported by the Superior Court and Judge Colliotti by the County Council and by volunteer clerks who provide administrative and critical IT support. And we've addressed in the recent years and meaningful topics including pandemic response, public health, public safety, criminal justice, fire safety and resilience which has just been discussed by a number of citizens and homelessness. And finally, what can the Board of Supervisors do? Please encourage your constituents to volunteer and go to scgrandjury.org to find the work of the grand jury and find and submit an application. And with that I thank you. Jen, your microphone's now available. Hello supervisors, my name is Jennifer Levini. I'm a lawyer at Levini Law. And at first I'd just like to thank all of you for the difficult work that you're doing during these extreme times. I am calling today because I'm representing several of the CZU fire families. I sent supervisors Koenig and McPherson a letter and I'm gonna reiterate today what is in that letter that describes the situation that some of these families are going through. Recently, staff geologist Jeff Nolan declared there are properties to be an active landslide without any actual geology reports. And he said that their properties are no longer buildable. Even though these families previously signed a notice which allocated 100% of the risk back to themselves and not to the county. If the properties are declared unbuildable that this is a constructive condemnation to which they are entitled to just compensation which is the fair market value of their properties before the destruction. If the properties are condemned, I'm asking that the county allocate FEMA funds to buy the property so that the families can move on and get new homes for their children. Leaving them hanging with contradictory information over verbal communications text messages and letters is left the families completely destroyed. I'd like you to direct the staff to give consistent messages and to either honor the notices that they've already signed or to actually condemn their homes and provide them with FEMA funds. Again, thank you and all this information is in a letter that supervisors McPherson and Conan Katz. Thank you. Colin user 9483, your microphone is now available. Hey, Mary-Lou Sam Swiley. Thank you all for everything everyone is doing to help with this awful storm and such. I'd like to request that the county ease their tree removal permits not charge them to get rid of all these eucalyptus, bluecomb eucalyptus trees. They're just a recurrent property of no Marmonti the section in between highway one and San Andreas. Continually trees are falling and falling. One landed on a house and a woman was entered had to be evacuated from the second floor. These trees will continue to lean, fall, break, fall into the lines. There needs to be some way to view upon the home owners, the property owners to remove these trees to prevent further damage to the infrastructure. How many hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent over the years to keep repairing these lines by PG&E, cable, et cetera, the damages to the downhill neighbors for the tree damage and such and it's put onto the county. County comes in, cuts the roads from curb to curb and then everybody else is responsible the property owners responsible to remove all the remaining trees and branches that are left on private property, but it's not happening. If you own property, you need to take care of it and remove this quagmire of deadly trees. Also there's something called a tree of heaven that a PG&E and excuse me, Davey Tree person told me that it's a very hazardous tree also grows quickly up into the lines and shorts it out. We can help each other by getting rid of the trees in viewing upon the property owners to take care of the trees and not plant these tall or allow tall growing trees to be under the poles when all of the electrical lines were put in, PG&E cut it to the ground and property owners have allowed to let this grow. So we all as a community need to imbue upon them to take them down if county needs would be wonderful the county would take away the fees because it's very expensive to remove all of this. I appreciate it. All in user two, your microphone's now available. I'm Karen Garrett and the County Board of Supervisors has been provided data over a 20 year period by me and there's some of the harmful effects of this wireless technology, cell towers, cell phones and panels, et cetera. And I'd like to quote Barry Trower who was a Royal Navy microwave weapons researcher and expert in microwave radiation weaponry. Here's the quote. To my knowledge, microwave or radio wave sickness was first reported in August, 1932 with a symptoms of severe tiredness, fatigue, pitfall, sleep, headaches, intolerability and high susceptibility to infection. The paradox of course is how microwave radiation can be used as a weapon to cause impairment, illness and death and at the same time be used as a communications instrument. In an article by Barry Trower titled, it's his Wi-Fi report, humanity at the brink. This is posted in Wi-Fi in schools and it's from 10 years ago. And he explains how young girls have all their eggs at birth and exposed to microwave radiation causes damage to those girls and their any future generations. And he asks if people might think, oh, no government would ever harm its citizens for money, especially pregnant women. Thank you. We have no further speakers, Chair. All right, thank you. We'll bring it back to the board then to discuss the consent agenda. I'll start with Supervisor Hernandez. Are there any items you'd like to discuss on consent? No? Supervisor Cummings. Thank you, Chair. Just want to start item number 28, which is the fire safe council grant. I just want to congratulate staff on obtaining that grant and that funding, but also would like to see if we could get a report back around budget time around the implementation. So we'd like to add that recommendation to consent. With the juvenile hall report, I just want to thank the commissioners for their hard work on this. It's a pretty big lift and we're just glad to see that we're making progress in a lot of the critical areas. One question I did have and I believe our director of probation's here, I've met with the juvenile justice committee's chair and she informed me that the facility in Stockton where some of the Santa Cruz juveniles are being housed is set to close the end of July. And I was just curious about what conversations are being had around where those juveniles are expected to go and if we can get an update on that situation. Good morning chief, welcome. Good morning chair. Yes, we've been aware of the closure for the last two years in making plans. We have currently four youth who are still at DJJ, three will be returning to our community. Actually, they will be returning and going to Sonoma County, which is our only facility that we are able to contract with right now. The fourth individual will stay in adult prison. He was a commitment to DJJ, but wound up in prison because of a new charge and he's likely to stay there. So we have planned Sonoma County has accepted three of the individuals already. So that's where they will transition. I will share that we have challenges. We have no neighboring counties in the Bay Area other than Sonoma County who is willing to accept our youth. In the state of California, there are only 11 counties who are accepting youth and the closest one, other than Sonoma being Sacramento, Fresno, we have down to Riverside. So the other ones are far away. So we're just working on perhaps, our neighboring county would be great Santa Clara, so any help that we could get to convince those folks that would be very helpful. Great, and maybe at budget period if we can get an update just on how that progress is working, that would be great. Sure, absolutely. Thank you. And then item number 32, this is ADU incentives. And I just want to again, thank staff for their work on this. I know a lot of folks are interested in building ADUs. One of the, in the agenda report, so there's gonna be a contract with Hello Housing and they're gonna issue a request for qualifications for professionals including architects, engineers, surveyors and general contractors to work with individuals who wanna have ADU projects. And one additional direction that I would hope to add is that we also have Hello Housing requests for qualifications include companies that produce modular units. These are cheaper units that are often times constructed offsite and then put together on properties. And they're often times much cheaper than traditional housing. We know that there's some people who've been trying to rebuilds who've been using these units as well. And it could be a good opportunity for us to help expedite the construction of ADUs on property that would be cheaper than on traditional housing. And so I'd just like to see if we can add that direction as well. And that concludes my comments on the last comment with the Davenport water rates. I just wanna let the community know that we've been working with members of the Davenport community to set up a community meeting to make sure that folks have an opportunity to weigh in. We've been in touch with Director Machado and tentatively I think it's gonna be April 12th but we'll be following up and letting folks know about that meeting so that community members in Davenport can have an opportunity to weigh in on the increases in the water rate structure. And that concludes my comments. Thank you, Steve. If I could ask a point of clarification on the council on that. I'm supportive of the additional direction on item 32 but this is ratification of a contract. Are there any challenges with adding additional information into a contract that's already been agreed upon on that? If you'll give me a minute to look at the contract I'll come back to it. Okay, yeah, absolutely. Cause I think that the board would be supportive of the information that Supervisor Cummings is providing. And if there's another mechanism we need to do council, that's fine. Sorry, yeah, please. Good morning chair and supervisors. The RFQ that's referenced would be an RFQ from the contractor to the general community. And it hasn't been prepared yet. I believe they would be including modular vendors as well anyway. So I don't see that it would be a logistical problem. All right, well, thank you for that. And thanks for coming up with that information. Perfect, Supervisor Koenig. Thank you chair friend. On item 28, I also want to congratulate staff on their hard work in receiving bringing this grant into our county for $380,000 from the California fire safe council. I've been hearing on almost a daily basis from constituents in the mountains about the need for additional chipping programs of all the branches that are down on the side of the road. And so these funds which will allow us to purchase an additional chipper will definitely be much appreciated. And of course the evacuation route planning will also be, I think help give people some peace of mind. On item 23, approving the appointment of Andy Schifrin as the third district regular member of the planning commission. I still have concerns about the appointment of Mr. Schifrin to the planning commission. However, I do recognize that this item is substantially different than the one that we saw before us at our last meeting. First of all, that Mr. Schifrin is agreed to serve for no longer than six months. And second, that Trina Barton is being appointed as the supervisor's analyst is being appointed as the alternate member for the planning commission. So I think that demonstrates willingness to transition the office or I should say the appointment and ultimately bring some new thinking to the position. And of course, I also recognize that the third district has an immediate vacancy on the planning commission that needs to fill. So ultimately thank you, Supervisor Friend and Supervisor Cummings, which for this way forward. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. I too want to say congratulations on getting the grants on item number 28. I'm glad that this is going to help in some of the evacuation routes that we have, including the Lompeco Canyon in my district, which is one way in, one way out situation. I'm glad it acquired the additional chip or two that's going to help a lot. Also on item number 32, I thank the housing division for bringing this contract to the board, given the hello housings work in other communities, and hopefully that they will be successful in increasing our ADU building here in Santa Cruz County. As we know, the so-called renin numbers for the next cycle, the next eight year cycle have been increased dramatically, more than three times for Santa Cruz County. And ADUs represent more affordable tool for adding housing stock, especially in the Santa Rosa Valley, where we cannot support high density housing because of one acre minimums and other things as well. So I just want to thank those who put this hello housing contract together. Much appreciated. Thank you, Survisor McPherson. I'd just like to speak briefly on a couple items. One is the digital wallet pilot project appreciation to Ms. Benson and the entire ISD team as we've been moving along with this, we're getting much closer toward something that I think is going to be very interesting for our community in particular, young members of our community that don't necessarily engage in government in traditional ways. This will allow them an opportunity to engage in that way. And also on item 23, I just appreciate the partnership with Supervisor Cummings on this item for this interim appointment and being able to move forward to ensure that his district has a full member for an interim period and that we're able to come to some sort of conclusion on that. Is there a motion for consent with the additional direction? So moved. All right, so we have a motion from Supervisor Cummings and a second from Supervisor McPherson with additional direction on two items. Madam Clerk, did you get the additional direction on the two items? Are you comfortable with that? Just to clarify, Supervisor Cummings, I show additional direction on items 28, 29 and 32. Correct. Thank you. All right, roll call please. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Hernandez. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Friend. Aye. Thank you, approved as amended. Moving on to the first item of the regular agenda. As a reminder, item seven was deleted. So the first item of the agenda is to consider a presentation on 2-1-1 Santa Cruz County by the Executive Director and CEO of California 2-1-1 Providers Network. Elena Hitchcock has outlined in the memo of the chair. We also have the CEO of United Way. They'll be presenting remotely, Keisha Broder for the CEO of United Way. They were both intending to be here today in person, but apparently a little bit of a storm has made travel more challenging. And so we appreciate your willingness to present remotely and also for the remarkable work both of you do in order to connect people to very significant health and human resources, the health and human services resources within our county. Ms. Hitchcock, if I could turn it over to you. Thank you so much. And thank you for inviting us to be here today to share updates about the state of 2-1-1 services across California as well as here in Santa Cruz in connecting people with critical assistance, as you noted. I do have a presentation. If we could please start with the first slide. Thank you, Ms. Hitchcock. Your presentation is shortly going to be showing one moment. There you go. Thank you very much. And I would like also like to thank my colleague, Keisha Broder, CEO of United Way of Santa Cruz for being here today to share the local perspective on 2-1-1 in Santa Cruz. But I would like to begin with a little bit of the statewide perspective to offer some ideas and updates about how 2-1-1 is serving people across the state and the possibility that it provides for the county in partnering to connect people with urgently needed assistance. Next slide, please. So to begin with 2-1-1, California is a nonprofit organization that comprises the network of all of the 2-1-1 providers across the state. And a lot of people don't know this, but 2-1-1 service is actually provided by local nonprofit organizations that partner with counties and states and other organizations to provide the 2-1-1 service. About half of the members in 2-1-1, California are United Ways and others are independent nonprofit organizations. And they all go through a process of being designated by the California Public Utilities Commission, meeting national standards as well as demonstrating community and county support. And the programs vary widely across the state, as you'll see as do the funding sources, but all share a dedication to the community relationships and trust that it takes to be able to have people call with their most urgent needs and compassionately assess and connect them to services. Next slide, please. One of the things that is truly unique about 2-1-1 is that it serves as an actual one-stop shop where the job is to look at a person's entire situation, listen to them and what they're saying and find the best available resources no matter what type of resources those are that support their situation and improve their lives. We know that people are increasingly facing complex situations, particularly when it comes to financial needs, housing, health, mental health, and so much more. And 2-1-1 is critical for being able to look across all of the needs and find the available services. The caveat of course being that services need to be available in the community to meet the needs. Next slide, please. Some of the things that people might not know is that beyond the primary function of making that initial information and referral to service, 2-1-1 does a lot more than that for people and increasingly has been finding the need to go beyond that in order to actually successfully connect people to the services they need. 2-1-1 have a very important role in disaster as the trusted provider of public information to people who are seeking information on things like evacuation areas, status of incident, but also where can they go for resources before, during, and after events? As well as things beyond that from actual providing emergency assistance for food vouchers, motel housing, other financial assistance as available during and after disasters to working with county programs to enroll in benefits programs and do screening, to do ride scheduling for people who lack transportation to services, to provide service navigation when it comes to overcoming barriers to service, and increasingly to participate with other community providers, health plans, and county and state services in networks of referral organizations that are sharing information in order to better connect and serve individuals. Again, this varies widely across county and we look forward to more partnerships to be able to expand these abilities, but this is increasingly what we are seeing as the need for 2-1-1 services. And I do wanna emphasize that despite the prevalence and increase of online services during COVID and the increased use of online services by 2-1-1 users on our websites, chat, text, et cetera, we have not seen that the need for live human assistance diminish if anything it is still growing as people need help to navigate these services. Next slide, please. So what it looks like across the state is a very widely ranging map of contact centers that are providing nonprofit contact centers that are providing the service, along with local programs. We are seeing increasingly some regional partnerships and models, but there is coverage across the state of California in some places it is disaster only and funding for that actually has ended as of January for 17 rural counties. And but increasingly there is the need for regional and statewide mutual assistance agreements between providers, especially in times of disaster to be able to support surges in demand and that is happening. Next slide, please. There are also programs that are statewide that 2-1-1s all are providing across the state in partnership with either the state or other entities such as assisting with preparation for and care coordination during extended power outage events for people who are medically dependent on power that's in partnership with utilities, helping people quit smoking through the Kick It California program where 2-1-1s have been among the most effective providers in reaching traditionally hard to reach populations and getting people signed up to help quit smoking. A new program that you'll be hearing more about as it's publicly launching in the next month or so is a hotline statewide to report acts of hate that are motivated by hate, whether that is a crime, an incident or other types and provide victim support and care coordination. And then also COVID information and showing community needs data to the state as those needs are changing, 2-1-1s are participating in that as well. Next slide, please. So to provide a picture of what is the overall need across California to give you an idea for the past year, 2022, over 2 million were assisted by 2-1s. And that means assistance of any type and providing over 2.15 million referrals consistently except for various peaks during COVID where healthcare became the top. Housing is far and above the top need between 30 and 40% of all contacts are related to housing. And within that, there is a breakdown that we can share as needed into the types of housing, everything from landlord tenant issues to emergency housing, to transitional supportive people looking for affordable housing, many different types. And this is part of the power of 2-1-1 to be able to dive deep into what the specific needs are of individuals and track that. All of the top needs really in some way to financial need. And the people who use 2-1-1 are largely low income and comprise a lot of families, elderly, people of color, people who are truly in need of assistance. Next slide, please. There is a lot more that 2-1-1 can do than we do now. And we see that movement in a lot of counties across the state. The intent all along was to simplify access to services of all types in one place. We see that sometimes that doesn't happen when there's a proliferation of hotlines and websites and people get confused about where to go for what. 2-1-1 provides that entry point if we can consolidate that messaging. However, there is not enough capacity in the 2-1-1 now or currently to meet that level of demand if everyone who needed it was using it. And that's something else that we need to address. There's also a huge potential to provide a movement on social determinants of health in connection with our healthcare needs and systems to meet the social needs that people have that affect their health through 2-1-1. As we know, disaster is a huge, but there's even more room for integration into the planning, preparation, and response phases with 2-1-1. And there's an extensive ability to use current data and expand on that to deliver insights for decision makers and funders about what the community needs are in real time. The 2-1-1 goal is to help more Californians through increasing awareness, capacity, and partnerships with county and others and innovation in how they're delivered. Next slide, please. And I'd like to turn it over to Keisha Browder to discuss the 2-1-1 Santa Cruz program. Thank you, Alana, and good morning, everyone. Again, thank you for your patience and your flexibility as our 2-1-1 as well as our United Way are currently in the midst of responding to our disasters in our community and helping our neighbors. Next slide, please. So I want to share some of our local information. We're very fortunate because we are one of the counties here in California that have our own 2-1-1 and that's thanks in partnership with local grants and foundations as well as our local government, our county, our cities are all supporters of 2-1-1. We have been in this community since 2010. We have just embarked our teenage years, this past February, February 11th. And so we're looking to continue to evolve in how we support and serve Santa Cruz County. We are that real-time critical support. You can contact and dial 2-1-1 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There are over a hundred languages spoken to meet the needs of our community in real time. We do connect, as Alana said, we do connect residents and callers to health and social supports that they need when they need it. Next slide, please. I want to share with you recent totals here, different numbers of support. Just to let you know that back in 2022, we had over 6,000 distinct calls to our 2-1-1 call center. Right now we have nearly 400 local agencies in our 2-1-1 Santa Cruz County database. And that provides well over 2,000 local programs and services that are given by those 400 agencies. With that, those 6,000 callers were connected to over 9,000 referrals. That means that operator, that call specialist on the 2-1-1 end, listen to those clients to hear about the various needs that they want. Most times we have callers who will call and they may be calling to see about shelter. And then as they begin to talk more, we learn about their food needs and other needs. So we're able to provide them a variety of referrals. We also have the ability to text. Anyone can text their zip code to 2-1-1, 2-1-1, and they will be in contact with the call specialist via text message. That's a fairly new feature. And with that, we have 95 who in the past year have used texting as their option. But as you can see, it's something about being on a call with a human, another human being that just sits well with a lot of our local residents. Next slide, please. Why are people calling United Way? We have the ability to track that information and provide that information back to our county. So we do have this as our annual report, which I was prepared to make sure all of our county supervisors did have a copy of our annual report. This gives you just a glimpse at why our folks have been calling 2-1-1. As you can see, housing is the number one reason we do have calls with over 2,500 of those calls being for housing, a little over 600 in utility services, 499 in legal services, over 300 for food assistance, and over 300 in public assistance programs. And then I wanted to share with you some of those additional categories like transportation, mental health care and services, individual and family support services, material goods and domestic animal services. So when folks are calling us, we're able to connect them to local programs and services. This also can help local agencies as well as our local government understand those emerging needs and where we need to focus our attention on here in Santa Cruz County. Next slide, please. Elena, she shared with you some of the statewide programs that are happening. I want to share with you just a glimpse of some of the local programs that we have. Many of you know that we have recently connected with SHIO, which is our health information organization here in Santa Cruz County. We've connected with them to deepen that healthcare coordination space. As much as 2-1-1 can provide referrals, we can actually sync our systems for healthcare coordination. What happens to a patient when they're discharged? How can we ensure that there is someone helping that patient navigate through getting the best quality of care that they can both with our healthcare system as well as our local CBOs? In addition, we have partnered with the Health Improvement Partnership here in Santa Cruz County. We are working with the Adverse Childhood Experiences coordination, also known as ACES, similar to the healthcare coordination. How do we help families access the different stress buster programs like mental health needs for youth, shelter, food, and et cetera? In addition, we do have Ride United. We have that right now, offering share rides with Lyft, where we can help people get to doctors appointments, job interviews, get to save spaces through evacuation. We also have a beautiful partnership with Second Harvest Food Bank, helping to deliver with DoorDash, helping to deliver food from the food pantry to those who do not have a means of transportation to get to our food distribution. And last, we also collect this data, the community needs data. On a quarterly basis, our 2-1-1 senior program manager, Casandra Flores, she ensures that those 400 agencies receive information so they know what those emerging needs are in our community, where they're sending their referrals to, we can get this information out both to agencies as well as local government. And it goes to, without saying, in addition, we definitely partner with the County of Santa Cruz. We help take phone calls for disaster response and recovery. We help with hotel programs, direct financial assistance. We want to be there and be a partner for our County of Santa Cruz and our local partners. Next slide, please. So we invite you to connect. We want to connect with you. We want you to know that if you can't remember anything else, we want you to remember that 2-1-1 is for that non-emergency health and human service needs. You can dial 2-1-1, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and our call specialists will connect you to the right services and needs that are here locally. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you both for your great work. Do any supervisors have any questions or comments on this? The supervisors are coming. Yeah, first I'd just like to thank you all for your presentation and for the services that you provide our County. I was just curious, if you all track the 2-1-1 referrals and outcomes, I know you mentioned, for example, that housing is the, you get the most calls for housing. And I know there's a variety of rental assistance and different programs that the County offers that we provide funding for nonprofits. And so I'm just wondering if you all track some of those referrals and what you've been hearing. Great question, supervisor Cummings. Yes, we do track. And that's one of the things we're actually deepening on. Can we follow that person along their journey? That is the next step that we're working in partnership with Shial. So today we can track that that person did connect with XYZ agency or program or service. We can track that today. The next step, supervisor Cummings is following that person along their journey. They went to that service. Were there other services that they needed and how was that outcome? So that is coming soon, supervisor Cummings. Great, thank you. Thank you, supervisor Conan. Thank you, Chair Friend. So my question was along the same lines was basically how long does a case last? So from what you're saying, basically there is, we don't, a case is not created when someone calls 2-1-1. We basically just directly refer them to whatever service we think is gonna help them the most. Am I understanding that correctly? We're not like, yeah, following up with them in a week. Yes, yes, supervisor Conan. Yes, supervisor Conan. Today, when a caller dials in, we can track the referral. The next stage with this new partnership with the health information organization with Shial will be able to then track that person's journey to know how long, how long did it take for this client to access and get their needs met versus how long did it take another client with another situation and how to get their needs met? So that is coming soon. We just got, we're still fundraising for that to build that infrastructure for us to safely do that and talk across the board. And I wanna emphasize the complexity of that because it really takes the local relationships with all of the organizations that are providing the services to make sure that that information is being accurately and safely shared and reported. It's a very large effort to get there. So congratulations on getting that started in Santa Cruz. Great, thank you to you both. This is clearly a much utilized service and very much needed in our community. So thank you. Thank you, supervisor McPherson. I just wanted to say, it's fun to hold what you say. You have 400 agencies in your database and the coordinated effort that you have to do with so many agencies is really significant and really impressive. Is there anything more that you have to do to improve that coordinated effort? Maybe you have said it to follow up on, follow through. I guess that might be one of them. But what do you see that the needs are now? You've provided so many services, but what do you need more? Yes, great question, supervisor McPherson. What we are working on with two on one is building that infrastructure. We all know that we have 400 in our database. We know that we have thousands of agencies in Santa Cruz County. And we know that our nonprofits are being tasked and pulled in so many directions. So building a free profile, let me emphasize that. We do not charge our nonprofits to upload and create a profile in two one one. It is a free service for them to do that. We also recognize that for some of our nonprofits given their staff capacity, they seriously just may not have the time to do that. And so two one one on our end, what we wanna do is to help create those profiles. We want to continue to talk to nonprofits and if their health and human services get them in, but what that'll take is more infrastructure, more staff on two one ones and to make sure that we're helping to build those profiles. And to state the need for staff for that, this is not a matter of just pulling stuff from a website, something that can be automated. This is understanding the nature of the services, how to accurately describe them, index them and two one ones provide a certified industry certified resource specialist to do that, but they need more to be able to capture the full extent of available resources and continuously update them. All right, thank you. I just wanna thank you both for taking the time to be able to refer this presentation when I had reached out. This was before we recognized that we would be having biblical reigns in our community again for the 11th time in the last three months. So we just appreciate though, that this goes to show that the services now are probably needed even more than ever. And so reminding the community that they have access to this free and remarkable services are important. If I could open it up to the community, this is a non-action item, but anybody in the community would like to address us on this item. Please feel free to step forward. Good morning, Board of Supervisors. I was just hearing a lot of buzz words in this presentation that was concerning me and it's tracking. I'm concerned about privacy issues and government overreach. This sounds like a lot of control over people's lives couched as a benefit. I myself have experienced the 27 layers deep of pretend to feel good help from the domestic violence agencies ranging locally through the state and up to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. And of course my first question is how much is this gonna cost? If I'm personally using this benefit, I don't wanna be tracked. I don't wanna contact someone for help and find out now I'm in some database and someone's getting ahold of all my private information and following me around. That makes me feel very uncomfortable. And they're asking for staff when just at the last meeting you guys were up and down complaining about our budget. And instead of cutting spending, you were looking at raising taxes, which I stated was absurd. So how much is this gonna cost? Well, I do feel like people are always sinking information. We're not dumb. We've got the internet. We've got cell phones. Anyone can look stuff up and this just kind of feels like a little bit patronizing to me. Thank you. Anybody else like to address us on this item? Is there anybody online, Madam Clerk? We have no speakers online, Chair. Well, thank you both for taking the time for this presentation and making sure that the community would continues to be aware of your work. Thank you for your great work. All right, we'll move on to item nine, which is to consider adoption of a resolution confirming previously approved consumer price index increases and benefit assessment rates for County Service Areas 257 and 20 and consider adoption of resolution confirming previously approved rate for CSA number 10. Considered option of resolution scheduling a public hearing on June 13th, 2023 and proposed benefit assessment service charge reports of the various CSAs and take voted actions. That line of the memo of the Deputy CAO Director of Community Development and Infrastructure. We have three resolutions to notice the public hearing and the agenda board memo. And we have Ms. Trujillo. Good morning, welcome. Good morning, Supervisors and Chair. I am Ashley Trujillo, Sanitation Engineer for the Community Development and Infrastructure Group. And today I come to you to request that the board set a public hearing to consider objections and protests, if any, to the data included in the benefit assessment and service charge reports for our five Sanitation County Service Areas. For CSAs number two, which is placed in year, number five, sand dollar and Canyon Del Sol, number seven, Boulder Creek and number 20, Trestle Beach. We propose that the sanitation rates be increased by 4.9%, which is the consumer price index to cover the operations and maintenance of these systems. The charges for CSA number 10, Rolling Woods and Woods Cove will remain at the same rate as last year due to their available reserves. Included with this item is the notice of public hearing with a summary of all of these rates. With the board's approval, Community Development and Infrastructure will place the reports electronically on file with the clerk of the board. These reports detailing the assessor's parcel number, characteristics of the property and the amount of the benefit assessment service charge will be available online on or before May 29th, 2023, which will allow for the public to have two weeks to review the proposed charges before the June 13th public hearing. Therefore, we recommend that the board adopt the resolution confirming the previously approved consumer price index increases in benefit assessment rates for the five CSAs, well, the four CSAs because number 10 we're not increasing it, sorry. And we adopt the resolution confirming the previously established rates for CSA number 10. Approve the public hearing notice and adopt a resolution setting June 13th, 2023 at 9 a.m. or thereafter as a date and time for the public hearing on the proposed benefit assessment sewer charge rates for the five CSAs. And direct the clerk of the board to publish the notice of public hearing once a week for two weeks before the hearing in a newspaper of general circulation. I'm available for questions. Thank you. Are there any questions from board members on this item? Are there any member of the community who'd like to address this on this item? Good morning. Good morning. Wow, 4.9% increase. That's probably got to be the best gamble going on. When you look at the sewage and using the Silicon Valley Bank as sewage, somebody made some people made $200 billion last week and the puppet that controls our government has ensured that the people that control those sewage operations and I'm talking about the big tech in Silicon Valley with all the apps and the tracking that's going on, they're going to get their money. So those agenda 21 tracking can still go through. So I think only a 4.9%. I can't think of a better guarantee for a service that is really necessary because I think civilization would really fall apart if the sewage system didn't work. Thanks. Thank you. Anybody else in the community who'd like to address us on this item? Madam clerk, is there anybody online? We have no speakers online chair. All right, we'll bring it back to the board for action. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Koenig and a second from Supervisor McPherson. If we could have a roll call, please. Certainly, Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Cummings? Aye. Hernandez? Aye. McPherson? Aye. And Friend? Aye. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we'll move on to item 10, which is to consider approval and concept of an ordinance adopting chapter 7.144 of the Santa Cruz County Code to prohibit the use of force against children by individuals and businesses engaged in the transport of children and schedule the ordinance for a second reading and final adoption on March 28, 2023. As outlined in the memo of the Director of Human Services, we have the agenda item board memo, the ordinance that we have Mr. Morris here for a presentation. Good morning and welcome back. Good morning, Chair Friend and board members and members of the public watching online are here. As stated, Randy Morris, Director of Human Services Department, I don't have any presentation today, just a few comments. As was stated by Chair Friend and for those who don't know, state law requires that if local government passes an ordinance or a law, there's two readings required. One has to be public, which is today. And then if passed, there's a second reading required at the next board meeting as a consent item. So I just want to frame that that's what's in front of you today to approve and concept this ordinance and then to direct the return to a consent item next week. Brief history, which is outlined in the memo for those who haven't read it because this was a very emotional item that generated from District 3, the former Supervisor Cooney carried forward by Supervisor Cummings, a very difficult matter that occurred in District 3, which is in October of 2022, after a family court order that had nothing to do with county practice, county policy or county direction. There were children in District 3 who were forcibly removed from their home as part of a family court matter. And that was videoed and that video went viral and raised a lot of concerns because of the trauma and what people watched. Former District 3 Supervisor Coonerty brought forward a matter to the board on November 15th, issuing two directions to my department, Human Services. And the reason I was named is because we have the Child Welfare Division, which has a very longstanding practice of not putting hands on children when we transport. And County Council for two considerations. The first was to take action to request our state legislature, pass laws at the state level to prohibit this from happening again.  On January 31st, my department brought forward a memo to your board, which responded to these two directions and worked closely with County Council. The first was we did bring forward a very strongly worded resolution from your board, requesting state legislative action to create laws to prohibit this from happening in the future. That action was passed by your board, that resolution has been forwarded to our state legislature and both of our state legislators have already expressed interest in moving this forward. So that action has occurred and is moving. The second is as staff, we did not bring forward at that matter on January 31st, a recommendation to pass an ordinance. The reasons were, we were struggling to be quite honest with how to figure out how to administer, regulate and enforce that matter without asking for a new staffing. And it is also something we don't do locally in my department, certainly regulate private businesses. However, when we brought that matter forward on January 31st, you passed the resolution item but you directed us to come back to really figure out some way to bring an ordinance forward, given what happened. So in front of you today, I want to give credit where credit's due to our county council, Jason Heath, who I worked with closely, who I came, how I believe came up with a really thoughtful way to look at this. And so what is in front of you today is an ordinance, which is in the materials, which does not, but the county in the position of administering, regulating and enforcing because of those issues. If so, we would have to figure out a whole sort of staffing issues and liability issues. But what is in front of you is an ordinance that does indeed make it against the law to do what happened in the unincorporated areas of the county. And it creates an opportunity for aggrieved individuals or family members should this happen again to be able to bring a matter to the civil court, which would include civil penalties if the judge so ordered of $10,000, punitive damages, as well as attorney fees. So we see this as a really nice balance in response to the direction honoring what happened to the family and then really continuing our focus with our state legislative delegation to really push for state laws, which I think is the right place to really make this a matter of law throughout the state. So with that, I turn it back to the board for questions, deliberations, any public comment? Thank you, Mr. Morris. Are there any questions from board members? Surveyser comments or comments? Yeah, I just wanted to thank you all for your work on this item. We had a lot of members of the public who wrote letters in support of this item. And while it's not perfect, I think it's a good step forward to address these concerns that came up after the interaction to place last fall. And so just wanted to express my appreciation for all the work that you all have done to try to help us make some progress on this item. So thank you. Thank you. I'll second that. I feel that this has been a very challenging item and a lot of respects both on the, I mean, the issue is clearly unacceptable of what happened to these kids and also where the role and authority within the county actually lies. And I think that county council and our human services directors really found a strong balance on this. I just want to compliment you on your work on that. Is there any member of the community that'd like to address us on this item? Please feel free to step forward. Good morning again, Board of Supervisors. I tried to load my response to this last night on the portal, but it didn't work. So I emailed you all. I please ask that you read all of that. First of all, I would like to point out that the drafting of this ordinance failed to include survivor led participation even though many domestic violence survivors contacted the Board of Supervisors. Former supervisor Gary Patton stated that all of you work for we the people but you don't always act like that. Paragraph one, factually speaking, there were two incidences of children forcibly being removed by Santa Cruz police officers directly and indirectly. This paragraph is inaccurate. This ordinance fails to address police officers involved in these violent removals. Paragraph three, the children know they are being kidnapped. To state children who are unable to process what is happening is dismissive of what is factually happening to them. And this is unacceptable language in my opinion. Paragraph four, the board has ignored emails from an affected parent requesting survivor led reform and the local domestic violence agencies and programs that are failing most impacted families and which also led to these judicial child kidnapping incidences. Paragraph five, the language is too vague and subjective leading to the very problems we witnessed by law enforcement personnel who were unable to make good decisions regarding the safety of all children. Further harm was perpetrated during the June 28, 2021 incident and is contained in the report regarding the Santa Cruz police officers lack of cognitive abilities. They failed to provide the ultimate remedy to the child in distress. And that was to let her mother hold and comfort her. Instead, they have caused irreversible injury. This paragraph fails to address this. This ordinance fails to address the real problem in Santa Cruz is political grandstanding. It did not include any efforts to get at the root problem which is there is an epic lack of training, critical thinking, knowledge of law, knowledge of due process and knowledge of civil rights secured by the constitution of the United States of America which police officers take an oath to uphold. This is either incompetence, corruption or both. In my opinion, this ordinance needs revisions. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, sir. Thank you for waiting. My name is Charles Rolander and I would just like to make a comment about something that relates to not just this item agenda but the County of Santa Cruz. And when people search on the website for Santa Cruz County, we moved here 35, 36 years ago from Arizona and there's also a Santa Cruz Arizona County. And sometimes it's a little confusing because I end up on the wrong website and end up wasting time. So it's nothing urgent but the County Supervisors maybe should be aware of that. Thank you, sir. I actually get emails for supervisors in the other Santa Cruz County. So I know that it happens. Good morning. Good morning. Wow, Heath, I was looking through agenda item 10. I didn't see yet the stuff that you helped pass but there were some people that were very in favor of what you did. Thank you. I think there are hundreds of families in Santa Cruz County that have been affected by the family law system. I have two. So, it's always an opportunity for you guys to walk through talk. I mean, if we were to put this in a maybe a state or a national or international situation, it's my understanding and I don't really have the time to explain it but I certainly could as to why Russia actually went into Ukraine, due to the puppet governments established by the people who controlled the United States in 2014, a lot of Russians were being murdered and it ended up that over 30,000 children were left without their parents. And so when Putin realized that some of those children were showing up dead in the United States, he went in and did what was necessary to protect those Russian children. Now, a lot of different things are going on. It seems odd, two weeks ago, I was in the city of Santa Cruz. I was just baffled by, I had three things to talk on that I had specific information, maybe a fourth. I just stood and just listened. Apparently, California is a sister area to the Ukraine. There are a lot of things to be proud of about the Ukraine but not so much that I can talk about in the last 150 years. So once again, it's an opportunity for you guys to connect what's coming out of your mouths with what you guys are actually doing with your hands. Again, I'm looking forward to reading what you wrote. Thank you. Thank you. Becky Steinbrenner, resident of rural Aptos. Thank you, Mr. Morrison for your work to address this and thank you Supervisor Cummings for shepherding this through. It is very concerning that this could happen anywhere. And I also want to point out that there have been cases where children have been taken for foster care. My friend, Fox Sloan has experienced that and has been fighting in the courts to get her grandchildren back. So it's a bigger problem than just this isolated event, although that's probably the most egregious of them all. So I urge you to continue with this as quickly as possible but to give law enforcement some ability to step in when they feel that it is not right and to protect the rights and the dignity of our children. Being able to take someone to court and recover costs is one thing but that doesn't help the children recover from being forcibly taken from their family whether it be in the case of the paid people that happened last fall or a county worker coming in and taking them to foster care. So I'm curious to watch this and again, Mr. Morrison, I thank you for your good work. And again, Supervisor Cummings for being responsive to the people. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else in chambers on this item? Madam Clerk, anybody on Zoom? We have no speakers online, Chair. All right, well, I'll bring it back to the board for action. Supervisor Cummings? I'll move the item. Second, we have a motion from Supervisor Cummings and second from Supervisor Koenig if we could have a roll call, please. Supervisor Koenig? Aye. Cummings? Hernandez? Aye. McPherson? Aye. And Friend? Aye. Thank you that item passes unanimously. Thank you, Mr. Morrison. Thank you, Mr. Heath, for your work on that. We'll move on to item 11, which is to consider adoption of a resolution pursuant to government code section 7522.56, exempting the hire of an extra help retired annuitant from the 180-day waiting period as interim staffing support for the Department of Parks, Open Space and Cultural Services and the redevelopment successor agencies outlining the memo of Mr. Gaffney. We have the agenda item board memo and the resolution, Mr. Gaffney. Good morning, Chair Friend and fellow supervisors. Thank you for having me this morning, Jeff Gaffney, your parks director. So I'd ask for a move on the recommended action to adopt the resolution approving the hire of the retired deputy director of County of Santa Cruz to an extra help position as a senior departmental analyst, administrative analyst pursuant to government code section 7522.56 to provide interim part-time administrative staffing for Parks, Open Space and Cultural Services and for the redevelopment successor agency. And I'm here for any questions. The item's pretty self-explanatory. Thank you, Mr. Gaffney. Are there any questions from any board members? Seeing none, does anyone remember the community that like to address us on this item? Please feel free. Thank you, Becky Steinbrunner. I do have questions about this coming at a time when our CAO and the budget division has warned that this board recently of an impending $6.4 million budget deficit and that all departments will be asked to cut. So I hope that Parks can accommodate those expected cuts and that without harming services to the public that needs Parks. And I'm very concerned about the financial status of this County. So I always question the wisdom of increasing staffing at a time when you're going to be asked to cut it. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else like to address us on this item? Considering Parks has a 20% vacancy rate, this is not increasing staffing nor is it even increasing their budget because there's a significant unfilled set of positions. Is there anybody online, Madam Clerk, on this item? We have no speakers online. All right, we'll bring it back to the board for a motion. Is there anyone there? Second. We have a motion from Supervisor McPherson and a second from Supervisor Koenig. If we could have a roll call, please. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Hernandez. Aye. McPherson and Friend. Aye. Passes unanimously. Thank you, Mr. Gaffney for that. If it's the board's will, we'll just continue straight through. Is that okay? Okay. We'll move on to item 12, which is to conduct a study session to consider CZU recovery permitting progress to direct staff to implement strategies to address rebuilding barriers and direct staff to provide a path for recovery permit applicants to request review and determinations. As outlined in the memo, the Deputy CAO Director of Community Development and Infrastructure, we have the agenda board item. And I believe at some point we're going to have CDI staff making their way forward. All right. Mr. Machado, are you also joining? And this item, we have Ms. Carolyn Burke, the Assistant Director of CDI and Mr. Machado, the Deputy CAO Director of CDI coming forward. We appreciate both of you and your willingness to come forward on this item, which was requested from the board and Supervisor McPherson previously, Ms. Burke. Morning. Good morning. Good morning, Chair Friend and Supervisors. Thanks for the opportunity to present a today's study session on the CZU fire recovery with a permitting focus. Whoops. Okay. Today's presentation will provide some background context for our session, including a brief summary of rebuilding metrics provided at the February 14th board meeting. We will move on to focus on two specific areas of improvement for the recovery permitting process, dispute resolution and onsite wastewater treatment systems before concluding our presentation. Two and a half years ago, our North Coast and San Lorenzo Valley communities experienced the devastation of the August 2020 CZU Lightning Complex fire. Since that time, the County has taken steps to develop a streamlined recovery permit process for those rebuilding after the fire. In 2020, the County established the Recovery Permit Center in the community room of 701 Ocean Street, staffed by consultant for leaf. To address the complexities of rebuilding in mountainous terrain, staff developed a pre-clearance permitting framework whereby applicants could get early feedback on feasibility level issues related to septic geology and fire access prior to applying for a building permit. Recognizing challenges related to structures with unclear permitting history, the board established the Legacy Older Structures Program to allow structures developed prior to 1986 to be considered legal non-conforming for zoning purposes. Going into 2021, rebuilders began to complete debris removal and enter the permit process where they encountered obstacles with both the cost and time required to meet code standards. The board responded by passing the CZU Rebuild Directive, waiving certain local requirements for geologic investigations. And a pilot project was undertaken to allow useful alternative building codes in the rural last chance area. At the close of 2022, the County experienced another historic disaster with an atmospheric river that caused widespread flooding and damage. On February 14th, the board amended its contract with Forleaf to add capacity for storm damage projects and field inspection support. And as CDI staff to return today to take stock of CZU recovery progress and discuss ways to improve the disaster permit process and resolve obstacles to rebuilding that continue to impact our community members in the CZU burn area. Until now, the primary metric used to determine recovery progress was the number of dwelling permits issued against a baseline figure of 911 residences lost. Today, we are providing numbers based on the total number of parcels having lost at least one structure in the CZU fire. The reasons for this perspective shift are twofold. First, the 911 number was based on state and local inspectors field guesses as to how a destroyed structure had been used prior to the fire. This determination was based on very little information that could not in many cases be corroborated with permit records. Second, for those parcels that had multiple structures used as residences, it is unlikely that an owner would have the financial capacity to undertake reconstruction of all the residences at once. Parcel metrics on the other hand provide an indication of the health of the recovery by showing how many property owners have engaged in some level of exploration regarding the possibility of rebuilding and thus maybe in the pipeline for permits in the coming months. 697 total parcels have inspection records showing at least one structure was lost in the CZU fire. Of those, over half or 53% have some level of permitting activity as evidenced by applying for a pre-clearance or building permit. Of those that have engaged, 195 or 28% of affected parcels have building permits issued or in the review process, which is on par with the 28 and 24% figures from the glass and lightning complex fires experienced by Sonoma County in the same timeframe. The status of pre-clearance applications currently in process shows that of the 101 parcels with denied pre-clearance applications, 89% have encountered issues meaning septic code requirements and 44% have similar issues related to geologic hazards. A commonality between both septic and geologic requirements is that they are governed by state codes in addition to local ordinances. In the case of septic, the local ordinances in Santa Cruz County code by law require approval by the state water board and cannot be altered or lessened without their agreement. For geologic hazards, the board took action to waive local geologic report requirements, but the California building codes still mandates that new construction consider slope stability and soil conditions. The county's adoption of the state building code cannot by law lessen the requirements in the state code. We have heard from applicants that navigating septic and geologic issues even with technical consultants on their team is exceedingly difficult due to their place in line behind their consultants volumes of other work and the resulting time it takes to respond to requests for additional information. Further applicants are often the ones acting as a go-between for consultants who do not agree with county determinations without a clear path for resolution of these disputes property owners struggled to relay technical information to county and recovery permit center staff through a series of overlapping emails that when combined with requests for additional information can take weeks or months to sort out and address. Two improvements the county can make to help applicants are first to make technical guidance more accessible in a readable format. This allows applicants to anticipate information requests in areas of conflict at the outset and shape their projects scope accordingly. In addition, the county can create a clear pathway for applicants to dispute a pre-clearance determination and receive a comprehensive response from decision makers. The recovery permit center does not currently have a formal process to dispute pre-clearance determinations. As noted in the previous slide, applicants requesting review of their pre-clearance results typically email the recovery permit center staff who then confer with county leadership and respond to the applicant. Without a concrete timeline for response, the applicant may send similar emails to other recovery center staff and county leadership provide additional information from technical consultants to support their request or change their project scope in an attempt to resolve the dispute, all of which result in long and often conflicting email chains that can be difficult to decipher by decision makers. At the end of this process, the applicant receives a response, but feedback from those in the process is that they still lack clarity on the ultimate authority making the determination. And in some cases where the applicant continues to disagree with the outcome, they do not know where to elevate their complaint. A formal dispute resolution process is needed and any plan should include clarity regarding who holds ultimate decision-making authority, a clear timeline for review and response, a single submission point with a static scope of work and technical justifications for consideration by decision makers, and a single designated applicant contact for all subsequent response and coordination. The first point to clarify is who holds ultimate decision-making authority for the determinations made by recovery permit center staff. The recovery permit center also referred to as the RPC is a section within the CDI planning division permit center. While the staff within the RPC are for-leaf consultants and often referred to by the public in shorthand as quote for-leaf, they are working employees of our permit center and the staffing and operations are ultimately overseen by myself, Carolyn Burke, CDI assistant director with direct day-to-day operations, including inspections and over-the-counter plan checks supported by the consulting chief building official in the RPC, George Thomas. In contrast, the pre-clearance determinations made by RPC staff in the areas of geologic hazard septic and fire access are ultimately governed by those with the statutory authority over the relevant underlying code sections. Acting on behalf of the CDI planning division, I have decision-making authority over determinations made regarding geologic hazards, zoning and coastal and building permits. As the interim director of environmental health, Andrew Strader has decision-making authority over implementation of codes governing septic systems.  With no one entity vested with decision-making authority over all the code sections enforced by RPC staff, any plan to develop a formal dispute resolution process should offer a single entry point for any one of the three pre-clearance areas. To improve transparency, the website should be updated to include the organizational structure outlined here. We recommend a dispute resolution process that provides clarity for both the applicant and decision-makers through a structured submittal and focused response that is provided in four weeks versus a sometimes months-long process experience today. We envision such a process could be initiated online by an applicant or their consultant filling out a web-based form with fields that prompt the user to provide specific information about the details of their scope of work, the determination from which relief is being sought, applicable code sections and the reasons that the determination should be reversed or modified. Once the applicant submits the dispute form, an RPC staff person would do an initial review of the material to see if the request can be handled quickly on the staff level, such as in the case of clear human error, or if it involves policy determinations and needs for the review by department leadership. The latter cases would be considered at a monthly meeting of the directors of CDI Environmental Health and the relevant fire agency when applicable, after which the applicant would receive a detailed written response. The process outlined here is resource intensive at the executive level, but it's set forth would provide benefit to the applicant overall county response by ensuring that concerns are heard by decision makers who through their participation will regularly be vetting the implementation of county codes and policy to determine where changes can be made to address common issues. CDI further recommends that a separate web portal also be created for non-determination related complaints regarding regular RPC services, such as customer service and operations. These would be vetted and addressed by the RPC chief building official overseeing day-to-day operations and collaboration with myself. I'd like to note that this is only an initial plan. We anticipate it will take three to four weeks to implement and will be refined in response to feedback from both public and internal participants as we understand the volume of participation and needs. The pre-clearance data we presented earlier shows that a major pain point for those in the pre-clearance process are on-site wastewater treatment systems, otherwise known as septic systems. A common rebuilding complaint is that county code allows homes reconstructed after disaster to not be considered new construction, but pre-clearance review results in additional requirements to perform repairs, record notices, or even replace their system altogether, leading to understandable confusion about how county code requirements are being applied. First, it's important to note that even for replacement homes after disaster, county code requires that the existing septic system is upgraded to meet standards. That means for in-kind reconstruction with existing systems that meet standards, including having sufficient expansion area, pre-clearance is easily approved. The path is more complex for those wanting to use existing systems with no permit history or whose system does not meet standards. The same tools that allow environmental health to approve use of these systems also require recording a notice on the parcel D that makes current and future owners aware of the deficiencies they can prepare for system replacement. Finally, for those exceeding in-kind replacement or whose septic systems have a history of water quality impacts, it may be that the only option is to replace the system. While the state regional water board is unlikely to approve changes to our local ordinances governing use of existing systems due to ongoing water quality concerns, clear comprehensive guidance on the points highlighted to the right of each category will provide applicants critical information to plot the course of their rebuild proposal. In addition, any updated guidance documents can be incorporated into dispute resolution responses to ensure accountability and consistency over time. Thank you for the opportunity to participate in today's study sessions. Staff's recommended actions are shown here for your consideration in action. This concludes my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have as well as my colleagues from County Environmental Health who are also available today. Thank you. We'll bring it back to the board to start with questions. Supervisor McPherson. Yeah, first of all, I wanna thank the chair and the board for agreeing to have this study session today and I wanna thank our fire for survivors who have been contacting my office to share their experiences. My objective for calling this to our attention on this agenda was to see how our recovery is going especially considering that we are going to add even more building permits with the recent storms that we've had. 90% of the most heavily damaged homes from the January storm are in my district today. So I have every reason to ensure that we are doing what we can to improve our rebuilding processes for everyone in these recent disasters. And I wanna make clear that I'm not satisfied with the pace of recovery. I had hoped more residents would have rebuilt or would have been in the process if we're building at this point. And for those people who are in the process, I want you to know that we are doing what we can to the best of our ability to help them at this time. We have learned some things through this session that are meeting on February 14th, but there is more proactive outreach that we need to do and I believe is warranted. Disaster rebuilding is now a topic that directly impacts all of our districts, not just three and five. And I would really like to keep our focus on ways we can continue to make the process of rebuilding easier where it's possible. We do know that some rebuilders have challenges that are not easy to overcome, but we need to ensure that our part of the process is working well. I do wanna thank Ms. Burke and others who have joined us in the discussion on how we can improve the processes. Again, I stated before that comparatively, we're on track with, for instance, the Sonoma fire case, but the point, the reason we're having the study session is it's not good enough and we can make it better. And I appreciate the cooperative effort that we've had from the department and Ms. Burke throughout this process. So to that end, I will have some additional direction after some discussion by the public, but my hope is that we can do this more quickly and more understandably, shall we say, for the general public. Thank you. Thank you. Suvas are coming. I just wanna thank staff for their presentation and for the work that you all have been putting into this. I know it's been, some of that we've been hearing a lot about and trying to help ease the frustration that people are facing. And I know that since joining the board, I've had a number of emails that have come through where people had disagreements with, something that Fourleaf was saying, and then we were able to bring it to your attention and you all were able to help resolve the situation. And so that was really part of the reason why I was supportive of Supervisor McPherson's direction to have us try to figure out some resolution on these kinds of disputes. I did have one question related to this number two in the direction which is regarding, developing a clear policy regarding the circumstances that require a recordation of an acknowledgement of the requirements for use of onsite. So it just follows the system with special operating characteristics. Just wanting to know with that, with the direction that's given under that item, how much time that that would likely take and when we could kind of get an update on that. Absolutely. Interim Director, Andrew Strader is here along with John Ricker and they can address that. I'm chair, members of the board. My name is Andrew Strader. I'm the Interim Director of Environmental Health and along with me today is John Ricker. He's a former divisional director of water resources and currently on contract with us as helping with us to implement the lamp and new septic ordnance. I'm sorry, the question was how quickly the second part of the direction is the development of a clear policy regarding circumstances that require a recordation of acknowledgement of requirements for use of onsite. So which disposes a system with special operating characteristics. And I think this was along the lines of if people wanted to have older septic systems and needing to have some kind of acknowledgement of that on their deed. So that when new people are coming in to buy the property it's clear that they may need to upgrade in the future. And so since we're gonna need to develop that policy I'm just curious around how long that would take and when we'll be able to hear back about that. Yeah, I have a draft policy already. I think we just need to kind of finalize so that would be fairly imminent. Okay, thank you, that's my only question. Thank you, we're gonna open it up for the community now. There are members of the community that would like to address this on the side and please feel free to step forward. What a daunting subject. Now I started coming into this counting about 25 years ago. After doing, you know, probably about 10 years of construction work in Palo Alto which actually had an incredible self-help center. The only place that had a better self-help center than Palo Alto was Santa Cruz. I don't know what's changed in the past couple of years with the self-help center and you'd walk right out of the fourth floor and you'd have just literally dozens of documents on how to do things. It seems like the simple bureaucracy of understanding the tangible codes which are all for public safety have been so affected. So in reference to what was spoken about in a similar subject today on February 14th it seems that since I went through my notes coming back here on January 31st, the consent agenda, I-NUM number 38 was brought up and that's where the various statistics were brought up about what's actually been done. So what really to say except that earlier today there were three homesteads that were really facing some difficulties where you guys have just changed the rules and had a wonderful conversation with a man who spoke here earlier who's been an architect in this county for a long time. He shared the elevator and walked out in the street. When I simply told him that I learned fairly quickly to don't go with questions, go with answers based on codes. It's just really challenging what's been going on with these directed energy weapons attacks. I spoke while I recorded what I spoke on September 24th, 2020 when you had three minutes to talk that's available on YouTube under Jay Benz, Ewing. Why are we here? Let's, I'd like to see some changes. Thanks guys. And I appreciate what you said, Bruce, about wanting to be noticing that not enough is happening. Thanks. Thank you. Anybody else here for this item? Please feel free to step forward. Morning, welcome back. Oh yeah, Luc Rosito, a 73 year resident. I appreciate the studies. You guys made, I think you're not really considering the cost to a homeowner right now. Now I go to all the Civic Center meetings in Boulder Creek. I don't see any supervisors there. Mr. McPherson and Mr. Cummings, I emailed you several weeks ago to give me a call because I have a lot of information and 45 year background with the Santa Cruz County building departments. But all the people that are complaining of being held up, the septic is one thing, but the septics are over-engineered today, okay? Take my word for it. Cost my client $10,000 for a septic upgrade and a septic report. It's not needed on a 1993 home. She's got, the state came in and cleared the property. It's going to cost her $100,000 to recoup.  For me to get it back to that is going to cost her about a hundred grand and the state contractor wants 80 out of her insurance. One prime example, in two minutes isn't enough here gentlemen. One prime example is the state contractor came in and took out an eight foot wide, 80 foot long exposed aggregate walkway and then told my client, oh, shit, we're in the wrong property. We shouldn't have been here. That walkway alone is going to be at least 50 grand because they took out also four feet of dirt. So we have to backfill and recompact the soil to get that down again. You're overlooking a problem and I do appreciate you guys and I appreciate what the board is going through right now. But the cost of this is paralyzing many people and now they're, excuse me, for just a few more minutes. Now the biggest complaint is they're running out of insurance money for rent. And my client is just a school teacher. She's ready to retire. She has nothing. She has no family or anything. She can't afford rent and a mortgage payment.  So I've got 120 pallets of a styrofoam block on in my orchard right now because she can't afford storage. Thank you. I'm doing it for free. Please get on. We're on page five, five, zero, nine, four, six. Mr. Koenig, you're in my district. Give me a call and let me tell you exactly what's going on here. I only want to build one house and your system is so complicated. This is my last one. I'm not building anymore and I'm the best act in the county trust. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody else who'd like to address us on this item? Please feel free to step up. Good morning and welcome back. Thank you. My name is Steve Holman. I've lived in Bonnyton since 1976. I'm a registered environmental health specialist. I've worked with about 30 CZU families for free to resolve conflicts they had with four leaf staff over environmental health matters. Whenever I have asked for a meeting with Deputy CAO Machado, he emails me back, grants me a meeting, resolves problems. I have the same experience with Assistant Planning Director Burke. I've asked the director, well, actually I had the same experience with Dr. Underwood from Environmental Health when she was here. She was the former director and she always provided a meeting to listen to what clients had to say, made decisions, and also wrote written guidance for four leaf to use. I've been asking Environmental Health, the interim director, for a meeting since December or January and February and haven't had no response. And this is a problem. And I also have a problem with four leaf in that in their management structure, they don't make decisions unless somebody makes them make a decision if it's difficult, if they're struggling with what the concept is. If someone in the county management says, please resolve this, then it gets resolved. Otherwise, it can just go into limbo for months. So this new process is gonna be great for people to be able to say, wait a minute, I'd like this to be looked at a higher level. So I support what has come out of the community development and infrastructure department today. It's a good idea. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Holman. Thank you, Mr. Holman for your assistance with some of the, those who want to rebuild. Good morning. Indeed. Thank you, Mr. Holman and to this other fine gentleman for donating their expert time to help the people in the CZU area. My name is Becky Steinbrunner. I'm a rural residence and I have friends whose homes were burned in the CZU area. I think it's interesting that the number of structures lost has been reduced to 697, accounting that 911 was just sort of on best guess. Is that what I heard? Or is that big disparity nearly one third reduction due to the number of homes that were not in county planning records that were maybe built long before there was a county planning process. We have a very historic county here. Some of my friends had 100 year old homes that burned including the McCrary family. And it looks to me that this is just trying to make the numbers look better. How many people have just given up and sold their property and moved out? I know a few. And it provides a McPherson thank you for making sure that this is talked about and having better information like this because I don't think it's gone well at all. I wanna thank these two gentlemen in the audience who have stepped in and donated their time. And the septic issue has been a problem. I'm happy to hear that a very problematic employee with for leave has been relieved. That's going to help a lot. I think your board also needs to bring back the building and fire appeals board that you heard from Mr. Cove Britain. You've heard that this morning from Ms. Levine from an attorney that people are having to resort to taking legal action. That's expensive. And we've got to get the building and fire code appeals back. And you're not the people to be doing that. No, you are not the people to be doing that as it states and county code. We need to take it back to what it used to be for the purpose of serving the people. Thank you. Thank you. Sir, anybody else that would like to address us in chambers? Do you use that forever? Is there anybody on Zoom that would like to address us Madam Clerk? We have no speakers online chair. All right, we'll bring it back to the boards who rise McPherson. Yeah, I appreciate. I think this is going to make the issue process better. I additional direction, I don't know. I don't think it's repetitive of what supervisor Cummings said, but I'd like to direct staff or I'd like to direct staff to inquire with the state regarding the feasibility of modifying the local agency management plan or LAMP to include onsite waste water treatment systems in the legacy older structures program to allow use of functioning septic systems for in-kind replacements of three 1996 structures. And I've got that printed out for you that that, but I think that's going to help us really get to some answers more quickly. And that's why I wanted to add that additional direction. That's a melody of our motion actually first and with the additional direction. Yes. I'd like to move the recommended actions with this additional direction. We got it. Is there a second to that? Second. Okay, I know there'll be additional discussions on second, Mr. Ricker. A question from supervisor Hernandez. I do have a question. The CZU fires in the aftermath that affected South County and someone mentioned about people moving out. And so the backlog in delays has really led to a land grab in South County and folks out there have been moving out there. It's been further driving up our housing costs in a community that's primarily agriculturally based and farm worker community. So it's been difficult. So now after the January floods and the current floods, I really appreciate the speakers that came up because it put me in their shoes with the constituents that I have that are going to be facing the same ordeal trying to fix their houses that are yellow tagged and red tagged. So I really appreciate any effort to expedite the permitting process. My question is, I have a lot of my constituents tend to approach me about the planning process, permits and stuff like that, whether it's in the past in the council and even now recently. So my question is regarding the permit process as part of our constituent work, right? That we do, can we find out where the permit processes for them and where it was denied, where the holdup is? So we know who to call for clarification, whether it's for leaf staff or county staff. So are you speaking relative to recovery permits or any type of permits? Recovery and any type, I think. Okay. Yeah, so recently we did just hire a UPC Unified Permit Center manager, Brian Rubin and he is currently from our staff transitioning into his new role, but he will be a point person for you to contact if there is concerns regarding a particular application. You can also contact myself. We also have opportunities for you to review the permit comments online. You can review those anytime as well. And we've tried to create a system where you can find out that information yourself but then also be able to contact our staff via a self-scheduled appointment as well if you want to have a more in-depth conversation about a particular area of concern and you can schedule online at any time. So with any of the individual agencies. So we've tried to make that accessible and then we're improving that with the Unified Permit Center staffing as well. Okay, so like a team's kind of meeting with staff. Yeah, so we have in-person appointments and by phone and we can arrange for a team's meeting. We're looking to update the application process right now to have that available as one of the options when you schedule your meetings. We're working with ISD currently to arrange that. Mr. Ricker, I think you wanted to address some of the additional direction question. Yes, thank you. John Ricker, Consultant Environmental Health former division director. Couple of points, we did have conversations with the state staff over a year ago about potentially changing some of the requirements for reconstruction of existing homes. They were not very flexible, I'll just say. They wanted us to bring them up to full standards. I do believe that we have found a way within our code and within the lamp that we can essentially treat those reconstructions in kind reconstructions, essentially just what you're asking for as the LOSP or whatever that is. You know, if they were there prior to 1986, the existing system is functioning. There's no indication of water quality impacts. They can reconstruct in kind. They may need to do the acknowledgement of non-standard system just so a potential future owner would know that we don't know that that system meets standards and may require upgrade in the future. We feel like that's important for any future buyers. And we also feel like it's important for the current owner to know what their limitations are. We have notices like that on many properties in the county, over a thousand properties. So we don't see that as a significant burden as some of the applicants see that as a burden, but we feel that it's sort of a necessary way to get through that process and to be able to reconstruct without having to upgrade their system if it's not having any adverse impacts. Okay, now Mr. Chair, I have the most respect for Mr. Ricker and I wish he was still with us, but here in retirement comes to everybody sometime. But I would just still like to inquire with the state. It'll tell them that we're reviewing this process at the least and that we think that it needs more attention than it's receiving. I understand what you're saying, but I would still like to include the additional direction just to let the state know our problems aren't over yet and we need more clarification if we can get it. So I'll stick with the additional direction, but understand what you're saying. And I really appreciate what you've tried to do. Getting this lamp up to standard and so forth was no easy process in the first place. I know that. Supervisor McPherson, would you be open for a minor modification that we receive a written response from the state? I think that one of the concerns is that, I mean, these have been conversations, but we haven't seen a formal written thing. I think that'd be fine. I'd like to have, we'd get a written response. So that way that'd be something that we could share out. I appreciate that. Twovisor Cummings. Yes, I'd just again want to appreciate the staff's time and work on this and being able to meet with us to hear our concerns. Our office has been in conversation with staff about some of the changes that weren't included in the general report, but I wanted to provide some additional direction and I've typed it out so that folks can read along. But first, just want to really, again, thank you all for the hard work on this. And I think that we're moving into direction where it's gonna be a lot easier for folks to have their concerns met. Oh, can you pass those to that one? The additional friendly amendments that I'd like to make this direction is that we also recommend that the applicant submission form be user-friendly. That for uncomplicated cases, the resolution by the staff should occur in applicant form within two weeks of the submission. For more complicated cases, the interdepartmental meetings should be every two weeks if there are no applicants waiting. The applicants should be informed of what they need to do in order to meet county and or state requirements. The applicant shall be notified of the decision within 30 days of the form submission. The district board members should be notified of every complaint request that's submitted when it's first submitted and the staff should establish an email list of interested persons or groups that are notified via email whenever the information on the web portal is changed. Just to provide some background on this additional direction, we're really trying again to help people speed up this process, which for many folks, they're still waiting, we're now going on three years, and we're really trying to make sure that if there's a very uncomplicated request that staff is getting back to folks pretty quickly, and my office has experienced that when we had an individual who was trying to rebuild and they were told by Forleaf they needed a coastal development permit. They had told us that their house was built in 1976, so we sent that to staff and staff was able to quickly resolve that issue. So rather than that person having to wait a month before they have their problems resolved, trying to see if we can expedite for very uncomplicated cases, but also understanding that if the case is complicated that it's gonna need about a month for us to be able to resolve it potentially. And so just trying to build in some flexibilities so that we can expedite folks if the cases are uncomplicated or if there's no applications waiting, and then for those that are more complicated understand or if the staff is getting a lot of complaints or disputes that they have the time they need to resolve these. And I would also add that if we see that in a couple of months that we are getting a lot of dispute cases and there's a need to extend these time periods I think that this is a good trial period and be happy to hear back from staff and revisit whether or not we need to change that process. So I understand you all are very busy right now. Ms. Berker, Mr. Machado, any questions or thoughts on that? No, thank you. Excuse me, Mr. Ricker got to speak twice. May I have a second time? Mr. Ricker was speaking on behalf of the county though Mr. Holman specifically in regards to a question that a supervisor had requested. So that's the challenge. So if there was a question directly to you from a supervisor, yes, but that's what Mr. Ricker was addressing was the additional direction specifically from Mr. McPherson. Thank you. Keep in mind that you may be selecting the income class of persons in this state with the amount of charges county calls. Mr. Survisor McPherson, you made a motion with additional direction. Now I need to make sure that you accept the additional direction that the amendment from here. Yes. Okay. All right. So Madam Clerk, we have a motion for the recommended actions with additional direction from supervisor McPherson and supervisor Cummings, are you comfortable with what we have or do you need something repeated? I believe we have everything and I'll be following up with supervisor McPherson to get his written direction language as well. Thank you so much, supervisor Cummings for providing that. I think we're prepared for a vote if you're ready. Yes, we do have a motion from supervisor McPherson, a second from supervisor Cummings, I believe. And an acceptance of the friendly amendment so we could have a roll call please. Certainly, supervisor Koenig. Hi. Cummings. Hi. Hernandez. Hi. McPherson. Hi. And Friend. Hi. Thank you for your work, I want to work on that. Thank you. We have a late edition item which is item 12.1 which is to consider adoption of a resolution ratifying the proclamation of a local emergency for March 9th, 2023 atmospheric river winter storm event as proclaimed by the CAO as the director of emergency services on March 13th and take related actions outlined in the memo as CAO. We have the resolution ratifying the proclamation of March 9th and the emergency proclamation as a reminder to the community. This is the item that was voted to be added to the community on to the agenda today. Ms. Coburn, welcome. Thank you. Good morning, chair, friends and members of the board. I'm here our OR3 director, Dave Reed is at our EOC which is currently activated but we did want to go over an emergency proclamation that we've added to the agenda. I'm just gonna provide some general remarks and then Dave's going to cover weather and coordination and give a status update. And then Matt Machado, our deputy CAO is going to cover operations and roads. So as you are aware, we are currently experiencing our 11th atmospheric river. Our 10th atmospheric river hit the county on March 9th. We've had significant flooding throughout the county for which we've had to issue evacuation orders and warnings. We've been in coordination with the sheriff's shelter and care branches to stand up various shelters and deal with the emergency situation. I will note that our initial damage estimates for this event have been estimated at over a million dollars and this does not currently include any significant damage to private property owners, private roads or utility infrastructure. Other damage related to this event which we will quantify may and very well could increase this number. So what we're asking the board to do today is to adopt the resolution that's going to allow us to proclaim our local emergency and access hopefully state and federal assistance that the county could use to cover our damage. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Dave. Your view, Mr. Reed. No, can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Good morning, board. Yes, thank you, Assistant CAO Covern for the introduction. The EOC has been active the last couple of days and we were in early this morning as a weather update for what is happening outside your windows right now. We believe that most of the intense rain is going to be abating in the next few hours but our rivers, creeks and streams are responding quite dramatically. At this moment, the National Weather Service is issuing a flash flood warning for the San Lorenzo Valley. So many of the residents up there are likely to be getting that wireless emergency alerts on their cell phones. We're watching the rivers, creeks and streams there right now. We're hopeful that the forecasted amount of precipitation will actually be less on the ground. So we're hopeful that we won't be needing to issue evacuation orders but we're monitoring that very closely right now. The other aspect of this 11th Atmospheric River, as Ms. Covern mentioned, is the wind. So the wind is very intense right now. We've had gusts of 86 miles an hour just on the other side of our border in Santa Clara and our North Coast is getting hit pretty intensely right now by the winds. So we are starting to see power outage and utility infrastructure getting damaged right now as we speak. So that may be the biggest element of this 11th Atmospheric River that we deal with. On the rivers in our South County, the initial forecast because of the change in weather, we are hoping that the Pajaro River crest is gonna be lower than originally forecasted even just yesterday. So we're hopeful that that will have improvement on conditions experienced right now in the Pajaro Valley and the flooding down there. From a coordination standpoint, this disaster has strengthened our coordination in relationship with our Monterey County residents and Monterey County partners. So we're in deep coordination with them in support of our Pajaro residents at the Fireground Shelter. That shelter is currently being operated by the Monterey County EOC and their staff, but we are coordinating and we know that there is a deep desire from our community-based organizations and nonprofit organizations to support our Pajaro residents. So we're gonna be working closely to integrate our CBOs into the support of those community residents. And then we are also in close coordination with the issues around the Pajaro-Levy system, the failure and the flooding of the fields on the Monterey County side. So happy to answer questions. Just wanted to give you a brief update and I'll hand it over to Deputy CAO Matt Machado for an operations update. All right, thank you, David. Thank you, Chair, Supervisors. So just a quick update on operation-focused items. I'll cover three areas. Roads, solid waste and flood control. On the roads front, since the January storms, we've had 35 new sites with damage. So it will certainly be in the millions of dollars of permanent damage. Some of the roads that have seen significant damage include Main Street, Eureka Canyon, Bean Creek, Lodge Road, Upper Zantay, Morrell and Bear Creek. And that's just a few of them to list. So crews are working 12-hour shifts right now to respond to all these storm damage sites and to make as much repair as possible. Many of these will go into permanent repair, which will take a significant time. And we will add this to the list of prioritizations that we drafted in the January storms. We will have initial damage estimates by the end of the week for most of these sites. It will be ongoing as we discover new damage and new sites though. In the solid waste front, we are assisting the city of Watsonville. They've lost most access to their disposal down in Marina. And so we've been accepting their trash, their organics at our point of vista landfill. I will say though that their organics has become in a situation for both of our agencies. We typically process and haul our own organics out of County as compost. And we're not able to do that at this point. So they're stockpiling now. We're actually looking for special permission from the state to potentially leave some of that material at the point of vista landfill. So that's a situation that we're managing hour by hour. On the flood control front, Director Reed mentioned quite a bit about the Pajaro levee. In addition to that, we're working with residents in the College Lake area. There's significant flooding in that area. There are not great solutions at this point, but we anticipate after the storms receive that we will work with that community and try to get that water out of their homes or out of the streets as quickly as possible. We're also on 24-hour levee patrol, primarily in the Salse Puedes Corralitos Pajaro area. Those creeks are in constant monitoring stage. And then some efforts that we started yesterday, yesterday evening was on the Pajaro levee along the city's wastewater treatment facility. We undertook some significant reinforcement of about 1,300 foot of levee there. Granite construction mobilized in with equipment and material and we've placed fabric and rock to reinforce the outboard levee along that section to ensure that the wastewater treatment facility is protected as best as we can. That concludes my operations report and I can answer any questions you may have. If I could add a little bit of context to that presentation. One of the big dilemmas that we are facing along with Monterey County and the city of Watsonville is the impoundment of water behind Highway 1. There's an effect, a big lake that is formed there. The water is draining. There is channels under Highway 1 which were created after the 1995 flooding. And remember in 1995 there was no real way out other than the river channel itself. So that water was impounded and there was actually channels cut at that time through Highway 1 underneath it to drain the water out. This was in 1995. So since then there have been channels that have been created. But even with those channels there's still a huge impoundment of water behind Highway 1. It is draining but it's not fast enough and particularly concerned with this latest storm and that is gonna add more water to that area, that flooded area because the breach to the Paro has not yet been closed. So there's a danger there. And the danger is to the levee and that it could breach the levee close to Highway 1 which would then put a lot of water into the channel which would then potentially jeopardize the wastewater treatment plan in Watsonville which is only half a mile from Highway 1. So we are working with the city of Watsonville and Monterey County on solutions to that which involve trying to drain the water out of that huge lake in effect that's been created behind Highway 1 so that it does not overwhelm the levee system and endanger the wastewater treatment plant. The wastewater treatment plant is a critical piece of infrastructure that serves more than 60,000 people in not only in Watsonville but also in the unincorporated area of the Santa Cruz County and in the unincorporated area, Paro and Las Lomas. It also provides 4,000 feet of recycled water to the ag community. So it is a very critical facility over probably $300 million facility and if it was damaged it would obviously be a very, very big public health crisis. So in any event, we are working very quickly as we speak to try and come up with solutions. The good news about the latest weather report that we received this morning is that it appears the storm is passing somewhat north and south of us and is not as severe as was originally projected. So that is good news but we still are monitoring it very closely and we are working around the clock with Monterey County, Perfima, Paro Regional Flood Management Authority and the city of Watsonville on solutions to this big lake and how we're gonna protect the wastewater treatment p