I'll now call to order the irregular meeting in the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. It is June 7th, 9 a.m. Clerk roll call please. Supervisor Friend. Here. Coonerty. Here. Abbott. Here. McPherson. Here. And Chair Koenig. Here. There you have, Corum. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now have a moment of silence and a pledge of allegiance. Is there any member that would like to dedicate this moment to anyone? Yes, Mr. Chair. I think that Supervisor Coonerty and I both have individuals we'd like to ensure are recognized today. I'd like to recognize Betty Allen of Coralitos who recently passed away. She had an outsized influence in Coralitos. Not only was she a local that went to EA Hall and Watsonville High, but she was one of the people who made sure that Aldridge Lane Park. Recording in progress. The Coralitos Cultural Center was started and the Coralitos Library was started. She was a real institution and very beloved within Coralitos community and she recently passed away. So I'd like to make sure that we honor her today. I believe Supervisor Coonerty also has some of it. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Zach. I'd also like to recognize in the moment of silence Trisha Geistreider. Trisha and Reed Geistreider have been real pillars of our community in every imaginable way. And she was an incredibly wonderful energetic human being who we lost too soon while she was on a trip to Europe. And we wish Reed and the whole family and friends the best in these difficult times. Thank you. We'll hold them both in our hearts during this moment of silence. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Teo Palacio, so are there any additions or deletions to the regular agenda? Yes, we have one revision. This is on the regular agenda, item number 10. There are additional materials. We are adding attachment one to resolution CSA 12 service charge reports FY 2022-23 titled CSA 12 wastewater management benefits assessment service charge report. And that concludes the revisions to today's agenda. Thank you. We'll proceed to item four. Any board members that wish to remove an item from consent to regular agenda? Seeing none, we'll proceed to public comment. Any person may address the board during public comment. Speakers must not exceed two minutes in length. Individuals may speak only once during public comment. All comments must be directed to an item listed on today's consent agenda, closed accession agenda yet to be heard on the regular agenda or topic, not on the agenda that is within the jurisdiction of the board. We'll not take actions or respond immediately to any public communication presented regarding topics not on the agenda, but may choose to follow up later either individually or on a subsequent board of supervisors meeting. Go ahead, sir. My name is Don Dietrich. I live in the F-5 district at 904 Lockwood Lane. I'm here today to urge you to reconsider the cuts to the community bridges program. As a retired community member, I feel fortunate that I can pay my bills so I don't have to live in a one-room apartment to wondering where my meals are coming from.  They shouldn't have to live that way in this community. So the community bridges provides that gap between those of us that are fortunate enough to not have to suffer like that and those that don't. And I feel the government's one of their fundamental roles is to make sure that we're taking care of those that are vulnerable and are incapable of living up to what I consider to be at least equitable standards. There's all these issues with food equity, healthcare and all these things that happen and these people live very silently and live very, very poorly and minimally in small apartments, one-room apartments. They're waiting at the door when I show up every Friday for the food that we're bringing that probably lasts them three days. So I think it's very important that we as a government take care of, as a community take care of these people. And I know you have a lot of hard decisions to make in budgets. I appreciate the work that you do but please reconsider community bridges and try and tighten up someplace else because the people that they serve are the people that need it the most. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Tric. Good morning. My name is Suzanne Stone and I'm the Executive Director of Advocacy Inc. Could you speak a little bit closer to the mic so we can hear you? Could I start over? Good morning. My name is Suzanne Stone.  And I'm the Executive Director of Advocacy Inc, a core grant applicant agency which provides federally mandated monitoring and complaint investigations for seniors who reside in assisted living communities, skilled nursing facilities and board and care homes. We've been continuously providing these services to Santa Cruz and San Benito County since 1975. And we've been receiving core funds for support since the program was instituted. We're very appreciative of the support that you have given us in the past. Our request for proposal was not funded this year. And I'm here today to let you know the consequences for local seniors and out of home care if our agency does not receive the funds that we requested from the County. Advocacy Inc is the only program in Santa Cruz County that responds to family and resident complaints and coordinates with state and local officials to resolve them. Our core funding request for $60,000, 20% of the Ombudsman program funding is an essential component of our budget since we're required to have a local match in funding in order to receive the majority of our funding for this program, which comes from the Area Agency on Aging and MediCal Admitted Strait of Activity funds. Without the core grant funds, we're at risk of being unable to continue to operate the Ombudsman program. Seniors and their families rely on us to address violations of their family members' rights and to advocate for the care that these elders deserve. If our program closes, doing to losing our local match, who will be the voice of these? No, it's okay. We'll see you. Disturbed is the core. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Koenig and esteemed supervisors. At some point in your life, you, your parent, your grandparent or another loved one may find the need to be in a long-term care facility, skilled nursing or residential care facility. In fact, each of your district's houses, one or more of these essential residences. You as care concerns or care issues arise and you may not be able to get those issues resolved with facility staff, who would you turn to? The answer is simple. The long-term care Ombudsman. My name is Steven Matzi and I am the long-term care Ombudsman Program Coordinator with Advocacy Inc. Our small but dedicated team of two, including myself, full-time staff are mandated by the Older Americans Act to advocate for and protect the rights of residents living in long-term care settings. Today, I'm advocating for our program. We respond to complaints ranging from allegations of abuse and neglect to unsafe discharges and inadequate quality of care. Furthermore, we are the only provider in the County of Santa Cruz that provides this critical and essential service and work tirelessly to help long-term care residents live their highest quality of life. We have appreciated our long-standing partnership with the County and the City of Santa Cruz, so I was surprised and deeply concerned to learn that our program is defunded under the current core funding recommendations. Have we not learned anything about the needs of our long-term care residents during the COVID-19 pandemic? I humbly and respectfully ask that you thoughtfully consider the recommendations and the impact that the loss of this funding will have on our seniors living in long-term care settings. Thank you for your time and your consideration. Thank you, Mr. Madsi. Good morning, supervisors. Thank you for your service. My name's Shalaka Vannes. I love Santa Cruz and I have the privilege of serving as chair on the Mental Health Advisory Board. Supervisor Caput has been to almost every one of our meetings has provided the leadership you're gonna be missed very, very much. So thank you very much, Supervisor. I'm here to talk about a consent agenda item number 39, the residential facility for youth and adults. There'll be two to deal with severe crisis, mental health crisis, and strongly wanna support that as the Mental Health Advisory Board is important people are suffering crisis is that they stay here locally with their family in the place that they know in the community that can support them instead of getting sent out. And that's especially true for vulnerable youth who might be suffering mental health crisis. So as a Mental Health Advisory Board of Santa Cruz County, we strongly, strongly support the funds that we are getting and to continue raising funds to build the residential facilities for both the adults and the youth. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Caput. Good morning, gentlemen. I'm Thomas Wayman. I'm living in the mountains. Hopefully that's enough. I am here to comment regarding your proposed recycling rate increase. I looked at the numbers and it just seems to be an alarming increase. The total is 59% over five years. Well, four years if you're discounting the rate increases that averages out to about 12% per year. Now that's far more than the rate of inflation even with the recent price increases. And the problem I have is the government doesn't wanna do what the rest of us have to do to live within our means. If they wanna do some new big project, they just add on taxes. And you're getting more money every year because of increases in sales tax from goods that are rising in price.  You get a huge bump in revenue. And I would just plead that you live within your means.  We need more money. You're getting a little bit more every year from inflation. So those are my comments. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wayman. Yeah. Good morning, Board of Supervisors. My name is Dana Wagner. I am the director of the Community Bridges Women, Infants and Children programs here in Santa Cruz County. Our program serves more than 6,400 individuals and 4,000 families each month. The proposed cuts outlined in the core funding recommendations will defund services vital to the health and wealth being of our community. A sudden 60% cut in funding to Community Bridges programs is short-sighted and will disrupt the lives of thousands of underserved families in our community and dozens of staff who have dedicated their careers to helping others. I ask everyone in this room to imagine the impact it would have on you if you suddenly woke up to the news that you were getting a 60% cut to your family's budget beginning July 1st. How would that last impact you and those around you and would have a ripple effects to those you may employ and to the local economy? Now, I ask you to multiply this by thousands and not just any thousand, but thousands of working families in your districts who are struggling to make ends meet during these challenging and unprecedented times. What will happen to these families? Over the years, Community Bridges has provided essential services to those young and old, specifically to the most vulnerable and challenged. Community Bridges Network of Programs is a safe and friendly place to receive these services. This was particularly true during the CZU fire throughout the ongoing pandemic and now during the infant formula shortage. Community Bridges staff have rallied during these crises. There's been no stoppage of services. On the contrary, services have been increased and targeted to meet the needs and challenges of the last two years. It is unconscionable that we would consider defunding these programs at such a critical time. Our community has benefited from the visionary leadership and dedicated personnel at Community Bridges. I respectfully request that you reconsider the devastating and decimating cuts to Community Bridges programs proposed by core. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Ms. Wagner. I'm David Bianchi and I'm Executive Director for Family Service Agency of the Central Coast. It's not a good morning for the clients of our agency. I've spoken here many times in this chamber over the past 35 years, but I'm disheartened to be standing here today. We've had a public-private partnership spanning over four decades to support our vital mental health services. We work to assist a number of agencies to merge with us to preserve existing services under a cost-effective umbrella, including suicide prevention of Santa Cruz, IU Venture, Family Service of Pajaro Valley, Women Care and Survivors Healing Center who joined our Established Counseling and Senior Peer Counseling Programs. Any process, no matter how carefully planned, can result in mistakes and unintended consequences for the very community it was designed to support. The process isn't sacred. Our staff were paid less, most of them can't afford to live here. Our hundreds of volunteers who take time away from their families to help others and our clients who have the courage to seek help at a time of crisis who need and deserve your support. That is sacred. I'm not going to ask our clients who are children, families and seniors in counseling, people who have lost loved ones to suicide, women undergoing treatment for cancer, survivors of child sexual abuse and care facility residents isolated and ravaged by the pandemic to come here and tell you what in your heart of hearts you already know. Despite our exemplary record of meeting all benchmarks, outcomes and level of satisfaction to these vulnerable target populations with our culturally aware diverse workforce of staff and volunteers, we are recommended for zero funding going forward. This is a significant loss of support. We'll likely cripple some of our programs and will result in the disenfranchisement of constituents in each of your districts and their ability to access our unique services. Please use your understanding and compassion to consider our public appeal and any formal appeal we're allowed to file. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Bianchi. Good morning. I've never been here to speak, but I just felt this was so important and was really shocked to learn about the cuts to the Family Service Agency that David just spoke about. My name is Elisa Berton. I've been a physician in this community for more than 30 years, working at community health centers, first at Salud Parra la Gente down in Watsonville and then at the Women's Health Center. I'm also the president of the board of the Family Services Agency. And it was just shocking for me to learn about the cuts to the services that we provide, especially at this moment when we're having such a crisis in mental health because of the pandemic, because of income inequality, the difficulties with the standard of living in this community. Family Services Agency has always been kind of a backstop for clients that couldn't access mental health services elsewhere. When I worked at the Women's Health Center, those clients that did not have MediCal or couldn't afford our sliding scale rate, the card that we always gave them was for the Family Services Agency for them to access the mental health services there. Just at this moment in time, I think all of us have read the newspapers and are aware of the mental health crisis that's happening in this country and in this community. And to cut services for mental health, it just seems unconscionable. And so I wanted to ask you to reconsider that conclusion. All right, thank you. Thank you, Ms. Berton. Good morning, my name is Cheryl Frenzel and I'm a rather new executive director for the Diversity Center. And I'm here representing the Diversity Center. I came to realize recently that the Diversity Center did not receive core funding, which it has in the past. And I wanted to come here and ask for consideration for some county funding for this incredibly important organization. The Diversity Center is the only LGBTQ serving organization from here to San Luis Obispo, frankly. When I came on this year, what was happening on the staff was a lot of struggle because of the amount of mental health crisis and frankly, suicide ideation and attempts. And when I came on, what was trying to happen was forming a community review of how do we shore up appropriate mental health support for LGBTQ youth and seniors who are being extremely impacted. And this also had county representation on it. And at the end of the day, it was really clear that we didn't quite have what was needed to care for LGBTQ youth because there's a special awareness that a clinician needs to have. So I took the approach in our core grant to ask for funding for a clinician because it was the way to shore up what was lacking. So that might have been the wrong approach. However, I am sincerely hoping that we can still count on county and city funding in order to help us continue the services to the LGBTQ community here going forward. Thank you very much. Thank you, Director Finsle. Good morning. My name is Shannon Calden and I am the Director of Elementary Curriculum and Instruction for Santa Cruz City Schools. On behalf of the district, I'd like to thank the core investments team for their recommendation that we receive a core grant. At Santa Cruz City Schools, we strive to support the education and health and wellbeing of our students and families in Santa Cruz. The focus of this grant is to give elementary students an identity as learners and computer scientists before they leave elementary school. Understanding concepts of computer science opens doors to students that were previously closed until high school or beyond. Research shows that the earlier students see themselves as capable of understanding difficult concepts such as computer science, they're more likely to continue to college and have a lucrative career path as an adult. We seek to support our immigrant children, children of poverty, children of the Latinx community and English learners with educational opportunities beyond reading, writing and math so they can realize a better future. Our process also includes substantial engagement of families, teaching them technology and CS concepts to allow them to better participate in an increasingly digital world. We look forward to partnering with our community to expand the work we've already done at Galt Elementary to the remaining children and families in Santa Cruz City Schools. We thank the Board of Supervisors and the core team for your support of our initiatives and your commitment to helping us create a brighter future for the children of our community. Thank you. Thank you. Gary Richard Arnold, remind the DA and the County Council was everybody saw on there that Zach Friend knew exactly what Ryan Coonerty was gonna say next and they live on opposite ends of the county. If there's three or more on a line, that's a violation of the Brown Act. This county is already run by conspiracy with the parallel government and bag never reporting since Manu has been up here to the public of the commitments to money et cetera that are done there. Gender 21, which you have signed onto was created by Maurice Strong. If you read West Magazine and from Colorado, he calls for the culling of the world population exactly what's going on now. And all these people begging for money, they don't care whether this is a sanctuary city in County, where drugs and crime and housing and hospital crowding and even baby formula is going to not the Americans you represent, but to this global lonely that Biden signed onto. Look up the Wall Street Journal where he says, God, it's gotta be 15 years ago where he calls, he says, I'm a new world order, I believe in the new world order. He does not believe in the national sovereignty and the constitutional protections of the United States. When Manu came here, he was not gonna be, he said he was not gonna be another Panetta machine person, yet he's kept of a public speaking time. He cut it by one third. He's created an absences staff. None of the supervisors any longer have anybody answering their phone. It all goes through one thing under our Carlos Palacios. Their own assistants no longer have a specific email address. They're literally out to lunch between 12 and noon when most people that are working have time, cannot reach you and remember Santa Cruz, they gave the key to the city to Angela Davis and has Black Lives Matter endorsed Manu with an organization co-founded called Sevenomics and one of the founders is Ronald Duelson. Good morning ladies, gentlemen. My name is Suzanne Forbes. I'm here in support of community bridges over the years. I've been here 26 years and throughout the years that I've been here and ever. Ms. Forbes, did you just step a little closer to the mic so we can all hear you? I'm so sorry, of course. My name is Suzanne Forbes. Reiterate, I'm here to support community bridges. I only recently learned of the budget cut yesterday. So it was kind of, I've got to come and say what little I have to say, so I'll make it as succinct as possible. They have offered me support and advocacy over the years and I'm really grateful for them. I had nowhere else to go for what I was given through them. Anyhow, I would hope that you would reconsider your cut to them, thank you. And all the other agencies that have come forward to ask that you rescind those agreements. Thank you, Ms. Forbes. Good morning, board. My name is Maria Cadenas. I'm the executive director of Ventures. I'm here to thank you for the recommendation of funding for the program, Semiguitas or Small Seeds, which is, we're just honored to have been partnering with the county and greater organizations, including first five Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz County Office of Education, Dientes, Salud para Al Jente and many others to bring Semiguitas to our county. Creating a vibrant, healthy community with shared prosperity does not happen overnight, which is why the county's investments in Semiguitas is such an important aspect on how we see our support and commitment to our Santa Cruz County kids. Semiguitas will provide an automatic college savings accounts to all county newborns and continued investment as they develop to make sure that their parents have aspirations and hope for the future. What's most important is the studies have shown that children with these accounts are three times more likely to go to college and four times more likely to graduate. And that doesn't even include the impact on decreasing maternal depression and the increase of social emotional well-being of the child from zero to five. This is because programs like Semiguitas are changing the way we welcome our kids and build aspirations from day one. From the onset this program and the leadership thing that made it possible had a commitment to our children in our county to make sure that they thrive and with it the future of this county. Again, I'm eternally grateful for the consideration of funding for Semiguitas and this bold step into the future for our county. Thank you. Thank you, Director Cadenes. So I came here to support community bridges from being cut. I haven't used their service so I hope I'm in the right line talking at the right time. But I have finally gotten a decent social worker with the County Mental Health that has given me resources that community bridges gives to families and seniors. Well, I fit all those categories. I'm a senior, I'm a disabled person, I'm a family, I live in below the poverty line. And as you can see, our country is going down more and more people are falling into poverty. This is the totally wrong time to start cutting vital services that helps the poor. While you fund, it seems like this county's all big on funding, big development, fair market rate, and they're looking towards the taxes moving over here. You've got the wrong crowd that you're funding. You need to help the people that really need help, not for profit, but just to live. I know like with County Mental Health, I tried to find these when I was homeless and when I advocated for homeless people, but they give you cards that help you out at the grocery stores for food. They give you cards for other things. I didn't know these existed because it's really hard to find these resources. So community bridges is a great resource and it needs to stay there and it needs to be funding people that really need help. We need to, in our country, we need an FDR type thing going on and cutting funding from this is the opposite of that. Right now, America isn't long to survive. It ignores its lower people that need help of local government and federal government. Thank you and my name's Pat Colby. Thank you, Ms. Colby. I'm sorry to come here without a speech or anything, but I was just informed about this recently. Hello. Community bridges in Felton has really helped us out a lot, not just because of my involvement with the homeless community there, but in regard to people who lost their homes in the CZU fire. Also, when the Mount Herman had to close down for as long as it did, that's where a lot of my colleagues, the people that I work with, were getting their groceries from.  We were exhausting our resources. We had food in our shutdown dining room, but that was very important to those people who weren't able to work at the time. And still, even though most of us are working things out, it's a very important resource for the homeless community in Felton. It's where a lot of people go to find jobs. That's how I found out about this because Mount Herman is in need of help and hiring people. And I contacted, it's called Community Bridges Now in Felton to see if they could post job listings for me. I know I have difficulty getting people to hire because they're not the greatest jobs, but there are people there who are willing to take that. So not only does it help me, but it helps people out there who are in need of employment. Looks like I'm running out of time, but so thank you. Thank you, sir. Good morning, Supervisors Karen Delaney. The organization I work for is grateful that we aren't being cut. And my staff was like, you're crazy. Why are you going down there? It's because my whole career, I believe in two things. One, people are good and will try to do the right thing if they have the right data. And two, we can do better even when it's hard. Core folks were given an impossible task because of the level of investment, limited levels set by your board eight months ago before we knew the economic climate, the conditions were any amazing new program only gets funded if you pull someone already away from the table. If you think those are still with the conditions, if you really believe that's the best we can do, let me tell you one example. This is what the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is voting for for their nonprofits. A 5.25% COLA for all staff in fully funded existing programs for all nonprofit partners. An additional 60 million over two years to invest in bringing all nonprofit childcare workers up over a living wage, not losing a single childcare slot. 30 million over two years to increase wages for nonprofit homeless veterans and mental health service workers so that all case managers make a minimum prevailing wage of $28 an hour. Plus a 37 million increase investment in new targeted services like our core. Sadly, in my beloved community, that model that every new dollar in a year where you have a lot more money has to come from another service is not true. I encourage you to hold over, get the list of the cuts, compare them to every dollar you're spending this budget. Thank you, Mr. Wayne. Good morning. My name is Diana, coordinates. Good morning. My name is Diana, Valades. First of all, I have arrived at school. At lunchtime in Os..... oh, sorry. Oh, yeah. I'm a mother of two kids who go to Live Oak School. My kids receive help and support from the Live Oak. I'm here to let you know that I am representing other mothers. It is very important for us to preserve all the supports and resources that we have. We want children who are happy and healthy. Have them realize themselves and be happy and be successful. We would like to have loving kids. It's only fair that we all have good health. Thank you so much for listening to me and for us. It's a good idea and it's wonderful for you guys to continue with this support. Thank you. I appreciate the input and I think these people may not be here later today but this item will be discussed in detail on item 12. After you speak, any recommendation or decision by the board will not be made until after the discussion on item 12. We appreciate your input but I just want to let you know the in-depth discussion will be coming a little later. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. We will take comment from people who are still standing here. We will hear the core item. It's item 11 and when it comes to online public comments, which I will have to assume people are slightly more flexible, I will ask anyone speaking to the core item until we actually hear that item. Go ahead, sir. It's item 12 or 11? It's item 11. Go ahead, sir. Good morning. Thank you for your time. We've been going to all the community breaches events they have and all the stuff they prevent for kids. Our team has been taking advantage of all the classes they do, all the tutoring. They've been doing that all the time. With COVID, we have helped them. They help us with providing food and all the bases and we need some of the head of the household. So when I went down with COVID, all my family wasn't able to do anything. And they were able to provide us. We could walk or the kids and the wife could walk and pick up groceries and bases we need to survive for a week or two. They've been providing a lot of stuff and a lot of support. I think it's a very happy joy in the clouds they have. And we'll be very happy for us to, if you just, if you folks figure it out and decide to keep it going, we'll be appreciated. And we're speaking in more of a minute and are unable to make it. Unfortunately, everybody has to work in different times, but we're supporting them and thank you for your time. Thank you, sir. Yeah, good morning. My name is James Ealing Whitman on the Consent agenda. Item number 21 referring to assembly bill 361 about remote meetings. This is almost as much of a full house as I've seen here in the past eight months since he've been open to the public. Look, don't you guys are wearing masks today? Look behind me, half the people are wearing masks. Just why is that? Why does the city of Santa Cruz not have open meetings? They did it for two weeks only. So also on the agenda item number 26, an approval of reappropriation of $124 million. What is going to go on with that money? I thought that was part of people's retirement funds. And number 38, the ex the emergency extension because of the tsunami that happened in January. So public not aware that these extensions just allow fishing expeditions for people for this government to get more money. You know, I didn't stand for the pledge of allegiance. What we have there are three flags, the United States flag or California flag and the pedophile flag. So when a nation is taken over, they sow something around it and it becomes a pirate flag. So I wish I had more support for the city of Santa Cruz, the county of Santa Cruz, the state of California in the US government, but it's been taken over. You know, I don't know how many of the public actually realized that the elected officials answered to the city and county managers who often aren't elected officials. So it's interesting that so many people have stood here today about the funding that they used to get and that they're not. I don't know if they would have shown up more to see what actually is going on in this room. That may not have happened. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Redmond. Good morning. Adult Education of Santa Cruz County partners with community bridges to provide childcare for adults learning English. This means that anyone who has a young kid can come to the Live Oak Center to take classes while their children receive top notch care. In fact, Live Oak Community Resources is the only place in the entire county that does this. There are no other options for students who want to learn English and need childcare. This service is crucial for immigrant families composed of parents who have the time, desire and energy to learn English, but need to have the childcare. These proposed funding cuts would take away not only the childcare but the ESL class itself from the satellite location. You should not take away the one classroom option our families with young children have. As the teacher, I, Miriam Cohen, can attest to just how crucial both classroom time and non-classroom time are. I have watched community blossom within our classroom at Live Oak Community Resources. Students study in class together for three hours daily, learning things like US civics, current events, how to navigate the various medical and educational systems, and of course grammar and pronunciation. About halfway through, they take a break to check in with their kids and let their minds relax. Since their native languages differ, they use English as their communal language to exchange woes on parenting struggles and tips on things like how to potty train their kids or how to find a preschool. If someone needs a dentist, they can ask how to find one and where to go. It's in these moments when students of diverse backgrounds are supporting each other through similar phases of life that relations are built and community happens. By the way, in the period from mid-October through last Friday, students attended approximately 1,550 hours of class. Through community bridges, these students and their families also have access to fresh food twice a month, parenting classes to help with those tricky preschool years, and help with applications and legal aid, among other services. In a time of soaring inflation and a looming recession, it is imperative that you support our families and preserve resources that bridge our communities. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Cohen. All right, we'll now go to Zoom. Is there anyone on Zoom who would like to comment on something? And again, since we have not actually come to item 11, we'll be hearing more about the core process. I'd ask that anyone speaking online try to address things that are not on our regular agenda. Carol, your microphone is now available. Good morning. My name is Carol Bjorn. I have a great idea actually on how you can solve all these spending problems. It's really quite heartbreaking to hear everyone's testimony this morning. But you know what? You should really consider getting rid of the county office of education. They really don't do anything to add any value to the students in Santa Cruz County. They're really just rubber stamping everything coming out of Sacramento. There's no critical thinking going on over there. And I'm sure they have a huge budget. So if you just get rid of that county agency, it would free up a lot of money to actually serve the poor people in this county. Please remove item 43 from the consent agenda and place it on the regular agenda. Please vote no on this agenda item. Item 43 would clearly violate the fourth and fifth amendments of the Constitution for the United States of America. Further, if you all vote yes on this item, you could be held liable for violating the fourth and fifth amendment rights of the Californians living in Santa Cruz County. Further, you all will be participating in the ongoing fraud of the COVID-19 pandemic. As I've talked about on numerous occasions before this board, there is no isolated SARS-CoV-2 virus. Thus, there is no basis for saying that it's contagious and there's no basis for saying that it causes COVID-19. Last week, I read from the book The Truth About Contagion by Dr. Thomas Cowan. Ms. Bjorn, we're getting a lot of feedback. As I was reading last week from the book, the question was, is the Spanish flu pandemic contagious? And again, during a study conducted by U.S. public health, it was found that the Spanish flu pandemic actually was not contagious. They did an experiment where they took mucus secretions from 100 people that were sick, put it in 100 volunteers, not one person got sick. You really need to read this book and I highly recommend it for everyone in the audience today. Thank you, Ms. Bjorn. Jeffrey Ellis, your microphone is now available. Jeffrey Ellis, if you'll accept the unmute, your microphone is now available. Hi, my name is Jeffrey Ellis, here to speak on item 46 on the agenda. These are applications for funding of homeless facilities. This looks to me like deja vu all over again. At your February meeting, you approved four home key projects, including the applications for funding, including the one on Park Avenue, which was done without any neighborhood outreach and engagement. It's caused a lot of unhappiness in that area. I've spoken to people there, they're appalled that it was done without consulting them. And now you have applications for a total of $6 million. And there's nothing in the agenda item about where these facilities would go and absolutely nothing about neighborhood outreach and engagement. Now, please, please, you need to let people know what's coming or what may be coming and get their buy in. And all I see on the agenda is let's get the money. Let's get the $6 million. Well, first, let's ask the people in the targeted neighborhoods whether or not they want these facilities, whether or not they will support them. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ellis. Elizabeth Madrigal, your microphone is now available. Good morning, Chair Koenig and supervisors of the board. Elizabeth Madrigal speaking on behalf of the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership. This initiative consists of a broad coalition of community members, local employers and organizations to advocate for and catalyze an increase in housing of all types and income levels near transit jobs and services in the Tri-County, Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito County region. And that fully supports agenda item 36, adopting a formal resolution for the pro housing designation program and directing the community development and infrastructure department to submit an application for a pro housing designation. Once the county has adopted sufficient policies and programs to qualify for approval. The committee of Santa Cruz for this step as a pro housing designation will grant the county an advantage in applying for state housing funds and be a state leader when it comes to building the housing that is desperately needed in our community. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you, Ms. Madrigal. In user two, your microphone is now available. Yeah, great way to fund everything is to just take a small portion of the military budget. How about the billions going to the Ukraine misdirection of money in this country? That's for sure. I would also call for you to put item 43 on the regular agenda on a future agenda. Violates fourth and fifth amendments. And I read Dr. Thomas Cowan's book. I recommend it for you. That Carol Bjorn referred to. I don't feel like to recommend that you read the printed speech of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in January. And you can from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial against the mandates. And it's Western a price. And one of the things he said, if you give government the license to silence its critics, you have given them the capacity to commit any atrocity they want and to obliterate all the amendments and rights of the Constitution. The freedom of speech is critical for people to know what's going on and that is being censored. And he said we've experienced a coup d'etat against democracy and the demolition, the control demolition of the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights under these these last months. So I recommend you read that and that the pharmaceutical. Serge Cogno, your microphone is now available. Good morning chair Coneg and board of supervisors. My name is Serge Cogno. I'm executive director of a local nonprofit. I'll speak on item number 11 when that agenda item comes up. I'd like to speak to item number 32 living wage ordinance. The living wage ordinance is a powerful statement of the importance our community places on ethics in our county contract budgets. However, there should not be an exception for nonprofits as a director of a local nonprofit. It's my ethical responsibility to provide my staff with a living wage. Nonprofit staff are the heart of services nonprofits offer County contracts should not have the ability to give exceptions for nonprofits requiring only a form. If you run a search for them throughout passport materials, you'll find them usually not filled out only having executive director signature. It's unclear whether County staff ever looked over the forums or whether further information was requested to explain why staff were not receiving the living wages. There's no reason a county contract should be given without funding for living wages to say that is because they're simply not enough funding does not lessen our ethical obligation to support our community through our programs. And that includes our staff studies have shown staff at nonprofits often need to supplement their income with public benefits. Staff have difficulty paying for groceries rent and gas like everybody else. There's no reason why a contract should be given knowing some staff do not receive a living wage, especially here in Santa Cruz. While there's no reviewing of the salaries of the executive team or the nonprofit of the nonprofit. Please make efforts to remove this outdated attempt to push lack of funding onto the backs of those struggling to pay their bills while doing the great frontline work of our nonprofits. As a co chair of the mental health advisory board I'd also like to speak on item number 39 in appreciation and support of the creation of these two needed programs. Thank you for your time. Thank you Mr. Cognaw. Mr. Cognaw, please or Lara, your microphone is now available. Yeah, good morning. Members of the board of supervisors as a lot of what the monitor would be central library council and happy election day and I'm calling about item number 11 since we're on the campaign trail today. But you know cuts and core funding to community pages program. Mr. Lara is there any way you can wait until we actually hear the item 11. I actually cannot. Please proceed. So the first closure of all four family resource centers would never negatively impact working families. Family resource centers service thousands of members of the Santa Cruz County community across its four locations loss of socialized house care slots how. partial closure of these sites would negatively impact not just youth, but also seniors. I urge you not to support not to support the the cutting of the core funding. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lara. Lorraine Iglesias your microphone is now available. Thank you. Good morning. I like to speak to item 11. I know that I cannot stay. So if you could accept my comments, I'd be appreciate that. Go ahead. Thank you. My name is Lorraine Iglesias. Good morning, Board of Supervisors. I sit on the Board of Directors for Ventures and I wanted to just show my appreciation for considering Semiguitas, which is a program in Ventures, which means small seeds. And I wanted to thank you for considering an investment in the future of Santa Cruz County Children's and the future equity for their lives. So again, showing my appreciation and thank you. Thank you, Ms. Iglesias. Jessica Peters, your microphone is now available. Good morning. Can you hear me? Yes. Hi. My name is Jessica. I live in District 5 and my comment is short and sweet this morning. I just wanted to say that I really appreciate seeing Bruce McPherson in person this morning. It's so important that we have good in-person present and engaged representation for District 5. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Peters. Whitney Barnes, your microphone is now available. Hi. Good morning. Thank you. I'm there as a representative of the team of adult protective services for Santa Cruz County. And I would like to thank the Board for proclaiming June 2022 Elder Abuse Awareness Month. Our team investigates allegations of abuse, neglect, self-neglect, and exploitation among older and dependent adults throughout the county. We strive to reduce risk and enhance safety for all community dwelling older and dependent adults in Santa Cruz County. The issue of elder abuse is significant and not just in terms of impact, but also scale. According to the National Council on Aging, roughly 10% of Americans over the age of 60 have experienced some form of elder abuse. Additional studies suggest that self-neglect adversely affects somewhere between 10 and 20% of American older adults. If you reflect on your own personal connections within your family, neighborhood, church, community, and others, consider that somewhere between one or two of every 10 older adults in your social circle may be suffering from some form of abuse, neglect, financial exploitation, or inability to meet their own daily needs. It's important to keep in mind that we do estimate only one in every 24 incidences of abuse against older adults is reported. And that highlights the importance of events such as this proclamation. Raising awareness on the issue of elder abuse will increase attention to the issue and hopefully ease fears for those who may need to seek help and support. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Barnes. Gloria P. Your microphone is now available. Buenos dias. Mi nombre es Gloria Palomo. Soy líder de copa. Good morning. My name is Gloria Palomo. Mi esposo, Leucadio Rivera, que hace 20 años fue diagnosticado con Parkinson y demencia. My husband does this with Parkinson and dementia. Es un paciente del programa de elder days donde lo cuidan cuatro horas por día y 20 horas por semana. Para mí estos programas son una bendición para poder sobrellevar estas enfermedades tan difíciles. These programs are a blessing for me and my family to be able to continue taking care of my husband. Y si dejaran de dar fondos para ayuda, yo sé lo que va a pasar. If you take the services away, I have a very good idea of what's going to happen. I've already experienced this when you closed due to the pandemic. Durante este tiempo me afectó al grado que me dio parálisis parcial y por favor he affected me health-wise. Y por favor les suplico que no reduzcan la ayuda porque no quiero no volver a pasar por esta experiencia otra vez. I will not like to leave this experience again. Por favor toquen su corazón para poder seguir ayudándonos. No cierren la ayuda para estos programas. Please don't take away this help and these programs. Gracias. Thank you. Thank you. How many more speakers do we have online? That was our final speaker. All right. Very well then. Thank you everyone. We'll now move to item six, whose action on the consent agenda. Any member of the board which to speak to items on the consent agenda? Mr. Chair, I'd like to speak on a couple items. Number 36, the pro housing designation program. I want to thank Dr. Ratner, our director of the county's housing for health division for bringing this opportunity to our attention. If we succeed in adopting policies to become a pro housing county, it will position us in a better place to be more competitive for state money to build project. I want to thank Chair Koenig and the staff for working with my office on this item. There's on items 39, 40 and 45. They all have to do with behavioral health funding. And I want to thank really our behavioral health staff and all our nonprofit partners for working in the arena of mental health services. I'm really glad to see a greater investments in addressing this issue as it is a major contributing factor to homelessness and it has co-occurring issue with substance abuse in many cases. We really cannot afford not to address this issue without adequate resources. And I think the recent events that we've seen in our nation have proven time and time again how important it is to provide more behavioral health services to our community. And I think we'll be able to do that if we are successful in getting these funding get these grants that we've applied for. On item 48, I have a question. It's about geological hazards and geotechnical engineering guidelines. I want to thank our staff for the community, from the community development infrastructure for bringing this item so we can really better understand how professionals are being advised on how to navigate this issue. I'd like to ask a question. I think our public works director is here. Do we anticipate that these guidelines are going to make it simpler and more predictable about people seeking permits to get through the process? I think this is really and important to think about in both the context of fire recovery that we've had and also other geologically challenging areas in the county that were directed by the CZU fire. It seems like the state and local guidelines are a little different and we want to meet them all and we need to meet them all. Yeah, good morning. My name is Carolyn Burke. I'm the assistant director with community development and infrastructure overseeing the permit center. Our current guidelines date back to the mid-90s. Since that time, there have been a lot of regulatory and technical advancements in both geotechnical and geologic reporting. One of those is the incorporation of stronger geotechnical requirements in the California Building Code. These guidelines bring all of that into one package for consultants. Our hope is that it will set expectations so that we can have a smoother review process as well as provide consultants with tools so that they can better scope their reports prior to signing contracts with clients and they're able to better anticipate timelines. Overall, our mantra is more complete reports and applications lead to more streamlined review times. So that's our hope in producing these guidelines. I hope that speeds it up and makes it more predictable because we've heard this for two years now and I know you have too, Ms. Burke. Absolutely. I appreciate the efforts that you've tried to coordinate what we do and what we have in the county and what the state demands too. It's been an easy process. Absolutely, Jan. With respect to the CZU fire survivors, the CZU rebuild directive is an option for them, which takes them out of the county code review process, but the California Building Code, as you know, still has requirements and so this helps provide a path for them to be able to at least anticipate what kind of requirements would come up in that review. Great. Thank you. Thank you for your explanation. And one other thing on item number 53, the California Department of Transportation. The litter and encampments along state highways right away have been an increasingly difficult problem throughout California because its local jurisdictions really don't have the ability just to go in and work in these areas. So I really appreciate the county's community development and infrastructure division again for working with Caltrans to provide the funding to maintain these areas to the best extent possible. I know it's a big issue here and elsewhere throughout the state of California. That's it. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. All right, seeing I'll just comment on a couple items here on item 33. I want to thank Mark Yellen for volunteering to serve on the Emergency Medical Care Commission as representative of the Santa Cruz Medical Society. On item 36, the pro housing designation, I also want to thank our planning staff who's committed to reviewing best practice policies from around the state and bringing them to our county so that we can proactively address the housing crisis. On item 51, authorizing the submission of a grant for 2023 active transportation program funding in the amounts of $67 million and $3.5 million for the coastal rail trail segments. And of course, I'm excited to see this project move forward and I thank Public Works for all their work on it. I just have to say I am concerned that there's a risk in applying for too much money here. We're a less than 1% of the state's population and we're asking for more than 10% of all the active transportation funding for this project, for a program that has been described as oversubscribed and highly competitive. So I'm hoping for the best, but I do have concerns.  You know, I just want to say here as well, I'm concerned that we're reaching the maximum utility of this program, allocating housing vouchers for people, you know, it's fantastic that we've given vouchers to 250 families and found permanent homes for 100 people. But the marginal utility is spending another $2 million on this program when we are in urgent need of other transitional housing options in our community. It does make me trepidatious and I'll support finishing out this program, but I think we need to seriously consider this as we look at what the best next dollar is to spend addressing homelessness. Those are all my comments. Is there a motion? Move the recommended action. I'll second. Motion by Supervisor Coonerty to accept the consent agenda. Second by Supervisor Friend. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk roll call vote please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Koenig. Aye. Thank you, Chair. The consent agenda passes unanimously. Thank you. Then we'll proceed to item seven to consider an option of resolutions confirming the previously established benefit assessment rates for County Service Areas 4, Pajaro Dunes and CSA 48, County Fire, adopt resolutions setting a public hearing on June 28, 2022. On the proposed fiscal year 22, 23 service charge reports for CSAs 4 and 48 and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the Director of General Services to report on this item we have. Director of General Services Michael Beaton. Take it away. Thank you, Chair Koenig. Michael Beaton, Director of General Services. I am a staff to this item and available for any questions. Okay. Any questions from members of the board? Seeing none. Is there any member of the public that wishes to comment on this item? Seeing none. I'll return it to the board. I have motion to be in order. I'll move the recommended actions. I'll second. Motion by Supervisor Friend, second by Supervisor Caput. Any further discussion? Seeing none. Clerk roll call vote please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Koenig. Aye. That item passes unanimously. Thank you, Director Beaton. We'll now proceed to item eight, the public hearing to consider approving a resolution establishing a charge for recycling and solid waste services infrastructure at the county's point of vista landfill and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the Deputy CAO, Director of Community Development and Infrastructure. And for a report on this item, we have Assistant Director of Community Development and Infrastructure, Kent Edler, as well as Casey Colasa in our Department of Public Works. Good morning, Chair Koenig. I'm Casey Colasa, recycling and solid waste services manager in the Department of Community Development and Infrastructure. Up here with me is Kent Edler, Assistant Director. Today's item is regarding the establishment of a charge for recycling and solid waste infrastructure. Since the point of vista landfill is nearing capacity and due to requirements of Senate bill 1383, the new charge would fund a transfer station infrastructure at the Bonavista landfill and organics processing facility at the Bonavista landfill and closure costs for the closing of the Bonavista landfill. This new charge would be collected through the property tax bills on developed parcels in the unincorporated areas of the county. The charge per parcel over the next five years is outlined in the board memo and they were developed by our solid waste consultants HFNH. And so in compliance with Proposition 218, the notices of the new charge were mailed on April 14th, which exceeds the 45-day minimum required for noticing prior to today's public hearing. Per Proposition 218, the new charge would not go into effect if more than 50% of affected property owners submitted a written protest prior to the public hearing. There are 45,017 affected property owners and we've received only nine written protests of the charge. So that's far below the 50% required for a majority protest. So the recommended actions are to open a public hearing to take objections or protests, if any, to the proposed charge for recycling and solid waste services infrastructure and close the public hearing. And upon its conclusion, adopt the attached resolution approving establishment of a charge for recycling and solid waste services infrastructure and we are available for any questions. Thank you. I'll officially open the public hearing for this item. Is there any member of the board that has questions? Supervisor Caput. Thank you. Yeah, they all caught me a little bit off-guard here. Now the recycling when you're talking about the charge, it would be taken when they got there at the landfill. So this charge would actually be put on the property tax bill. So it would not be when you go to the landfill. Do we make money on the recycle? Yeah, that's figured into our revenue for our budget. Yeah. Supervisor McPherson. I want to thank Public Works for bringing this item to us and for laying that round work and how we're going to deal with the eventual closure of the Buena Vista landfill, which has been stated, I think 20 years ago it was going to close in a couple of years. So it's held its ground as best it can. But to understand this, we understate mandates and for those who want to refer to legislation, it's Senate Bill 1383 to deal with our organic waste in a better manner. And this is going to help us come up with solutions to that issue and the demands that the state has put upon us. I have, and I think all of us have received some comments about why unincorporated residents are shouldering this. And I think it's important to note that the residents outside of the unincorporated area in the cities, the four cities in Santa Cruz, they do pay an additional fee to use the Buena Vista site. That said, I look forward to future discussions on this, about how we're planning to address our recycling and solid waste in the years to come. This is something that we just have to address and get ahead of. It's a state mandate and we have to meet it. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Any further questions or comments from the board? Seeing none. As any member of the public wish to address us on this item, please approach the podium. My name is Geraldine Decarlo. I live in Santa Cruz County, unincorporated. I did get the notification in the newsletter from Green Waste. And when I saw this, I was shocked. First of all, I am a senior citizen fixing gum. I do pay for recycling when I go to take whatever I need to at Buena Vista, which is not very often. And I do pay for services to pick everything up at my home, which I have to actually lug down the street, put down at the end of the street about a quarter mile down and come back and pick it up. I should not be paying an additional surcharge for something that I'm already paying for. So I'm protesting. But I also have to tell you the gentleman up here said, if he had gotten X amount of protest and writing, I would have responded. But there's nothing on this writing that says I have to protest and writing. Nobody's informed anybody up in that area to my knowledge that this is happening. So this is another piece of junk mail that comes through and people just toss it. We have not been properly informed of what's going on. That's all I have to say. Thank you, Ms. Carlo. Is there anyone on Zoom that wishes to address us on this item? Yes, we do have one speaker. I apologize. Two speakers now. Colin, user two, your microphone is now available. Excuse me, Marilyn Garrett. I appreciate the previous speaker there. I'm in the same category. I find this pretty outrageous that you keep putting more taxes on property owners. And also recycling is a myth. It's estimated that about 5% of the plastics is so-called recycled. Why are not the polluters of the plastic the producers halted at this source? This is ridiculous that, you know, what is that corporations privatize the profit and socialize the cost? That's what's going on. And during these last couple of years, there's been more and more and more plastic produced. It's clogging up everything with micro plastics, the oceans. This doesn't go to the source. Stop the pollution where it starts has to do with the profiting system. And I'm opposed to this increase in taxes. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Garrett. Jessica Peters, your microphone is now available. Hi. Good morning again. This is Jessica. I live in District 5. I want to thank the previous speaker for bringing up the mailing that we received. We also received that. I took it as mail that came from GreenWaste, which I do not feel that GreenWaste as our trash provider should be responsible for sending out information that has to do with our taxes being increased. I disagree with our taxes being increased. I feel that the budget should be balanced somewhere else. And us as taxpayers are being asked to shoulder far too much. Our trash rates have actually doubled in the last 10 years through GreenWaste. Our water costs are going up, PGN costs are going up, food costs are going up, gas. Everything is going up and we're being asked to shoulder all of this. But yet the county with their budget, I don't see where cuts to the actual county are being made. And I would ask that the taxpayers are not asked to shoulder this. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Peters. We have no additional speakers. All right, then I'll return to the board for action. Sure, you can provide the cabinet. Okay, thank you. Now the money, it's $110 a year, right? That's correct. That's the first year, though. It has a schedule where every year increases. How much is that total when you add up all the property owners? So the total for the first year raises about $5.8 million. And this is to fund, we have about $52.5 million of improvements needed in order to build the transfer station as well as the organics composting facility. And then there's additional costs for the closure costs of the landfill. Okay, well, what I noticed was it goes up every year about $15 to $20, right? From 2022 to 2023. How many years are we talking about this to go on? Then the year 2030, are we going to still be charging it? So what's before the board today is to approve five years with the rates. But we are expecting that in order to pay for the transfer station and the organics processing facility, we're going to have to bond for that. So every five years, we would come back, we would reevaluate the rates and the costs, and come back before the board with proposed either increases or decreases to the rates. Okay. Okay, yeah. The only question I have is, there's the charge and basically how many years that would go on. So you're saying after the five years, it would be a different rate? Yeah, we expect that the bonding for the facilities would be about a 30-year bond. So it could be for 30 years that we're going to have charges on the assessment, but the charges for these amounts in order to pay off the bonds for these facilities. Okay, but the money we're collecting is to build some kind of facility at the landfill. Once it's built and paid for, then why would it continue past the five years? I would expect that what would happen that once it's paid off is that we would just have it, that the capital cost to pay for it would be gone, and then we would just be left with kind of maintenance of the facilities, which would be a reduction. So after 30 years, my expectation would be that that charge would go down once the facility is paid for. Okay, that's my concern. It should go down after five years. It should go down. Well, after it's paid for, so we're going to be bonding for 30 years, so probably after the 30 years. But again, we're going to come back every five years and we re-evaluate, have a new cost of service report. So technically it will take 30 years to pay it off? Correct. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. Any further discussion? Yeah, Mr. Charitas have a, I think what might be a better way of asking the question is, what would happen if this was not done? So for Casey and for Mr. Kluss and Mr. Edler, say we were unable to bond and unable to build and given the new state mandates, what would be the impact of the landfill and for the county? So there's a lot of impacts if this doesn't go through. So what would happen is that five to seven years we would close the landfill. So there would be nowhere for county residents or the green waste trucks to take garbage within the county other than the Ben-Loman Transfer Station, which is a much smaller facility.  So without a transfer station, they would have to drive individually down to the Marina landfill or the Monterey Regional, which is located in Marina. So he would have individual trucks driving from Santa Cruz County down to Monterey County and back in the individual Packer garbage trucks. We've looked at those costs. Those costs would be more expensive than what this charge would be. And you would have additional greenhouse gas emissions with garbage trucks driving back and forth. We're planning to electrify our fleet once the technology gets there, which we're hoping will get there by the time the transfer facility is there. So that's some of the impacts. We've also, we've studied many things as well. We've studied rail, the cost of rail to ship it out. That doesn't pencil out economically at this point. You'd have just the amount of facilities and how far you'd have to ship and so forth. So we've looked at many different alternatives. We feel that this one is the best from a cost perspective and still gives the residents a place to take their garbage inside the county. When we all know that illegal dumping is constantly a problem, if we don't have a landfill in the county, we fully expect that there to be an increase in illegal dumping as well. And there has been a change in state requirements that have also increased costs for county residents in regards to organics and other issues that also drive up general costs in regards to landfill usage, correct? Yeah, that's true as well, because I was just speaking about the garbage previously, but there are SB 1383 requires all the organics to be taken out of the regular garbage. So that's, you know, that's additional, additional trucking that would be in separate trucks that would have to go down as well on Beat Hall out of the county as well, where this proposal before the board today is two facilities. So it's transfer station, so allow people to dump their garbage. And there's also a separate facility where we could process organic waste on site at the point of this landfill. Okay, I just thought it was important to note that some of this is Supervisor McPherson had noted it's just the pure age and longevity of the landfill. And due to both innovation and recycling, that it's been preserved just beyond its useful life. And some of those is also additional state mandates that require us to do various things locally. We've not historically been required to do. We can argue the merits of that, but the reality is those are unfunded mandates that are coming down that local use ratepayers are, that's we share the burden on that or shoulder the burden. So I understand the questions from Supervisor Cap and I appreciate them. I just think that the counterfactual to this would be catastrophic for a lot of issues within Santa Cruz County, both from what I would believe would be a significant increase in illegal dumping and waste, which is an ongoing issue for all of us in the unappropriated area. Additional climate change related issues on GHG, issues on transportation costs, and then just the reality that we wouldn't meet state mandates. So as a result of that, I will move the recommended actions. Second. Motion by Supervisor Friend, second by Supervisor McPherson. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk roll call note please. Supervisor Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Koenig. Aye. That item passes unanimously. Thank you, Mr. Edler, Mr. Colasa. We will now proceed to item nine, public hearing to consider fiscal year 2022-2023 benefit assessment service charge reports for Sanitation County Service Areas 2, 5, 7, 10, and 20. An adopt resolution confirming the fiscal year 2022-23 benefit assessment service charge reports is outlined in the member end of the Deputy CAO, Director of Community Development and Infrastructure. And for a report on this item, we have Ashley Trujillo, Civil Engineer. Take it away, Ashley. Hey, thank you. So I'm Ashley Trujillo, Senior Engineer for Sanitation Engineering. And on April 12, 2022, the Board adopted the 2022-2023 benefit assessments for the County Service Areas 2, 5, 7, 10, and 20. And set today as the date of the public hearing on the benefit assessment reports. CPI increase of 4.2% for sewer service charges in CSAs 2, 5, 7, and 20 are necessary to adequately meet the CSA's revenue requirements. No additional increase is required for CSA 10. The benefit assessment reports were electronically filed with the clerk of the Board for public review on or prior to May 23, 2022. Therefore, we recommend that the Board open the public hearing and hear objections or protests, if any, to the proposed 2022-2023 benefit assessment service charge reports with the County Service Areas 2, 5, 7, 10, and 20 and close the public hearing and adopt a resolution confirming the 2022-2023 benefit assessment service charge reports for the various Sanitation County Service Areas are available for questions. Thank you, Mr. Trujillo. I'll open the public hearing on this item. Any questions from members of the Board? Seeing none, is there any member of the public that wishes to address us on this item? Is there anyone on Zoom? We do have a speaker on Zoom. Yes, one moment. Colin, user 2, your microphone is now available. Marilyn Garrett again. More and more and more taxes just on this agenda. There are quite a few previous agendas it adds up. And what are we really getting any benefit from? I see very, very little. And it's disturbing to me where our taxes go. You have plenty of money for the whole infrastructure, 5G, 4G, radiation facilities, surveillance, money for other things like that. And we were asked to pay more and more for more and more damage to the public overall. Very disturbing. Elected representatives should be protecting the public well-being. And unfortunately, I'm not saying that. Having attended board meetings for over 20 years, and when I retired from teaching, previous boards would have discussions. They would vote no on certain things. When Marty Wormwood and Jan Butz were there, things would come back. They would have other perspectives presented. This board, no, all corporate except occasionally, Greg Kappa, thank you for your no votes on occasion. That's all I have to say. Very disturbing. Thank you, Ms. Karen. We have no additional speakers for this item, Chair. All right, I'll return to the board for action. Is there a second? A second. Motion by Supervisor McPherson, second by Supervisor Friend. Any further discussion? Seeing none. Clerk, roll call vote, please. Supervisor Friend. All right. Coonerty. All right. Caput. All right. McPherson. All right. And Koenig. All right. That item passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hia, and I'll officially close the public hearing on that item. We now have a regularly scheduled, two regularly scheduled items for 1030 items, 13 and 14. So the Board of Supervisors will now recess in order to permit the Board of Directors of the Santa Cruz County Flood Control and Water Conservation District of Zone 5 to convene and carry out a regularly scheduled meeting. And as the Chair of the Flood Control and Water Conservation District for Zone 5, I'll officially call an open D meeting. And Clerk, if we could begin with a roll call, please. Here. Thank you. Thank you. Director Friend. Here. Coonerty. Here. Caput. Here. McPherson. Here. Jaff. And Bertrand. Director, you have a quorum. Thank you. Are there any additions or deletions to consent to a regular agenda? Good morning. You know, this is Rachel Patuhi with the stormwater management section, senior engineer. There is no additional deletion to that agenda. All right. Thank you, Ms. Patuhi. Item 3, oral communications. Does any member of the public wish to address the Zone 5 Flood Control and Water Conservation District? Is there anyone on Zoom to please to address us? We have no speakers on Zoom. Right. Then I'll proceed to item 4, approval of Zone 5 meeting minutes. Please. Any discussion on this item? Any member of the public that wishes to address us on this item? Seeing none. Is there a motion to approve by Supervisor McPherson or Director McPherson? Is there a second? Second. Second by Supervisor Friend. Any further discussion? Seeing none. Clerk, we'll call the vote, please. Director Friend. Here. Coonerty. Here. Jaff. Here. Coonerty. Here. Jaff. Jaff it. Aye. Tonic. Aye. And McPherson. Aye. That item passes unanimously. All right. The minutes being approved, we'll proceed to item 5, action on the consent agenda. Any comments or questions on the consent agenda for members of the board? Seeing none. Any members of the public that wish to address us on the consent agenda? Anyone on Zoom? We have no speakers on Zoom. All right. I'll return it to the board for action. Is there a motion? Remove the action. Recommend the action. A second. Motion by Supervisor McPherson, second by Director Friend. Any further discussion? Seeing none. Clerk, we'll call the vote, please. Director Friend. Here. Coonerty. Here. Jaff. Here. Jaff. Jaff. Coonerty. Here. Jaff. And McPherson. Aye. That item passes unanimously. Thank you. We'll proceed to item 8. Consider changes to the Zone 5 rules and regulations related to section 1.9, method of action, 1.11, election of the Zone 5 board chair, section 3.3, district engineer and adopt resolution amending resolution number 4-89z, approving set amendments as outlined in the memorandum of the district engineer. And Ms. Fatui, report on this item. So we're presenting this item for changes. The main change we have is initiated during the last meeting for streamlining the process for the chair and vice chair. And then when we looked at original, I mean, the current rules and regulations, there are a few changes that became necessary, such as a type what we had from the prior resolution. And also we have the Robert Stroll, we changed it to the current practice by the county to Robinson rule, as well as changing the name of the district engineer for public works to the community development or a new name. So those are the changes we did with this amendment to the resolution. Thank you very much. Are there any questions or comments from members of the board? No, Mr. Chair, as you remember, I brought this item, mentioned this last time just to streamline for future boards to make it simple with the two districts that are most impacted to have the chair, vice chair role. And so I appreciate the board's consideration. Thank you, Director Friend. Any member of the public that wishes to address this on this item? Anyone on Zoom? No speakers on Zoom, Chair. Thank you. I'll return to the board for action. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. Motion by Supervisor or Director Friend, second by Director Coonerty. Any further discussion? Seeing none. Clerk, roll call vote, please. Director Friend? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. Krapit? Aye. Koenig? Aye. And McPherson? Aye. That item passes unanimously. Thank you. I'll proceed to item nine to consider approval of the proposed fiscal year 22, 23, Zone 5, and Zone 5 expansion construction budgets, as outlined in the Memorandum of the District Engineer. Does that do it? So this item is approving next year's budget, Zone 5 construction expansion, as well as Zone 5, which is mainly, Zone 5 is mainly from revenues from annual assessment construction. Expansion construction is from impact fees. So the budget in front of you is for the expansion construction, the budget is in the total amount of the, I'm sorry, for operation. For the operation, we're starting with the operation that total, I mean, recommended finance, include an estimated fund balance as of June 30, 2022, a fund balance of a million, or the 45,587, and a tax levy of 829,700. And the recommended appropriation is 1,875, 287, leaving zero in an appropriated revenue. Basically, the revenues are appropriated into expenditures. As for the expansion construction, the recommended financing, including estimated balance as of June 30, 2022, there's a type of fund balance of 772,446, and a drainage fees of 160,000. That's for next fiscal year and permanent processing of 240,000. The recommended appropriations are 1,175, 446, leaving an estimated zero in an appropriated fund balance. With that, we recommend your approval, or if you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer. Thank you. Any questions from members of the board? Seeing none, any members of the public that wish to address us on this item? Anyone on Zoom? No speakers on Zoom. All right, thank you. Then I'll return it to the board for action. Motion would be in order. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. Motion by Director Friend, seconded by Director Coonerty. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk, we'll call vote, please. Director Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. Koenig. Aye. McPherson. Aye. That item passes unanimously. Thank you. We'll proceed to item 10. Considered option of resolution accepting unanticipated revenue of $55,000 in the Santa Cruz County Flood Control and Water Conservation District Zone 5's expansion construction budget is outlined in the Memorandum of the District Engineer. Mr. Coonerty. So for the revenues this fiscal year we're in, we're getting more revenues in reviews than what we anticipated. So what we allocated early on, we are exceeding that. So we need to accept this and addition our revenues so we can continue spending for the remaining part of this fiscal year. And the amount that we underestimated was $50,000. So we're accepting those revenues so we can spend it during this fiscal year. Thank you very much. Any questions from the directors? Seeing none, any members of the public that wish to address us on this item? Anyone on Zoom? We do have one speaker on Zoom. All right. One moment. Monika, your microphone is available. Hi, this is for the following item. Thank you. Not for this one. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. All right. Then I'll return it to the directors for action. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. Motion by Director Friend, second by Director McPherson. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk roll call vote please. Director Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. Koenig. Aye. And McPherson. Aye. That item passes unanimously. Thank you. That brings us to the conclusion of the Zone 5 meeting and I will now adjourn and I will hand it to Supervisor Friend as our Board Chair for the Zone 7 meeting. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Madam Clerk, do you need a minute to promote any of the attendees and to- Yes, please, Chair. Thank you. Let me know when you're okay. There, I believe all of our panelists have been upgraded. Thank you, Madam Clerk, for your help on that. I will now call to order the Santa Cruz County Board of Directors for the Flood Control and Water Conservation District or Zone 7 for our June 7th meeting if we could have a roll call, please. Director Koenig. Here. Coonerty. Here. Caput. Aye. Here. McPherson. Here. Culbertson. Billisich. Here. And Friend. Here. And I also saw that Ms. Lucas is here, although she's a non-voting member. We appreciate her attending. Mr. Machado, are there any changes to today's agenda? Thank you, Chair. No changes today. All right. We'll open it up to oral communications. This is an opportunity for members of the community to address us on items that are not on today's agenda but are within the purview of Zone 7. Is there anybody in the chambers that would like to address us on Zone 7? Seeing none, is there anybody on Zoom or on the phone that would like to address us? Chair, we do have one speaker. Thank you. Call-in user 2, your microphone is now available. This is the flood control and water conservation district. And people have been very diligent over all about water conservation. But we really need to ask the questions about the what is causing these extreme droughts. And yeah. And one of the sources of information I recommend for you and anybody listening is geoengineeringwatch.org with Dane Wiggington. And one of the things he states is that climate engineering operations are blocking the brain. And he cites patents that have been issued for various climate engineering operations. And he also recommended on his website seeing the dimming and said climate engineering is the elephant in the room. What we're seeing is not natural weather like we used to see. That's affecting the crops. And we have a big agricultural area south of this county. So this geoengineering really needs to be halted. So geoengineeringwatch.org. Thank you. It's really disturbing hearing the facts. He also has a program on KSEO Saturday morning 10.80 a.m. for an hour. And you can just hear the facts on geoengineering. Thank you. All right. Is there anybody else for all communications? Madam clerk. We have no additional speakers. Thank you. We'll move on to item four. And before we address the minutes just director Machado perhaps moving forward unless there's something that precludes this we could add the minutes into the consent agenda so it could swept into one action if possible. Are there any comments from directors on the minutes? Seeing none. Is there anybody from the community that would like to address this on the minutes? Anybody online? Madam clerk. No speakers for this item. Sorry I bring it back to the board director Billisich. Do you have a comment? I have a no. I'd like to motion to approve. Thank you. We have a motion. We have a motion from director Billisich. I apologize I missed the second. Also director Koenig. Thank you. Madam clerk roll call please. Director Koenig. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Crap it. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Billisich. Aye. And friend. Aye. We'll move on to item five. Is that action on the consent agenda which are item six and seven. Does any director like to comment on the two items on consent? Is any member of the community would any member of the community like to address this? I'll come back to you director Billisich. Is there any member of the community that would like to address this on this item within chambers? Seeing none. Is there anybody online that would like to address this on Zoom? We have no speakers on Zoom. All right I'll bring it back director Billisich. Do you have a comment on consent? Comment is that I really appreciate item six and the opportunity to teleconference. It's much more convenient and I think efficient too. Thank you director Billisich. Anybody else on comments and consent? Seeing none. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? Motion to approve. Second. We have a motion from director Billisich and a second from director Koenig. If we could have a roll call please. Director Koenig. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Crap it. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Billisich. Aye. And friend. All right. We'll move on to the first item of the regular agenda which is the program manager's report for zone seven. This is item number eight. So we're here to consider a status report on the Pahora River flood management risk flood risk management project as outlined in the memo of the district engineer. Director Machado please. Thank you chair and directors. Just a couple of highlights on the item before you for our management update. A good piece of information including your board letter today is a map of all the reaches that are under proposed for the Pahora project. And most interestingly is the status of our design progress with the Army Corps of Engineers. And they are designing reaches five and six. An update they're highlighted in the board letter is that that design will be about 35 percent complete this fall. Additionally the board letter highlights some new funding in construction that that we have celebrated a bit but I did want to highlight it again. We did receive 67 million dollars from the federal transportation legislation that was approved in November. And so that was good news and that'll go towards that phase one of reaches five and six. So with that just a quick highlights and then the last bit I did want to share and we'll talk about it more here in the near future is tomorrow's public hearing for our proposed assessment which will go towards the maintenance of the capital project that we're talking about now. So June 8th is tomorrow night and the Watsonville Chamber is a 630. With that I will conclude my remarks. The recommended action for this item is to accept and file the status report on the Pahora River Flood Risk Management Project and I am certainly available to answer any questions. Thank you Director Machado. The map was a request of this board previously for just clarity on the location. So I appreciate that that has been provided. Are there any questions from directors before we open it up to the community? Seeing none is there anyone in chambers that would like to address the board on this item? Madam Clerk, is there anybody on Zoom? We have no speakers on Zoom Chair. Great. This is an action item. I'll bring it back to the board for action. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. We have a motion from Director Koenig and a second from Director Bilicic. If we could have a roll call please. Director Koenig? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. Caput? Aye. McPherson? Aye. Bilicic? Aye. And Friend? Aye. We'll now move on to item nine which is a public hearing on Zone 7 assessment rates for the 22 and 23 fiscal year. We're here to hear any objections and protests if any and consider adoption of a resolution confirming the rate report as outlined in the memo of the District Engineer. We have a summary of the assessment rates and a resolution and the assessment rates. Director Machado. Thank you Chair and directors. So this is an annual adoption. This year's assessment does include a 4% inflationary index and this does cover the operations and maintenance of our Pajaro River system. The recommended action is to open the public hearing and hear objections and protests if any to the proposed 22-23 assessment rate report for Zone 7 and to close the public hearing and upon conclusion of the hearing consider adoption of the attached resolution confirming the written report on assessment rates for the 22-23 fiscal year and staff is available to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. Before we open the public hearing, are there any questions from board members on this item? Okay. Seeing none, I'd like to now open up the public hearing. Is there any member of the public that would like to address this on this item within chambers? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, is there anybody on Zoom that would like to address this during the public hearing? We have no speakers on Zoom, Chair. Okay. This will be a final call for comments or protests in regards to this item. Is there anybody that would like to address this during this public hearing? Okay. I'm seeing and hearing none. I will then close the public hearing and bring it back to the board for action. Director Bilisic. I'd like to make a motion for approval. All right. We had a motion from Supervisor Caput. Director Bilisic, would you second that? Yes. Thank you. Okay. Then we have a second from Director Bilisic. If we could have a real call vote please. Director Koenig. Hi. Coonerty. Hi. Caput. Hi. McPherson. Bilisic. Hi. And Friend. Hi. And that concludes Zone 7. Appreciation to Director Bilisic for joining us as well as Ms. Lucas. And then I'll turn it back to Chair Koenig for the regular Board of Supervisors agenda. Chair, do we have item 10? Yeah. One more item. One more item. One more item to get us out. He wouldn't let me. All right. So let's do item 10. Consider the 22-23. Thank you, by the way, Director Machado. Consider the 22-23 proposed budget for Zone 7 and accept to file the semiannual levy inspection reports as outlined in the memo of the district engineer. We have the Zone 7 budget. We have the budget narrative, the levy inspection report for both 21 and 22 and the table as the attachments. Director Machado, please. Thank you, Chair and Directors. So the item before you is our 22-23 proposed budget. The proposed budget includes expenditures of $4,683,279. Those expenditures are funded from three sources. First is the fund balance of $97,444. The second is grant revenues of $2,336,739. And the third revenue source is our assessments at $2,249,096. A critical piece here to really explain this proposed expenditure is Attachment B, our budget narrative information. These are proposed expenditures. I believe it's a good report. It's complete. And we certainly can answer any questions that you may have. The recommended action this morning is to consider approval of the 22-23 proposed budget for the Santa Cruz County Flood Control and Water Conservation District Zone 7 and to accept and file the semiannual levy inspection reports. I'm available to answer any questions you may have. Thank you, Director Machado. Are there any board members that have questions on the budget? Can I have a comment? Please, Director Belichick. I just want to say how much I appreciate all the detailed work, all the inspections that were done. This is pretty comprehensive and, you know, it tells us what condition everything is in. It's really a nice report. So I appreciate your fine work. Thank you. Any other directors with questions or comments before we open it up to the public? Seeing none, is there anybody in chambers that'd like to address us on the proposed budget? Also seeing none, is there anybody, Madam Clerk, on Zoom? We have no speakers on Zoom, Chair. Okay. I'll bring it back to the board for action. Is there a motion? I'll make a motion to approve the new budget. We have a motion for the recommended actions from Director Belichick and a second from Director Koenig. If we could have a roll call vote, please. Director Koenig. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Grapit. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Bilicich. Aye. And Friend. Aye. And now we will actually conclude the item. And my appreciation that I expressed previously did not go away for Director Bilicich and others that attended the meeting. Thank you, Director Machado. I'll hand it back to Chair Koenig for the regular scheduled board of Supervisors next item. Thank you, Supervisor Friend. I'll now resume the regular meeting in Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. I will thank everyone for their patience. We are almost at the item. I think most of you are here to discuss, which is item 11. But first, item 10, Public Hearing to Consider Resolution Confirming Proposed Fiscal Year 22, 23, Assessment Service Charge Reports for County Service Area 12, Wastewater Management, as outlined in the Memorandum of the Director of Health Services. And for a report on this item, we have our Director of Health Services, Monika Morales, and Director of Environmental Health, Marilyn Underwood. Please. Good morning. So thank you. As you described, Chair Koenig, this is a public hearing for the Assessment Community Services Charges, number 12, Wastewater Management for physical year 22 and 23. As a reminder, the CSA-12 was created in 1990. And it was in an effort to address the concerns pertaining to the failing onsite wastewater treatment systems in the county. So as such, with the passage of the local agency management program in October of 2021, the CSA actually became mandatory. What we're trying to do here today is follow up on our discussion for May 10th, where you adopted the Benefit Assessment Services Charges for CSA-12. Today's meeting is really for us to come back as you adopted the resolution that June 7 would be the date for us to have the hearing, the public hearing on this. As such, I want to pass it to Director Underwood to give you more of the details of what this proposal entails that we presented to you as well in May of this year. The gray button on the microphone. Thank you. Good morning, Supervisor Koenig and Board. Thank you, Dr. Morales, Director Morales, for your opening remarks. Again, as she has said that we're talking with you about the service charges for CSA-12 and 12A and 12N, these are all part of a onsite wastewater treatment system oversight. I'll call them OTS, trying to get away from the word septic systems as they become more fancy. This CSA was created back in 1990, and it really was some forethinking by the Board at that time about the need for a program to oversee septic tank maintenance, septic system disposal in general in the whole county, but in particular in the San Lorenzo Valley watershed because of its importance obviously to our water quality. And we know that we have impacts around the county that was summarized in our lamp that I'll talk about in a minute. And then in 1993, the Board created 12N, which I will also talk about a little bit, which are these specific service charges for particular what we call non-standard systems. We've been performing these activities since 1990, 1994, and overseeing these systems, and in fact there's been no increase in the CSA-12 and 12A charges since 1996, and since 2009 there was a change in the 12N. And as you're all very well aware that the state required us with the passage of a state law and also their state policy in 2012, that we developed minimum standards, that we've developed a program that meets the minimum standards they set forth in something called the local agency management program, the called LAMP. We did submit a LAMP to the Board and it was approved in October 14th last year, which allows us to continue to oversee onsite odds, permitting and inspections in this county. In the LAMP and in the state minimum standards, we had to do additional activities. Ironically, most of these are the activities that are already covered under CSA funds. So they not only require us to continue doing those activities, but we need to do a lot of reporting back to the state. And in fact, we need to expand some of our activities, particularly in the groundwater and surface monitoring areas. So I did an extensive study to look at the costs that it will take to carry out these activities that was included in the staff report in the May 10th meeting. So these are reasonable costs to carry out these activities. They do in the again, the thing that you already approved for the service charge increases for CSA 12. This is throughout the county, unincorporated, that have an odd system on their parcel. It would go from $6.90 to $33.32 cents. In CSA 12A, this is within the San Lorenzo Valley watershed. It will go from $18.54 to $23.14. And finally, for those that have non-standard systems, we're proposing a change in just the two of the three systems. Those that have non-conforming, that's a conventional septic system, they needed to do a repair. In some cases, we allow them to do that repair without meeting upgrade standards. It does come with the caveat that they can't do any expansion of their home and upon this transfer of the property, it does need to be upgraded to current standards. We're proposing a change from $1.01 to $331, or you've approved, I should say, $1.01 to $331. And then lastly, our alternative systems. These are systems that enhance systems that have a lot of bells and whistles and need to be overseen to keep making sure that they're acting properly, meaning that they are treating the sewage before it's discharged to our leech field. These kind of systems are required when they say there's not enough groundwater separation or the stream setback issues. These are becoming more and more prevalent in our county because of the site constraints that we have. Currently, we have somewhere around 900 of those. Most of them have what we call as an on-site service provider, an OSSP. We require that under the new lamp that they have a commercial entity to do this work and make sure that once a year we get a report from them. For that we're not changing any service charge. It would still be $167, no change. About 800 of our parcels already do that. We really want to get everybody to join the commercial, but we did cost out the estimate that it cost for us to enforce and IE inspect those systems if they don't take on an OSSP provider. And for that, you have approved an increase from 501 to 1,326. Again, we think these are reasonable costs to cover the expenditures to do this work, especially under the lamp. With this, the recommended actions are used for to open a public hearing. Your support objections are protested. If any, to propose fiscal year 2023 assessment service charge report for the county service area 12, waste fund management, and to close the public hearing and adopt a resolution confirming the proposed fiscal year 2022-23 assessment service charge reports for county service area 12, waste fund management. Thank you. Thank you, Director Underwood and Director Morales. Before I open the public hearing, are there any questions from members of the board? I'd like to make a couple of comments. This has been a long time coming. As you said, this was created, CSA 12 was created in 1991 and we haven't seen an increase since 1996. And in those 30 years or so, the population and housing have been greatly increased. And you've heard me maybe say it before that there was one report at least 10 years ago that said the density of septic tanks in the center of the valley is probably greater of any community west of the Mississippi. So we need to do something about this. It's as was stated by Ms. Underwood about the critical fact that the septic systems play in our water system that in the San Lorenzo River in particular that are so vital to our water sources that we have in Santa Cruz County. I really want to thank the Environmental Health for working on this issue. It's been a long time coming. And once again, we are dealing locally as we had previously in another item, how to respond to state mandates. And this is a case that's related to the environmental aspects of septic systems. So these increases will allow the county to provide the kind of service required by the state in terms of oversight of septic systems. I spent a long time coming and it's much needed. And I appreciate the work that everybody's put into it. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Further comments or questions? Seeing none, I'll open the public hearing. Is there any member of the public that wishes to address us on this item? Seeing none, in chambers. Is there any member of the public on Zoom that wishes to address us on that? We do have a speaker on Zoom. My apologies. They've put, okay, they've put their hand back up. Yes. Call-in user two, your microphone is now available. More taxes. Wow. This agenda's loaded with that. I have a request when the staff report takes place, please spell out the acronyms. There's a lot of them you listed. And could you repeat the one? I want to make comments first, but you changed septic tank ways to what seems like language is often euphemisms to cover up things that aren't so pleasant. And I also wonder with the groundwater and surface water, we really need to have rules that state, for instance, no pesticides, polluters are polluting the surface and groundwater. Why is that permitted? That shouldn't be allowed at all. And there are thousands of chemicals, including in this recent Soquel Creek water, what they call pure water, poop water that you cannot remove all the pharmaceuticals and toxins from. This is further polluting things. It really seems like there is a lack of ecological common sense problem solutions taking place. So again, I'm opposed to this increase. And please tell me what you changed septic tank ways to what? Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Garrett. Are there any, is anyone else wishes to address us on zoom? We have no additional speakers chair. All right. And Director Underwood, would you like to define Otz? Sure. Otz is on site wastewater treatment system. And it's been replacing septic just because we do have so many enhanced treatments that the term septic system is no longer relevant. Thank you. All right, I'll officially close the public hearing and return it to the board for action. Motion would be in order. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. Motion by Supervisor Friend, second by Supervisor Coonerty. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk roll call vote, please. Supervisor Friend? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. Caput? Aye. McPherson? Aye. And Koenig? Aye. Signed and passes unanimously. Thank you. We'll now proceed to item 11 to consider approval of recommended awards from the collective of results and evidence-based, that is, core investment requests for proposals, process and approve agreement between City of Santa Cruz and County related to core funding and contract administration. Direct the Human Services Department to return on June 28, 2022, with final core contract awards. Direct the Human Services Department to return on or before February 28, 2023, with an update on the evaluation of the core RFP process and community stakeholder process and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the Director of Human Services. For presentation on this item, we have our Director of Human Services, Randy Morris, and Assistant Director, Kimberly Peterson. Take it away. Thank you. Good morning, Chair Koenig and members of the board, public watching and members of the public who are here. I am Randy Morris, Human Service Director, joined by Kimberly Peterson, Assistant Director as Chair Koenig described. Appreciate coordination with the clerk of the board who's going to queue up a PowerPoint in a minute to go through today's presentation, but I'd like to make a few introductory comments in part and recognition of the emotion and passion and investment this community has in this program for 40 years. I'm mindful of the point in history I play in this. The first is I want to take a moment to recognize not going through names, but just generically speaking to this is a collaboration with the city of Santa Cruz who Kimberly and I will be in front of this afternoon. This is a dual jurisdiction of funding matter with city funds and county funds and our partnership with city staff, but a host of county staff and other support staff that were a team that helped us move this request for proposal and competitive procurement to where we are today and we anticipated given the challenge in front of us and there were some public comments during general comment this morning. The complicated position that we're all in when you have tens of 20s of 30s of millions of dollars of unmet need in this community and you only have five or six million dollars to spread around it is a complicated moment for the service providers currently funded for those who have been waiting for years and years to be able to have this opportunity to play and get funding for us as staff to establish a fair process and for you as our elected body to sort of figure out how to respond to the passionate emotions. But I stand here very proud as the human services director to give you a presentation with Kimberly that outlines what we did to execute that which the community asked us to do and what your board approved which were the rules and the parameters that were in the competitive procurement. So thank you to the human services and City of Santa Cruz team that helped us do all the work that you'll hear about today. The second comment I want to make is I do want to recognize that this is a process that has been in motion for generations before me and this particular board. This is a program that 40 years ago this Board of Supervisors were providing services through local general fund money to help a number of our local service providers help the community. And for 35 years the process took place in one sort of way and that was a lot of what's in the chambers behind me today and that is people who are providing service and the consumers that they serve coming to your board during budget hearings with great passion and pride in what they do asking your board to give them more money to do more of that good work. And the shadow to that was a lot of service providers who were asking how do I get some of that money. So that led to an action that occurred five years ago today. And that was for the first time ever after 35 years your board approved actually for the first time ever actually putting that money out through a competition called a request for proposal or service providers had to apply for money. And what occurred five years ago was not very many changes. There was a few. There was a lot of passion. There was a lot of debate. There's a lot of fight. And actually your board responded to one of those fights to resource some funding and approved giving the money back even though the procurement led to some cuts. So I want to recognize as somebody is newer to the community that this is a moment after 40 years where there is for the first time ever change. And we are going to talk about how we got to this moment. The process we establish and why we believe this makes sense what we have in front of you today. But I feel like I need to recognize that this is the first time there's change where there is a shifting of dollars between which service provider delivers what I want to take a moment to balance two comments. One is I feel as my responsibility express though not surprised a little bit of disappointment in some of the narratives that are in the community that from what I see are factually incorrect. So my hope is that throughout this presentation your board as our elected officials who have the ultimate decision making responsibility will have full information to make a fully informed decision. You will hear throughout the presentation a number of facts about what played out. And I just want to highlight two because there is a lot of emailing going around requesting people come to this board with talking points to do and I just want to name two things. Number one basically stop these cuts. The package in front of you today represents an 11% increase or $545,000 of more money than is in place today. So this is proposal is an 11% increase. Now from the individual provider perspective there are cuts to particular agencies but there are new agencies and the overall package is a $545,000 increase in services or 11%. So just as you hear the comments about cuts I appreciate and understand from a particular agency who is getting cuts I get it but there is not overall cuts to the safety net of services. There's a pretty large increase. And the second is comments that service providers who are getting cuts had absolutely no notice that this was coming and the rugs being pulled out from under them. Five years ago those who have contracts today were given three years of contract money. Your board approved a one-year extension to align with the two-year budget cycle this board adopted for this first time which gave them a fourth year of funding which to the shadow the CBOs who wanted to get this money had to wait another year. And then the pandemic this board moved it forward yet another year. So the current providers had five years of knowledge that this dollar was going to be put out for competitive bid and so I expressed my disappointment that their comments being made that there was no notice. So those are just two examples in my interest in sharing this is just to make sure as I see it the facts are on the table. My final comment I want to take the moment to share what I believe is my role as the Human Services Department Director who this is not our money. This is the only moment that we come to you as a department with recommendations for money that is yours. 40 years ago the board asked the Human Services Department to manage the contracts and we've carried on that tradition and now we're managing the second procurement ever. But our job in a democracy that's functioning well is to do what you've directed us to do to do it fairly to describe the rules but also to what I anticipate we're going to hear in public comment is to recognize that a functioning democracy involves passion, healthy debate and what I hope is respectful disagreement. If at the end of that your board has all the information you need to make an informed decision to accept our recommendations I feel like we've done our job. But I want to end my introductory comments before we pull up the PowerPoint by sharing with you what I see as a bigger concern of mine. If the economists' predictions are true the Human Services Department that manages $170 million and the Health Service Agency that manages probably $200 million we are likely going to be at a moment in the future we're going to have to be dealing with big cuts. So it is never a comfortable moment for service providers, clients who get services from service providers for us as staff or your board to have to make difficult decisions about cuts. I appreciate that but I'm hoping the end result of this conversation is your board is in a position to make an informed decision and you have all the facts and we welcome hard questions and we will listen closely to public comment as well. So thank you for the moment to share my perspective on this. Mindful, this is a bit of a historic moment and clerk of the board if you could pull up the PowerPoint. So if you could go to the next slide. So this is a quick overview of what I will be covering along with Kimberly. Quick repeat of the recommended actions with a little bit of detail. Talk about a little bit of the history evolution of core that God is today I think that foundation is important. We are going to then give a summary of the applications that were received and then to what I think is some of the most important moments for the public discourse and for your board's liberation is for us to describe in some detail that are in the public materials the process we put in place to move this process forward to ensure a fair application process and the recommended wars are done through a fair way and also the funding recommendations in the role us staff had making a few adjustments that you gave us parameters to work within in the RFP and then we'll end with talking about the role we have as county with city and end with the next steps to summarize what's coming after today's hearing between now and when we hope this budget passes at the end of the fiscal year. So next slide. So here's a summary of the recommended actions. I want to take a minute to talk about today's ask of you on item number one which is to approve the recommended awards. I want to be clear that this is the first of three steps in the process. Today is not the final moment for your board to make the decision about who gets awards. Per the terms of the RFP there is a significant adjustment in the sequence of events from what happened five years ago and that is because of the omicron variant. The service providers asked and we agreed with their request to delay the application deadline by a month. We came to your board in January to ask for you to approve that delay and we came back in March to outline the implications of supporting that delay which led to us having to get board approval to change the appeal process because we had to get to complete this process in time for the fiscal year. So what that has done is last time five years ago most major decisions were made at this moment in time when the awards and then there was appeal process and then it got brought back to the board to sort of just stamp approval for the budget at the end of the year. Today is step one. You'll hear from the community. You'll deliberate. You'll ask us questions. We are recommending you approve the package of awards. This morning all the service providers were per the terms of the RFP given notice by every single application whether they're being recommended forward to a day or whether they are not and their individual score. That triggers the appeal process. That is the second step and that is my recommendation to your board when you hear concerns and passion and arguments about keeping is to recommend the applicants file an appeal. That is the rules of this procurement. After the appeal process is completed then the last moment is on June 28th which is recommended action number three where service providers if the appeal is not upheld they have a chance to lobby to call you and to come back to the board on June 28th at which point you make your final decisions. That was a bit of a different of sequence. So I want to take a moment to make sure you understand that the request to approve recommended awards today is not the final moment. There are two more steps. Second this is the first time that the city and county funding is actually per terms of our agreement braided and the plan is for the county to hold all the contracts. So we have an agreement established and approved by both legal councils in the package and as chair Koenig you listed we ask you to direct us to return on the 28th where you will make your final decisions and we have some technical items we need your support for to execute contracts and then we will talk briefly in Kimberly's presentation about initiating a review process and a lessons learned process in the summer and coming back early next calendar year to provide an update on sort of how the contracts have moved forward and the lessons learned. So next slide. Evolution of core. It strikes me that this storyline listed here is really important to recognize what the rules are in are in this RFP today and what we have staffed to execute the rules in that RFP. For 35 years as I described in my introductory comments community service providers came forward during budget hearings made their arguments your board deliberated and contracts were executed. When the process shifted to what's called core the very first RFP was built upon four strategic plans and those strategic plans were informed in varying degrees by the community and those were the building blocks of how to determine how to for the first time ever award funds based on those four strategic plans. This process led to bringing everything to your board into the city council on the same days and then we which will be the bulk of our presentation implemented your agreements and I'm going to walk through these in a little bit more detail in the next few slides if you can move the slide forward. So the community informed process I just listed the community programs the first RFP since the awards were issued five years ago there have been five years of community engagement sessions with the service providers and other providers who wanted to be able to gain contracts through the next procurement for the last basically four years and then we engage the community more intentionally as we prepared for today. We had five stakeholder meetings that played out last summer where the service providers who have contracts today and those who wanted to apply for contracts had an opportunity to give us as staff feedback which then informed what we brought to your board to approve and if you can go to the next slide I'll share a bit more. Before the terms of this RFP were approved by your board there were seven public meetings where current service providers had an opportunity to speak publicly about what they felt the terms of this RFP should be. We were in front of you in February of 21 we were back in front of you in September of 21 and we came forward to you in November of 21 with the draft RFP. The city had two city council meetings and two community program committee meetings so those seven meetings were opportunities that were made available to the service providers to share what they believe should be the terms of this RFP. The terms of this RFP are as much informed by the parameters that your board approved and my final comments are and what were not included in the parameters of the board and this is where I want to have my last comment here be a pivot to what governed the terms of this RFP. Through those five stakeholder meetings and those seven public meetings there were 12 opportunities for the current service providers to share their perspective about choosing to prioritize a particular core condition of well being to prioritize a particular population to prioritize a particular region or for a particular provider to say why they felt they deserved carve out money and that they didn't have to compete for it and to the best of my knowledge and I've reviewed all 12 of those forums not once did it come up and therefore the terms of this part RFP did not direct or instruct us to organize the application process the panel review process or therefore what we're bringing forward to you based on any prioritization that is a very important fact because as staff it was not our place to manipulate the application process and the ranking process to recommend awards prioritize anything because those 12 moments did not leave to anybody recommend we do so so if you go to the next slide so this put us in the position of executing what your board approved as informed by those multiple opportunities for stakeholders to share what they felt should be the rules in this RFP first and I will say more of this in my closing slides this was a collaboration with the county in the city because the city shares in the funding and we work together every step of the way second to my earlier comments there are a number of service providers who have not had access to this money for for sure 35 years and in the last RFP if they were not awarded any money for really 40 years to create a level playing field we put in place a technical assistance program to help make sure all service providers had a fair opportunity to apply for these funds and as is articulated in the materials there were 64 training sessions provided before the applications were due that ended up supporting 298 participants to help make sure everybody interested in applying had opportunity for some technical assistance to submit a qualified application I'm going to end my comments by referencing these final three bullets and then I'm going to turn it over to Kimberly who's going to share what I believe is the crux of what we believe is fair and open and pieces of information for public comment for your board to focus your questions to us how did we execute to make sure that this process was fair the rankings were fair and the recommended in front of wards in front of you were following the terms of this RFP that this board approved it involved a process of recruiting and training and supporting panel members it involved a process of creating a scoring rubric that was used that was targeting each of the individual tier groups and in the end it involved us to staff within the parameters you approved bringing forward of some modest adjustments to ensure we could get the most amount of awards up to the community possible and Kimberly's presentation is going to cover these in much more detail and the materials also include a lot of information about these details I'm going to turn it over to Kimberly now and I will come back at the end to close out with the next steps thank you thank you randy can you hear me okay so as you make recall and as randy mentioned these are what you're looking at is the total number of proposals received as of March 4th 2022 which was following a one month extension of the initial deadline at the time that we extended the deadline we knew it would have implications further down the line in the process which meant a truncated timeline for reviewing proposals analyzing and submitting recommended awards as well as a truncated appeal timeline what you can see in this graph is that there were 127 applications received this represented 70 127 applications from 78 agencies we received 79 applications for new programs and 48 applications from existing programs and as you can see there were nearly 16 million dollars worth of requests which was more than two and a half times the available amount of funding but you can also see when you look at the column under the small tier is that there were fewer small tier proposals than there was available funding and as we will discuss a little bit more we took a portion of the remaining funding and moved it into other tiers and just to set up a moment of context this RFP was set up through um through tiers based on the amount of funding requested by each applicant and that's what you were seeing on the last slide as it relates to the panel process though we had a truncated timeline we worked to ensure that their process was still thorough and fair extensive outreach was done to recruit panelists with reference to the feedback that had been received from lessons learned from the prior RFP to have a local and diverse representation on the panels we had 58 panelists all panelists went through a training that was provided on the scoring rubric there was a scoring rubric for each tier level and following each panelist's opportunity to review the proposals and score them on their own there was each panel reconvened to discuss any discrepancies or variances among their scores and they had an opportunity to change those scores if they chose following that meeting during the panel review period the panelists had support from the core team if they had any questions regarding the process during the course of their review we had 19 panels and they were organized by core condition of all the applications received panelists were assigned based on their connection to the core conditions of the proposals and demographics as mentioned we were striving for a locally representative diverse group of panelists once all panelists had submitted their scores met with their fellow panel members and had an opportunity to adjust their scores if they chose then the final scores were averaged for each application and utilized to determine the final score of the proposal and the final scores were used in the ranking process for each tier funding recommendations so since applicants submitted their proposals at the end of February or early March we recognize that people have been very eager to know the results on May 26th we sent an email to all applicants letting them know that the funding recommendations would be presented at the June 7th board meeting and that we would send them the links to the materials once they were published last Thursday on June 2nd we sent all applicants a follow-up email letting them know that the board meeting materials have been published and that their and that their formal notification of their awards and whether they are being recommended for an award or not would be emailed to them on the morning of June 7th that formal email triggers the appeal process which will then end June 10th this Friday at the close of business the appeal period had been adjusted due to the truncated timeline as referenced earlier and we went to acknowledge that had we sent the formal notifications to applicants at the same time that the board materials were published was something we considered then that notification would have triggered the appeal timeline providing applicants less time to appeal if they chose to we recognize there's been a number of inquiries regarding releasing the scores and the fullest of applicants publicly we had not done that for a couple reasons one was that we had referred back to what process had been followed during the last round of the RFP cycle and at that time only recommended proposals were published in the materials and the other reason that we hadn't done it it was out of respect for organizations that were not funded and providing them an opportunity to see their own scores and consider what they wanted to do with that information this morning as Randy mentioned all applicants were emailed both their formal notification of the results and their score they were also provided a link to the human services department core website which includes additional information regarding the RFP process including the scoring matrix training documents and other materials I will also acknowledge that in light of the the number of requests that we have received over the last few days from a number of organizations and and elected officials to provide the fullest of applicants and in some cases rankings or scores we did also provide the information of all applicants by tier with high level buckets for the most competitive applications by tier so following the entire review and scoring process we did staff did utilize some of the discretion allowed within the RFP to make some minor adjustments as mentioned there were fewer applications received in the small tier than we had funding available so and following the scoring of the small tier funds we established a minimum score of 68 to recommend for funding and move the remaining funding over to the medium and large tiers we also used staff discretion to make a slight to make a slight 3 adjustment to all medium large and targeted impact grants allowing us to utilize all available funding and also fund two more medium and large tier proposals finally during the March 8 board meeting there have been direction to carve out funding for seals meal senior meals programs and align that award with the award that was made by the area agency on aging for senior meals so we did that and that proposal was included with the large tier proposals and is being recommended within that category along with the other large tier proposals for recommended funding of $436,000 as is in the materials so Randy's described the process that led that led up to this RFP and the the efforts for community and stakeholder engagement that have taken place up to this time and also in defining the RFP it was really it was community driven in the sense that it was up to the applicants to define the need in the community equities was an essential part of this RFP as well and applicants were to describe the need in the community for the inequity that they viewed and how they would address it equity was also a central part of the process from the perspective of providing an equitable opportunity for applicants an