Good morning to everyone. It's February 2, 2021. I'm going to call to order the meeting of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. Please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Here. Friend. Here. Coonerty. Here. Caput. Here. Chair McPherson. Here. We will now have a moment of silence prior to the Pledge of Allegiance. I don't know if anybody has anything to say before we have a moment of silence. Chair, if you would let me go ahead and share my screen so if people need to join us that they can have that information. Very well. So welcome to the teleconference February 2, 2021 Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisor meeting pursuant to the provisions of the governor's executive order and 2-9-2-0. This meeting is being held virtually. The county welcomes the public to participate in today's meeting using the Zoom link provided here on our website. Provide it on our website at Santa at www.SantaCruiseCountyCA.IQM2.com. Click on today's date and then the agenda. You will find the Zoom link there or you may type it in as you see it here on your screen. If you wish to participate by phone you may do so by calling 1-669-900-6833. The meeting ID is 811-6828-0214. Again, you may call 1-669-900-6833 and enter the meeting ID 811-680214. If you need further help logging into today's meeting you may call the clerk of the board's office at<PHONE_NUMBER> and someone can help you log into the meeting. As always you may watch live the live stream broadcast of today's meeting through the Santa Cruz County CA.IQM2.com the county Facebook page or through the community TV website. Thank you. Chair you can continue now please. Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. We will now have a moment of silence followed by the Pledge of Allegiance now recites the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Item number three on the agenda is the consideration of late additions to the regular agenda additions and deletions to consent agenda and regular agendas. Mr. Palacios do we have any additions to the agenda? Yes thank you chair McPherson. We do have some corrections an addenda and also a request to have a late addition. I'll start with the corrections on the regular agenda. Item number seven there's additional materials there's a revised memo packet page 11 on the consent agenda on item number 10. There's additional materials there's a revised minutes packet page 20. There's an addenda to the consent agenda item 29.1. This is to adopt a policy goal to create a collaborative countywide approach to ensure no family with children under 18 years old remains unsheltered for the more than 90 days by December 2021. Direct the county administrative officer the director of the human services department and the housing for health division director to work with all appropriate county staff and community partners to develop and prioritize programs resources and partnerships to ensure families with children do not go without shelter and to return no later than May 25th 2021 with a report on the development and implementation of the programs including any additional resources necessary to achieve this policy goal is recommended by supervisor Coonerty and supervisor McPherson. There's a board memo printout as well and finally chair McPherson there's a late addition to the regular agenda that we are requesting. This is item three it is requested that the board of supervisors determine by majority vote that an emergency situation exists as defined by government code section 54956.5 requiring prompt action. Item 8.1 would consider adoption of a resolution establishing a state of local emergency as a result of damage to roads and other county property from the January 2021 storms and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the county administrative officer. There's a board memo printout and a resolution emergency proclamation. So the first item chair that we would ask is that you consider a vote to add this item to the agenda. Okay that's 8.1 right yes it would be added as 8.1. Okay. Mr. Chair I'll move to add that to the agenda. Second. Okay we need to vote uh we guess we do need to vote to add that to the agenda call the roll please. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Caput. Aye. Chair McPherson. Aye. Does that complete your report on the consent and regular agendas Mr. Pachas. Yes that does thank you. Okay we will now go to announcement by board members for items removed from the consent or regular agendas. Anybody want to remove anything from the consent agenda? Okay item number five public comment. This is a time for any person to address the board once during the public comment period not exceeding two minutes. Comments must be directed on today's consent or closed session agendas or regular agenda and uh or on any topic on today's agenda but within uh speak up not on today's agenda but within the jurisdiction of the board excuse we'll take public comments now for up to 30 minutes if necessary. Additional time will be made for public comments allowed after the last item of today's uh regular agenda. Do we have any uh public comments? Yes we do chair if if you wish to comment and you are calling in from a phone please dial star nine now this will virtually raise your hand I will identify you by your last four digits of your phone and when you hear me say the last four digits of your phone number please dial star six to unmute yourself. Only dial this once if you dial it a second time you will remute yourself. Once you dial star six you may start to speak the timer we're we'll start when you begin and chair if you will give me one second to share my screen to bring up the timer. Thank you. One second chair I'm sorry I'm having I apologize chair I'm having uh that's okay I think everybody understand this time that you get to take your time it's been working very well since the first of year so don't worry about it maybe it's because it's February there we go. I'm trying to center this so the people watching can see the timer and for some reason my keyboard is not wanting to respond. I see the timer on my screen. Can you see the whole thing? Okay that's fabulous. Two minutes three three sets start. Excellent our first speaker is Corinne Hayland you have two minutes to speak I'm unmuting you please accept the unmute and start speaking the timer will begin when you start speaking. Thank you. Good morning my name is Corinne Hayland I oversee the county health services agency oral health program in partnership with Dientes community dental care we staff the oral health access committee a group of local experts community leaders and education advocates with the goal to improve oral health of Santa Cruz County residents supervisor friend as a co-chair of the committee along with Dr. Cepi Tagvei chief dental officer of Dientes. I'm here today to thank the board for signing a proclamation recognizing this year's four oral health hero awardees. The oral health heroes will be recognized at the upcoming oral health summit held this thursday february 4th the lifetime achievement award will be given to Cynthia Matthews for her decades of oral health promotion as past mayor Santa Cruz city council member and current member of the oral health access steering committee. She had spearheaded water fluoridation efforts and advocacy led the charge for more access to dental services through increased community investments and has supported a new dental clinic in the city of Santa Cruz. The oral health team award for outstanding non-dental professionals will be given to David Brody executive director and Alicia Fernandez health outreach and enrollment supervisor of first five Santa Cruz County for their steadfast and synergistic collaboration to promote oral health education to families of young children therefore aiding in the prevention of childhood caries. The oral health award for outstanding non-dental professional excuse me will be given to Noel Helch Cabrillo college dental hygiene program director for her passionate promotion of oral health care both locally and globally and for her commitment to education and training of future dental professionals. We hope you can join the celebration of our local oral health heroes. Invitations have been sent to all of you for the Oral Health Summit this Thursday February 4th via Zoom. Thank you. Thank you very much for your your recognition of that program and to our own supervisor and friend for being so involved with Matthews Brody and so many others. Congratulations on a very successful and very necessary and meaningful program for the county. Our next speaker is Carol Bjorn. You have two minutes to speak. I am unmuting you. Please accept the unmute and start speaking. The timer will begin when you start speaking. Good morning. This is Carol Bjorn. Can you hear me? Yes. Awesome. Good morning. So last week I gave you all a common sense approach to considering whether a vaccine for COVID is necessary. By posing the question why would you need a vaccine for a disease with a 99 recovery rate? I hope you took some time to ponder this question. Today I would like to look at the vaccine issue from a legal point of view with the following question. Is mandating the COVID-19 vaccine legal? And the answer is no. Mandating or requiring a COVID-19 vaccine for schools or businesses or the community in general is not legal. It violates federal law to do so. To illustrate this I'd like to read a letter from Children's Health Defense that was sent to all of the superintendents in California. So PCR testing and COVID-19 vaccines are not fully licensed products. They are EUA products which means their emergency use authorization products which by their very nature are are legally considered investigational. As these are experimental medical products it's unlawful and unethical for schools to mandate either a PCR test or any currently available COVID vaccine. Federal law confirms explicitly that EUA product must be voluntary because the federal statute requires the option to accept or refuse administration of the product. Further it also violates mandating PCR test or experimental COVID-19 vaccines also violates California state law. It's California health and safety code 24172. Federal and state law on this matter rests on the first principle of the Nuremberg code requiring that the human subject be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice without undue inducement or any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, or other form of constraint or coercion. This is a bright line test that cannot be blurred. So I just wanted to make sure that you guys are all thank you caller whose telephone number ends in two nine one five. You have two minutes to speak. I'm unmuting you. Please accept the unmute and start speaking. The timer will begin when you start. Good morning. This is Becky Steinbruner. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. I support what the former speaker said completely and I do not support mandatory vaccinations. It's not a vaccine. She's spot on. It is not a vaccine. So thank you and I hope that you will the board will carefully consider that. I want to I'm a little surprised that there was a local emergency declared for road damage. Our county really dodged the bullet on this last storm. And so I want to point out to the board that there is already a storm damage repair on Schulte's road. That's consent item number 27 was the damage on Schulte's road related to that just that it got worse. So I am aware of the damage on Blanche school road, though, and that was I'm glad that PG&E worker made it okay. I want to bring to you that the damage that has been done to the 5,000 people who evacuated during the debris flow and had no place to go. Supervisor McPherson, your newsletter sent out at 5 p.m. a week ago Tuesday, instructed people to find a hotel. The fairgrounds was not open. Even though the board was told it was, it was not. The livestock gate was closed and locked on Wednesday. There were no animals allowed to be taken by Ecoin evacuation to the fairgrounds at all. There is an MOU with the county that the fairgrounds must be available for disaster sheltering. The harvest building in which houses a kitchen that the county paid for to put in for mass feeding was filled with a hot tub and spa show. No people were allowed to evacuate and shelter there. This is wrong and I have contacted Mr. Beaton by email three times and he's not responding. Chair, I do not see anybody else's hands raised. I believe that is the end of public comment. Okay, thank you. We will look at the consent agenda. Are there any items on the consent agenda, Mr. Koenig, that you would like to address? Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to point out item 21, the two-year $1.5 million grant from the Disaster Recovery National Dislocated Worker Program. It's a great program. I think it's fantastic that we're providing work opportunities for folks who have suffered from the CZU complex fire and more over creating opportunities that help to clean up and repair public spaces like Big Basin State Park. On item 23, the contract with BitFocus, which is for $288,000 a year to provide data for homeless services. Obviously, data is an essential part of our homeless programs and services and I just want to encourage us to get the public-facing parts of those dashboards available as quickly as possible. You know, as I've mentioned numerous times, this issue is of top concern to the public and I think that we need to be able to demonstrate to them as well as to ourselves what progress we're making. So at $24,000 a month, we should be able to do it and I'm looking forward to seeing those dashboards. That's it. Thank you, Supervisor Friend. Mr. Chair, I have nothing to specifically comment on on the consent agenda. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Koenig, Supervisor Coonerty. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a couple of comments in one additional direction. I'm number 19, which is the FIT. That's the Focus Intervention Team. It says that we would assess to incorporate in the budget but this board voted to to provide half a year's funding so I just asked that we change the direction to incorporate it into next year's budget. Item number 20, which is the water resources. I just want to thank our water resources team between the fire and the debris flow. We could have had additional crisis of having the cities and the county's water resources severely impacted more than they already were and the water resources team had a great response and we're lucky that we're able to maintain water service and then restore the water service to the communities that were impacted. Item number 29, it's about the tree work that the Department of Public Works did. I just want to take a moment and thank them. They did it in a way that was collaborative and effective and it was ensured the safety and the protection of our infrastructure. So I just want to give a moment of appreciation and finally on 29.1, which is the late addition that Supervisor Chair McPherson and I added to have a develop a policy and a strategy for no unsheltered local families with kids under 18. This is something I've been working on for a long time. We have a preference from the Housing Authority for Section 8 vouchers for local families. So there's a path for them to go. Hopefully those, we increase the number of vouchers and with a targeted and effective outreach program and problem solving we can make sure that there are no kids out in the rain tonight. San Mateo has a similar policy and in addition Housing Matters just received a large grant from the Bezos Family Foundation to address this issue. So I feel like the pieces are coming together and if the county really focuses its efforts we can achieve this goal. And I also just want to take a brief moment. This was a policy that was really important to Alison Ender. She worked on it constantly trying to help kids directly who she knew were homeless at night and then overall shift the county's policy and I want to you know just just do this in her memory and her honor as a as something that was incredibly important to her. Thank you. Very good. Supervisor Caput. Thank you Chairman McPherson. I'll just make a quick comment on the here at the shelter at the Veterans Building in Watsonville. We do have women with children. I don't know yourself and Supervisor Coonerty. When you say families with children is that the husband and wife and the child or the mother and father and the child? Yeah or or one parent. The real point is to help make sure we have no unsheltered kids. Okay great. That's great. That's about it. Everything's going okay here. Okay that's good to hear. I have a couple of items on number 14 the operation plan update. This was a very ambitious program for 2019-21 to subset of our strategic plan. The operations plan though I want to thank the CEO and all the departments who have played an integral role in taking our strategic initiatives and bringing them to life. I mean I think that we had 180 objectives 64 completed and I think that 44 have been amended and we have a high percentage that we've achieved or are underway but the challenging events of 2020 will continue well into this year have a necessitated review of our operational plan. So I frankly have learned a lot through our pandemic and fire response that we need to be incorporated into our plan going forward. I'm just glad we have it. This is something people we really took an effort as a county to reach out to everyone include all departments to say what do we need to do whether it be in recreation public health transportation what is the needs of our community and how do we address those needs and get to them and we are doing a fantastic job. The interruption of the fires and the COVID have really put a dent in this and that's why it's delayed but I look forward to seeing this updated plan in August. I just want to thank everyone who has put so much time in this for us to reach the essential and important goals that we have. I too would like to mention on the water resources report but thank the environmental health for generating this big it's a huge report. It's going to be invaluable for understanding of our water systems in the future in our water supply and I think a special thank you for the efforts made to secure and maintain our water quality and supply after the fires there's also much work going on outside the burn area to deal with long-term plans the mid-county area has done its groundwater basin plan I and now supervisor Koenig are involved in the valleys of scott's valley sands ones of valley on the santa margarita wastewater plan and we it's a critical element and it's good to have this updated repair or report. I do want to thank the public works department for managing our storm damage repairs and critical infrastructure replacement that's items 26 25 and 6 the needs of some of these repairs go back to more than four years and so it points out just how long it takes to get the matching funds to get the plan to get the environmental review all those aspects to get this done but we did it and I think it's we're doing a great job and my hats off to the public works department and then on 29.1 I want to thank supervisor Coonerty for bringing this forward the housing for the families with children that are experiencing homelessness a critical part of this huge issue that we have and we're going to manage it to the best of our abilities with the financial resources that we do have with that I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as amended I don't think the motion are all second either. Okay move by Coonerty seconded by Caput to approve the consent agenda as amended please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Hi. Friend. Hi. Coonerty. Hi. Caput. Hi. And Chair McPherson. Hi. That passes unanimously. We will now go to our regular agenda item number seven consider the presentation of the long-range facilities plan as outlined in the memorandum of the deputy CEO director of public works Matt Machado. We have a long-range facilities plan and I think Mr. Machado is going to make the presentation on this. Chair it's actually going to be Travis Kerry the okay if you will give me one second I will bring him into the meeting. Very well thank you. Mr. Kerry you should be able to present. Okay can you hear yes can you hear me now yes we can okay I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen for the presentation okay can you see the presentation yes thank you excellent good morning chair and board Travis Kerry director of capital projects department of public works and it's my great pleasure to present the long-range facilities plan to you today it's been about a year and a half in the making and so we're really excited to get this plan accepted and move on to the implementation phase where we can so I wanted to real quickly acknowledge the steering committee that is the membership of the steering committee is listed in the plan included representatives from every department in the county and some of our partner agencies as well and CAO staff and and some supporting staff as well for all the working groups so it all support there and I want to also quick thank you to the Gensler team our consultants for their expertise and guidance and creating the plan especially through our challenges with COVID this plan was primarily finished up during during COVID and remote work so that continued with a slight delay but otherwise looking pretty good and I also wanted to oh and I want to mention the Gensler team is listed in the plan as well and I want to have a special acknowledgement for Peter Dettlitz formerly in the CAO's office and now with HST Peter came in and helped co-manage this project with me and then really took a leadership role when we had some staffing changes and transitions he took a leadership role with the departmental interviews the facility tours and we just we had innumerable meetings on this project and he also did a great job helping coordinate the consultant so that I'm very very much appreciated so with that let's get started so here's an agenda for today I'm I'm going to look at the goal and the focus series of the plan briefly and then I want to talk a little bit about the fit into the strategic operational plan that chair McPherson just mentioned and then we'll talk briefly about some of the limitations of the plan and go over a process map that we used for the plan development and then we'll get into the actual plan itself and I'm I'm just going to review you know some of the highlights out of the plan mostly in the property and space needs area and then really focusing on the recommendations and then we'll talk about some next step projects that are in the works and the board recommendation so here's the overarching goal of the the project and the plan so I'll let you read it a little bit there it's it's pretty long I wanted to point out it's a 20-year plan so this is a long-range plan that's why it's in the title it is a you know pretty pretty far-reaching so keep that in mind and we're setting guiding principles and standards for this so a few new standards are recommended and then this is really a framework and so it's giving us a good comprehensive look at our resisting facilities and some good recommendations going forward for both facility and some campus master planning and there's a time with the county strategic plan and the operational plan and we'll look at that briefly on the next slide so the focus areas we looked at all the county owned and leased facilities that's really important as we'll see later and then we we distilled it down to seven priority properties they're called they're the largest campuses and the rural employment centers for the county and we identified two potential surplus properties and then you know we looked at current and future staffing and service delivery really important looking at not just county facilities from the staffing standpoint but service delivery is a primary you know study part of this study so and then of course looking for opportunities for consolidation and more effective leasing the facilities that we have okay so here's here's our county operational plan implementation so the the long-range facilities plan is in objective 140 of of the operational plan for public works and it was basically they're called campus master plans and so it's the second component in there the board did accept the first phase opportunities and challenges study April 2019 and so now we're looking at the second phase I wanted to point out the two red X's on we were planning to do a master plan for the Freedom Boulevard campus as well as the government center and then the subsequent environmental review because of the budget constraints those two elements of the objective have been delayed and you know it's possible that could come back at a later date if we can identify some more funding and need there and so today we're focusing on the long-range plan it was authorized by the board back in September 2019 and so we're looking today for a a second time actually so quickly on the limitations if the plan includes a majority of the county facilities however does not address jails and detention facilities we did look at you know the sheriff's staff when we looked at staffing levels especially at the shanticleer site so that was included but this is not a jails and detentions facility and we did not cover non-county agencies so some of our sites have county partners in there that was not a part of the study this is like an immediate error message here also does not include parks or the the parks master plan the parks has their own master plan that they follow for their development we did look at parks in terms of what the county owns and we did include again the park staff and the simpkins swim center is one of the priority properties but the park's master plan is not part of this this plan and then there's some limitations on implementation i want to point out that that this plan does not implement specific projects and it does not fund specific projects it gives some costing ideas and some and the framework as we talked about but this plan itself is a plan and so projects coming out of the plan then then go through the normal development and review and budgeting process and then some of the plan recommends following up with some site specific master plans and so that's that's another element that that is a big potential on some of the county campuses but is not specifically part of this plan there's also been in the plan about market analysis and financial evaluation of course as you know markets change those those assumptions can change too it's also it was a pre-covid plan the concept was developed prior to covid but there could be limitations there but based on the long-term nature of the plan we're hoping that that is not a big of an impact and we're actually implementing several projects because of covid like some of the remote work recommendations and some actual lease consolidation work is actually happening because of covid and we're trying to make the best for that situation right so here's our process map this is actually part of the plan so the the long-range facility plan is a four-step process in four different phases and so we had a pretty pretty robust project startup we went into phase two and that's where all the workshops and departmental surveys happen the consultant team and the key staff toured every single facility in the county that was part of the plan and did a pretty good assessment of that and then we we talked about service delivery the department's all participated in a in a pretty robust survey as well and then we went into the draft plan and now before you today is the final plan right so this is the table contents out of the the actual plan so it gives you an idea of the the types of work that went into the plan i'm going to talk briefly about some of the items a little bit on real property and some space requirements and really focusing though on the recommendations out of the plan today so here's the real property section it was quite a bit of work we we did a lot of background provided a gensler with with everything we could possibly find out about what we own and it was a pretty pretty interesting undertaking here's some of the summary facts the county owns you know over 2000 acres of land which which is it's a lot of land 1.4 million square feet of facilities and then 159 buildings and you see in the upper left that speaks about the age of our facilities and so a whopping 31 percent are older than 1949 and then most another big chunk are older than 1989 so that gives you a sense of some of the age of our facilities and and then the map here it really shows it shows how distributed the facilities are and there's some recommendations around consolidation that will come out of that distribution and then we did look at workforce distribution and so there's there's a lot of stats on the plan about that okay and then this this slide is talking about our leases and so the leases make up about 16 percent of the county workforce are in leased facilities and and those are on the map it shows them distributed around there's a lot of lease activity in south county there's there's also leases centralized in around the government center for the primary leases 125 000 square feet of lease space at this time so here's the map of the priority properties and they're listed out here on the map as well so there's seven priority properties it's the government center here emeline campus freedom boulevard campus the center for public safety on shanticleer simpkins swim center and then the two main dpw maintenance yards at bromer and down in watsonville ahead so here's an example of some of the data that was collected for our campuses and all of our facilities so it's the first time we have a comprehensive look at all of our data um how many staff on each site how many staff are in each building how large each building is what the operations are there so it's a it's a really good resource source now to have all of this information collected you know provided by gsd and gis and all the departments in the interview so it's really great and we'll see this example of freedom boulevard carried throughout the presentation and so you could see see how that moves forward so a lot of work went into space requirements that's a that's a big deal is we're looking at how to use our facilities and what our projections are so here's some of the issues we looked at under under space so this is showing our projected growth the historical staffing and then our projected growth in staffing again mostly from departmental interviews so and then built on you know other other data from the consultant and so you know we're looking at a potential increase in staffing over and again this is out to 2039 at this point so it's it's not insignificant and here's the look uh combined you know with staffing then we're also looking at at how much space we use and so we looked at each department each building and what our average the both square foot per person in each facility and you can see it various by department some departments are more efficient some some are squeezed into buildings and some have a lot of room to move of course you have to look at what types of operations are done in there's two so it's it's not necessarily a one-to-one comparison but it does come up with an average of 233 usable square foot per person and then the way that that pulls forward is we're looking at recommendations of two different standards so for hsa and hsd we're looking at a 230 so a slight reduction and then overall at the county 190 square foot so that's less obviously quite a bit less than than what we're currently using i think this this graphic is really interesting and so this shows where we are now we're pretty high up on the right i'm at 233 usable square feet and then the recommendations are again 230 so a reduction and then down to 190 and this shows other counties Sonoma county for example is at 193 county Los Angeles is is way down at 159 and then there's some some private sector information in there too and another variable to add into the space needs of course is remote work and workplace mobility and so you know some of the the studies Gensler has a lot of experience actually in workplace mobility and you'll see an item coming to the board later on a workforce mobility study and so through that implementation we could look at significantly reducing the required usable square foot even more so into the recommendations it's divided into sort of the portfolio recommendations and then some recommendations around party properties and then some some surplus properties so here's sort of the the big six portfolio recommendations consolidate in the real property portfolio is number one it's it's really you know we can use a lot of work it's developed over time without a real plan and so there's a lot of potential there and then number two is the support housing development there's a lot of potentially vacant land that the county owns and also that would also go into supporting housing development not and then recommendations around workplace quality collaboration between departments and between employee groups and then overall recommended recommendations around safety and security at camp county workplaces but also for making sure our service delivery points are safe and secure for our clients and then supporting flexible work so here's a look at one of the one of the recommendations and you'll see here it's really talking about trying to be more efficient with with the land and the facilities that we have some ideas over in the recommendations eliminating leases so lease consolidation is a big part of this you'll see the list the leases listed there these are our main leases that when we talk about lease consolidation these are the big ones collating co-locating customer service one-stop shop came up a lot and and potentially that could be more one-stop shop opportunities in south county as well so that all the services aren't necessarily located at the government center and sharing counters and then the fourth on recommendations is it's possible that there are some some strategic acquisitions that we get to that would better serve the county in terms of facility and location and then you know if consolidation can happen around that effort is a big potential here's one of the housing development the other recommendations this is important because what the plan identified is that there are unused or potentially more usable land owned by the county that could be used for housing development what what model that would take would you know need to be determined but about over 18 acres of land either not currently used or that could be used more efficiently and then that would be looking at the county of Miami but also opportunities to have more more support with with some community partnerships so here's a recommendation example out of the priority properties again this is freedom boulevard that we saw before and so here what what we're seeing is some recommendations on potential surplus land and then some ideas for how the site could be developed and again keep in mind this is a long-term plan so we have a lot of folks working here on this site there's a lot of services on the site now so this is not not an immediate proposal but but it does make more efficient use of the site and freedom boulevard in particular has a lot of really really old buildings on here and we have a lot of maintenance issues bsc is continually struggling with with keeping some of these buildings going and so we're looking at you know this site is really interesting you know we have some newer buildings older buildings there's a lot of potential to to go a little bit taller be more efficient be more efficient with parking and then potentially have some surplus property either as a sale or as a partnership opportunity for for housing development something like that so that's an example there and then there's actually two properties were identified as as potential surplus properties and again this would this would need more consideration by the board and so there's there's one came up on Prather Lane this is a live oak adjacent to the Winkle Park 1.98 per site there and then there's a the county owns a property down on the Esplanade on Rio del Mar adjacent to the the recent fire that happened on the the facility at the corner there so that was bought by the county it's a small site there there are development issues there but there has been interest in the site and so again that's that's the second surplus property so here's a here's a little look at the implementation guide and so this is the the 20-year plan here and then in the plan it gets a little bit more detailed about in five-year increments and so what you see here is a lot of phasing you know it gets really complicated really fast if you especially if you're talking about demolishing and building new buildings that we have existing employees and service coming from so some of the arrows up and down are linkages so if we're moving folks out of one building is there swing space they need to go into when you demolish a building then you build a new one and and who's going to move into there so that stuff is is pretty exciting it does get really complicated really fast so and that's where again support from potentially a more detailed campus site specific master plan would would be able to better inform that and then combine with with our lease consolidation so the last section of the plan was a financial evaluation we looked at occupancy costs and some capital costs but real quickly here the the the second box is again freedom boulevard campus and then what we did is we had the the recommendations actually cost it out and you can see they they get very expensive very fast and so this is why we want to make sure that we know what we want to do we know how we want to use the sites the most efficiently and then and then follow that up with with more detailed costing but again this is a long-term plan so we do have some strategic decisions to make there and then this is a little bit more detail on that same site so this is coming from the appendix actually and how some of the costing models were developed and then you see here at the bottom that 179 million again and how those carry forward to the development so the concept here was building quite a bit at freedom boulevard again that that needs to be seen if that's the best thing to do okay so here's some next steps we have a lot of activity in this area right now so we are actively working on lease consolidation and we've had one lease already that we've slated for for moving out of a lease facility and then you'll see coming to the board February 23rd a workforce mobility study and space planning and that's primarily focused on the leases that are in south county as well as one lease in in the north county that's that's close to the government center and that will be looking at how to implement the remote work within those individual departments there'll be a robust survey and then some detailed space planning and what what that information looks like in terms of what space needs are at the time and then you'll also see February 23rd the bromariard master plan coming before you that was one of the primary properties priority properties and public works has gone ahead and done a conceptual master plan that put out property and then surplus properties again we we went over those two properties and we're hopeful to come to the board you know in spring and summer and start looking at some direction on those properties and there's there's potential of course for more campus master planning especially as things move around with lease consolidation possibly down at freedom boulevard and then there's active work being pursued by gsd on the fourth floor space planning a concept you know to make make our 701 building here a little bit more efficient and and be able to serve serve the public better and then there's online work at suite b and again these gsd projects that are coming forward are now being undertaken with the idea that that everyone has really increased their communication when we're talking about capital facilities and construction and what kind of maintenance happens with sort of a new less siloed approach and and more communications so we all know going forward hopefully we can all work together and make things happen in a more more comprehensive manner and then there's some recent policy development going on too around capital facilities and to the extent we can you know incorporating obviously the strategic plan but also the long-range facility plan and other strategic departmental strategic plans into capital facility decision making and so our recommendation today is to accept and file the long-range facility plan and that concludes my presentation thank you mr carrey for a very thorough report and much needed i'm going to make a couple comments and then ask the board before we go to the public this is a long time in coming our original long-range facilities plan was done in 1994 and that doesn't mean the county hasn't been doing anything for the last 27 years for sure but i think it's really very very timely for us to get an update i really appreciate the efforts that have gone into creating this property inventory and evaluations the changes needed based on our community's needs among the recommendations outlined in the staff report i'd like to highlight three that i think are most critical that we make every effort to identify how our properties could be used to make housing more affordable and to increase overall supply and this could be controversial as you said the housing needs are i think 10 000 units by 2029 which is not very far away but you can there'll be a lot of pushback for people concerned about traffic issues and and water needs and adequacy so it's it's going to be interesting how we address this but it needs to be addressed because we do know we have some housing needs um also i appreciate the effort to identify where some of our county services are not very accessible to certain communities and of course i would like to include the sander in the valley in that in my district and ask that we include that part of the county in our efforts to create a new service hub of some sort and i want to underscore the benefits of our remote work policy and the positive impact it can have on our health and well-being for employees as well as reducing traffic and parking needs the largest carbon footprint in this county comes from our employee commutes so we can address environmental objectives as well as we are going for government service needs at the same time and i'm sure i and others will have more questions when specific projects come come up as of this summer i take it but i i really want to thank our CAO for leading this effort and to really dive in deep into what we have what we need and where we can be more economically responsible and really more importantly have provide better services to more people in the county in a very very environmentally sensitive way so those are the couple of comments i have but i think it's a tremendous presentation that's well needed at this time and i would invite members of the board if they have any comments i'll start i saw a supervisor friend this time thank you mr chair thank you mr carrey mr debtless for your thorough project that clearly had you know took was even more difficult over the last year for a lot of reasons associated with coven you know there are a few comments i'd like to make the first one to echo what chair mcfirstin said is that this is an essential project or process that we're going through and and i and i hope that it's clear that that the goal here isn't to just have a a plan that sits on a shelf but to really be actionable over the next five and ten years but i i read the report in a way um that i'd like to highlight a couple things you got a graph in there that talked about where employees lived versus where they worked for example that really did show that functionally uh most of our employees live in the mid and south county but all work up north uh so the degree that we can shift the overall services to the mid and south county including the government buildings that way i think makes sense long term i mean speaking to supervisor mcfirstin's point the county is the second largest employer in the county behind the university and does have a responsibility in regards to uh traffic environmental issues and and quality of life to address this in a way that that we can and i think that one of the easiest ways to do it is just to realign where our buildings are physically located but with that said um there was uh additional data in there that showed on on more of a national side that our consultants found about 12 percent of people would support a permanent remote work situation um setting aside for a second obviously some positions that are field positions clearly aren't conducive to remote work realistically i think that the county needs to more aggressively pursue options that allow for permanent remote work options uh we're not going to be able to even if we were to realign services toward where people live in the mid and south counties in the more uh relatively affordable but still astronomically priced areas within our county you know people are still going to need to be uh living out of county or in some cases uh even multiple counties away currently in order to afford housing and be able to work for the county and we need to be able to accommodate those situations people shouldn't have to be commuting two or three hours in as many of our actually a decent number of our employees have to do uh we're probably not going to be able to build the amount of affordable housing that's going to be necessary to truly address this problem especially in the near term so i would like to be planning more for even future workforces i mean we survey a current workforce but we're not necessarily thinking about the employees that we're going to be hiring in five ten or fifteen years and the fundamentally different environments that they grew up with both in the educational and work environment i mean we need to be accommodating what their perceptions of the work world will be both from a remote work and transportation standpoint so i think that it's it's in the county's best interest to more aggressively look at how we can accommodate remote work options it's in the county's best interest to see how we can realign services to the south and east in our county because of both where our employees live and also those that are consuming services where they live and i think that that will also uh a will reduce costs to the county overall be it will improve the quality of life for the employees and see i think long term it'll improve even on the retention and recruitment of future employees because they'll have more flexibility associated with it it's it's overall where most work worlds at least in the professional side are going and i think that we need to if we're going to do a plan we just need to more aggressively get out ahead of that this plan does it does talk about this mr carrey i just wanted to say that that in my opinion we need to to be even more focused on how that'll apply moving forward uh i again appreciate what you and mr jetless did this really is is setting the stage i think to improve customer outreach to our constituents moving forward as well as improve employee conditions moving forward so i appreciate both that thank you thank you mr coonerty our supervisor coonerty thank you mr chair so yeah i just want to sort of build a little bit on what uh both chair mafias and then supervisor friend just mentioned first being um it's it's incredibly important that we catalog and better manage these assets these are the people's assets uh and um they have tremendous opportunities and also tremendous costs and if we don't pay attention to them um we lose the opportunities and and increase the costs the um to to build on what supervisor friend said i said i think first we have to remember um that we are in the service delivery business and the best way that we can deliver services is ideally um we're not requiring people to go to any physical spot to automate or digitize various services that that we provide um so that they aren't uh they don't have to take time off of work or drive across the county or get child care and so making sure that we have a user focused um uh approach to our delivery system is incredibly important the second optimal uh thing to do for our users is to make sure that we are uh close to where they are so that um so that it's easy to access whether it's in san lorenzo valley or in south county or mid county and so i want to make sure that uh as we develop these plans we have a user center focus and then as supervisor friend just talked about you know um reading this report read a little bit i know uh ginsler did the did the work for plantronics about 15 years ago and i didn't see a lot that had changed in sort of how they approached the workspace and um the realities and in part this is because it was done i think a little bit before covid but um the more aggressive and forward thinking we can be um uh to allow people to live and work uh more flexibly and to provide services more flexibly i think it it helps reduce costs it helps uh reduce impacts on our environment it provides better service to our customers and it allows for recruitment and retention of of good employees and so um i really think that i'm looking forward to us being you know a leader in that area um and then finally just two sort of comments um to to that go to this specific plan the first is um you know i think five out of the six buildings in emeline are talking about being demolished uh and uh and and rebuilt let me just say if we were looking to to locate health and human services somewhere in the county emeline is probably the last place we would choose to do that it's not accessible via public transportation um there's no adjacent services uh uh nearby um so i hope that when we look at that property that we aren't just rebuilding what was there for the sake of rebuilding but they were actually thinking about how to how do we deliver health services and human services in the most effective way possible and if i'm looking at you know creating the kinds of housing that we want um that's that that would be a more appropriate spot for housing um than the provision of services and so i think making sure that we're really thinking about that and then lastly i really want to um you know there are um some proposals in here that are pretty intensive uh for the areas and we want to make sure that we are clear to the public that by adopting this uh we won't be moving forward on any of these specific master plans uh until there is you know outreach and a vote and uh discussion with the with neighbors and people about how best to deliver it um that this is uh this is a conceptual approach and a study um but that um before we implement anything there would be there would be a lot of discussion but i really want to make sure that we're bringing our users into it and we aren't building something that's to the benefit of our departments versus to the benefits of regular people who are coming in uh you know i guess the last analogy i'll point out is you know i watch especially pre-covid uh people wander around the first floor of the county building and the idea that they have to go to one office to pay their property taxes and another office to get their marriage license and another office to register to vote and a different office to to get accessor's information uh if i'm a regular person i want to walk in and just have those services all in one place and figure out how to um how to get what i need ideally without even having to come to the building but if i come to the building um you know having each department set up for its own needs rather than for the customer's needs uh is uh i think uh you know something we need to change and can improve on going forward thank you mr. Coonerty, supervisor Coonerty, supervisor Caput? yeah uh thank you i'm going to lower my hand and uh yeah thanks Travis for the report how you doing great thank you okay uh when i was looking at uh i don't expect an answer now but maybe we can you can look it up uh land owned or controlled by the county and uh that's where we come into the Puffer River south subways creek Corleadus Creek there's always confusion about who actually controls from what point of the the water in the in the river and the high water mark and the property next to the high water mark and that the city of Watsonville supposedly has some where the river goes through the city area the county we have also responsibility uh a certain portion uh and we we always with control comes responsibility so what i'm getting at is if um we get calls here somebody through a mattress or sofa uh by the creek then it comes down to does the state of california have control over that they do have control and then also the federal government but uh when one does it come where is the specific line that i've never seen where we have to go out there and actually take out that uh mattress or sofa or garbage that was dumped over there but that's for something that we can look at later so control and responsibility i get the two key word and then grimmer off the bulletin uh i know that uh the building's there a lot of them need some work is that that would be on a lower priority list i know that that site it was referred to in the plan as as wilson yard or wilson yard that is one of the priority properties one of the seven and it's it's there's some recommendations for that site it's definitely one of one of the more important sites for public works and potentially for more use by the county in the future okay and then lastly uh freedom boulevard campus uh uh we've been looking at this uh the entire time i've been on the board and they've been looking at it for probably 20 years before that so yeah it's a long it's you know time to do something there uh and what i what i had and i think the plan uh does include a small area for a neighborhood park a small mini park maybe with some swings and uh you know i call them sandboxes from the old days but anyway uh for kids that can play uh the neighborhood off the press view and that area that they can go and use it is that is that included and what you're looking at uh well at this time the plan is really it's it's pretty um it's pretty elevated view of it it's looking at you know what we have now what could potentially be there in terms of development and what the potential is but but particularly on that site this project did did you know want to do a a master plan for that site and i would i would still recommend that depending on on what we see happening with lease consolidation in the south county because i think that might change you know some of the recommendations on that site but i would think any major decisions on the larger sites should be really followed up with a more in-depth analysis and planning of how things have changed what we really need um at the county using the concepts and recommendations from the long-range facilities plan but looking at our current situation and and what projects have happened um since the plan and and where we see other projects going forward so really details about like a park on a site is something that will be coming up in future planning efforts yeah i i just don't want it to be forgotten and i'm not talking about a big park in that area because i know that's where the mental health offices are and that's where a lot of you know health services nurses and everything i know there's a lot of need to have space for that but neighborhood park would be nice and when i'm talking about it park i'm time not talking about more than a maybe a quarter quarter of the nature the small part okay and that's about it and you know we'll we'll talk maybe about the responsibility by the south subways creek carlinus creek uh buffer ruling and uh good luck you if you can figure it out you can do better than i am because every time i call the state says oh no that's your responsibility then i call federal governments closer towards the ocean where the river runs into the ocean but uh and then that city wants to build so whose response yeah good points thank you uh supervisor kony thank you chair uh and i also want to thank mr carry and mr betliffe uh for this fantastic report uh and the ceo uh for having the vision to put it together it's incredibly helpful especially as a new board member to be able to come in and get this really overarching view of our county facilities and have a sense of where we're going in the next 20 years as far as moving departments around to be more efficient and how to use our space more efficiently um i i think what supervisor kunity said is is spot on that we really need to focus on service delivery uh mr carry of course you started with that as well service delivery as being a primary part of this study and so my questions actually are you know how do we begin to make some of those incremental changes as quickly as possible one of the things that jumped out at me i know it's been a goal for our county to create a one-stop permitting shop as quickly as possible um and i noted that there was some you know the current plan is to stand that up at the at the at the sheriff's center over on soquel avenue i also noted that it was the most inefficient use of space we have today at 378 square feet per person is that just because of the you know the fact that we have that you know the sheriff means to keep vehicles there and you know other operations um along with that or is it actually are there um you know is there a good opportunity to more efficiently use space there um at the sheriff's channel clear site i would say that's um it is at the top of the list but the sheriff does have they do have normal office type uses there but they also have a lot of specialty areas um there is some potential i know that that they're looking at some for future improvements for sheriff uses in that in those buildings it is a large site they're large buildings um i wouldn't necessarily say that that's that's a problem at this point without maybe a little bit more look at it that's the data that's how it comes up but again the sheriff has a lot of uses that are very untraditional they're not all office uses and so when we look at specific sites and specific buildings and departments we need to be careful about apples to apples comparison because um the sheriff for example has you know the the morgue is in that facility there's a lot of other you know specialty inspections and they have a lot of staff that requires specialty support like locker rooms and that kind of thing and so um it's it's it's a measure the building efficiency but you have to be careful making those comparisons um there so i think there is potential on that site um to do to do more work i think and potentially more consolidation and offer more services there um but but um that's yeah we just have to be careful yeah i i i get it uh it would also be great to just you know really do some kind of a trial there in terms of service delivery uh you know even if it's using one of the public public rooms while we're in covid and we're not gathering as a public to provide a one-stop permit shop just you know even on a three-month trial basis i really think that we need to be innovative in terms of our service delivery and try to use some of the spaces for that i know i'd be happy to office or offer the my office at the sheriff's center today towards that purpose um and furthering that end the other question i had you know um you know it's interesting to see that your um probation is leasing an office right across the street from the county building and of course um there's a lot of efficiencies the county building i mean 701 ocean a lot of efficiencies we can create right here in this building um i'm curious you know i saw the 68 million dollar figure for renovating 701 ocean is there any way we can take a more incremental approach to that um you know the the open office floor plan obviously we're with a more focused public space eliminating the interior loop design i thought that was a great diagram in the study can we is it possible to do a single floor move in um uh probation and the public defender's office and eliminate some of those leases can we start saving money in an incremental fashion like that and what would the payback period be if we just did one floor and then we're able to eliminate some leases yeah that's a great question um there is a current project sort of in in the the mid planning phase right now um being led by gsd that's that was specifically looking at the fourth floor um and and the reason for that was was focusing on the one-stop shop for permanent services and how to more efficiently combine uh planning and and department of public work services around permitting and so you know improvements to the lobby and and and that and so that project um as far as I know is not funded um and so we would need to look at funding unfortunately we don't have you know fund set aside for all these projects that we'd like to do but that's a good example of a project that is incremental um it would provide more efficient use of 701 and and the discussion was um if if we can learn a lot from that um type of activity and then we could we could potentially increment um implement some of the the more public facing services on the ground floor was something we discussed with gensler and and a lot of the department departments when we had the interviews um so that that gets to supervisor communities you know comment about having to roam around the building looking for services when we could potentially have more easily accessible public counters um but but you know this building is old when we start talking about remodeling there's only plumbing in the middle and and things like that and so it's it's a bit of work there is a scope of work ready to to you know really look at seriously um with with gsd and so you know that's a good example of a project um and then the intent of that was to consolidate maybe some of the other departments in 701 make use more efficient and now potentially implementing remote work and we have discussed examples of you know bringing in some of the the north county leases into 701 if we can make more more room available um yeah okay so that makes perfect sense um just to like give or ask more specific question do you have some sense of how much it would cost to do a lightweight renovation of one floor um i i'd have to get back to you on that i think that that again that project is led through gsd and so i know they've they've gotten some some initial costs out there um they're ready i think to move forward with a with a planning consultant contract and that would be for design services and then that that would then really allow you know the departments to work together and figure out what we really want to do and so that's kind of an iterative process so we come up with the first phase with the design consultants and then how to implement you know all the changes we want to make and then from that plan and then move forward into more detailed architect architectural plans and then costing for that and so that again would also be an incremental step but i think it'd be an exciting um project to look at because it would give us an idea on on what we can do and you know for the consumer cost obviously then perhaps there's some phase phasing that we can look at to start implementing something like that yeah like i said i'd love to be able to compare that project cost to for example how much we're paying for the lease at 303 ocean for probation and say you know if we can say hey we pay this off in you know seven years um you know that'd be great to get an understanding of that um kind of looking at that side of the street i was uh of ocean street is there another i mean i understand that there's a um you know when you start talking about the the main jail and other probation facilities there's a quite a few more properties there main jail is on 5.6 acres also more or less in the heart of of downtown i know in discussions with our sheriff he said that it is a priority to try to renovate that facility or you know construct a new one because it's it's very old and um you know doesn't provide good service to um the folks that we detain there um is there a alternate is there you know does a alternative study already exist that considers you know long-term facility planning for um for detention services or is that contemplated in the future so as i noted that this particular plan does not consider detention facilities i know that the sheriff is is very concerned about that particular site and and the long-term nature of that site i can tell you that that what was hopeful um when we're looking at the two subsequent phases of this project going into site specific master planning particularly on the government center we did start having preliminary discussions about not just this property at 701 but across the street the jail property and then you know tying in the the adjacent leases as well and because it's if we do a really intensive master plan we want to make sure we do cover that issue um there's there's different ideas that came up over there and you know how to more efficiently use this site as well as that site i think any future master plan really would take in to account that facility because it could as you mentioned is a large piece of land over there as well so that should definitely be considered got it so you're saying that will when we do a master plan for 701 ocean it would also include looking at the main jail site across the street that would be my recommendation yes got it great um and i suppose the the final thing i um want to mention is just as as we look at you know sort of the potential surplus side of this property here at 701 ocean or the emeline campus or other locations um i will you know i'm interested in seeing a public-private partnership where we do retain some ownership in this in this property rather than simply selling it off i mean we've seen a 10 increase in property values in this county just in the last year alone you know if we sell this property we're never going to get it back i think that you know as far as managing the public's assets probably one of the best things we can do is is grow those assets in in a way that ultimately returns you know the highest rate of return to the public and i think that we're going to get that if we maintain maintain ownership or some portion of it that's it thank you good questions everybody inviting for information gsd has been referred to the general services department which oversees the the physical plant of the county i just have one more question before i ask from some public comments to mr palacio or something this is a huge multi-million dollar program and we know it's going to take a lot of time but in general what are some of the funding opportunities i mean i know that the public partner private partnership could be one which was mentioned by some by zirconi and others what i mean does the federal or state everybody says oh just get a grant you can build it well they're not easy to come by and but are there some specific opportunities or what do you see is some ways we can get at this and we're not going to be able to build this in a long time if we rely on our general fund surplus if there is one what would you see are some of the main opportunities we might have to fund some of these projects yes chair mcgerson there are a number of opportunities that we have ahead of us for example if we were to consider a mixed-use project that involved affordable housing there are some funds available for affordable housing both at the federal and state level one of the obstacles has been in obtaining those funds there's a couple of obstacles one has been a siding net that's probably been the biggest obstacle where do you put an affordable housing project at that's always been a big obstacle and then the second one is that there's typically a requirement for a local match we used to use redevelopment before it was eliminated under governor brown it was a very important source of affordable housing funds at the local level that we used to use as match for both federal and state funds and so that source is now you know it's gone so finding that local source of match we do have an impact fee at the county that we implemented a few years ago but it's it only has a very limited number of funds we have some remaining redevelopment affordable housing that have been almost all committed already so that is going to be one of the challenges is just how do we find that local match I know that one other way to do it is with this public private partnership and that way you would create some kind of mixed-use where you would have market rate and affordable housing in the same project and then use the market rate to in effect be the local match for the affordable housing project and we we will definitely explore that we have done that in the past I know that has been the model that some jurisdictions have pursued and we definitely view that as an option other sources of funding include special grants for both behavioral health facilities health facilities as well that oftentimes there are federal sometimes state grants for actual this clinic facilities for example we have been able to build the new behavioral health center remodel our health clinics all using specialized some grant funds but also our own source of health funds that we get from the federal and state governments so those are another source of revenue so and then of course we already are paying a lease revenue many times out of the general fund and dedicating those funds to our own building as opposed to paying lease funds is another way way to do it I think that COVID crisis has been you know great tragedy for our country and the world but one of the silver linings is that it has really forced us to rethink the idea of office space and and remote work and so that also gives us an opportunity to potentially consolidate save money on funds that we are currently paying towards lease and use it to potentially remodel or rebuild new buildings so the whole remote work revolution is something that we can definitely take advantage of and and see how it can benefit us in terms of being more efficient in our use of space so there there's a lot of different spaces you know when I was in in Watsonville when I was a city manager there we built a new city hall and the new parking structure we actually ended up using over 10 sources of funding to build those facilities so that's the kind of creativity we're gonna it's going to require of us as well using multiple sources of funding to put together a project thank you okay thank you for that overall viewpoint very important well critical obviously are there any is there any comments from the public on this issue um yes chair we have one speaker speaker whose telephone number ends in two nine one five I will be unmuting you you have two minutes to speak when I when you accept the unmute the timer will start speaker two nine one five you can go ahead and start hello this is Becky Steinbruner can you hear me yes thank you thank you for this report I think it's very interesting and um brings out a lot of uh issues that have not been dealt with for quite some time so I'm happy to see this done and hope as has been expressed here that it doesn't just get shelved one thing that regarding the 701 ocean street complex that would be of immediate assistance to the public is to reinstate the public information booth that used to be uh and on the first floor at the very entry um people could go there and figure out where to go and that was eliminated that needs to be brought back immediately that would help a lot of people that navigating and lost in the building and would be not an expensive thing to do I really am curious about the plan to sell the piece of property in the Rio del Mar Esplanade that is next to the sea breeze tavern that tavern just sold for 1.2 million dollars and likely will have to be demolished because of the fire I think it is interesting that it has been immediately rendered as surplus property at the time that this sale has gone through and again as supervisor Koenig said the county should not be selling off property that is and will become even more valuable so uh thank you for those good comments supervisor Koenig and I do not want to see that property sold to a high bidder at the hotel industry the um probation department should be housed and is housed in the Aptos village project the county is leasing property there for probation so why is it also leasing property on water street combined and chair McPherson that is the only public speaker I see who had their hand up that's so that would be the end of public speaking thank you okay um once again I want to thank Travis Kerry and peter deadlifts for their really intense viewpoint in this report it's really invaluable to us for our future operations and needs for our citizens of of Santa Cruz county I would entertain a motion to accept and file this report uh mr chair I'll move the recommended actions second second just okay we have most of my friends second by Coonerty please call the roll supervisor Koenig aye friend aye Coonerty aye captain aye and chair McPherson aye that's unanimously and thank you again for a very detailed report um we will go to item number eight to consider the final appointment of Lynn Petrovic to the Commission on Justice and Gender as an at-large representative of CASA where it turned to expire April 1st 2024 the nomination was accepted January 26th 2021 you have a motion to accept an appointment move approval I'll second second Coonerty uh captain please call the roll supervisor Koenig aye friend Coonerty sorry aye captain uh chair McPherson uh now we will go to item number 8.1 and mr Plastius could you repeat that I don't have that uh it's the order of the emergency proclamation could you just please read it for the record uh item number 8.1 yes uh this is uh to consider the adoption of a resolution establishing a local state of emergency as a result of damage to roads and other county property from the January 2021 storms and take other related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the county administrative officer uh we are recommending that the board consider adoption of a resolution establishing the local state of emergency upon adoption direct staff to direct the resolution and forward the resolution to the governor of California with a request that he proclaim the county of Santa Cruz to be in the state of emergency and further that the governor requests a presidential declaration and request both state and federal funding assistance and inform the applicable state legislature state legislators of the board's action. This action uh chair McPherson members of the board as a result of the storms that we experienced in January 2021 we have experienced significant flooding and damage to property including but not limited to Valencia school road white road Schultes road and Buena Vista Drive and then there have also been other roads damaged due to fallen trees power lines debris flow landslides slip outs and flooding from rivers and creeks that concludes our our report and I believe Matt Machado deputy CAO public works director is also on the call on the call if uh if there's more specific questions okay I I don't miss a machado needs do you need to have any further comments he doesn't need to comment unless there are questions okay any questions from the board oh one question mr chair um i'm curious just you know to the uh to the public comment we heard earlier just for clarification why is it necessary to create a new state of emergency um when my understanding is we actually are currently in a state of emergency based on even the 2016-17 storm damage so just seeking clarification there uh yes it's a different incident so each specific incident there's a requirement to request a new declaration of emergency and that is to allow us to seek federal and state emergency funds to help us repair these various roads and other damage to county property thank you any other questions from the board no uh the only comment I'd make uh is uh uh with the emergency situation if something arises uh when we're not actually meeting uh I can't remember exactly how do how do we respond mr palacio with uh like when we had the incident down here in south county within hours we were uh we had uh trucks from granite rock taking uh tons of rock to bolster the levee by the pahoa river about four years five years ago I I know we did that within hours rather than having to wait to meet I think we did a teleconference is that what we did or what so there's uh I have the ability as the county executive to declare a local emergency uh on my own uh without the board's approval but the board has to ratify that that's correct okay now I remember and that answers pretty much uh supervisor koonig's uh question somewhat if there was an emergency and we couldn't get together you can do it then later we could ratify is that correct that's correct yeah okay any other comments from the board uh any comments from the general public yes we have one comment chair there we go um caller whose telephone number ends in 2915 you will have two minutes to speak I am unmuting you please accept the I'm you and start speaking the timer will begin when you start hello this is Becky Steinbruner can you hear me yes we can thank you I'm I'm very curious about this and and I actually worry that the county is crying wolf I I recognize there was damage but is it does it meet the dollar amount that really satisfies declaring a state of emergency I see in the resolution that this local emergency shall be deemed to continue to exist until its termination it's proclaimed by the board of supervisors of the county of Santa Cruz so this means that any storm coming forward would also be included for optional uh for possible repair money I'd like that clarified or would it have to only be due to the storm that we got last week which was not actually that much damage I realized there was damage in these certain areas but again on Schultes Road is this related to the 2016 2017 damage that is now currently under bid to be repaired I think um it's important not to overuse this state of emergency because I think um it could get us into trouble so I would like some discussion about that and um exactly how much money does it include enable us to get for these repairs what is the process do we have to hire special outside consultants as we did in 2016-17 at an additional cost to the county or could that work be done in house thank you very much okay I think it's um I think it's been discussed I think everybody can hear me that you know the CAO can declare this and we kind of as the board of supervisors approve it depending on the circumstances at hand whenever that should happen and we hope it doesn't happen again here but I think the CAO explained that he has that option under these circumstances and we approve that so I don't think there's a dollar amount included in these situations it's just a situation if it meets the criteria that the CAO believes is a state of emergency and then we would approve it as a board of supervisors I I don't think we I don't know how you can go into more more detail than that Mr Palacios do you think you want to add anything yes we we have definitely suffered millions of dollars of damage there's no doubt about that we don't have a firm estimate yet but it's definitely in the millions of dollars and so uh relying on our own local funds that'd be very difficult to try and repair these roads and so this would make us eligible for state and federal grants to help communities like ours when we do suffer from natural disasters such as flooding and uh road slipouts and so forth okay thank you um we have um can I I'm sorry do we get emotion on this um I don't think we have is anybody want to motion I'll move the recommended actions thank you moved by second by Coonerty um please call the roll supervisor Koenig hi friend Coonerty hi Caput hi and chair McPherson hi that brings a conclusion to our regular agenda um we will now move into a closed session uh there was one item to be discussed in that closed session and that's a conference with legal counsel threat to public services or facilities uh Mr County counsel do we have any reportable actions from that closed session do you think thank you thank you there are no reportable actions okay very well then we will uh adjourn this regular meeting and move into closed session uh it is now about 20 minutes to 11 uh why don't we take a 20 minute break we'll meet 11 o'clock in closed session um and uh we'll see you then our next meeting of the county board of supervisors is February 23rd 2021 at 9 a.m. we will move now to closed session thank you uh we'll reconvene at 11 o'clock


Oh, hey there. Kaiser Permanente. We're to start. On my first arrival, that was really welcoming. But versus now, I feel that I'm really comfortable in my department. They made sure that we met our managers, made sure we met all the other interns, participated in team building activities. So one of the intern activities we do here at ESCAL is watch the executive speaker series. Since the executive speaker series is held over at NCAL, all the ESCAL interns in my office will gather in a room and watch the executive speaker series together. It's a way for the interns to collaborate and network and really learn from the executives. One of my intern activities that we participated was the RAD tour, which is reimagining ambulatory care and design. So KP is actually a part of innovating patient care in general. At this facility, I actually had physician calling so you could call there like any specialist that you need. I got the experience sitting on a chair in which I had no idea that it would actually take my weight and it was actually pretty cool because being a part of something that's so innovating, such as an organization as KP, it's really a feeling. So what's exciting about my internship here at Kaiser is that I get to be my own project manager. I get to set my own timelines. I get to meet with subject matter experts. In the end, what's really great about my internship is that I really get to define my experience.


I've always been a bit of a lurker, but I'm coming to the one place I think can help me now. Something seriously wrong in my hometown. I've always been an explorer, and after having spent most of my younger years being raised and educated in Ohio, I struck out on my own. After five years in DC, and almost one year in Florida, I've been relatively happy with my choices. But I do miss Ohio in the fall time, cold weather and all. My family all lives in Tuscaroras County, which is a small county about an hour south of Akron. So it's never an issue when I want to go home for long periods of time. And after living on an island most of the year, it's nice to go somewhere that has a large landmass for me to explore and hike and whatnot. Which brings us to two weeks ago, when I called my mom and asked if she'd be willing to put me up for a week so I can come see friends.  We talked about the comings and goings of small town Dover, Ohio, and the typical neighbor gossip when she said the area is just changing. Me being from there dismissed it. Something was always going to happen, but it never quite materialized in my small hometown. I drove up a week later, happy to be home and seeing family and friends. I spent the first two days bouncing all around the county. But one night, I couldn't sleep, and I hopped in the Jeep and decided to take a night drive, driving like a bat out of hell across those winding roads, until I ended up back in town. I stopped at the local Circle K for a pop. This is the first time I noticed something off. As I walked out of Circle K and into the parking lot, I noticed a man standing in his front yard next to the Circle K, just standing there, staring straight ahead at the empty street in front of him. I assumed he maybe had AirPods on or something, but he made no noise, just stood, never once turning his head. I brushed this off and of course hopped in my Jeep. Once started, the radio blared to life louder than I had remembered having it. I turned it down and once again looked toward the man. He was still standing, but his head had shifted to the left and he was now staring at my car, staring at me. I could feel it. Needless to say, I noped out of there really quickly and got to my mom's, convinced myself that it was just a weird guy, and fell asleep. The next day, I happened to drive past the house again, and the man was gone. Though I have expected to find him still staring ahead, I told myself to quit being paranoid and just enjoy my time here. Two nights later, I was at my sister's and we were talking about it. I told her about the man I'd seen and to my surprise, she said the same thing my mother had said weeks earlier. Yeah, Zach, the area is changing. I asked her what she meant and all she said was, just is. After a bit more catching up, I hopped in the Jeep again and took off to my mom's. Driving through town late at night was always peaceful as the roads were usually barren, barring the occasional late night driver or two. You tend to zone out except for when you see the random red lights. Something felt off and uneasy though to me. I came to a red light and that's when I saw them. The house is lining the street on the block before me had people standing in front of them.   You guys okay? I managed to say. Nothing. What's, uh, what's going on? I stammered, trying to put some bass in my voice. Still, nothing. Their eyes weren't even focused on me, just staring straight ahead. Their heads didn't even move.  Further down the road I went, desperately trying to get to my mom's and shake the creepiness factor. However, as I continued and turned off the main street, I noticed that more people were out in front of their homes. It wasn't every house, but probably one out of every three. All of them staring straight ahead. To my relief, my mother's street was not experiencing this. I ran into the house. Mom, you gotta get up. Something's going on. Zach, it's 1230. What could possibly be going on? I told her the story and she looked at me incredulously and it was obvious she didn't believe me. I begged her to come with me and I could show her. I finally coaxed her out and we got in the jeep and I went to the areas where I'd seen the people. No one was there. The streets deserted like they usually were at this hour. My mom was annoyed and complained about being pulled out of bed. I told her I knew what I'd seen and that it was weird and something felt off in this town. Zach, the area's changing. She said coldly. Just as if it wasn't in her voice. I asked her what that meant. But she gave the same answer my sister had hours earlier. Just is. I pressed her for more, but she didn't say anything till we got back to her home. She told me goodnight and went to bed. I couldn't sleep. Something felt off and I felt as though those people were still out there. The next morning I left for Cleveland as planned to see some friends over the course of two days. I stopped at Speedway to get gas that morning and was tired due to lack of sleep the night before. I went in for a coffee and to my surprise, the man standing behind the counter was the same man I'd seen at the start of all this. I froze, unable to move. Does he recognize me, I thought? No, no, there's no way. I walked up with my coffee and he looked at me before asking, anything else? No. I stammered. He was different, fidgeting and tapping his fingers on the counter. So much movement compared to who I saw the first night. I had to say something, anything to him. I had to know if he knew me. Hey man, I think I saw you the other night. I managed to say, my eyes avoiding his, where at? He asked, I think I saw you standing outside your house the other night around 11.30. I muttered out, nah, man, it couldn't have been me. I opened the store and I go to bed pretty early.  I managed to say, not really believing it. This was sure as shit, the same guy. Lots of new people moving here, man. Don't know the whole town like I used to. The area's changing, that's for sure. As he said it, his eyes got very distant for a moment before shifting back to his cheerful demeanor. The words sent chills down my spine.  My sister, my mom, and now this guy all had the same reaction with the exact same words. I grabbed my coffee and I got out of there, ignoring his, have a good one, brother. As I walked out the door, being in Cleveland was wonderful for those two days. And I felt as though a giant weight was lifted off my shoulders. Life was normal again.  All of those weird experiences, while in the back of my mind, felt like a distant memory. Which brings us to tonight. My mom called me around four and asked if I was heading home. I told her I'd still be there tonight, but she should leave the door unlocked in case I leave late. I told her I'd text her when I left Cleveland prior to the two hour drive. I felt a bit of paranoia leaving the city, something's off back home, right? Is my mind just playing tricks on me? I did my best to push this feeling down, but I couldn't shake it. This ominous sense of dread as I rolled down I-77 to a place that now terrified me. I pulled off the interstate and onto the exit around 1130. My anxiety was borderline overwhelming. Like this impending sense of dread. I went past the gas stations and turned back into the town towards my mom's place. And I wasn't prepared for what I saw. Every house.  All of them standing lockstep in their front lawns. I couldn't believe it. It was as if the road was a red carpet and they were lining it for me in my jeep to drive down. No one moved. No one even acknowledged the car as it rolled down the street. They all just stared straight ahead, speeding through the quiet streets. The faces didn't acknowledge me. Just the same blank stares, fathers, mothers, children. Everyone just staring straight ahead. What was this?  I finally came to my mom's street and I saw what I dreaded most. Her and my stepfather were in front of their home, like all the others. Standing there, straight-eyed at the street. I got out of the car and onto the street slowly. Just as if I was afraid a sudden movement would cause the various neighbors to descend upon me. Hell, maybe even my own parents.  Mom? You okay? I asked. Nothing. They just stared straight ahead. I was so scared in that moment. What was causing this? Why won't they acknowledge me? I'm her son. Terrified and shocked. I grabbed my mom by the shoulders.  She blinked. The first movement I'd seen, her head jerked sideways almost inquisitively as if she was trying to sort out what was happening. She opened her mouth and let out a slight gravelly breath. The air is changing. She said, it wasn't her voice. Suddenly I heard the sound of movement and the entire street was looking at me. All at once they opened their mouth and let out a wail.  Dozens of wails from these people, these neighbors, like dozens of people were all crying out in agony and the sound kept increasing. Almost as if the whole neighborhood was all crying out in one tortured scream. I ran across the front yard as fast as I could away from my own mother and I jumped in the car and sped off. As I drove, the screams continued. It was the whole town now. They were all looking at me, their faces shifting as my jeep sped down the road, but all of their voices projecting out this tortured noise. I have never heard anything like that and I pray I never will again. I jumped on the interstate and I got the hell out of there. I drove for an hour to Akron and I checked into a hotel where I'm writing this. I don't know what to do. Do I go back in the daytime? Do I call the police? I have to do something. My whole family is there. I tried calling my sisters and no one answers. I hope they're safe, but I dare not attempt to go get them now. Not until daylight. The area may be changing, but I'll be damned if my family is going to change with it.


You need a financial advisor with the freedom to focus on your specific needs. Whatever your goals, Reid Potter can create a game plan tailored to you. Call Reid at 432-0777 at Pikeville, Kentucky to learn more. A Johnson Central Educator is being recognized as the American History Teacher of the Year in the state of Kentucky. Really, you know, I've been nominated for some teacher awards before and so I kind of understood the process but never really thinking that I may actually have a chance to win this American History Teacher Award. So, yeah, I mean, it was, you know, getting a chance to just be nominated was, I mean, that's great in itself and then, you know, to win a statewide award like that. I mean, that's unbelievable. Van Hoos is the recipient of the 2022 Dr. Tom and Betty Lawrence American History Teacher Award presented by the Kentucky Society of Sons of the American Revolution. He will be recognized at UK's Spindletop Hall on March 12th. Hopefully I don't have to say too many words. I don't have to give a big speech, but I mean, it's just an honor to be able to go through the whole process. And, you know, now that, you know, I'm up for possibly getting this National Teacher Award, I mean, that involves some monetary stop-ins and, you know, what could help with some additional professional development training. So, you know, I look forward to that. Van Hoos included that he has received many awards in his career, including being named Kentucky Mr. Basketball in 1998. And according to him, the American History Teacher Award is at the top of his list. I love Mr. Van Hoos. He is awesome. His personality is just so uplifting and he incorporates like new technology and like how we are students into his lesson plans. I think Mr. Van Hoos really deserves this award. He really gets everybody involved. And not only does he want to be a teacher, he is always there for you and wants to be a friend. Social studies is definitely not my thing. And it's just very awesome how well I've learned. You know, a lot of people think history is boring. It's names and dates, but it's so much more than that. And if you can make it come alive and make it exciting for the students, you can see that excitement. That's really what makes it worthwhile. Reporting from Mountain Top News, I'm Ethan Miller.