Good morning. Good morning. It is September 14th, 2021. Welcome to the Santa Cruz County 9 a.m. Welcome to the Santa Cruz County Board of Services regular meeting. Clerk, please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Here. Friend. Friend. Here. Coonerty. Coonerty. Here. Tappet. Tappet. Yeah. McPherson. Here. Thank you. Have a quorum. Thank you. We'll now have a moment of silence and record the Pledge of Allegiance. Is there anyone that wants to mention anything? We'll have the Pledge of Allegiance. By and by the United States of America. We'll have consideration of late additions to the agenda, additions and deletions to be consent and regular agendas. Yes. Let me go through the corrections first on consent agenda number 21. Staff requests this item to be deleted. Packet pages 168, 169. There's an addenda to the consent agenda. Item 51.1 Adopt an ordinance amending Chapter 7.130 of the Santa Cruz County Code relating to cannabis dispensary, citing criteria, setback waivers. There's a board memo printout attached. In addition to an unwritten correspondence, there's a correction. The item should read letter of Ian Larkin, unit chief Cal Fire, Santa Cruz unit convene copy of a notice of intent to harvest timber slash domestic water supply inquiry issued by the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. In addition, there is a late addition request. This is under item three to consent consider addition of late item to the regular agenda relating to Senate Bill 496, 496 as outlined to them in the memorandum of the County Administrative Officer. Consider authorizing the chair of the board to sign a letter on behalf of the board of supervisor urging Governor Gavin Newsome to sign Senate Bill 496, which would specify that the Department of Water Resources may provide up to 100% of local subvention funds for the Pajaro Valley Flood Control Project as outlined in the memorandum of the County Administrative Officer. That item will require a fourth bits vote of the board to add to the agenda. So if you could go ahead and proceed with that, that authorization and then we'll add it to the agenda. I'd like to bring that item to the board. Mr. Friend, you're chair of the Zone 7. This is a real critical thing. We appreciate Senator Laird in Sacramento putting this forward. Do you want to just make a brief comment about it? Yeah, I could just make a brief comment about you're talking about the Senate Bill funding, correct, Mr. Chair? Correct. Yes. I mean, I can't I can't stress enough how close we are to the finish line and the state is helping us pull over the goal line. As you know, we were able to get reauthorized this entire program a couple of years ago on the federal side and some initial funding. But this right now, there's a maximum of a 70% state investment in the local cost share. This allows the state to go up to 100%, which is pretty significant when you're dealing with two federally disadvantaged communities, both in Watsonville and the town of Pajaro. Obviously, we're very grateful not just to Senator Laird, but also Assemblymember Rivas and Stone to help carry this through. You know, it passed unanimously, both in the Assembly and the Senate, so we're hopeful that we can get this all the way through. But but as you know, very well, Mr. Chair, having served there to have this kind of funding coming forward in potentially it could mean about 40 additional million dollars to our community for specifically for flood protection in the Pajaro region. I'd like to make just one suggestion. It's to request me as board chair to write this, but Mr. Friend, Supervisor Friend has been chair of his own seven and been instrumental in getting this to where it is, along with Supervisor Caput, but I would like to have him sign it as well. Okay, I would entertain a motion to send a letter to the governor. So this is to add it to the consent agenda. Add it to this consent agenda. Okay, we'll just add it to the consent agenda and I'll move to add this item to the consent agenda. Second. I'll move second. All approve. Do you want to call the world, please? Supervisor Koenig? Aye. Friend? Aye. Coonerty? Aye. Appet? Aye. McPherson? Aye. Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. Great work by everybody on that. That is so critical for the South County. Yeah, I want to, if I could, real quick, want to thank Supervisor Caput for his leadership in the past few years. And this is a truly something to celebrate. Thank you very much. We have any announcement of our board members of items removed? Agenda? Yes. Seeing none, we'll move on to public comments. Ms. Cabrera, do you want to make an explanation, please? It's time for public comment. If you wish to comment or join us through the Zoom link, please find the hand icon at the bottom of your screen and click this to raise your hand. This will place you in the queue to speak when it is your turn.  Ask if you want to accept the mute. Please accept this and start speaking. If you're calling from a phone, please dial star nine now. This will virtually raise your hand and place you in the queue. I'll call you by the last four digits of your phone number. At the end of your two minutes, your microphone will be muted automatically. Please press star six to meet yourself when it's your turn to speak. Ahora es el tiempo que la Junta Directiva de Supervisores recibirá comentarios del público. Si gustaría dar su comentario en español, tenemos un servicio de traducción disponible para asistir. Si desea comentar y ser unido a través de Zoom, busque el icono de la mano en el fondo de la pantalla y hazle click para dar la mano. Eso lo colocará en la fila para hablar. Cuando sea tu turno de hablar, te llamaré por tu nombre y verás una ventana emergente en tu pantalla preguntándose si quieres activar tu micrófono. Por favor, accepte y comienza a hablar. Si se ha unido a través de teléfono, por favor, marque estrella nueve para levantar la mano y estar colocado en las filas de hablar. Cuando sea tu turno de hablar, te llamaré por los últimos cuatro digits de tu número de teléfono. Por favor, marque estrella seis para activar tu micrófono cuando sea tu turno de hablar. Al fin de tus dos minutos, el micrófono será desactivado automáticamente. Thank you. Any person may address the board once during the public comment, not exceeding two minutes. Comments must be directed to items on today's consent and closed agenda session agendas and yet to be heard items on the regular agenda or on a topic not on today's agenda, but within the board's jurisdiction. We'll take comments now up to 30 minutes. If necessary, add additional time comments after the afternoon session. We have a scheduled item at one thirty. Please. Good morning. And thank you, board members, for the opportunity to speak to you today. I especially want to thank supervisor McPherson and Capit for proclaiming September as suicide prevention Awareness Month in Santa Cruz County. My name is Gail Pellerin. I'm from Santa Cruz and I'm here once again to talk to you and members of the public on a topic that is profoundly personal to me and my children, Jacob and Emily. Suicide was not a topic. I spent much time thinking or talking about before November 19th, 2018. Never gets easy. When my husband, Tom, the father of our two children, died by suicide. The past one thousand and thirty days, my daughter's been counting them. I've learned a lot about suicide and about grief. And I've met many amazing people who have been impacted by suicide. And I motivated to speak openly and publicly because there's a stigma associated with suicide that has got to end. Early in the grieving process, I went to a talk on suicide and the speaker encouraged us to put our grief to work. That really resonated with me. So I joined a suicide survivors group called Wings. I reached out to our behavioral health director Eric Ray era and suggested that suicide hotline posters be put up in our county bathrooms. And I believe they're working on that. I participated in the American Foundation for suicide prevention out of the darkness, suicide prevention walk in San Francisco, where my family and I walked 18 miles through the dead of night in an effort to raise. Oh, can I get more time? Okay, participate in the American to raise money and awareness for suicide. I started a Facebook group called Suicide Survivors Santa Cruz County. And I recently joined our National Alliance on Mental Illness Board NAMI, which is an incredible organization providing education support to families and people in need. There are so many organizations and people who are on the front lines of this battle that many still refuse to discuss in public. I know how difficult it is to talk about suicide and mental illness.  In the beginning, it was very hard for me. But now as my friends and family can attest, I do it often. The reality is every one of us, each of you board members, everyone hearing my words has struggled, has felt hopeless, has been depressed, especially during the last 18 months. Yet many of us silently fight our battles in silence.  You do not commit an illness. You would not say someone committed cancer. Instead, I say died by suicide or took their own life. I also do not believe suicide is a selfish or cowardice act. Suicide is possible when someone is in a very dark, painful, hopeless place, and they lose their fair death. The statistics are daunting. Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States. It is the second leading cause of death for 10 to 24 year old Americans. There is one death by suicide in the US every 11 minutes. There's been one since we've been here, or 130 suicides per day. 47,511 people died by suicide across the United States in 2019. That's almost three times the number of homicides. In 2019, 1.38 million people attempted suicide. Firearms are the most common method of death by suicide. And in Santa Cruz County, the suicide rate is 16.4 per 100,000 residents compared to 10.7 statewide. Suicide does not discriminate. It impacts all people of all ages, genders, race, ethnicity, incomes and sexual orientations. But suicide numbers are higher for white males, active military and veterans, and LGBTQ youth and transgender adults. Depression is the leading cause of suicide. However, 80 to 90% of people who seek treatment for depression are treated successfully using therapy or medication. So we need to talk about mental health a lot more and make sure people have access to treatment. I've learned a lot about grief over these last 33 months. Brief is not something you get over. It's something you learn to live with. You see when a loved one dies by suicide, a parent, a child, a spouse, a sibling, a family member, a co worker, a friend. There's a sudden and unexpected hole in your life that leaves you in shock. When someone else kills your loved one, you can direct your anger and pain at that perpetrator. But when it is the person you love that is responsible party for their own life, taking much too soon, there's confusion, profound sadness and loss on how to deal with your emotions. Sometimes friends and family think it's time to get over it, time to move on. They don't like to say his name. But my children and I need to talk about Tom. We need to remember his smile, his sometimes annoying behaviors, his love for history and physical activity and his love for us. You see with suicide, there is no moving on from grief. You simply pick it up and carry it with you. And for me, I have been inspired to put my grief to work. And that's why I'm here today. So what do I want to achieve? I want us all to recognize that suicide is a public health crisis. I would like the county to provide suicide prevention training for our county employees. I urge schools to make sure parents have information about suicide prevention. And I encourage parents to talk to their children often about their mental health. I hope all of us, no matter what line of work we do, will take some time to talk to our coworkers, students or clients about suicide awareness and prevention. I want everyone who is listening to accept that we all have a role in preventing suicide. Learn the warning signs, ask the difficult questions, and let family friends and neighbors know they are not alone. Let me expand on this a bit. When someone you know talks about wanting to die, or talks about feeling hopeless or having no purpose, or feeling trapped or being in an unbearable pain, or talks about being a burden to others, or you see someone increasing the use of alcohol or drugs acting anxious or reckless, sleeps too little or too much, withdraws or displays dramatic mood swings, please reach out. Talk to them. Listen, you don't have to be an expert. And it might feel really uncomfortable. Let them know that help is available. Tell them what they are experiencing is treatable and that suicide feelings are temporary. Suicide is final. In closing, I want anyone who is thinking about suicide to know that your life matters. Your family and friends will not be better off without you. Please reach out for help by calling the hotline at 1-800-273- TALK or text to 741-741. And I just have to say if you haven't voted yet, please get out and vote today. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much for your courage and your explanation. Very well received input. I'm sorry to hear about your situation and so many others. We need to do what we can to help others in this. Thank you. Good morning. My name is James Ewing Whitman. I really appreciate what the previous community member stated. I've been a first responder for two suicides in my life. And I've personally helped three others cannot kill themselves as a first responder. I can say that my first experience with law enforcement is they kept me on the phone until law enforcement could physically see me. I think that it was beautiful and it helped me mitigate that situation that first happened in my life when I was 21. I'm now 54. It would be delightful if I would get the same respect to say what I need to say. Thank you. This is an excerpt on page 25 from a bio mag healer training that I took in early in late March of this year. Warriors are not what you think of as warriors. The warrior is not someone who fights because no one has the right to take another life. The warrior for us is one who sacrifices themselves for the good of others. Their task is to care for the elderly, the defenseless, those who cannot provide for themselves. And above all, the children, the future of humanity. I was said to be a set of from chief sitting bowl. Since I'm going to run out of time. I wrote something this morning. I'm not going to do the first page. I'm going to go to this middle of the second page. Now I'm going to get personal and real and mean and raw. The absolute violence of this board of supervisors in Santa Cruz over the last 50 years, but specifically when the seeds project at Denja 21 agenda 2030 was adopted into law in 1997 and the community foundation of Santa Cruz matches observations written and physically created in the Georgia's guide stones in 1980. All real wealth in any social order. And in its reverence for the natural magneto biologic leadership skills and children and its care to represent their parents, grandparents and great grandparents. Wolves and velociraptors family orders could each forgive and parisunder these 12 million individuals where the rest of humanity out numbers them 625 to one. Thank you. Thank you for completing your comment. No person speak for several minutes. Can I understand that? And I'm going to rest. Hello. The hydro turf needs to be reapplied to the to the burn scar in the Santa Cruz mountains. My name is Marcia St. Clair. I'm 71 years old and immunocompromised in the year since my house burned. I've moved eight times. I currently live in a tent with my husband, dog, cat and two gopher snakes. The snakes were uninvited. I also live at the Brookdale Lodge where my husband tries to manage a multinational company when there's electricity. I've given up my personal medical devices because there are large clouds of billiless round spoil blowing everywhere. And it's too hard for me to sterilize them because I have to start a generator to get water. And then I have to boil it on a butane stove. I take cold showers and drink bitter coffee, but not as bitter as the taste I have in my mouth toward my own county government or their systemic ignorance of the cruelty that the planning department in there in as much as they try have been unable to overcome. We need to have the erosion and control reapplied to those areas that since it's been over a year now that where the soil is blowing around. Also, I could use a case of water. Thank you. Yeah. Good morning. My name's Brenda Brenner and I'm the director of the emergency medical services here in the county. I'm here as county staff to the Emergency Medical Care Commission to talk about item number 29, which is a contract for Z consulting that contract will provide for an assessment of our public safety radio infrastructure system and also provide for recommendations for needed improvements in that system. In addition to the need for the sheriff's department to have improved radio security, fire and EMS providers need to see a reduction in the gaps in the radio system within our county. That would be gaps in the ability to both receive radio traffic as well as to transmit or speak on the radios. These gaps exist because we have an incredibly beautiful but hilly terrain. That's hard to provide coverage for and also because there's a lack of enough radio towers and cell towers in our county upon which to place the radio equipment to make it possible to be able to transmit and receive everywhere. These gaps in our radio system create a hazardous situation for fire and EMS responders on a daily basis. Because of these gaps, there are times when fire and EMS cannot hear critical safety information being given to them by the dispatch center. There are times when they cannot call for help if they need it in an unsafe situation and they can't necessarily coordinate operations at a large incident such as a big fire or a disaster. In addition to the needs of the first responders, we have an additional need for cell towers to improve the ability to get emergency alerts to residents and visitors in our county for things such as emergency evacuation or shelter in place when there might be criminal activity taking place. The Emergency Medical Care Commission would like to request your support and approval of this contract as a critical first step toward resolution of the gaps in the radio system and improvements to the safety of first responders. Thank you very much. Thank you. Agreed. Good morning. My name is Sarah Steiger and I'm a resident of Ben Lomond. As you probably may know, especially Supervisor McPherson that we've had ongoing power outages for the last four days. As of this morning, Zianti was out of power, which affected 937 residents according to the PG&E report. We are really struggling with no power, not clear information from PG&E. Every time our power goes out, I call PG&E to report it. They say they're not aware of it. The automated message says that they say they'll send somebody out. I myself probably haven't been as impacted as other people I know that work from home. I have a neighbor down the street who was giving a presentation to clients in France. His call got dropped. People that are working from home are being impacted. Kids that are learning from home are being impacted. A lot of residents are low income. They don't have generators to be able to run power. No internet. Some people don't have hot water if they're on demand water system. People are losing food. They can't run fans or air conditioning and hot weather or heat and cold weather. We want to know what's going on. We want to hear from PG&E. We want to hear from you. We hope that you will have a town hall meeting a way for us to communicate our concerns and to learn more about this new technology that PG&E is using to keep our power ongoing because it seems to not be working. Thank you. Thank you. I know it's been a nightmare in San Rosa Valley Monday morning. I called PG&E to request a town hall meeting. I'm hopeful that we can have one on Thursday evening. But I haven't gotten confirmation on that yet. Thank you. Anyone else want to address this public comments? Okay. We look for. I do have speakers on. Excuse me. Carol, your microphone is available. Good morning. My name is Carol Bjorn. And I just want to encourage the board. If there's a two minute time limit on speakers, let's apply that across the board. We all have various interests that we're passionate about. And if you all are going to limit us to two minutes, it needs to be applied to everyone, not just certain people. So yesterday, in the Atlantic, there was an article released and the title of the article was our most reliable pandemic number is losing meaning. And a new study was released in this article and it said from mid January through the end of June 2021, 48% of all hospitalized COVID patients may have been admitted for another reason entirely or had only mild presentation of the disease. Researchers from Harvard Medical School, Tufts Medical Center and the Veterans Affairs Health Care System analyzed nearly 50,000 COVID hospital admissions across the country to see whether each patient required supplemental oxygen or had a blood oxygen level below 94%, which is the NIH definition of severe COVID. If either of these conditions was met, the authors classified that patient as having moderate to severe disease. Otherwise, the case was considered mild or asymptomatic. The study suggests that almost half of those hospitalized with COVID-19 were admitted for another reason entirely, or only had mild or asymptomatic cases. So I just wanted to bring that to your attention that there's been a lot of misleading information. This is just one example of that misleading information for the last 18 months. The second example of misleading information is the quote unquote Delta variant. There is no specific test for the Delta variant. And so whenever Dr. Newell goes out and talks about the Delta variant, or anyone else talks about the Delta variant, they're engaging in fraud, because there is no specific test for that. So I encourage you all the next time she speaks publicly, to ask her about that, ask her how she knows that there is a Delta variant, and then do some investigative reporting on your own to investigate that. All in user one, your microphone is available. It's a reminder to star six to unmute. Hi, this is Marilyn Garrett. And we should have equal time, everyone. I learned at a young age that democracy requires debate, investigation of various sources of information, and questioning authority. I'm going to read from a statement from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The question is whatever happened to liberalism, cognitive dissonance in the age of phasism, the amended liberal code, censorship is bad, except when it comes to vaccines, informed consent should apply to every medical product and intervention, except vaccines. America should honor her treaty obligations under the Nuremberg Code, and the ethical precepts of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, except where they impede the forced vaccinations. Every medicine should be safety tested, except vaccines. Pharma is greedy, homicidal and untrustworthy, except about vaccines. By the way, a number of antidepressants state on the readout that it causes suicidal tendencies. Number six on this list, mercury and aluminum are dangerous neurotoxins, except in vaccines. My body, my choice, except with vaccines, glyphosate and permaldehyde cause cancer, except in color 4658 your microphone is available. Hi, my name is Tim Folger. I'm a longtime resident of Watsonville. My family roots go back 150 years. And I'm speaking to agenda item number eight, the topic is a consideration of a moratorium on the cannabis ordinance and county code. I have familiarized myself with the county code. And to my careful examination numerous times. It's pretty unclear. We have a new application now, different than last month's application, that is radically different. And focusing on co licensing, which I think to use the previous speaker's characterization of democracy requires calls for careful examination of the facts and do process and careful public input. I'm interested in studying the facts. I've done that for as long as I've been a resident of the subject area. I'm right next door to the parcels in question and the application. I've been part of a very active community of neighbors for many years and study the conservation of water and by that saltwater contamination overdraft. How do we protect what we have? How does everybody get a fair shake? In this instance, we have a operation that is basically a vessel at least a tenant farmer. Their participation in the activities of the neighborhood is very different than ours. All residents have made a long term commitment by properly approving it, conserving the resources that we have around us. We have made that commitment. I need benefit. I don't have I do have seven other speakers. You have seven. There are seven other speakers. Go ahead. We are at 931. Joseph Oh, your microphone is available. Thank you very much. I hope you can hear me. I'm speaking about the recent increasingly horrible response of PG&E. Thank you very much for trying to organize a town hall. I recommend this is focused on more on the CPUC, the California Public Utility Commission overseeing PG&E. So I think it's more their responsibility for not caring, not giving a good direction. As you know, every other public utility commission overseeing a monopoly in basically any other state, any other jurisdiction cares about having good quality, power, low cost, good service, higher reliability. We get none of these things. I'm a 23 year resident here near the Summit and 17 area, Santa Cruz County. And it's about 100 times worse this last month and a half than it's been in the last 23 years I've been here. The number of power outages has been through the roof. We're getting often a few per day. They typically last 12 hours to a day and a half. Horrible long things.  That's fine. And that's good. In the past, they would turn things back on when they realized it's not from the circuit. What they're doing now is keeping it off forever and ever until they physically walk or recently now using a helicopter, the hubris of the waste of time, waste of energy, waste of money of the helicopters of our time for being out of power for many days in the hypothetical possibility that in between the time that a power outage occurs in one place in the next five seconds that an align has gone down and they have to be so super careful is utterly ridiculous. It's goofy. The loss to the great payers to the citizens is so inefficient. Please let's do have a town hall. Please make sure that the California Public Utility Commission there as well, because they're the ones who are overseeing this huge mess and they're approving it unfortunately. Thank you. Okay. We'll take two more speakers. We have David Gazzak. Your microphone is available. Great. I just pressed unmute. Thank you. I live in La Selva Beach. Tim Folger, who just spoke, is my neighbor. I also support agenda item number eight calling for a moratorium on non retail cannabis licenses within a 500 foot setback. It's critical that the supervisors have this opportunity to review and examine the criteria that determine where these licenses can be issued. The moratorium will enable the supervisors to do this to evaluate and strengthen protections for children, families and residential neighborhoods in the same way that they have done for retail cannabis. Thank you for your consideration. Last speaker for this section will be Paul Lego and as a reminder that public comment will continue after the agenda has completed. My name is Paul Lego. I also live in the La Selva Beach area of Watsonville. I encourage the board to support the moratorium proposed and agenda item number eight and to support the proposed changes to the non retail cannabis ordinance to separate cultivation from residential communities by 500 feet. I'm not against cannabis. I'm not against cannabis cultivation. I support the right to farm. I oppose cannabis cultivation near residential communities, regardless of zoning. Cannabis is not just another crop. Other crops do not require security fencing and motion sensing lights every 50 feet. Other crops don't require odor control. Other crops aren't grown at night. Other crops aren't illegal in many states and at the federal level. We've lived with farms next door farming other crops like flowers and strawberries for decades successfully. Cannabis is different, as already acknowledged by the existing ordinance. When Santa Cruz County chose to drop work on the draft environmental impact reports for California Sequa, you took on legal and moral responsibility to evaluate and mitigate the environmental impacts of cannabis cultivation on a project by project basis. It's clear that there are significant and difficult or impossible to mitigate impacts of cannabis cultivation near residential communities. Those impacts are on children and other sensitive populations as well as our environment. We're legally inbound to bound to consider those impacts. I strongly encourage you to consider moratorium on just new cannabis licenses that would potentially violate the proposed setbacks of 500 feet from these residentially zoned lots. I also encourage you to consider and change the cannabis cultivation ordinance to keep cultivation separated from those lots. There are hundreds of other parcels that are still viable for cannabis cultivation. Be true to Sequa and be kind and fair. Thank you. We will go to item number six. Pardon me, Chair. We're going to go to item number six for action on the consent agenda. Any board members, Supervisor Koenig, any comments on the consent items? Yes, thank you, Chair. On item 30, approving potential locations for alert wildfire cameras and asking OR3, the Office of Response, Recovery and Resilience to provide regular reports until we get at least three more cameras installed. I just want to encourage my colleagues to review the list of potential sites for additional alert wildfire cameras and work with OR3 to help get them installed if you know constituents with good potential locations or any of the called out locations. We were able to identify some private funding in the first district for one of the locations. I think we'll be able to move quickly on at least one site. And I also just because there's a few grand jury reports that we're responding to in item 23, I want to call out that with item 30, it's actually following up on an item from last year's grand jury report, the one called ready aim fire Santa Cruz County in a hot seat that talked about fire response preparedness. And that was recommendation 23 in that report was to get more alert wildfire cameras. So I just want to assure the public that while we're not always respond to these reports immediately, they do provide a good list of recommendations that we can work with in the future. On items 40 and 45, I just want to thank public works for completing these essential repairs, both the storm damage repairs to so Cal San Jose road, which is of course the major artery in our county and the many other repairs with the R step funding and item called out an item 45. And then finally, just also want to point out item 44, we're spending a significant amount of money on design for the new transfer station or actually potentially multiple transfer stations from Buena Vista with just eight to 10 years of remaining capacity at at this county dump. You know, I think it's essential that we continue to pursue as a board waste reduction measures. That's all. Thank you. Very good. Thank you. Supervisor Friend, second district. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Supervisor Cronig for your comments on in particular on item 30. I share them very strongly about the value of these wildfire detection cameras, which was a commentary we'd had during the budget hearing with our three. I would like to obviously see some additional locations within the second district and happy to work with our three on that. I do recognize that there are also some private companies that have been partnering with PG and others. So this is a list of what we're dealing with, but they actually are some additional cameras already set up within our respective areas in both the third, first and second districts. But but I think that this is a pretty cost effective way to get some eyes in the air on early detection, which is something that should that have been able to happen in CZU. It's possible we could have had better outcomes. If nothing else, it's something that Cal Fire definitely wants to see a significant expansion of the status provided additional funding for in their most recent budget. And so I'm looking forward to that extension. I appreciate Supervisor Cronig's efforts on that as well. I'll just make a comment on whatever the new number of the item is and recording the letter to the governor. I assume it's 51.2 maybe, whatever the last item we just added to the agenda was from the consent agenda. Again, appreciation to Dr. Mark Strudley in public works for his remarkable leadership on this. I can't emphasize enough how difficult it's been to thread the needle between local state and federal government on this to get a project funded that for 60 years couldn't even get out of the feasibility stage. So we've really had to pull some some both policy and political miracles here, but we have a very can a very committed group both at the county as well as at the state and federal delegation to make this happen. And there's just so much momentum in this last state effort. If the governor if the governor can sign this bill will remove a enormous burden from two disadvantaged communities, eliminating what we estimate to be at least half of their of what we'll need to ask local voters to help fund for the opera ongoing operations and maintenance on that. So it's pretty remarkable. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Supervisor Coonerty, Third District. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. Just two brief comments. One is on I'm number 37. I want to thank the parks department for getting the Keep America Beautiful Grant and investing it up on the North Coast and an item number 42. I want to thank Public Works for working on the Swanton Road repair. It's been long overdue and it'll be a big benefit to the residents up there. Fourth District. Thank you, Chairman McPherson. Item 22 of the Redistricting Registricting process takes place really at the city, county, state and federal areas every 10 years, and it's very important when it comes to elections and representation for everybody pretty much. So the next one in South County will be in Wattonville, September 30th at 6 30 p.m. And that'll give the public a good chance to give their opinion on the whole process and how the maps are drawn for the representation in the elections coming up in the next 10 years, basically. Number 23, Grand Jury. Just want to say definitely we have to get more staffing in the Correctional Bureau, the prisons and they're understaffed and they have a lot of mandatory overtime and it's a very stressful job. So I just want to assure everyone that the board takes that very seriously and we're going to look at it coming up real quick. Thank you. Thank you. I'd like to comment on a couple items. Also on number 22, the redistricting process. I want to encourage members of the public to participate in that process by our county advisory redistrict commission. We have three meetings that will be drawing the net or Supervisorial lines for the next 10 years. They're all at 6 30 September 22nd at the sheriff community room in Live Oak. September 29 at the Felton Library and was mentioned September 30th at the Starlight Elementary School in Watsonville. On item 23 also on the Grand Jury report like to thank members of the Grand Jury for their service and thoughtful findings regarding the CCU fire complex and other topics they reviewed this past year. And item 29 that's also been mentioned about the next 10 years. I'm happy to see this move forward. As we saw during the CCU fire as our emergency responders see every day, really communication among the agency is incredibly vital. It needs to be improved and modernized and I look forward to seeing the analysis that come forward. On item number 30, I want to thank Supervisor Koenig for bringing this item forward to cameras are very useful tool and putting out the fire. I just I want to ensure that the sites considered here will be evaluated further and confirmed to be feasible by fire authorities and other experts before this item comes back to the board. So I'm not sure what this process of evaluation is, but I think it's critical. We have the fire districts involved and so make sure that that happens. I think it's probably in place, but yes, absolutely. We'll make sure that happens. Okay. And on number 45, the resurfacing projects regarding the road repair projects on today's consent agenda, the public works department is doing a phenomenal job with the funding it has really supported by a measure D that was passed by county voters in the fifth district. I can tell the residents and Alba, Bear Creek and East Siamese roads that they're thrilled and thankful for the public works department for that. With that, I would like I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as amended because we added the item. Does that be the correct way? Yes. We do still need the addition of supervisor friend signature added to 51.2, which will be the Senate bill. So we'll need the motion to include that additional direction. We need a specific motion for that. Okay. I'll add the extra direction for supervisor friend to sign a letter on SB 496 with you. Okay. Would that be a separate motion? It can be part of the same motion. Yes. I have a second. Second. Second by Koenig. Please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. He said aye. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you. Motion passes unanimously. We'll go to our regular agenda presentation on COVID-19 response and infrastructure enhancement plan except COVID-19 epidemiology and laboratory capacity grant in the amount of 11 million 79,439 dollars from the California Department of Public Health. COVID-19 local assistant grant funds in the amount of $1,517,000 353 from the CDPH immunization branch adopt resolutions accepting unanticipated revenue in the amount of $5 million for the fiscal year 2021-22 approved addition of 11 and a half full-time equivalent positions, permanent positions, the addition of 20 full-time limited term positions through June 30th, 2024 direct the Health Services Agency to return by August 31st, 2022 with an update on the community-wide response to the COVID-19 pandemic and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the Director of Health Services. We have the list of positions, the epidemiology laboratory capacity expansion and a resolution on that expansion. We'll go to our regular agenda resolution on that expansion and I do want to say as we go into this my thanks for the staff for what I consider to be a gold standard of responses to the pandemic. This has been and continues to be an enormous challenge and I especially like to mention Mimi Hall the County's Director of Health Services she will be leaving the county in October but it's done an exemplary job in getting our community on track and staying there. We have fought this crisis as well as we can on health issues and I want to thank you for your input and your whole department and what it's done so thank you very much. Go ahead and make the presentation. Thank you so much for your kind and supportive words Supervisor McPherson it's truly truly appreciated today I do have with me both of my assistant co-assistant director Jen Herrera who is the force overseeing the COVID response on the ground in the department operation center and I'd also like to introduce Tiffany Cantrell-Warren who has joined us virtually. Tiffany comes to us most recently from the City of Long Beach Health and Human Services and Tiffany if you'd like to say a brief hello that would be great I believe she's joined us. Taking the dresser so she should be ready. Hi my name is Tiffany Cantrell-Warren I am very excited to be joining the county of Santa Cruz I actually grew up in Santa Cruz County and so I'm really happy to bring the experience that I've gained in a different community in Southern California back to help my home community and I look forward to working with each of you and with our community members to elevate health protect and promote health and wellness for the residents all residents of Santa Cruz County thank you Tiffany and we also have Dr. Gail Newell and other staff available should the board have questions after our presentation so I do want to note and again your words are so meaningful Chair McPherson the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the death of almost 700,000 Americans to date and tens of millions more Americans have been infected and the dollars that we are asking for the board to accept an appropriate today are incredibly needed to not only continue our responses but bolster them for what we anticipate will be a prolonged response effort into the foreseeable future so with that I'd like to turn the presentation over to Assistant Director Jennifer Herrera who will provide an overview of the COVID-19 response to date and the infrastructure enhancement plan as a result of the funds we request that you appropriate today thank you Director Hall and thank you board during this presentation we will cover the county's pandemic response to COVID-19 the purpose of this item is to request your board's authorization to accept an appropriate new funding for COVID-19 public health activities and request your board's approval of new positions to sustain the response we'll start by reviewing what we've accomplished a phrase I call the sprint during this time frame public health and the community sprinted to get ahead of this novel disease by building and innovating new infrastructure in partnerships next we'll review where we're going what I call the marathon the marathon is about enduring for the long haul we expect the pandemic to last for years and the impact to last for generations the work ahead will need to be energized focused and steady to sustain the response and recovery we will conclude with the recommended actions for this new phase of our pandemic response and closing remarks from HSA director Mimi Hall the county sprint to build the pandemic response was done so with these core attributes in mind what is our legal duty recognizing that partnerships are vital needing a unique infrastructure for this unique moment ensuring health equity legal duty under California code of regulations Title 17 local health departments have a unique legal responsibility to control the spread of communicable disease at a population level or the entire county population regardless of where people in the county where people live in the county what type of insurance they have or where they receive medical care this unique duty authorizes a county health officer orders and enforce preventive measures that are necessary to protect and preserve the community from public health hazards during times of emergencies furthermore counties have the unique responsibility of ensuring a medical health operational area coordinator or a MOOC is available to coordinate medical and health disaster resources with the state the county's pandemic response is based on the understanding that a public health crisis should be led by public health the entity with the knowledge and responsibility for population based disease control partnerships HSA public health division's mission statement is to collaborate with the community to protect, promote and improve the health and well being of all though we have led the countywide response population based impact is not possible without partnerships the county's accomplishments have been dependent on partnerships with a wide array of internal stakeholders including the human services department's shelter operation and the county's emergency operation center as well as external stakeholders including the entire health care system community based organizations county office of education neighboring jurisdictions and community coalitions such as Fajardo valley state lives the success of our response has been dependent on developing these unique partnerships infrastructure we utilize the incident command system or ICS structure to support the need to rapidly develop an organized response to the pandemic using ICS we formally activated a departmental operation center or DOC which has stayed active since its initiation in February of 2020 during the course of this response over 300 staff have been deployed to the HSA DOC the majority of deployed staff have been from HSA admin and the public health division however most HSA staff have continuously worked the front lines of the pandemic our clinics and behavioral health staff continue to provide direct services to patients and environmental health continued to provide education and technical support to businesses struggling to keep up with the changing industry guidance health equity last but certainly not least at the core of our pandemic response is health equity health equity is a concept that everyone should have a fair and just opportunity to live their healthiest life as public health experts we knew that there would be populations disproportionately affected by this pandemic populations historically impacted by social and structural determinants of health such as poverty and racism we continue to center health equity at the core of our response using data and an understanding of the social determinants of health to identify health disparities and allocate efforts accordingly to focus our response efforts early on we assess the existing knowledge of the pandemic response and develop the framework to characterize the purpose and general activities of what we're doing this became save lives Santa Cruz County the purpose of our response to COVID-19 is to save as many lives as possible in Santa Cruz County and we do this through the acronym of save slowing the spread of the virus adapting to a new normal ensuring vaccines and therapeutics are available and elevating public health readiness save lives has been a helpful framework to reference over the course of this pandemic this orange line here is the average trend of daily COVID-19 cases in our county over time you can see that we've had surges and lulls over time and we are currently on the decline of our third surge between January and June of 2020 there was a rush or sprint to understand we first heard of the novel coronavirus in January of 2020 public health at that time convened regular meetings between its communicable disease units emergency preparedness and emergency medical services to keep tabs on this emerging situation there were so many unknowns at the time how does it spread is it airborne, is it droplet, how lethal is it is it worse than the flu how many ventilators will we need what was clear is how this virus was impacting healthcare systems internationally Wuhan, New York City, Italy the images and stories of health systems overwhelmed they were horrifying and worrisome though we had a few cases during this period it was a time frame marked with uncertainty chaos and a lot of preparedness at this time we put out mass gathering guidance there were new shelter and place orders put out there was insufficient testing and so there was a lot of coordination in the healthcare system on that and there was a lack of clarity from the CDC as the science was still emerging our objectives during this time was clear flatten the curve meaning slow the spread to maintain the healthcare system which would save lives repair our community to the extent that we could at the time and contain the spread through testing case investigation and contact tracing we activated the DOC in February late February once it was clear that the virus was in California and by the end by early March we were notified of our first case we spent much of this time building new systems and partnerships to prepare for the surge to come in July through October we rushed to address our first surge and manage multiple emergencies in July we experienced our first local surge of cases while simultaneously onboarding to new technology to increase our case investigation and contact tracing efficiencies at its height we reached about 44 cases in a day the surge highlighted the urgent need to create new systems in order to protect the population from this virus after the surge ended HSA responded to the CZU fire supporting the medical health branch of the EOC's operation section nurses that had been previously deployed to support COVID investigations were immediately rerouted to support shelters our MOOC team coordinated mutual aid from the state and other jurisdictions including the deployment of behavioral health staff from other jurisdictions so that our staff could continue to serve our high needs clients and we procured rapid COVID-19 test kits for use of the shelters while partnerships and systems were being built this was a difficult time for all county staff we were all dealing with multiple emergencies direct services the newly instituted furlough we rushed to increase our capacity to make sure help and contract staff to maintain the response however there were many accomplishments including the distribution of health equity grants using coronavirus relief funds and an increased understanding of COVID-19 science which helped provide better employer and industry guidance during this phase our objectives were to mitigate the spread of COVID and once case rates declined our objective was to suppress further stages by maintaining testing investigation and isolation and quarantine capacity between November and February we experienced a war surge yet peaking at about 300 cases per day during this time frame we saw many outbreaks in higher risk settings such as skilled nursing facilities our hospitals were over capacity and we saw many deaths around 167 deaths during this period our staff were overworked never adequately rebounding from the first surge and dual emergency response extra help staff proved vital and worked so many additional hours that they were at the verge of exhausting their allowable time of the county and therefore at risk of being separated mid-year during this period the sprint continued staff worked quickly to mitigate the spread but there were a couple of silver linings we knew that the surge would end which it eventually did around February and vaccines highly effective vaccines became available by early December this period was literally a rush to save lives addressing outbreaks managing efficient distribution of scarce vaccines with very finicky logistics and working with personnel to maintain our staffing between March and June of 2021 we sprinted to vaccinate as supplies became available our community held a variety of mass vaccination in pop-up clinics with much success in partnership with our health and community partners we were consistently one of the top counties with the highest vaccination rates vaccines were distributed equitably by geography in our county vaccines became steadily available in routine healthcare settings such as primary care and commercial pharmacies cases continued to decline to rate similar to earlier in the pandemic and we continued to refine our disease control infrastructure and the DLC staff were granted an exception to roll over their furlough hours to the next fiscal year which created which provided greater flexibility with our staff capacity as vaccines steadily showed their real-world effectiveness there was a rush to provide guidance in this new normal where mass necessary to vaccinated people need to quarantine what will return to work look like is it over yet our focus during this timeframe was to continue to suppress the virus vaccinate as efficiently as possible and now we are in our current phase starting in July which we continue to sprint to mitigate the surge and understand the impact of the COVID-19 Delta variant we continue to focus on neighborhood based vaccine clinics with a focus on actual vaccine distribution local state and international data has proven the effectiveness of vaccines that preventing serious illness hospitalization and death 20 months we have been sprinting we've done so much and we realize that this isn't sustainable and it's time to pivot and that pivot is to this next phase which I called the marathon the pandemic isn't over and won't be for a while the actual surge and lows of the pandemic could last for years and the recovery efforts will last many more and though we have learned a lot there are still many unknowns about this virus there are questions about how you know how long will the vaccines hold out what are the effects of long COVID what are the long-term social impacts of the pandemic economic instability lack of in-person instruction for schools behavior health and traumatic events and coping for the community public health needs to maintain an adaptive response to COVID-19 and other threats to public health every surge has been a unique experience affecting different populations and settings with a variety with varying severity so we need to remain flexible to the situation planning for this marathon we need the following we need to strengthen our partnerships every partnership that we have developed over this this pandemic has been extremely valuable and we need to sustain what works and grow on those partnerships we need to increase our internal capacity for sustained response we found that we can't sustain an adequate response with extra help staff and volunteers and contractors we need to also have hired staff to continue on with this on this long road infrastructure readiness to accept future funding it's not just about disease control operations like case investigation and contact tracing we also need accountants admin aid analysts the staff that ensure that we continue to be responsible stewards of public funds that is rapidly becoming available and we need to develop necessary infrastructure for HSA's unique role to address county priorities such as racial equity COVID has exacerbated existing disparities if we are truly going to achieve health equity which is at the core of our response we need to address the root causes of the systemic inequities that cause these disparities such as racism it's not a coincidence that the primary population affected by COVID-19 are those who have identified as Latinx or Latino or Latino but this disparity is preventable for this new phase in our pandemic response we are requesting the acceptance of two funding sources both from the California Department of Public Health on the left you'll see the ELC expansion funds which is a total of around 11 million dollars this funding spans from January 2021 through July 2023 we are asking for 4.5 million to be appropriated for this fiscal year and the purpose of these funds is to support basic public health disease control infrastructure to sustain our COVID-19 response on the right you'll see the other set of funding that we are asking to accept which is a total of 1.5 million dollars through our immunization grant it's a supplemental to an existing five-year grant that we typically get from the state and we are asking to appropriate 500,000 for this fiscal year this will support services and systems changes to integrate COVID-19 into the healthcare system during our sprint phase we realize how chronically under staff we were to adequately fulfill our role to lead the countywide pandemic response though we have had success with external partnerships it became clear that we need to increase our internal capacity here's a graph that shows a vacancy average for HSA's public health division you can see in the course of the pandemic it drastically increased just reflecting the realization of how much stuff we actually need to be an adequate health department the pandemic has highlighted our unique role of a local health department and this new funding that we received has provided some great opportunities for us to be innovative with how we staff for department so our staffing request is to add 11.5 full-time equivalent permanent positions because we are expecting to receive ongoing funding in the future after these one-time grants and in 2023 and 2024 for example the state general fund has promised 300 million annually to public health starting next fiscal year so we look forward to learning more about that we're asking to add 20 FTE limited term positions as well as extending 32 limited term positions many of which are already filled with excellent staff this is a timeline to fill those positions and the list of activities that we need to do to have a candidate start and we'll continue to work closely with personnel to fill all of these vacancies at HSA it can take anywhere between 11 to 20 weeks to fill a vacancy if there is no existing list then it can take about 11 weeks if we have to do a recruitment to develop and rank a list that's when it takes closer to 20 weeks to fill a vacancy so in this last stretch of the sprint we aim to move quickly to have many of these positions filled by January of 2022 or sooner and I will turn it over to director hall for closing statements thank you director Herrera clear from assistant director's presentation that we have really really risen not only as a staff but as a community and as a county to address COVID-19 and one of the things that I'm so grateful for in terms of these funding is that they provide an opportunity for us to address equity we can see that across the country the pain that we've seen from COVID-19 has disproportionately affected certain groups in certain communities and we've seen that here in Santa Cruz County communities color in particular have felt the pain of the COVID pandemic much more sharply and they have experienced disproportionate case counts deaths and other social impacts and the disparities that we've seen over the last year weren't a result of COVID-19 they're actually a result of illuminated inequities that have existed for a long time in our county systems so in order to achieve health equity we really have to address the structural barriers that we have that impact any of the groups differently influence where a person lives, where they work, where their children play we understand that race and equity are determinants of health so as assistant director Jen Herrera has communicated HSA truly has a critical role not only in fighting the pandemic but in all matters of health to address the impact of racism and other social determinants of health so as we stand before you today or sit before you today to ask for appropriation of these funds we promise that we will continue to expand our internal agency efforts and also strengthen our external partnerships to foster greater diversity and an inclusive approach to addressing our biggest health problems we are also relieved that our federal government as well as our state has committed to ongoing funding to support public health infrastructure and we know that now is the time to acknowledge the work of public health and act quickly to help us bolster our capacity for the future there have been a lot of kudos given to the HSA team and our public health staff and they are absolutely well deserved we have by far the best team that has worked conscientiously to follow science best practice and the value of every single human life but I would be remiss if I did not thank our overall county leadership and our board the reason that we have been able to have the kind of impact we've had with the COVID-19 pandemic in Santa Cruz County is because we had the political will to let science lead and let the experts in public health emergency and we've also had top county leadership that has supported that and I believe that lives were saved in Santa Cruz County because of this approach so I want to thank our county leadership our elected officials the CAO's office, our county EOC all of the departments that rallied behind us in the public health approach and it truly made a difference in Santa Cruz County and with that today I would like to ask for your board's approval for the various items before you to accept and appropriate funds from California Department of Public Health to help strengthen our public health infrastructure thank you I want to reiterate how fantastic and I'd say unbelievable the staff work that you've had I mean it was double overtime for many many of your staff and this request for additional personnel to address this and attack this pandemic is very impressive and I just can't I don't know how to express more so than to say thank you for your unbelievable commitment to the public safety of the people of Santa Cruz County I'll start the comments from the board with Supervisor Coonerty great thank you I want to thank you all for you and your entire staff and the efforts you made during that sprint and now the efforts that will be ongoing during this marathon that will face not only COVID but just the changing challenges the emerging challenges that we will face and future pandemics and infectious disease and challenges that we will have my only question about this was you know that you showed the staffing challenges during the pandemic and now we're increasing staffing it's as we all know it's very hard to recruit people to come to Santa Cruz County because of the high cost of housing and I'm wondering what we're doing if anything to create a pipeline from our local schools and universities into the public health division so we can make sure that these positions are full thank you Supervisor Coonerty for your question we actually have support for that we haven't come yet to the board for it we have an additional stream of funding in the amount of $750,000 for public health workforce development and the state is also providing technical assistance training consultation to help do the things exactly like you described it's not going to happen in three months or even a year but it really is laying the groundwork in partnerships with our universities local education K-12 many many other sectors to build up that workforce and at the same time we are looking at being competitive as a health services agency it's not enough in government to be equitable with your county counterparts we are competing with hospitals the veterans administration with the schools for school nurses and if we want to attract and keep really really good staff and not have them leave for the next better job we really have to address workforce and that is one of the things that both of our co-assistant directors will be working on bolstering in the next year with the assistance of those workforce development dollars great thank you congratulations oh hi there good morning how you doing I'm doing alright thank you for your report it's been quite an experience the last year and 10 months and I can't think of anybody better than you and your staff helping us helping guide us through all of the challenges we had and I also want to wish you the best in the future that's it thanks Mimi thank you also thank you chair and of course thank you to you and all the health staff for your work during this very long sprint we've all heard about all the state money available these days with the huge budget surplus and it's fantastic of course to see it showing up in our county in a very tangible way that's going to improve people's lives you talked a lot about improving our local health infrastructure and obviously more staff are the primary way that we're going to do that but I'm curious are there other ways that you look at spending this money on infrastructure itself that will also improve our overall system and what are the grants what kind of spending is eligible with these grants we're fortunate to have some flexibility with this funding especially the ELC expansion funds which is generally to support disease control infrastructure so what that looks like in addition to staffing of course there's training and so we want to ensure that all staff have training in something as basic as equity and racial equity as well as disease control processes and infection control so that we have a clear baseline standard of competencies for our department in addition to that we're looking at big infrastructure like technology working with the Santa Cruz health information exchange to create efficiencies with how diseases are reported into our department to public health and then also investments into how we analyze into our analytics and which you can see some of those investments in our data dashboard that's developed over the course of the pandemic increasing our epi capacity and the tools to provide them so that they can work on that analysis so that's some of the things that we're working on in addition to that we're looking at contracted partnerships with organizations to do outreach and engagement although in public health we pride ourselves in being public health professionals and equity minded we also recognize we're not necessarily the right people to do the outreach and so that's where we work with community organizations like the live out cradle to career program and their promotora program so developing a network of promotoras so we're looking at workforce not just internally within public health but we're also looking community wide what does public health workforce look like community wide and that includes training our people with lived experience and people in the community around public health Thank you for that you know we've been working on these matters before the COVID COVID just created the impetus for the funding to be able to pursue the infrastructure that we wanted so I did want to note for that pre-pandemic we had been working we Jen and I to kind of reorganize how health services agency delivers its public health services so as you know from previous discussions we look upstream as well as midstream and downstream and make sure that our investments are equally weighted far upstream and focused on prevention so we have in the past couple of years worked on reorganizing our public health division and so we have a population health unit that didn't exist before we have a unit that focuses on overall prevention we brought in substance use disorder prevention from behavioral health into public health so all of these things that kind of make us work smarter and put the right people working on the right things in the right way Thanks you've talked a lot about equity and you just described some of those ways that you can do that working with community partners but of course one of the big reasons that we saw much higher rates of infection in the Latinx population particularly in that I guess middle first and middle wave of the pandemic were because we have multiple families looking for household because of the income inequality and of course that combined with the acute shortage of housing in our community and I noticed in some of the grant eligible spending things that hoteling was one of those and I just wondered if there was any contemplation of potentially buying some sort of small units that you could keep on either one of the north or south county health campuses so that in the future if someone does contract COVID or another infectious disease and they need a place to remove themselves from their family that they could do that rather than infecting the rest of their family or other families that they're forced to live with I'll try to address that and you can clarify Assistant Director Herrera I don't think that this allows for a large capital purchase it allows for construction improvements and vouchers and paying for hoteling but what you say is spot on in terms of our need and we are experiencing that not just with COVID but with recuperative care two whole floors of the roadway in that we are using as an INQ shelter is a lot much of those floors are from patients being discharged from the hospital that aren't prepared to take care of themselves that don't have an adequate place to go and when the funding runs out for us to cover those costs we're going to have a problem and so we are committed to working with Housing for Health with the community partners in our cities to think about how do we address this particular piece that has been highlighted by the pandemic and is our obligation to address going forward okay so you recognize it's a need but maybe this is not the right funding source is that what I'm hearing yeah I think there are ways for us to work with other partners to address that and this may be a part of it if some of this funding becomes ongoing and I hope that it may it could be that we figure out a way to actually purchase or acquire property that the operational costs can help be paid by this particular funding stream it's about braiding all of our resources but there are a lot of potentials okay thank you very much thank you, Supervisor Friend thank you Mr. Chair thank you Director Hall and Assistant Director Rivera congratulations by the way on the Assistant Director role I don't think we publicly acknowledged you on the evidence well absolutely well deserved Director Hall while this isn't part of the presentation let me just start by saying you will be missed as Supervisor Caput noted you really did help guide us along with Dr. Newell and everybody else on your staff well it's not done yet but through a pretty remarkable trying time in our community and I thought it was important as part of this presentation as Ms. Rivera noted sometimes when you're in the middle of this challenge you don't take the time to reflect on all the things that were done and the decisions that were made with imperfect information and oftentimes people judge on spot decisions that are made as though that there was a counterfactual known and most of these decisions were just being made with the best of the ability given the opportunities that we had and I have to say that overall is remarkable how correct your health team was and helping guide this I guess when you rely on science and not on things you read online you can actually make pretty significant improvements in people's lives so I just wanted to appreciate you and your team for being steadfast throughout that entire process completely in support of the actual item that's before us and sort of restructuring this in a longitudinal way that can ensure that we can begin to build back the department in a better way. There has been a historic under investment in public health across the country as you know started pretty significantly declining a couple decades ago and so if there can be one good thing about that comes out of tragedy or out of pandemics or out of these kinds of challenges it would be that hopefully it can reform how we look at long-term investments and things because they make long-term valuable outcome differences and so I think that this hopefully is the beginning of that component so thank you again for both of you for your work and I am supportive of the item. I'd like to make a short comment about the time factor in it it's nice to know that this is going to be going through and accommodate these physicians through June 30th, 2024 one of the things I'm concerned about it's the federal and state funds we have to address this pandemic and other issues too often it's a one-year deal this is two and a half years out or more almost three years out so that gives it some what shall we call sustainability and that's very welcome that we're not going to have to ask for this every year that this the funding will accommodate the positions you're asking for through June the fiscal year June or 2324 that's not the way it usually is but I'm sure glad it's there I have just a general statement any comments from the public my name is James Ewing Whitman recently heard a mortician of 15 years describe what was going on in Great Britain with fascinating kind of makes me want to be a mortician to help support the families you know the 11th leading cause of death in the United States may be suicide but long before this the leading cause of death in the United States is western medical doctors and I would love to just speak really quickly on what I wrote this morning it was from my heart I am just upset with the criminal malfeasance here it's disgusting thank you the DC administration is paying the state legislators county governments to run the covered 19 agenda you know as we spoke about this about three weeks ago there is no purified isolation of the genome anywhere to be found in the world so there is no covered 19 we've asked you to check the EUA life in CDC page 39 in the health department which wrote a spackle letter they both have no isolation there is no need for remedies the mask and the injection this injection creates no immunity it is experimental and there is no liability if somebody is damaged or dies it's on them Dr. Cahill, Stanford and Cornell are diagnosed cell cultures from ostensibly patients being treated for covered 19 they have found only Fleaway and Flea B and with frequencies with the 4G and especially the 5G and comorbidities people can get sick we also now know that the no swabs are vectors people sick they contain ethylene oxide and graphene oxide no disease in history has lasted one and a half years the injection is killing and maiming millions over the world reported body spasms blindness the eye doctors are reporting they've never seen certain kinds of eye diseases that they're seeing now it's also creating CVAs which are strokes heart attacks, choralysis and much more the agenda is communism control and injecting people worldwide with toxin graphene oxide lipid spike proteins that attack cells and cross the blood brain barrier causing prion disease which is like mad cow disease and nanoparticles that are wild cards that may cause more gelants disease in people what's more important you're more compass or the funding and control to ask you consider these are injections that are damaging a lot of people thank you any other comments from the public have any on the phone as a reminder for those joining us on zoom these are comments for item number 7 if your hand is still up for the public comment section I've written your names down we'll call you again at the end of the meeting please lower your hand if you intend to only speak to public comment if you are speaking to item 7 please maintain your hand up Valerie Laveroni-Coral your microphone is available and a star 6 to unmute yourself thank you I apologize for my oops you'll need to turn off for a second I have a problem here excuse me I wanted to address the issue of cannabis moratorium and I'd like to thank you we're listening to the we're listening to the we're listening to the we're listening to the we're listening to the we're listening to the item number 8 Lee I'm sorry I will have to come back I'll just send in a letter and save your time my apologies I could not get into the meeting earlier no problem that is Board of Supervisors at Santa Cruz County dot US it's call in user 1 your microphone is available this is Marilyn Garrett can you hear me yes we can hear you okay thanks to the previous speaker Joanne there and I want to recommend two books that go into more depth on how this virus has never been isolated and some other factors that cause disease one book is called the truth about contagion exploring theories of how disease spreads by Dr. Thomas Callan and Sally Fallon Morel it can be ordered from Dr. Tom Callan.com website the other book is coming out in November by Robert F. Kennedy Jr titled the real Anthony Fauci Bill Gates Big Pharma and the global war on democracy and public health and I want to read a little from the forward to Dr. Callan's truth about COVID-19 book and it's by Robert F. Kennedy Jr please let me read this paragraph without cutting me off instead of citing scientific studies to justify mandates for lockdowns and vaccines our medical ruler site CDC FDAN NIH captive agencies that are groveling sock puppets to the industries they regulate multiple federal and international investigations have documented the financial entanglement with pharmaceutical companies that have made these regulators cesspools of corruption and I fear that our own county is part of this financial entanglement Monica McGuire microphone is available Thank you so much I am can you hear me yes I'm again terrified to see that you are hired employees have not only ignored our efforts to create local expert debates on this topic which we've offered over and over to find out what would be best for our county needs you have misrepresented and hidden with the emergency declarations you continue to renew that are supposedly to overrun avoid overrunning our hospitals are baseless because our hospitals actually closed down sections in order to look as though not enough beds etc all of this including of course that we know the PCR test has been brought to your attention over and over it was never intended to be a test so you're voting today whether to accept further huge amounts of money to support injecting people in this county with this experimental mRNA therapy in multiple forms is actually just putting all of us at risk including yourselves because doing so despite so much evidence of harms already in recipients of these injections is furthering harms to everyone else who volunteered to be part of the experiment and those of those of your constituents who said we want no part of it all people who love our rights have proclaimed my body my choice among other great phrases and yet that right to determine what health experiments each of us desires to join is not being honored you haven't brought this up you haven't responded to our questions and points about it and you are putting yourselves further at risk by continuing to not act in the public's best interest this way you are harming children especially as people have asked you stop forcing them into masks and distancing at schools that's ridiculous since they have continued to prove they neither die of this nor are spreaders to anyone else closing down all our small businesses while you use the money for anything you want is disgusting there are no other speakers on Zoom okay I'll return it nobody else public wants to speak on this I'll return it to the board for action I'll move the recommended action I'll second be seconded by friend call the roll please supervisor Koenig friend thank you thank you thank you item number eight is to consider and adopt an urgency interim ordinance to place a moratorium on the issuance of new cannabis business licenses for operations on parcel zone commercial agriculture or CA that are adjacent to or within 500 feet of residentially zoned parcel and scheduled public caring for October 19 to consider an extension of the interim ordinance as outlined in the memorandum of the county administrative officer we have the notice of the public hearing and urgency interim ordinance a moratorium on cannabis licenses on the commercial agriculture zone presenting this today will be SAM before tea from our cannabis licensing manager and let's go ahead I'm going to go ahead and present this morning I'm sorry that's all right chair good morning chair and board members Melody Serino deputy CAO at the August 24th 2021 meeting the board of supervisors your board identified potential conflicts between residentially zoned partials and commercial agricultural operations in the commercial agricultural or CA zone district the board directed staff to come back with an interim urgency ordinance to impose a temporary moratorium on the issuance of new cannabis business licenses for operations on parceled zone CA that are adjacent to or within 500 feet of a residentially zoned parcel while staff considers and studies a proposed prohibition and county code amendments staff were also directed to return on November 9th to consider policy proposals and changes to the ordinance that reflect these parameters I just wanted to give a quick review of current licensing areas for cannabis cultivation because you might not remember all of this we did this so long ago and the minimum acreage required please note that other non retail operations such as non volatile manufacturing and class 1 distribution are also allowed on these parcels based on the current ordinance in order to allow time for the board to consider possible changes to the ordinance to address the conflicts between residentially zoned areas and cannabis activities in the CA zone district a temporary moratorium is proposed on issuing new licenses in CA zone parcels that abut or are within 500 feet of a residentially zoned parcel I just want you to note when we looked at this we included all residentially zoned parcels and that a residentially zoned parcel would include RA which is residential agriculture where cannabis activities are currently allowed if the parcel is 5 acres or more so I want to show you a map and can you give me control you should have these so first I want to show you all of the CA zoned parcels and I'm just going to zoom down a little bit so you can see there's some on the north coast as well but the green primarily the CA zone parcels are in the south county but the green areas the light green areas show all of the CA zone parcels within the county of Santa Cruz and I'm going to focus mostly on the south county since that's where most of the parcels are but I will show the rest of the map you asked for a 500 foot buffer so we added these red lines into the map so you can see the buffer zones and then you asked for that buffer around all the RA parcels so now I'm showing you the map with all of those parcels identified and I'm going to show you now this is what's left then once we take out all those parcels the dark green now indicates what parcels will be available for cannabis cultivation that do not abut or are within 500 feet of the parameters that you established so the quick numbers sorry we can get out of the map and back to the slide so these are the quick numbers are shown so there's 100 1462 CA parcels in the county once you take out those parcels within the buffer zone or that abut we're left with 689 CA zone parcels that are available for licensing still during the moratorium and I again I just want to remind you that RA zone properties already allow some cannabis activity though there are other considerations you may remember including setbacks and canopy size limitations on those RA zone properties so these are currently licenses in process which would be impacted by the moratorium which was information you asked for some are working on meeting their use permit conditions of approval building out their facilities to become operational and those ones in yellow are the ones who have submitted pre-applications to start the licensing process so each line represents this particular APN number and you can see what district they're in potential licenses within that license the current applications and review and if there's any current licenses on that parcel the total potential licenses including those that are in the pre-application phase represent approximately 22,000 square feet of indoor canopy cultivation 530,000 square feet of greenhouse canopy operations 20,000 square feet of hoop house canopy cultivation 150,000 square feet of greenhouse nursery operations and 22,000 square feet of outdoor canopy cultivation the total value of the potential revenue loss of CBT is estimated at 2.5 million and I want you to understand that this is a very broad estimate we did not have time to do a really detailed analysis around this that looks at market price fluctuations or the likelihood of loss production area given whether these facilities will actually be built within the year and other important factors but we will look at that in time for the November report back those who currently hold a license and are required to renew annually would not be impacted by the moratorium however our budgeted tax revenue for the current fiscal year included is increased based on projects in the pipeline so should these projects, these ones here the potentially impacted one be delayed in their licensing or not be allowed to continue we may not meet our projected revenues either for licensing or CBT in addition if the board makes these changes in November and includes the current licensees precluding them from renewal because they are but or are within 450 feet or 500 feet of a residential parcel this would impact approximately 37 properties impacting about 60% of our non CBT revenue so these are the recommended actions for today and we are prepared to answer your questions thank you for that presentation most of these are in the second and fourth districts of course as identified we will go on Supervisor Zach Friend in the second district if he has any comments before we go to the public and I think you might we just want to go to the public to go ahead thank you chair McPherson I appreciate the presentation there's a couple things in the presentation I did have some quick comments on what's being proposed doesn't impact renewals or current licensees so I know that comment was made at the end but that's not the intention that would be in conflict with this additionally a lot of the people that are in the early licensing process that doesn't necessarily mean that they will receive a license so I think that there's a little bit of clarity generally speaking on that on that slide because there's a lot of that makes up the majority of what was shown that could be prevented but as you know not everybody that applies for a license necessarily receives a license but just given the amount of feedback I think that we've received on this item over the last couple weeks I think it shows that the board we've been doing the iterative process on this for the last seven years that we still have work to do we've had these top-line interests the board has been very consistent on preventing any sort of activity within residential zone districts and also minimizing any environmental impacts we do that on dispensing we do that on manufacturing we do that and that has been the goal regarding cultivation as well which is why we did some of the movement from the hills did some of the movement away from some of the RA zone parcels and while we had this discussion in 2020 about setbacks and noticing in regards to CA and we had a commitment to continue to review this the setbacks and the we're not approved at that time there was a there wasn't full board support at that time but here we are over a year later and we actually have some information that shows that that there are some still some conflicts in regards to this activity vis-a-vis residential zone districts so given the fact that this would still maintain nearly all the activity within the second district given the fact that there's still over tenfold growth and potential licenses even with what's being proposed I consider this to still be a very reasonable approach moving forward as you may remember and the board may remember we did a full environmental impact report and we looked at CA, RA, SU and TPC zone parcels and at the end of that the IR showed that there was significant unmitigatable impacts and traffic, water, noise, smell and other impacts which is why we didn't certify the EIR because we wouldn't be able to have any kind of commercial activity at all but that was looking at current commercial agricultural activity on those parcels and then the change and intensification used to this so it shouldn't be particularly surprising then that exactly what the EIR showed is exactly what these residential areas are dealing with and so I think that this is just our opportunity to make this modification but still continue to have most of it, or actually almost all of it in the CA zone parcels and basically all of it still within my district but just moving forward to address those continued conflict points in the residential area but I'm very interested in hearing the continued community input on this and I appreciated that the board was willing to put this item on to hear more of this feedback. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you and this to adopt this urgency interim word is we'll take a four fifth vote of the board. Supervisor Caput, do you have any comments? Yeah, thank you very much for the report. I just want to state something here. Every so often we hear that cannabis marijuana brings in a few million dollars every year to our general budget and we do appreciate that but we have to remember that neighborhoods want to be in their lives residential homeowners pay hundreds of millions of dollars to the budget and we have to understand that they the people that own the homes the people that actually rent the housing and all that they live in neighborhoods and they shop locally they pay the sales taxes they pay the gas taxes they pay for pretty much everything their children go to our schools which we're very proud of so it comes down to protecting neighborhoods and what people that live in those neighborhoods want that's something that I really respect I know who pays my paycheck and that's the residents that live in this county so it's pretty clear what I'm getting out here and how I'm looking at this whole issue Thank you. Just a couple questions so you mentioned the potential loss of revenue of $2.5 million is that from not processing the current permits or is that if we move forward in November with completely excluding these zones That's based on the current permits in the pipeline. That's pretty significant just with current permits and obviously if we're looking at potentially losing half of parcels currently available for cultivations can have a much more significant impact you bring back that number for our November discussion okay thank you and then the map is extremely helpful would love to spend more time with that I don't know if you can make that public or part of the item in November in my mind there is a significant difference between residential residential zone parcels and residential agricultural I mean agriculture is part of their name it would be really helpful if we could see what kind of difference you see if you didn't exclude RA parcels versus all the parcels was that possible with your current functionality or had you grouped all the we grouped all of the residential parcels together because the residents even in residential agriculture is the kind of the top line of the tiers of zoning and so we included RA what we might what I might suggest is that we look at RA that is five acres or more since those are acres that already allow for cannabis activity so we could single out those parcels that are less than five acres and look at it in that respect yeah that would be helpful I'll just say this is going to be a difficult balancing act as we move forward that's all my comments for now thank you chair sir Coonerty do you have any comments at this point no I'll just wait after public comment Mr. Chair I do have one additional question if I may I just wanted to ask staff why they included SU in their understanding when we had done our original maps we didn't include SU which showed that there would be about another 100 or so available parcels for commercial cultivation I wasn't sure why SU was included and therefore prohibiting within 500 families sorry SU was included because residences can be built on SU property and so it would create the same conditions right if the conditions are this tension between where there's homes and where there's commercial agriculture because SU parcels can have residences on them we took that into consideration as well looking at the larger picture of that tension I mean okay I think that was a kind of a broad read of board direction because we were trying to prevent from those that already have resident in the name itself residential zone districts because my understanding is that would have allowed a little over 800 I believe remaining parcels as opposed to the 679 I don't have the exact number in front of me but I appreciate that I just don't think that I think that that was just an expanded reading of what the board's specific motion was which was just to deal with those that were specifically residential districts which I do look forward to the public comment on this I'm sorry would you like me to pull those out in the next iteration supervisor friend the SU parcels yeah I mean I think that I was surprised to see it today so I would like to just see it as well as what supervisor Koenig's question is or your point on the five acres or above an RA although realistically when we look at the underlying general plan designation of an RA residential and the type of commercial agriculture that's even allowed there is very limited compared to what is allowed on a CA parcel so I think it still is very residentially focused but yes on the SU I just that surprised me to see that in there okay we're going to go to the public how many people want to speak on this issue okay we've got several we're going to limit the comments to two minutes we have each of the board members I can assure you has received numerous emails or communications if you could keep your comments as brief as possible and not be repetitive but might be difficult to do that but it will so just stand a line and it's two minutes let's start good morning my name is Karen Ringenburg I'm an attorney I help people go through the state and local licensing process my office is in Oakland but I've done not all of the state including here in Santa Cruz County since 2018 I drove down from Oakland today to explain how pernicious this action would be to the 24 applicants who are currently in the queue when this board acted in 2020 to make commercial agriculture principally permitted for cannabis cultivation people did exactly what you expected investments based on that decision by this board they bought and leased properties they've invested millions in improvements consultants engineers architects to move these projects forward the board today considers pulling the reg out from under all of those people throwing away all of that investment we all know that if this moratorium goes into effect it is very likely all of those programs all of those projects are dead and all that money is flushed down the proverbial toilet so I would encourage you to consider limiting your action to only new applications that have not yet been submitted so all of those people who've invested millions of dollars on projects this county invited should not have the rug pulled out from under them I would encourage the county to do so not only because it's fair to those applicants but also because it sets a tone for how the county is perceived in the business community writ large if the county does this and veers the guardrail with these significant changes to its program it tells future businesses that the county cannot be relied upon to have a stable hand on the rudder in deciding policy these types of decisions should be made carefully over a long period of time not on two weeks notice with very little input because it's going to expect significant harm on lots of folks who are doing nothing other than what the county asked them to thank you supervisors I may see a property owner landlord and businessman here in Santa Cruz County over the last 10 years we have had tenants legally cultivated cannabis on our property without a complaint and fraction or citation of any kind and we're locked in on all sides by residential parcels I prefer to call them all neighbors we're here today because of concern regarding small two small parcels some neighbors have valid concerns but I also hear a great deal of paranoia and misinformation gun seizures raids, razor wire light pollution odor year round children in danger property values plummeting all in true or addressed in an ordinance already these neighbors seem to conflate enforcement action against illegal actors with what is happening at licensed facilities this is totally false and the record must be corrected by this body licensees must follow strict rules or they can be cited if they don't they can lose their license it's that simple I encourage everyone to read the ordinance the moratorium is unwarranted 500 foot setbacks and elimination of CA parcels adjacent to residential it is a lazy decision it's also not a minor change do this and you break the back of the industry in Santa Cruz County the bad actors win actors with existing licenses across the county would be wiped out and most would be forced into bankruptcy or leave here permanently if you force these licensed operators out someone fills the vacuum then we just push to the schools and not adult use dispensaries now we're moving the wrong direction citizens of Santa Cruz County have a right to save cannabis products from right here by their neighbors infusing much needed tax revenue into the general fund not a black market these proposals are the true threat to our public health, safety and welfare especially more vulnerable low income communities that's the party to not second Zach Frins motion for moratorium and rejected indefinitely thank you about five years ago cannabis was worth more per pound than gold and that's going back 40 years ago for 1937 Wild Hemp was everywhere but when Wild Hemp was eradicated by William Randolph Hearst and only five million dollars it forever changed the health of all mammals on this continent natural CBD oils were in the meat in the cheese, the butter and the milk yeah it's amazing their revenue a couple million dollars property taxes 2019 what was that 571 million as I recall it could be wrong during the Civil War Hemp was required to be grown the average sailing ship needed 1.5 million feet of hemp rope so while you guys are bickering over these little things about what my land war told me in 2008 donors come up with the best ideas in the world they're just too stone to do anything about it Good morning my name is Rod Composti and I'm a land owner in Santa Cruz County long-term resident I own property on Firm Flat Road I have watched the grow that at least my land for purpose of having legal cannabis operations spend hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars over the last year and a half to meet the requirements of the county's rules and regulations now in the 11th hour the county's attempting to implement the regulation that could potentially change the status of the permit as worked so hard to obtain who does the new regulations for future applicants or existing applicants please define this licensing of property and cannabis based by case situation should be repeated as such I feel applying the regulation of CA properties is arbitrary and unfair I am asking that you consider the new rule instead of 500 feet from an RA property line I'm asking for 500 feet property from an RA dwelling I'm going to transmit a lot of growers that have a pending permits to give those neighbors that a concern of great offer it should also be noted that in our neighborhood and the neighbors are RA parcels of pro cannabis and should be taken that into account please allow the growers to have applied that have a vested interest and complete our applications in our area there are one RA parcel the 20 parcels of zone CASU and that was owned okay thank you good morning I'd like to speak today from the viewpoint of a farm owner I've been in Aptos for two years now we own the property we built the farm and started a life here over the course of the last year I've worked closely with the city the county and our attorney to ensure we follow every guideline set by the county to obtain our license we are deep into the process here going on 12 plus months and to spend over $100,000 and countless hours of labor and building our farm to code as required by the county for approval we are steps away from the finish line and to have this moratorium show up in the 11th hour and jeopardize my entire livelihood is not only frustrating but devastating should this moratorium pass would not only cripple my business but it would shut me down and completely bankrupt the company I'm empathetic to the residents and their concerns I've owned several legal farms in other counties and I've always been successful at maintaining friendly relationship with our neighbors and city council while serving on the local agricultural alliance board and planning committees I have no doubt farm owners and nearby residents here in Aptos can have the same success as I currently have with the homeowners neighboring my farm I do ask that the board consider rejecting this moratorium for one that fairly serves all parties I would propose that instead of requiring a 500 feet from the property line that you consider a 500 feet or greater restriction for many dwelling on a residential property as the configurations for each individual situation are not synonymous amongst all farms our particular gross site is well over 1500 feet away from the nearest home I would ask you to please consider this impact on myself and others in my position we should not be forced to lose everything we have put in this county without putting real efforts towards a solution that works for all thank you for the opportunity to speak my name is Nick to see as I'm a local business person I live in Aptos adjacent to a few CA parcels so these residential agricultural conflicts are not new news to me my business it also owns a few agricultural parcels in south county they're at least a licensed canvas cultivators and this moratorium will impact my business negatively as well as those of my tenants who I deeply care about at this point they're in this room this I think the rule change is only as smart as the rationale behind it seems the rationale is based primarily in complaints from neighbors and I think there's a lot of misinformation in some of those complaints for the written documents on your own website so I'd like to address a couple of them directly on the subject of crime there have been a lot of references to gun seizures from licensed properties licensed canvas cultivated operations the number of gun seized on licensed operations in this county is zero zero gun seized fire and the sheriff's department both give feedback to the licensing process and the number of substantial fires that have broken out on the same group of licensed properties is zero there's no risk so far from fire at least to date on the subject of water cannabis crops consume approximately 50 to 60 percent of the water needs of other conventional crops in our community the principally cane berries strawberries and gun row crops so there's a substantial savings there and finally on the subject of noise and smell in our county all commercial farming produces noises and odors which is precisely the reason why all residential neighbors are required to sign a statement of acknowledgement accepting farming related inconveniences and discomforts for noise dust smell before purchasing or developing their properties these protections for farmers have been in place in Santa Cruz for half a century and should be continued so I encourage you to support farms of farmers thank you for your time today my name is Evan to see us and I co-own the real state business that my brother alluded to just momentarily ago I'd like to just read that statement of acknowledgement that he was referencing it's entitled the statement of acknowledgement regarding the issuance of a county building permit in an area determined by the county of Santa Cruz to be subject to agricultural residential use conflicts it says I we do hereby acknowledge that a property described herein is adjacent to land utilized for commercial agricultural purposes and residents of this property may be subject to inconvenience or discomfort arising from the use of agricultural chemicals including herbicides pesticides and fertilizers and from the pursuit of agricultural operations including plowing spraying ruining and harvesting which occasionally generate dust smoke noise and odor and I we further acknowledge that Santa Cruz county has established agriculture as a priority use on productive agricultural lands and that residents of adjacent property should be prepared to accept such inconvenience or discomfort from normal necessary farm operations everybody who buys a piece of property in Santa Cruz County adjacent to a CA zone parcel acknowledges this in writing it is bound to their deed it's something that everybody knows about because we prioritize the use of our farming community as such and I support you to object to the moratorium Hello my name is George Workman I'm a young agricultural professional I went to school for agronomy and my access as an entrepreneur into the industry of agriculture is through cannabis I've dedicated my life and my time in the last four years to get things compliant and to move a project down the road we're at the finish line of the project and like so many others have stated before the rug is about to be pulled I'd like to point out one of the big points elephants in the room and that is the root of this issue is the classification and the matter is that there's people coming from the tech industry over the hill and if you're not a computer engineer if you're not computer literate then you're getting priced out and you're not having access to work what my company and a lot of the other companies in this room are looking to do is to provide a diversity workplace for several other individuals in this culture not just engineers that can type away for Google and operate with integrity and with the mind of the people around us that's why we're trying to be legal operators that's not why we're otherwise we'd be in warehouses or we'd be underground still we're here because we want to do it right and we want to grant the opportunity that we've been given to others around us so I hope you reconsider this really unfair just moratorium thanks my name is Aziz I'm a local cannabis business owner and I really couldn't say it better than any of the people ahead of me but I wanted to remind you cap it we are also renters we are also property owners our kids also go to your schools and we are members of this community to us our employees and our landlords and everybody around us so thank you please reconsider this my name is Steve Fernandez I'm a kind of I've adapted into cannabis by leasing some of our land out it took me two years to get approved and a lot of money and to have the rug pulled out from underneath us and I also wanted to remind my supervisor cap it that I am also a member of the community I live on my property my wife teaches for the powerful valley unified school district I went to the school district that went to wasa will hide we are all members of the community we all contribute and a lot of different ways our tax dollars might not be as great as the tax dollar the property tax dollars but most of cannabis people are spending millions and millions of dollars to acquire land that wasn't worth millions of dollars before cannabis was approved and that's going to boost your property taxes and everything else in your community we are very much a part of your community community and want to be a part of the community moving forward good morning council and staff my name is Jacqueline McGowan and I'm a cannabis licensing expert I've worked in the state on cannabis policy for seven years I'm also a former Wall Street stock broker what is going on in the current industry at the moment is that people are committing suicide at the rate of once a week in the licensed market I want you to look around this crowd today at all these faces because if you do make this decision to move forward with the moratorium and you cause more economic desperation than they're already facing or someone not being here I'm also running for governor I'm on this ticket today and I did that for my cannabis industry and I did that because one of your operators already did commit suicide and he was a friend of mine this isn't a joke please stop playing with people's lives the pandemic has been hard enough these guys need your help today that's what I'm asking for thank you hi Pat Malo lifetime resident medical cannabis patient I've worked in the what was formerly the medical cannabis industry for my entire adult life it's the only way me and my generation were able to stay in this community I've almost a decade long process now of trying to transition the local good people who are in this industry for years and years into a new legal system I've poured thousands of hours volunteer hours mostly into this building this system and you know as much as I am so happy for the survivors in this room and the problems that they've taken on forcing this system to work and I'm eternally grateful I also think about the 95% of people who started this process with you guys came into this room came to meeting after meeting after meeting and haven't been able to get a license and then I look at that map the one of many many painful maps I've had to look out about zoning through this process and I see not only have we got pushed out of the traditional areas in the hills like where we were neighbors just like everyone and we've gotten now pushed out of seemingly every single district except for yours cap it which has always been a concern of yours and we're not even allowed in rolling hills anymore we're just down in flatland ag that has been used conventionally and poisoned by methyl bromide and a long list of things that we're not allowed to use and might not function for the high testing that we have to get through and good to meet that environmental bar so long story short is if you pass this which unfortunately I think you will let's please have a very very real discussion about how we achieve what we set out to achieve and that's letting people in not keeping them out good morning my name is Heather Schaefer and I'm the CEO of agoracy business services we are a cannabis licensing and regulatory compliance company who represents merced investment company in their journey to obtain a conditional use permit at the 110 Crest Drive property in Watsonville I'm here today to ask that our application be allowed to proceed through the application process and not be included in the moratorium in addition to making this comment today we sent in more a more detailed public comment last Friday and it's my most sincere hope that our correspondence has been made available to the public as part of the agenda packet we have had no intention of pushing this project through without communicating and entertaining feedback from the neighbors in the community although I was not in attendance at the August 24th meeting I reviewed the video and today I'd like to take some time to address a number of the concerns I heard voiced during that meeting the largest concern I heard voiced was regarding odor please understand I've been to the property additionally it was not lost on me that these are multi-million dollar homes with ocean views and there's a reason folks spend that kind of money to live in a location like this they want to smell the sea air we have no intention of imposing on this lifestyle and we've committed to bringing air quality specialists to take Ray Kapahi to conduct both air quality and odor control studies specific to the conditions the greenhouses currently we intend to implement the recommendations made by Mr. Kapahi and bring his group out to the property during our first run in order to ensure that odor control measures have been in place that are in place are working as they should be I have a number of different items and concerns that I addressed in my letter and I hope that's made available to the general public and I hope that you've all read it and please consider not including us in the moratorium since our application has been submitted and we just want to proceed through the process thank you yeah hi my name is Chris McGrown I run an ag supply business multiple counties and we supply farms from San Diego County all the way through Humboldt and the reason I'm here today is that I've been asked to join in the meeting in the conversation by a lot of my business associates friends who have been through this long process with the county and you know I don't know how much people understand that the amount of effort that goes into complying with all the rules and regulations of having licensed farm but to go through and select a site build it out apply it through all the applications the grading water use and all the full compliance for licensed farm is extremely time consuming and to take the 24 licensees that have already been through this process and invested considerable sums of their own money and pull the rug out from under them will be devastating to those people and I think that the county has responsibility to follow through on the on the zoning rules that has had in place that have brought those 24 licensees into position and to change the rules midstream with those 24 licensees is just it's not going to be good for those people or for anybody else involved in this business so I'd like to urge the county to vote against putting moratorium in place until the further studies and to allow this 24 to proceed through thank you morning chair supervisor staff my name is Dale Schaefer I'm a cannabis specialist attorney and I happen to represent Merced Investment Company in the 110 Crest Drive property I have a team of experts I work with including odor specialist, light specialist security specialist acoustic specialist and they work in conjunction with local planning commissions local policy makers law enforcement agencies and they work in conjunction with the needs of the counties or the cities and deal with the complaints of neighbors we are prepared to make our facility as odor free as we can make it which will be below the thresholds we deal with around the state I have projects all over the state my expert Ray Kapahi presented to the board of supervisors at El Dorado County and he designs carbon scrubbers and other mitigation measures so that around these greenhouses there will be odor below the seven dilution thresholds that we deal with in the environmental industry and that the property lines they will be much below that these are public nuisance issues that are dealt with through planning as you go through the conditional use permit we're prepared to deal with that our security guy designs our lights they are pointed downwards regulations require that any greenhouse that emits light from dust to dawn be covered so that complaint from the neighbors we're going to see light everywhere it's not going to be allowed we won't have a license and we will mitigate light through our illumination studies now we are involved in a struggle with what we call the black market and you talk about loss of revenues here law enforcement understands only too well you are bleeding money trying to stop the black market and the way to do this is through the marketplace and allow these businesses to go forward so you can stop the black market thank you very much thank you board of supervisors thank you for the opportunity to speak my name is Manny Alvarez I'm a business owner here in Santa Cruz County thank you for this opportunity I ask that you vote a no a big no on the cannabis moratorium I understand the concerns of some of the inconveniences that a handful of residents are complaining about but a moratorium that will decimate a large percentage of an already fragile industry is not the solution I believe cases are unique and should be should not all be treated the same 500 foot setback will not really solve the problem but only create other problems some of these complaints are a bit dramatic with no real concerns to human health and shouldn't be categorized as such smell really? if you chose to live around farmland you chose to be around all kinds of smells the cannabis community has already been pushed into one part of the county where all the growing has been a part of the whole county for decades and now we're facing another migration only this one would be out of the county cannabis operators have taken the scraps left from the apple industry and turned them into viable farmland again hence property values go up although the current recommendations claim to be for new businesses I believe that this is a calculated move for the obvious agenda of the future to remove cannabis businesses out of the county for good I ask that farmland be left to farmers vote no hi I'm Dave I just wanted to say like yeah we live here too I've seen you at the coffee shop um we're growing plants just like anybody else it's not any difference except for it smells different and seems like that's a big deal but this is going to be an agricultural crop like no matter what we do here it's just where it's going to be grown and what kind of revenue it's going to bring into the county and if we're talking about like jobs and having the next step this is this is it like this is going to beat out berries and you know if we don't I think we're going to be altering so thanks good morning my name is Terry and I operate a regenerative cannabis farm in Watsonville I'm here in the opposition to the blanket moratorium I've read the comments from the community and believe we have an opportunity to make this right for everyone cannabis has been referred to as industrial farming the definition of industrial farming is a form of modern farming that refers to industrialized production of crops and animal products like milk or eggs the methods of industrial agriculture include innovation in agricultural machinery and farming methods genetic technology techniques for achieving economies of scale and production the creation of new markets for consumption and the application of patent protection to genetic information and trade these methods are widespread and developed nations and increasingly prevalent worldwide this is what makes Santa Cruz so special greenhouses and hoop houses have existed here for years compared to other farming practices canvas farming is the least harmful due to the fact that legal cannabis farms are not allowed to use harmful pesticides La Salva Browns Valley Road and most places in Santa Cruz are sprinkled with farmland where is the cannabis supposed to go the solution here is to look at this on a case-by-case basis and not as an overall problem please do not allow a blanket moratorium because it will negatively affect those who have started the painful and very expensive process of licensing could financially ruin some good folks if a farm operates with zero complaints it should be left alone to continue its ability to receive its license if setbacks were needed but not in every single situation should be a case-by-case basis and not a blanket moratorium that is not the answer many folks trying to get licensed are not the problem and have zero complaints you have the opportunity to make this right for everyone please do not allow this moratorium thank you anyone else in the audience want to speak got something to say Darren story born and raised in South County I'd like to frame this conversation for what it's really about it's not tax revenue or the ability to get along with your neighbors this is about class warfare we know the average acre of cannabis grown in California injects over $700,000 into the local community in South County the majority of cannabis workers are Latin Americans so this economic value is injected into that very same impoverished community our cannabis businesses sell goods and other jurisdictions to effectively repatriate that revenue bringing it back to our community spreading that wealth with all the other businesses those businesses are then able to hire more workers which perpetuates the economic value cycle also well known that cannabis has a much lower environmental impact on other crops we use less water less fossil fuels and zero pesticides or fungicides some of you may not be aware that our little county is at the forefront of the nation's compassionate caregiving our cannabis community accounts for over 50% of the state's SB 34 donations for patients who cannot afford to pay for it on their own an affirmative vote today on the moratorium is not in support of neighbors or voices heard or didn't have an opportunity to speak up over the last four years instead your affirmative vote today will be a direct attack on the county's impoverished farm worker community and the state's poor people who depend on medical cannabis I know some of you had the intention on coming here today and voting in favor of Zach's moratorium so you could help them save face and quiet some of the vociferous privileged people anxious to protect their retirement nest egg but I strongly encourage you to stand up and let them know you are not against protecting their property values but rather you are in favor of injecting economic vitality into your impoverished communities a rising tide lifts all ships and we appreciate your need to endure sacrifice so that we can continue building our community to give others a chance for economic freedom and relief from their ills I encourage you to vote no on this moratorium and show people that our county places those in need over regressive racist and hateful agendas Allison the audience want to speak that hasn't spoken if anybody else wants to speak please just get behind this gentleman my name is Christopher John Daly and I've been cultivating cannabis in Santa Cruz County since 1975 and I just want to quote Patrick Henry one of our founding fathers give me liberty or give me death thank you okay the audience want to address the board we have anybody on the phone how many we have 13 speakers 13 on the phone Ben Warren your microphone is available well thanks for listening I didn't realize how many people would speak before we got to some of the neighborhoods so I'm going to change what I was going to say short and a great deal one of the things that I would like to see this moratorium extended for their study I understand some of the arguments of the people with money in this but we all have money in it too we have our homes and I think that's been covered but I would like to bring up two things one is that I did not appreciate the letters from Coralitas I had no idea what was going on over there I don't know how I would have but when I saw them published I recognized that there's a use case study for how this is going to affect us and many other people in the county in quote rural ag neighborhoods so I think if nothing else we ought to take time enough to hear Coralitas people come in and you guys all go to Coralitas because in my earlier presentation I was I put in given the Coralitas letters then our problem is the tip of your iceberg this is not going to change if we keep doing it the way it was done in Coralitas unless we believe all the people in Coralitas are liars and aren't telling the truth I think we ought to at least consider that finally if I can get to it quickly if you take a look at the Google maps and look at the satellite view and go over to the Roundtree Medium Facility Prison it looks a lot like in space and size and security and cameras and fences that this thing they're going to put in on our 30 acres across from us so we don't want a prison and that's what this looks like even though it claims to be this is just another crop we don't think it's another crop we think it's a lot more like this prison so I'd like to thank Coralitas and encourage you to use that as a use case if you extend this moratorium thank you Laura Shepard your microphone is available go to star 6 to unmute yourself last call for Laura Shepard hi there hi yeah so thank you for letting me speak today third generation Santa Cruzian here next to this parcel that's been spoken about in La Salva 33 years ago today we're not big money we bought the place a long time ago so I urge you to vote for the moratorium while you consider the ordinance chains I'm not opposed to cannabis or the agriculture in the right setting but have a number of serious concerns about Canada being grown so close to residential areas and near our children it is a known fact that despite legalization of cannabis in California the black market activity is still a major issue even among many of the larger communities in the space many of which are sitting down today with politicians helping to build new laws to impact the cannabis industry and how it's regulated with this black market activity occurring in the industry it opens up a scary door to criminal activities such as theft money laundering and violent crimes my largest concerns around allowing Canada to be grown in this area are the following proximity to family and children neighborhood character detriments like odor increased need for high security firearms used in security property and roaming personnel not to mention things like the odor licensing of cannabis throughout profit sets are intrusive to our residential communities the safety of our families and children needs to be number one second to that cannabis agriculture to any area should not have a negative environmental and residential impact things like the endangering salamander long-tone endangering salamander come to mind we're not going to be permitted near homes and schools or foul smells of cannabis and chemicals like pine salt are being put into the air to disguise cannabis and causing health issues for people like myself the impact of cannabis agriculture and residential add communities have a really impact environment home values and safety of our families and children I really encourage you to take a step back and understand that we all are a part of this community and what I do should not negatively impact you there is additional time that needs to be assessed to evaluate this fairly holler zero three three zero your phone is available holler zero three three zero your microphone is available you'll need to press star six to unmute yourself this is Susan Williams I'm hoping that you will not be influenced by a group of paid lobbyists and lawyers they do not live here they don't vote here they're not a part of our community and they'll be gone soon they talk about all the ways they'll mitigate the effects of a large cannabis operation in our neighb