Good morning, everybody. Like to call the order of the May 31st budget hearing. The board is supervisor. If we could begin with a roll call, please. Supervisor Koenig. Here. Cummings. Here. Hernandez. Present. McPherson and friend. Here. If we could begin with the Pledge of Allegiance, please stand, please. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, the two republics, the tens of nations under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Morning, Mr. Blasio. Are there any changes to today's agenda? We have no changes to the agenda. All right, thank you. We're going to begin with another overview from our budget manager, Mr. Pimentel. Mr. Pimentel, good morning and welcome back. Nice tie. Good morning, chair, friend and board of supervisors. I'm Marcus Pimentel, your county budget manager. I'll be starting today's budget hearings with an overview of our public safety and land use and community services departments. As I go through these first slides, they're going to look very familiar. The first six are repeated from our main night budget hearings, but with slide updates and where we are repeats from yesterday's hearings, we're just keeping them as an overview for consistency. Today's agenda entirely for the day will begin with my proposed budget overview of public safety and justice in the land use and community services departments, including infrastructure and capital projects on consent. Following my presentation, the consent items for consideration will be that those departments in public safety and justice and land use and community services that are not included in the departmental presentations will then have presentations to conclude the public safety and justice section by our district attorney and public administrator in the sharp corner. We'll move into land use and community services with parks, open spaces and cultural services. The community development and infrastructure department that includes planning, housing and public works and conclude the day with capital projects. These hearings will then be continued to our fourth hearing on June 13th, 2023. They'll consider the last day items, unified fee schedule, continuing agreements and the concluding actions for approval of the budget. Again, these next slides are repeats from May 9th and from yesterday. As this board knows, and we've talked about considerably in this board is provided guidance on our county is systematically underfunded and challenged.  Our sales tax is declining and moving to other jurisdictions who have online fulfillment centers, warehouses. We're losing about 5 million a year on online sales tax. Our property tax, if we were funded at the same level of some of our peers including our neighbor Monterey County would be $79 million more in the general fund a year. So considerably that's a big starting negative position we're starting in at $84 million behind before we even start to build our budget. We are a county like most counties and cities and districts that are struggling to address our deferred aging infrastructure. We do and have been making progress over these last couple of years of finding opportunities and leveraging federal and state funding to build facilities and also like with the model of our South County Government Center funding that through reductions and eliminations of lease rates. So we're essentially cost neutral. We should build up some savings from that project but we've had to be very creative and fiduciary, smart in moving forward with building our facilities. We've also talked about considerably the cost of our disasters while in last year and a half we've been talking a lot about our COVID and CZU reimbursements that are $67 million in standing. This year we've been hit by the really three months of storms starting in January, going into February and March two separate declared disaster events that have impacted our budget considerably and impacted the departments presenting today within our sheriff coordinator's response and community development public works response. Our behavioral health, our community has a lot of behavioral needs and we were moving forward to making some great investments both in services and facilities. And we have a challenge that's an opportunity to improve our public safety emergency communication systems that comes at a price tag that we still have not figured out how to fund. Our total budget is 1.1 billion. Our general fund is 738.6 million. And we have about over 300 million easily in unfunded infrastructure projects across our aging infrastructure and facility. I won't spend a lot of time on this we've talked about this a lot but in last fall, in fall of 2022 we rebuilt and extended out our forecast model to move to more credible model of forecast and forecasting deficits that factor in salary savings, factor in budget savings, factor in known cost increases and new revenue sources. And we're resulted with deficits general fund deficits between $8 and $10 million over the next four years. Our general fund reserves are at 10% and that's great. Unfortunately that those reserves include about 6% points of that for health services investments to expand Medicare services. So that's an area that we are unable to move on some of those investments until we can increase our reserves to free up those cash balances. Without those health reserves our reserves will be at 4% or less than two payroll cycles. Within the general fund as you might recall on May 9th although it's a $738 million budget really $210 million is our general fund flexible revenue basis that we use to fund operations across the county and that $210 million in revenue supports $223 million and discretionary general fund contributions to departments. So that's a nearly $12.5 million gap we're spending $12.5 million more in our revenue but that's budget authority so we expect there would be budget savings that would eliminate that $12.5 million gap. The biggest investments are in our public safety and justice departments, 114 million followed by health and human general government and debt is disclosed here. We'll conclude with the changes in our proposed budget for the entire countywide budget not just general fund but countywide budget recommends adding 36.45 positions or a 1.3% increase. That's very modest and this is an austere budget in our departments worked well with our instructions that were released in the fall to have a very scaled back austere budget and to try to limit growth wherever possible in unfunded cost increases. Across the entire county we're looking at 38.6 million in increases and that sounds like a lot but that's a 3.6% increase. This chart displays in orange the FTE changes so the biggest increases in staffing are in health and human and land use and community development with six positions in public safety that we'll talk a little bit more in today's presentations. As a reminder, our budget hearings we are approaching the end of the cycle we're on our third budget hearing on May 31st. We'll continue the hearings to June 13th where the budget will be considered for approval. It will then be in our audit controllers hands who will work over the summer what reconciling putting in the year in numbers and then submitting for the state controller the final adopted budget to this board on September 19th. As a brief overview I'll be reviewing the public safety and justice departments and land use and community services. In total the public safety and justice departments are $202 million. The biggest amount goes to fund our Sheriff Corners Department probation district attorney and public defender. Of that 202 million, 16 million is funded in other funds. So they're leaving 183 million for the general fund costs. Again, as breaking down that 114 million that you saw in the prior slide of how much the general fund supports our public safety and justice departments 66 million of the Sheriff Corner. They're not a revenue generating department clearly. So we have mandated services that we have to fund and then public defender and district attorney followed by probation or the talk for with general fund contributions. The changes within these departments the biggest changes are in our Sheriff Corner and probation cost increases 5.2 million in the Sheriff Corner and probation is 1.5, 1.6 million. Those are really reflective of the increasing costs for care for those in our detention facilities medical costs, mental health costs, food costs. There are some staff being added. Again, this is very historically low three positions Sheriff Corner two positions and public defender in one position in the district attorney. We're just not able to fund our services the way that even our departments made the strong cases for. Moving into an overview of our land use and community services department there'll be three more present our two three presentations today parks and open spaces community development which will be planning will cover planning housing and public works and infrastructure projects and then we'll conclude with the capital projects basically the county's facility projects including parks. The consent agenda items are listed there and it listed in the board packet that went out last week. Within the land use and community services department it's a bigger budget, 301 million in total costs being allocated in this proposed book 2324 budget but about $9 out of every 10 is for other funds with 37 million left in the general fund so about 10% of that 301 million is in the general fund, 263 million is other funds the largest is our department of public works internal service fund at $226 million. Some of the general fund support for these departments the biggest is for our parks open spaces and cultural services at 7 million and our community development the rest of the department title is truncated their community development and infrastructure that's really the planning support for that department just under 3 million for planning and the rest is a nominal amount for public works. The changes for land use and community services departments all the departments the biggest change is an FTE change in the public works department nine positions in public works given the entire size it's a small level of positions that might look a lot in this chart that's a very small amount of position increases and as you'll hear later today several of them are opportunistic and very smart positions to be adding into our budget. Parks has three positions being added those are all thankfully funded projects through state grants and local grants to help with trails and other projects. You can see the blue bars are very small if not nothing and cost increases in the rest of the departments. That concludes my overview I really wanna get you to the departmental presentations for the day, but if you have any questions now would be good time for any on the consent or anything I just covered. Thank you, Mr. Bernmantel are there any questions before we open this opportunity up for the community to address us? All right, so none would like to open up for the community it's an opportunity for oral communications or comment on consent or on the regular agenda if you're unable to attend or a closed session as well or on any item not on today's agenda but within the purview of the board. Anybody like to address us? Good morning, welcome back. Good morning, thank you. I would like to make a comment on item 20 proposed budget for the Superior Court. As you know, I'm interested in the prosecution of judicial child trafficking. I'd like to play something for you. That's what judicial child trafficking sounds like. More on this later. Morning, welcome back. Good morning, my name is James Ewing Whitman as far as the consent agenda. Number 16, the Monterey Bay, Bay Air. You know, even beings can only live for about three minutes without quality air. You can live a couple of days without water and you can live like a month without food. So in reference to what I witnessed and heard yesterday, I wrote something down about what my public comments were in yesterday's proceedings. Welcome to examples of slaughterhouses where the John Perkins Confessions of an Economic Hitman are the first steps of genocide, eugenics, techno-fascists, rock chisms, Fabian shepherd socialism by the deceptions of puppets like this board of five men. All city and county council members have been under the complete control of unelected city and county managers such as Carlos Palacios. Since 1915, where deceptions seem to be the status quo, my favorable comments and of a few others can be found on the Facebook, excuse me, can be found on the Facebook Live link starting at 28 minutes, 30 seconds and 65 minutes, 50 seconds. When you are even in front of the sheriff's headquarters, there's a big beautiful flag of the United States and of California, but inside every courtroom, including the sheriff's community room and in the city of Santa Cruz Police Office community room, there are the corporate pirate flags. So you guys are operating under several layers of parallel governments where our constitution or original one is really quite beautiful as is our Declaration of Independence. But that was re-usurped and changed within the first 13 years of its inception. So there's a lot of things going on and when issues really come up, how are you folks gonna really help the public? Thank you. Sorry to be else in chambers. Morning, my name is Becky Steinbruner. I want to again point out to you as I did yesterday that your website for all of this material accessible to the public is broken and has been broken since Saturday. There's no way for me or any other members of the public to review any of this material in advance from the meeting portal on the calendar as we usually do. So I really think it's a Brown Act violation for you to continue doing this because it has not been made available to the public. I want to speak to County Fire Department budget. Why is that on the consent agenda? It is just as important to the public safety as is all of the law enforcement, public defender, all of those good people who spoke before you yesterday and will continue to speak before you today. Why is County Fire on the consent agenda? And no one can even see the information because your website's broken. Because I go to the Fire Department Advisory Commission meetings regularly, I know what's in that contract with Cal Fire. It's been reduced to a one-year contract. When your board authorized and the levying of a new tax against CSA 48 property owners, we were told that it would fund three-year contracts, which happened in 2020. And now we're only getting a one-year contract with reductions in staffing that will harm plan reduction or plan review and also training. Why is this on the consent agenda? One of the things that was presented at FDAC is a very gloomy report given by Chief Armstrong and that there wasn't enough money to do what needs to be done. How can that be said when we've just been levied another very hefty tax? FDAC was very disturbed. And Supervisor Friend, your commissioner voiced his distrust with Cal Fire any longer because of the information that was given. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody else in chambers that would like to address us on these items? Madam Clerk, is there anybody online? We have no speakers online, Chair. All right, we'll bring it back to the board for discussion and action on consent. Supervisor McPherson. Thank you, Chair Friend. I wanted to address a couple of issues. Item number 14, the library funds. I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge all of the amazing facilities improvements that have been going on in our library system throughout Santa Cruz County since the passage of Measure S in June of 2016. In particular, I'd like to mention that the Boulder Creek branch in my district opened a year ago this month and the Scotts Valley branch refurbishment opened in August of last year. Both these facilities have wonderful community resources that made possible because of the passage of Measure S. And I want to thank the voting public for doing that. It was successful because it was county-wide and everybody was involved. Every library facility is being improved or has been improved. And it's a Felton library. In fact, I was one of the, was completed a couple of years ago and it has one of its kind in the nation of a discovery park right adjacent to it. Phenomenal facility. And also I want to say a special note. I recently attended the opening of the branch 40 branch library in the city of Santa Cruz and especially the Allison Indirt Memorial with Children's Room named after the wonderful board supervisor, staff member who worked so hard in district three for so many years. I want to, on LAPCO on number 15, thank Joe Serino, our LAPCO director for the tremendous amount of leadership he brings to that role. The job requires a lot of technical skills and he's been able to handle those and there's going to be more action before LAPCO I know in the near future. And then on 21 County Fire, I want to just thank our volunteer firefighters and the emergency medical responders as well as the staff who serve on our community through a contract with Cal Fire. They've made some decisions, some changes, but their service is invaluable and we know all too well in our County will continue to face high fire risk in the future. But those are three of the things that I really wanted to mention in our consent agenda. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Any other colleagues have any comments on consent or are seeing none? Excuse me, Supervisor. Please. I'll see you. Please do. I'll move the other budget. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Cummings, a second from Supervisor McPherson. If we could have a roll call, please. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Hernandez. Aye. McPherson and Friend. Aye. And that passes unanimously. Thank you, Mr. Pimentel, for your introduction and for the departments, for their work. We'll move on to item five, which is to consider approval of the 2022-23, excuse me, 2023-24 proposed budget for the District Attorney Public Administrator, including any supplemental materials and take-roaded actions as outlined in the reference budget documents and recommended by the CAO. We have the budget hearing item board memo, the proposed budget, the continuing agreements list, and the unified fee schedule. Coming today for us for this item would be District Attorney Jeff Rosell. We also have Eric Saab, the Chief of Administration for District Attorney's Office. Good morning, District Attorney Rosell. Welcome back. Thank you. Good morning, Supervisor Friend, Chairman Friend, and the other supervisors. Are we ready to get started? Go ahead. Okay. Just want to make sure the... Right, Eric. All right. Just want to make sure we're technologically on board. So I want to just start off by thanking the board for the opportunity to be here and the opportunity yet again to come before you and to talk a little bit about what we've done to talk about our budget and to thank you for your time and attention to public safety and to our office in particular. I'd also like to thank the staff of the DA's office. We have the managers up here and that is incredible staff, people who work in all of our divisions, the criminal prosecution division, which we all sort of know about, but also the environmental and consumer protection division. And victim witness assistants who provide assistance to victims going through the criminal justice system. In fact, some of those that don't even have cases filed. I would also like to thank the CAO's office. I would like to thank Carlos Palacios, Nicole Coburn, Sven Stafford and Marcus Pimental for all of their help and assistance in preparing our budget. And just frankly having an ongoing honest dialogue about what we need to make sure that public safety is something that is a priority for this county. So as we go through the budget presentation, I would like to start off talking about the guiding principles for the DA's office. And I would just like to remind the board and frankly everybody that under the California constitution, public safety is the first responsibility of local government and that we have an obligation to adequately provide services for public safety. We in the DA's office are obligated to follow various authorities. Those include the United States constitution, the California constitution, California statutes and the rules of professional conduct. We also have a duty to protect victims, the rights of defendants, which surprises some people, to review and file cases and to investigate them and to seek justice and to act ethically. We specifically in the DA's office of Santa Cruz County have a mission statement and our mission statement is to promote and ensure public safety through ethical and just prosecution. One of the things that I think is important to focus on is that we in the DA's office are not a rubber stamp for law enforcement that make arrests and refer cases to the DA's office. As you can tell from this slide, these numerous agencies, some that are at the forefront of our mind and others that may not be, are all of the law enforcement agencies in the County of Santa Cruz that refer cases to the DA's office. In those cases, we have an obligation as I stated earlier to thoroughly investigate, to make determinations about whether charges are appropriate and whether or not to file charges. And when it comes to filing charges, we are spending a tremendous amount of time going through the evidence that comes to us. I used to say it was reports in the old days now, it's body cam video, it is forensic digital analysis on phones, computers and all sorts of things. So to say that our job has become much more difficult in terms of making filing decisions based on the incredible amount of information we get, I think is frankly a huge understatement. So I also wanna say that when it comes to primary budget goals, we have identified three and the first one is to improve communication, education and transparency to the community, which we have strived as an office. And frankly, I understand as a County, we have strived to achieve these same sort of goals. The second is to enhance outreach prevention and early intervention practices, which we have done. I can tell you that in South County, we sponsored or major participants with probation other volunteer groups, trunk or treat. We served over 4,000 people. We did an adoptive family, which served 900 children, 160 families. We have participated in National Night Out, Teen Academy and a whole bunch of things that we believe on the front end will help and prevent sort of people that end up criminal justice involved. We're also focusing, we can talk a little bit about it later on truancy because there's an enormous link between children that are truan and children that become system-involved later on. The third goal is to augment resources to assist with digital technology, forensic evidence, collection and analysis. And as I mentioned with the advent of body camera, digital media, forensic media, social media in order to properly review a case to determine whether you wanna file it and to determine whether a case should be filed and to actually prosecute it, it requires tremendous, tremendous efforts and energy in terms of forensics. This is also forensics that include getting reports from all the various law enforcement agencies that I showed you so that we can properly make decisions, provide that when we file and push that out to public defenders, to private attorneys and to those sort of things. So when it comes to the proposed budget, the positions that we have, as you can see, are 109 full-time positions right now. When we talk about changes from the adopted budget, there was one program coordinator position that came midterm already and that was funded by some financial sources. So there were no net county costs for that position. And we are getting refunded an attorney position that we have, but which was previously unfunded. So the general fund contribution is 17.1 million, as you can see from the slide in your own information. And the increase in general fund contribution this year is 905,000. The bulk of that is negotiated and agreed upon salary and benefit increases. So with respect to the operational plan in one of our divisions, the criminal prosecution division, as I've said, school truancy is something that we wanna focus on. We believe that there is a significant issue here that we can sort of drive the train in addressing that we can do community outreach. We are extremely proud of our neighborhood courts program, which was spearheaded by the DA's office, frankly the fourth one in the state of California out of all 58 counties. It has literally kept at least 150 people out of the criminal justice system by referring them to neighborhood courts. This is a program that we run with the community resource center. And we also do media outreach, which I know some of you as supervisors have had the environmental unit come in and speak to some of your constituents, some of them more vulnerable people. Scams are constantly evolving and those things need to be sort of pushed out to the community so that we can prevent people from becoming victims. We want a county forensic team that we are working on. We are currently in the process with some of the other agencies, besides the sheriff's office of literally ripping phones, getting information off of digital media so that we can provide relevant and proper information for filing decisions and also proper information to help them, these agencies assist in investigating cases. We are currently also exploring artificial intelligence for transcription. And as you might be aware in our business, transcription of all the digital media interviews and everything else is a huge time and money sort of resource implied. And the bottom line is we are working with some sort of artificial intelligence. We're experimenting with different ones to try to see if there are more efficient ways that we can leverage technology. With respect to the victim advocate section, we are improving survivor services. Those are the cases that are filed. Those are cases that are not filed, still providing services. And as I've said in consumer protection with white collar, we've done a tremendous amount of outreach in your jurisdictions and are frankly always available for that. With respect to staffing and systems, as I spoke about earlier, there is a refunding of a full-time attorney to mitigate the backlog of cases and to ensure public safety. We are finalizing a new case management system, Carpell, which has proved very beneficial in terms of the information and data that we can get for transparency issues, but it has been, there have been some challenges in implementing that for sure. And then in terms of state budget considerations, I know there were some questions about whether the government, the governor's revised budget had any implications. It did not. And so with that, we are happy to address any concerns or listen to any comments that the board may have about our proposed budget. And we would just ask you to adopt it. Thank you, Mr. Rosell. Are there any questions or comments from board members? Supervisor McPherson. Yeah, thank you. I'm gonna thank you, District Attorney Jeff Rosell and your whole team for all their hard work and make our community safer in the partnership with the public defender's office. Of course, that's a new county-administrated office. And I know that you've, the quarter of effort that you've exhibited along with our public defender who addressed us yesterday is really, really encouraging. And I really thank you. I think I know she does too, our public defender. And I'm glad that we're able to add this additional position to address the backlog of cases that you have. And I especially want, as you mentioned to compliment you again on the neighborhood courts, the fourth one in the state of California and how impactful it's been for making our community safer. It's critical that the cases be resolved as quickly and justly as possible as you have stated and you've done. And I wanna thank your staff for the work to support the victims of crime too, as well as the efforts to prevent crime, very much at the top of the list and ahead of most every other county in the state of California. So congratulations on that. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Supervisor Cummings. Thank you for that presentation. I know that one of the things that you'd mentioned was that a lot of the increases are around salaries. And I'm just curious what the vacancy rates are like and retention is like currently. So yeah, we have done all right. We still have positions that need to be filled. We have at least one position that needs to be filled to now with the advent of that. So when I became district attorney, one of the things that I tried to do was stem the tide of attorneys that were leaving to go over the hill. As we know, Santa Clara out of 58 counties is the highest paid DA's office in the state significantly higher than Santa Cruz County. So what we tried to do was we'll never catch them but we tried to sort of close the gap between Santa Cruz County and Santa Clara such that people would at least think twice before we lost them to Santa Clara and other jurisdictions. So I will say we've done okay. The salaries and benefits that were received by the attorneys in the office and other staff. I do think all of them justified because as soon as you have experience that walks out the door, it takes years to try to catch up to where we were. We do offer things in the office. I think that other offices don't. We've had people who frankly have gotten offers from Santa Clara that turned it down for literally tens and tens of thousands of dollars. And that is because we offer things that they don't. We offer a family atmosphere, community atmosphere. We take an interest in everybody. We're not so big that anybody is above sitting and talking about cases and strategies and those sort of things. So we've done okay, but we feel as an office, those salaries and benefits were absolutely crucial and important to keeping people in our county so that we drain the incredible experience resources that we have. Appreciate all your efforts to try to keep people in the community and keep that collaborative atmosphere within your office. The one, I guess one comment is that as someone who's pretty passionate about tenant protections just wanting to hopefully engage in more conversation around that. As I've been talking to folks in the community, there's a lot of scams that have been popping up around rental housing online where people will fill out this application, pay this fee and then the person kind of disappears and those are becoming more frequent. I know students, especially UCSC are targeted as victims of those kinds of services. And then just, we've been hearing about other forms of exorbitant rent increases and what have you. And oftentimes, as I mentioned yesterday to the board that oftentimes falls on the individual. But given the fact that the DEA's office deals with consumer protections and housing is something that a lot of tenants are paying into to the extent we can figure out how we can deter that kind of predatory behavior. I think it'd be great to see what role the DEA's office could play in that as well. I appreciate that. And I can tell you with respect to the rental scams, we are prosecuting several cases right now and those are near and dear to our heart. They are consumer protection cases and we're trying to do outreach as well on the front end. So people don't become victims, but when the cases are there, we are happy to prosecute those. The rent increases is a little bit of a different issue. There are some things that we have power to control, scams, crimes. There are others that are frankly, a little bit more difficult, but we are certainly happy to engage in that. And if you would have any place that you would like us to educate people or do one of our consumer protection presentations to try to avoid those scams, we are absolutely happy to do that. And thank you for your comments. Thank you. And I can vouch for those trainings. We've held a couple of them in our district and they've been very, very good. I appreciate your team's work on that. You know, a question was raised yesterday in regards to parity. Sometimes the three legal offices kind of get lumped together even though they do really distinct work, you County Council and the Public Defender's Office. When I had worked for a local law enforcement agency, we had a different standard of probable cause than you do for prosecution of beyond a reasonable doubt. So can you just maybe, I don't know if you have these numbers handy, but do you have a sense of how many cases you had begun by showing all the referral agencies that come in? But do you have a sense of how many cases come to you that then you don't file and therefore some of these other entities like the Public Defender might not be involved in the same way? Yeah, that's a fantastic question. I appreciate you asking. I will say this, we get about 10,000 referrals to our DA's office a year of criminal cases from all sorts of sources that I showed on the slide. And we are not a rubber stamp and anybody who thinks that does not understand how the DA's office works. So out of those 10,000 cases, we are responsible for literally conducting independent investigations on those, making determinations about A, whether a crime was committed, B, whether you have the right person and see whether you can file charges and then there's the should it go to neighborhood courts, should it, how should it get resolved? And I can tell you we filed probably about 50% of those cases. So the cases that wind up in court are a minority or about half of the cases that get referred to us. Of those cases that wind up in court, some of those are referred to private attorneys depending upon the case, environmental consumer protection or typically private attorneys. You have conflict firms, you have criminal cases with private attorneys. And so we also in the Consumer Environmental Protection Division, sometimes file civil suits. And if you file a civil suit, those are almost exclusively handled by civil attorneys, corporate attorneys and those sort of things. And sometimes in the consumer environmental protection world, you don't even need to file a suit. They'll engage in discovery and give notice. And there's a lot of those cases that frankly don't even necessarily get filed and see the inside of a courtroom. So. I appreciate that. I mean, that's why I think that it's important to look at each of these budgets independently. I mean, for some reason they tend to, if you looked at and grouped as just some sort of general need, but I think that they, it makes sense to continue looking. Yeah, I think there is a tendency, maybe somebody thinks so. Well, the public defenders, for example, is that should be the same as the DA's office. And the answer is, we review thousands upon, tens of thousands of cases that never make the inside of a courtroom that we are responsible for. We file thousands of cases in consumer environmental protection that frankly don't go into the public defender's hands and we file numerous cases, hundreds and hundreds that go to private attorneys or conflict firms. So thank you for that question. Are there any other questions before we open it up for the community? You know, I just like to make one point. I was attended the senior legal services annual event recently and I want to just say in your consumer affairs office, Doug Allen has done a phenomenal job and just to give a warning to the senior citizens, I mean, the stories that people are losing tens of thousands of dollars. And just don't believe it if you hear it on the phone and your daughter or cousin in Alabama is being held and needs to get out of jail or something. The stories that I hear and the people that get into those things is phenomenal. It's sad, but I just want to thank you for that aspect of your office and what you do. And just to warn people, just don't take the bait. Yeah, it's heartbreaking when you hear stories about people who've literally lost everything they have on various evolving scams and they are constantly evolving.  So as I said, as an office, we are always happy to do front-end work. And if you can think of places that you would like us to go, please let us know. We're always happy to do that. And I want to thank you for your comments, all of you. Thank you. I will open it up for the community. It's an opportunity for members of the community to address us on the district attorney's budget. Anybody in chambers, please. Thank you, Mr. Rizal for that report. I really want to commend your staff member, Mr. Ed Brown for doing the environmental work and prosecution of the Barry Swenson Builders for their illegal removal of a tank of who knows what it was. They took it out in the middle of the night in Aptos Village. It was the only slap on the hand they got. So thank you. That was really wonderful work. Thank you. Thank you. I also, however, really think you missed an opportunity to do some restorative justice with prosecuting the two young men who left the black sine wave of skid marks on the Black Lives Matter mural in downtown Santa Cruz. I think that was a prime opportunity to work out something like a neighborhood court rather than putting them, prosecuting them and putting them behind bars. The mural itself is now degraded and those young men are still probably really angry. And we missed a real opportunity there. So I hope you will rethink that kind of prosecution in the future. I also have learned recently that human trafficking is a big problem in our county. Tremendous and very shocking. And I understand from leaders of the ARUCA project that your staff and the law enforcement are very, very focused on trying to get behind that and prosecute. It's very difficult because of social media, because these predators are on the move. And that leads into this predatory action on the internet. It is shocking. Supervisor McPherson, you heard at the senior legal how it works with financial scams, but there are scams luring young people or actually people of all ages, all sexes into the human trafficking market. And Santa Cruz County is a hot man of it. So thank you for continuing to monitor that and doing what you can. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody else in chambers who'd like to address us on this budget? Good morning, DA Rosal. Your report sounded so compassionate and helpful. However, I've experienced the complete opposite of everything you said. There have been 40 million views of children kidnapped here in Santa Cruz County and your office hung up on my victim advocate 15 times. And when we came down to present our evidence and our case of all the wrongdoing that happened in my child's violent kidnapping and how I was violently assaulted by her father, we were ignored. We were pawned off, told to give it to Santa Cruz Police Department. They have not done justice. I'm really unhappy with the independent auditor, Mr. Janako. The whole world is watching Santa Cruz. There is an opportunity to right some terrible wrongs. And I am asking you to take this budget and all this money and all this forensic science stuff that you are alleging that you have access to. I am a forensic scientist. I've put the whole case together. I've done all the work. And regarding to the transparency of the body cam footage, that is for the public to view and yet the Santa Cruz Police Department is refusing to provide it. It is of great public interest that overrides any excuse that they are trying to give from withholding that. I really would like to see you since the whole world is watching to be an American hero, to work with Sheriff Jim Hart, who is standing on a precipice to make changes here in Santa Cruz County. We are known as the court kidnapping, child trafficking capital of the world, much like my childhood when we were the murder capital of the world. Let's solve the problem together. I wanna work with both of you. I am available. I have put the case together. Please let's have you guys, you gentlemen be the heroes we need. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody else who'd like to speak about the budget item in front of us here at the District Attorney's Office? Good morning. Well, thanks. Yeah. My name is Julian Whitman. I find the legal system in Santa Cruz to be quite interesting and quite baffling. I deliberately put myself through a case system last year that was very minor, I suppose. But I think it's quite interesting when you provide evidence where the California Occultist Commission in 1975 has clearly said that any individual has 24-hour access to the beaches and waterways. And you provide that information, the magistrate that was residing over that case and it was just her and myself and the deputies there. I was still found guilty. You know, it's interesting another case that went through this county involving Mr. Michael Manningley doing the same thing. He actually had a jury trial. Now I'm gonna read something from the juror's handbook. Here's a picture of it. As a juror in a trial setting, when it comes to your individual vote of innocent or guilty, you are truly only answerable to God Almighty. The First Amendment to the Constitution was born out of this great concept. However, judges today refuse to inform jurors of their rights. So I don't know. I think that there's so much room for positive growth. I'm glad that I'm here to witness others suggesting working together with you folks. So thank you. Thank you. Anybody else in chambers like to address us in the district attorney's budget? All right. Seeing none, we'll close the chambers. Comments or anybody online? Madam clerk? We have no online speakers for this item. Okay. We'll bring it back to the board for action. I believe supervisor Cummings had a comment. It does have a comment on the defacing of the Black Lives Matter. You know, I actually did want to thank your office for how they engaged with the community that had been negatively impacted by that. I know that it was mentioned in the comments that the guys behind jailed those individuals actually never saw any jail time just so that's clear and have been involved in a restorative justice process where they're gonna be meeting with the communities that's been impacted and having community dialogues. And so this is an example of, you know, a different approach of addressing how people are treated within the criminal justice system. And just so folks are aware of the Black Lives Matter mural in downtown Santa Cruz actually is gonna be getting repainted on June 24th. And there is some discussion about those individuals actually helping with that repainting effort. And so it really is a different approach to trying to have more restorative justice approach on the criminal justice system. And I think that just goes to show that the leadership here in Santa Cruz through your office, Mr. Roselle is really trying to take a different approach at how we're addressing criminal justice in Santa Cruz County. So I just wanted to thank you for all the work that your office has done on that. Thank you for your kind words, Supervisor Cummings. And with that, I'm happy to move the budget for the DA's office. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Cummings. A second from Supervisor Hernandez. No additional comments. And if we get a roll call, please. Supervisor Koenig. Hi. Cummings. Hi. Hernandez. Hi. McPherson and Friend. Hi, and that passes unanimously. Thank you for your work, Mr. Roselle and your entire team. Thank you for your time. We'll move on to item six, which is to consider approval of the 2324 proposed budget for the sheriff corner, including any supplemental materials and take related actions is outlined in the reference budget documents and recommended by the CAO. We have the budget hearing item board memo, the proposed budget and line item detail, the fixed assets and the continuing agreements list. And with us today, we have the sheriff corner, Jim Hart with the under sheriff Chris Park and we also have Kathy Sands when the budget questions get asked.  Thank you, Supervisor. Good morning board, Jim Hart, Sheriff Corner and thanks Zach for the introductions and might not have remembered all those names. So I appreciate that. My law enforcement chief, Jake Hainsworth, had to leave for an emergency that's popped up. So he was gonna be available for any law enforcement questions, but we can handle that. This is my ninth budget as your sheriff. And even though I recognizing a knowledge that we use a lot of money out of the general fund, that this is a very lean budget in terms of we're not adding many personnel, we're adding two records clerks to the jail to help process people in and out rather than have correctional officers do that work. And then we're really in the process of beefing up our mental health and medical services on the front end at the jail as well. And that's where you're gonna see the increases in this budget. I do wanna acknowledge and thank Rita Sanchez and Melody Sereno from the county administrative office for helping us work through this budget as well as CAO Carlos Palacios. So moving on to our mission statement, this hasn't changed from last year and we believe in this and really at the end of the day, our job is to help make things better. We're not gonna solve all the social ills around homelessness and addiction and mental illness, but our staff can be out there, be available and try to help make things better. In terms of our services, where does that $61 million in that county cost go? And we're broken up into three bureaus, but primarily the money spent in two bureaus and our operations bureau, which is our law enforcement branch and our corrections bureau. And you can see the different functions that we serve. And I just wanna remind the community and the board that we don't work a standard 40 hour work week. We have a 24 hour a day, seven day a week, 168 hours every week that we're staffing. And so if one position, say our Felton deputy, it takes six people to cover that one position. And so yes, we're expensive, but we're also putting in a lot more hours than a standard work week for a lot of our positions. Our corrections bureau, it runs about roughly $35 million or so. We just reopened Blaine Street as you might have heard. I was real glad that we did that. We have 25 women at Blaine Street today. And we're staffing that on overtime right now. And then we have our main jail and then two of the three units at round tree are open. We still have one unit down there closed because of staffing issues. And then I just wanna touch on court security that we provide judicial protection in the courts both in Watsonville and in Santa Cruz. And we have 22, roughly 22 positions that do that work. Today, our main jail population is 267, which is about a hundred less than pre-COVID numbers. Blaine Street 25 and round tree. We have 70 men down at round tree. And then moving on, I just, I do this every year, but I just wanna give you an idea of the effectiveness of the Sheriff's office and the way that we work with the community. And just giving you an idea of what is it that we're getting for this money that we're spending? And so in this chart, you can see in the red, the state average for violent crimes per 1,000 state residents is about 4.7 violent crimes for every 1,000 residents in California. In unincorporated Santa Cruz County, it's a third. It's at 1.5, 1.6. And then you move over to property crimes. And again, it's about a third of the state average. And then our overall crime rate is remarkably low. I've never seen it this low. It's at about nine crimes per 1,000 county residents compared to a state average of about 27. You can see this is about a 12 year graph showing the crime trends. And there's two markers in here. And one is prison realignment. And the other is prop 47. And there's been a lot of discussion about both of those pieces of legislation. One that was a prison realignment was passed by the legislature, whereas prop 47 was voted in to law. And pre-prison realignment, we were as a county at about 27 crimes per 1,000 residents. And nobody was sure statewide what prison realignment was gonna do to the crime rate. And really what it did is it impacted the jail systems, the county jail systems, and it impacted the probation department because we became sort of a quasi-state prison and the probation department became sort of a parole office as well. And thankfully, since prison realignment hit, you can see the crime rate trended down. It flattened out for about five years. And then after prop 47, it's gone down dramatically. And so our crime rate is again, about a third of what it was before those two pieces of legislation took effect. I wanna talk a little bit about homicides. Obviously there's a lot of terrible crimes out here, but the homicides have a reverberating effect throughout communities. And I hear a lot of people talk about, we wish we were in Santa Cruz in the good old days. I grew up here, I hear people saying the 70s and 80s were barred, we could let our kids run around in the street and there was no crime. But there was actually multiple serial killers working in Santa Cruz County in the 70s and early 80s. And you could see in the mid-80s, there was a lot of killing going on in uncorporated Santa Cruz County. We had a two-year period, we had 25 murders. And then you look at that graph going down and for the last 10 years in Santa Cruz unincorporated. This isn't including the four city jurisdictions, but we've had 19 murders in the last 10 years, less than two a year. Now, any murders unacceptable, but these numbers are dropping and have continued to drop dramatically. And looking at the graph in terms of five-year increments, you could see 88 to 92, a violent time in Santa Cruz County, 32 homicides. That's a lot of killing that went on. And then look at 2013 to 17, two homicides in a five-year period. And then we've spiked back up a little bit to about the 30-year average of 17 over five years. Now I'll have Kathy talk to you about the budget. Good morning. Good morning. We've really, as the sheriff has said, we've put in a really lean budget working really well with the CAO's office to make sure that all the needs for the community in our office are met. We are increasing our funded positions by three. We're refunding two records clerks, as the sheriff had mentioned, and we're adding one information technology business systems analyst, which is completely cost-recovered by the local agencies for our Clutz administration that's required by law. And then we also have an increase in our expenditures primarily to negotiated salary increases and benefits and our corrections facility for medical, mental health, and our food costs that are continually rising. Our revenue, we've been able to stay status quo as you're, I'm sure, all aware, we are a non-generating revenue office. And so we really depend on the general fund and all of our grants and those type of items to keep us functioning. And we've been able to hold that steady this year. Okay, and then just briefly moving on to capital or system requests. We are in the process of the early stages of building our DNA lab, which you have been informed about several times now over the last year or so, and construction is gonna start soon on that. And then after construction DNA accreditation, we've mentioned the increased medical and mental health. We're also in the process of bringing our jail system up to national accreditation standards. We're working through the new CalAIM legislation, I'll talk about that in a moment. And then we have a very costly main jail control panel electronics project that's going in right now. There's workers in the jail putting this in, fixing a lot of old technology that is now being replaced. And as far as future potential projects, we do have space out at our headquarters building for a gun range that was planned when that office was constructed. We have the plans drawn, but we're a little bit shy in the revenues, so we're holding that as a future project. And then my office, Chris, Kathy, myself have been working with the county administrator and his staff on the early stages of trying to identify site location as well as funding for a new jail. If you read the most recent grand jury report, the grand juries in their report is calling for a new jail. This is something I've been talking about now for the last nine years. That's just an aged facility that needs replacement and it doesn't meet modern standards. Moving on to our 23 to 25 operational plan update. The increased medical and mental health is gonna be, we're gonna be doing screening for mental health on the front end. Right now correctional officers do some screening for mental health services, but we're actually gonna have a clinician 24 hours a day doing intake screening prior to accepting an incarcerated person into our system. I mentioned the jail control panel, the recovery center, after construction, we're hoping that it's gonna open up around January 1st of 25. And we anticipate diverting somewhere between 400 and 500 people a month from jail into the recovery center. It'll be run by a private vendor who's in the treatment and substance abuse business. And we're hoping that people who come in for first time DUIs, people who are too intoxicated to care for themselves, people who are under an influence of drugs rather than go to jail, they will be diverted into the recovery center. Their cases will still go through the district attorney's office for prosecution review, but the hope is that we can get these people to meet with clinicians at the recovery center and help focus them into some sort of treatment services. And then you've been informed about the DNA laboratory. Talking about CalAIM, I know that you guys have all heard a little bit about this. We're still trying to work out everything that we have to do in terms of what this piece of legislation is gonna do. But how we see it is that CalAIM's gonna provide increased treatment and then also a warm handoff, better services as somebody's leaving our jail facility so that they're just not being released to the community without any support services. And then we're also gonna have staff that is going to enroll people into MediCal about 90 days prior to their scheduled release so that when they leave our facility, they'll have access to services on the day that they leave. And then Kathy touched on the increased food costs. I do wanna touch on the difficulty recruiting. To me, this is probably the most significant issue that law enforcement is facing today, not just in this county and state, but across the country. And we're sitting right now on, we have 14 vacancies and corrections. We have seven on the deputy side. We have six positions of the deputies that were unfunded a number of years ago. We have 25 people in training. So we have about 50 positions that aren't productive right now. And we're getting by okay on the law enforcement side, but we're running our corrections bureau on overtime because we don't have enough staff. And we've worked with the personnel department. We've tried bonuses, job fairs. We've lowered some standards in certain areas. We've civilianized as many positions as possible to pull the uniform personnel out of those assignments and get them either on the street or on the floor in the jail. And we're continuing to look at our office in terms of what jobs do we have where a deputy or a correctional officers are performing those duties, but we could bring a non-sworn person in to do that work and get the correctional officers and deputies back to a more typical assignment. And so we've identified seven or eight positions that moving forward, we're gonna work with the CAO on civilianizing those positions, but we've been running our jail system now for the last four or five years on overtime and our staff is tired and they look to other agencies and primarily so that they don't have to work 60 or 70 hours a week. They could work 40 or 50 hours a week. And so it's a real critical issue in law enforcement right now. And it's something that we have to continue to think of ways of not only hiring and recruiting people but retaining them and the district attorney touched on the fact that we don't wanna be an agency that hires and trains and gives people experience and then they in two or three years they go to Santa Clara. Because every time somebody particularly on the deputy side walks out the door either retirement injury or going to another agency it takes about 18 months to get that position hired and trained and then put back on the street. And so we're continuing to work with the CAO and personnel on some ideas on how we can do this but we really need to value our county employees and I think they do feel valued but if they can go over to Santa Clara County and make 25 in some cases 40% more and a couple of those agencies over there that's where they're gonna go. And so we have to really work on that. And then the last thing I wanna touch on is that there are some projects that are centered around equity and diversion intervention services and those include the DNA lab. Most DNA work is done on homicide cases and sexual assault and survivors and victims of those crimes particularly on sexual assault are primarily women and children and statistically on homicide people of color. And so I think the DNA lab is gonna service and look at everybody more equitably and then increased medical and mental health care in the jail facilities as well as the recovery in the CalAIM program. I think all of those programs really address this issue here. So that's the presentation and our request is to approve the 2324 proposed budget for the Sheriff Horne's office including any supplemental materials as provided in the reference budget documents. Thank you, Sheriff Hart. Are there questions or comments from board members before we open it up for the community? Supervisor McPherson. Thank you, Sheriff Hart. And everyone in the department who has done so much to work tirelessly to keep our community safe, like our other safety and justice agencies. Yeah, I appreciate your department's coordinated effort with our local police and district attorney and public defender's office. As you mentioned, we're coordinated an effort with the police agencies under the oversight of our board chair, Zach Friend, and one that hasn't been done very often throughout the state. And it's not unlike what we did in the community placing policing efforts more than 10 years ago to really put that in place and your continuing it really helps, I think it gives our community more confidence in what you're doing. I think you are our largest general fund investment but it's needed and I think that it's really impressive that you're increasing your efforts to address those who are taking into custody that need mental health assistance. It's a huge step forward. It's one that everybody has their minds on at this point with what's going on in the state and in this world. And we know our sheriffs are your correction officers and you encumber a lot of challenges every day, every year. And I just wanna say how much I appreciate every one of your officers that are in the department for hanging in there. And it's not a real fun time to be in law enforcement in some respects, but you're appreciated by me and I know many, many others, most others and have what you're doing and to keep our community safe. And from an administrative perspective like other departments, we recognize, it's difficult to keep up with the state and federal programs and the mandates you're having and I think you're doing as well as you can. And I hope that you can fill those vacancies as quickly as possible. I really wanna appreciate how much I appreciate sustaining the sheriffs surface centers that are embodied, embedded in our communities. The offices in Santa Rosa Valley in particular in my district up in Boulder Creek and Felton, people just feel better. They feel safer and they are safer. Like you said in some of the statistics that you had. Again, I wanna say how much I appreciate the opening of the Blaine Street. We had some discussion on that about a month or two ago but what you're doing under some very trying circumstances is much appreciated by this board of supervisors, by this supervisor at least for sure. And I'm sure the others and the community for what you're doing. So thank you very much. Thank you. You supervisor McPherson, supervisor Conan. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Sheriff and under sheriff for everything that you do. Great that we've reopened Blaine Street. Of course, not great that it's been done with overtime but glad we found a way to make that facility available. You mentioned moving correctional officer roles to civilians wherever possible and just made me think about opportunities for efficiency within the division. You'd mentioned in our past conversations how actually that work we do with court security can take up a significant amount of time. I mean, it's 22 positions, non-trivial, right? And just getting people to their arrangements from the jail over to the courthouse and back can take up a significant amount of time. So any progress towards virtual arrangements or going, I know we had those during COVID, any movement towards allowing those again? Is there any work that we can do on the legislative side working with our state representatives to make that possible again? Chief Freitas has done some work on that. And Dan, do you mind coming up and just briefly addressing that? Morning. We do continue to do that usually only if somebody has COVID or is infected. It really is working with the courts under certain circumstances. If it made is very problematic sometimes or there's some kind of safety issue with transportation. Sometimes we will do that video arraignment. We have the technology to do it and really it's more in the court's hands. A lot of the attorneys prefer to see their clients in person while they're representing them in the court. And then there's certain, my understanding is there's certain types of court cases that allow virtual appearances and there's certain that require an in-person appearance. Okay, so there's some things that are sort of the preference of the court or the attorneys and there's just a few cases where it's an actual requirement to have an in-person arraignment. Yes, my understanding is like a, forgive me, I'm trying to recall the name of it. Obviously a jury trial would require that and then preliminary hearing requires an in-person appearance as well as a few others. Sometimes an inmate can waive their appearance and be represented by their attorney without them being there. But generally the courts locally at least have preferred to have their most of the inmates in person. They feel like it helps resolve cases sometimes quicker than it would if they were to just do a video arraignment. Okay, quick enough. I'm maybe worth for the conversation with the court and happy to assist with that since I know it is a big train on resources. Another question was regarding Prop 47. I mean, the graph showed a 50% decrease in crime since the passage of that. Do you think that's just because those are no, I mean, I don't know if those were just felonies or I mean, so is that just because we're not counting as many things as crimes or as felonies or is it because there's actually been a change in the environment? Yeah, so both the crime rate that you saw on the statistics include both misdemeanors and felonies. So it really has nothing to do with crime was reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor. It's a trend that we're seeing across the state in terms of reduced crime. There's pockets of increased crime, particularly in bigger cities. It's great technology. The cameras everywhere where I think have a deterrent effect on some of the behavior. I think it goes all the way to housing too in terms of our county is so expensive to live in and so many homes that have been rehabbed and people are moving here and working in the Silicon Valley or working remotely. So there's a lot of theories out there in terms of why crime is going down. I say it's great police work, but it's probably a variety of reasons. Okay, thank you. Supervisor Cummings. Just want to thank you for that presentation and update and it'd be great if you could share those slides with us because I think it's helpful for us when we're engaging with the community to your point where people say that things are out of control and crime is up and being able to really show them that statistically that's actually not the case and that we're actually seeing less crime now than we did previously. I think it'd be helpful just for us to be able to share that with the public when we're encountering with those kinds of comments. I'd also share the appreciation of reopening Blaine Street. I know that it's gonna be a challenge with overtime and to the extent that we can help get messaging out around what positions are available and help you all out. I think that will help the community also understand that if we want these programs to exist and we want these alternatives, then we need people to actually be in those positions. And I think oftentimes people lose sight of that, that it is expensive to live here and it's challenging. And if we want all these good things that are maybe a shift from what the criminal justice system was previously, we need the people to be in those positions to run those programs. And so I'm happy to help with any kind of messaging around that as it relates to you all expanding your services and then to the point about the main jail, I have a number of friends who've been in the leadership Santa Cruz and they were able to take the tour and I'd like to go on a tour still at some point now that the reins are behind us. But even people who may not be on, they may have the sentiments around, not incarcerating people, not putting people in jail, even some of those folks who have been saying, hey, we need a better jail because if we are detaining people, it needs to be in a way that's humane and they just recognize as well the need for us to have an updated main jail. And so I think that across the board, even for people who you might think would be against us building a new jail, would actually be supportive of it, just given that they've been able to see the conditions and understand the need. And what a 21st century jail could look like doesn't have to be what historically has been. And so as that those community conversations start coming up, happy to be involved and help get the messaging out around that so we can have the community be in part of that process as we're considering that moving forward. Yeah, thank you for your support. And when the main jail was built in the late 70s, early 80s, the average length of stay was about 30 days. And now we have people who, we have 70% of the jail population that are pre-trial. They're staying sometimes three, four, five. We had one stay as many as nine years pre-trial and those facilities aren't built for that. And I would love to show you the roundtree facilities. That's really what a modern day jail should look like. Okay. And then just also want to express the appreciation for public safety on the North Coast. And I know with summer coming, a lot of folks have been concerned and they've really appreciated your presence up there to help deter some of the petty theft and other crimes that happened in the North Coast. And so just want to thank you all for being up there and for helping to keep the community safe, especially when we have high traffic and the high visitation times. Thank you. We'll be up there full-time. We started on Memorial Day and we'll be there through Labor Day. Thank you. Any other comments from Supervisor Hernandez? No, just like I, well, thank you first of all for the presentation. I wanted to just kind of make sure that we also address the new hires, I think. We're going to eventually have to, all the departments are facing this with new hires. But if we can, you know, address those issues so that we don't have so many folks doing the overtime, I think it'd be great if maybe our CEO's office can assist in making sure that departments meet the requirements for the new hires so we can resolve the issue with overtime. Other than that, well, thank you for the presentation and thank you for opening up Blaine as well. Well, I'd just like to make a couple of brief comments and just sort of generalize the situation that we live in a really unique community and we are very fortunate to have a very unique leadership here. There are a lot of counties where the sheriff is in constant conflict with the Board of Supervisors or the community in general, not just in the state of California but across the country. And I find in this community, so often Sheriff Hart and his leadership team and all the deputies, I mean, the entire culture of the organization is how to meet the needs of the community, understand the ethos of the community and try and lead in that way. We just hosted the state attorney general recently in your department and he had a lot to say about how progressive the community of policing culture here was in regards to behavioral health and other issues. The sheriff's office was the first to initiate the 21st Century Policing Program in the United States been recognized constantly on a national level for its innovation, has been an active participant in the Criminal Justice Council, Supervisor McPherson mentioned and took all of the recommendations to heart. There wasn't, there was no pushback. There was a, how can we get ahead of this and make these changes? And these aren't seen so often, I think that conflict gets covered and so you don't really get the credit when credit doesn't get covered in the same way. And on a secondary note, as someone who managed a law enforcement budget for a decade, Ms. Sam's here has been doing this for a long time doing an amazing job. I mean, it's a very complicated issue with state and federal grants and a number of mandates and what this agency has to do with clets and a lot of the other responsibilities that a sheriff's office might have that city police agencies don't have. And you never hear anything regarding impropriety regarding the finances of the sheriff's office which is the largest general fund budget. So that is a real testament to you. What I'm saying is that it's working. The system is working and we only tend to acknowledge it when the system isn't working. And so I wanna make sure that your team recognizes that we value the work that you all do. All right, I'd like to open it up to the community. Are there any members? If I could. I just wanted to acknowledge and thank you for all your work for the Willowbrook Park and getting it named after Damon and then all the work that's gone behind that and all the work that County Parks is doing on it and the CAO supported it. But you've really driven that project and it means so much to the 350 people that work at the sheriff's office. So thank you very much for that. Thank you, Sheriff. I'd like to open it up for the community and opportunity for you to address us on the Sheriff's Corner budget. I'm going to ask back Mr. Whitman. Yeah, hello. My name is James Ewing Whitman. Mr. Hart, that was actually as an excellent presentation by yourself and staff. You know, I'm 56. I think when I was more behaving like a hooligan maybe when I was 11, maybe it's debatable that I still am. But you know, I think law enforcement's job is about six times more difficult than it used to be. You know, there's a mem that showed up and what the picture was, you know, it looked like the Titanic was sinking and all you could see were human beings' hands with their phones, but besides that, they were drowning. So, you know, I think there's not, no one's perfect, no system's perfect, but without healthy law enforcement, we can't really keep any kind of a peace. I think another reason why the law enforcement's job or peace officer's job is so difficult is because the politicians are not supporting the public. Not for a second.  That's just the reality. So law enforcement's job is very challenging and I think everybody could do a better job and I wish that more citizens were actually trying to work together to help the future of humanity, which is the children. So thanks for the presentation. Thank you. Anybody else like to address us on the sheriff corner budget? Yes, Sheriff Hart, thank you for your comments. However, when I was looking at, you know, your crime statistics, what is missing is the most fundamental problem here we have in Santa Cruz, which is domestic violence. And I would like to see that word domestic removed from violence because whether it's coming from a husband, a wife, a father, violence is violence. I am connected with thousands and thousands of parents who are terrorized here in Santa Cruz County by the family courts, by the allotted mental health workers and Maya and Sebastian Lang who were violently kidnapped in October have resurfaced. They're posting videos of the maltreatment by Dr. Lynn Steinberg who we make a claim that she needs to be prosecuted and arrested for the maltreatment and torture of those children as does Dr. Rebecca Bailey who has maltreated and tortured my daughter and thereby me and Justin Lang as the parents. These are true crime statistics and there's been a media blackout here in Santa Cruz County locally. However, and all the social media accounts, everyone is talking about Santa Cruz County and the kidnapped children and the violence. I know women who are scared to death. They have domestic violence restraining orders that are not being enforced but yet someone like me who gets a fraudulent one attacked on me, then the police wanna come down and beat me up because I'm trying to protect my daughter. We need to fix that. My stolen bike was just recovered from the PogoNIP. I got onto a local website. The theft rate here in Santa Cruz is off the charts and just because you haven't talked about it doesn't mean it's not happening. So be honest about what's happening here. Homicide is, well, that is a problem. There are far worse situations happening and it's the child trafficking. It's the child kidnapping. It's the terrorism of parents here in the community of Santa Cruz. And we need to be real about that and we need to solve that problem. Thank you. Anybody else in chambers like to address this? Thank you, Becky Steinbruner. Thank you, Sheriff Hart and all of the people who go out on the streets into the jails every day. Law enforcement's not an easy job and especially in these times. And I wanna thank the dedication for those who go out and try to do the right thing. Thank you. I wanna clarify that rape victims in this county do not have to go over the hill for the medical examinations that are needed for prosecuting their perpetrators. We've talked about that before and I thought I understood it was gonna change but with the DNA lab not being in built yet, I wanna clarify that our rape victims still having to go over the hill. I also attended the military grade weaponry town hall that you had earlier this month. That was very good. Thank you. I would like to ask however that next year as a supervisor Hernandez asked when the board approved the report could it happen in a different order? Just for transparency, which is what the people at that meeting were asking for more rather than less even though you don't have to do it by law. So, but I wanna thank you for having that town hall meeting and very, very patiently and thoroughly answering questions. I wanna speak to one of the challenges that you had on there about food. And I have seen in past years the problem with the contracting agency at Roundtree and the main jail for food. I want to see that it gets back to cafeteria style mass feeding type and provide work for the inmates in these facilities to give them job skills and give them something to do and to reduce costs. I would like to see some kind of a garden at Roundtree especially even though it's right next to the county dump. Thank you, Ms. Timberner. Thank you, Ms. Timberner. Is there anybody else in chambers? Is there anybody online, Madam Clerk, for this item? We have no speakers online, Chair. Okay, we'll bring it back to the board for action on this item. Is there a motion? I would recommend that. Second. A motion from Supervisor McPherson and a second from Supervisor Koenig if we could have a roll call please. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Cummings. Aye. McPherson. Aye. And Friend. Aye, and that passes unanimously. Thank you all for your work. Appreciate you staying this morning. Move on to item seven, which is to consider approval of the 23-24 proposed budget for the parks, open space and cultural services department including any supplemental materials and take related actions as outlined in the reference budget documents and recommended by the county administrative officer. We have the board memo, the line item detail, the supplemental budget, the fixed item, this gives me the fixed assets, the continuing agreement list and the unified peace schedule. And with us today, we have our director of parks, Mr. Gaffney and our deputy director, Ms. Ridley. Welcome both of you. Thank you for waiting this morning, Mr. Gaffney. Oh, thank you, Chair Friend. I, you took care of introductions. I appreciate that. And I appreciate you guys hearing us out today. Also wanted to thank a budget manager, Marcus Pimental and CAO Carlos Palacios for all their support. And Peter Datliff says we move forward with our budget presentation. I wanted to draw attention to this picture. It was selected with great intention as we take a moment to look back so that we can move forward. And in 2018, we had a commitment with our nonprofit partner, County Park Friends. As we adopted our first ever strategic plan, it was our shared commitment to access equity inclusion.  Fast forward through years of fires, floods, and a pandemic. And with the support of their outdoor equity program, we now have groups of youth participating in a series of Learn to Swim programs. This is a picture of the first group that started in March of this year. These future lifeguards, as we like to think of them, were identified as Live Oak residents, many within walking distance to the Aquatic Center. They would not been able to afford swim lessons on their own. County Park Friends worked with park staff at our Aquatic Center to support our community by getting these kids into free swim lessons as well as other recreational programs associated with the program, that program. Not only increasing safety for these children, but also providing them with a lot of fun and education. So we'll come back to that. But I'm just pretty proud that we were here at this moment and we were able to get there after years of work. So thank you. Moving on to what we're gonna be talking to you today about is our mission, our objectives, the services we provide, our parks, our fee updates and grants, budget goals, a long range of opportunities, and then of course the request that we're gonna be moving forward, asking for. Just wanted to briefly go over our, sorry about that, getting the hang of it there. It's been a while. Our mission statement, the county parks strive to provide well-maintained parks with a variety of recreational cultural services. That's what we always are looking to do. In with our mission statement, we've also added what was, I mentioned earlier, our strategic plan from 2018. That was the first strategic plan our department had ever created or even thought about doing and we were very proud to be able to adopt it in 2018. The four goals that came forward as part of that strategic plan were effective stewardship, our great facilities, a strong organization and awesome programs. We're currently at our five-year mark, which is halfway through that 10-year strategic plan. At the halfway mark, we said we'd come back and check in and see if we're kind of on pace with what we said we'd wanna be. We feel we're pretty consistent with those goals, but we also realized that we failed to add a goal that was equity. Equity's built into a lot of these goals with objectives, but we feel like it's probably going to be something that we need to have as a fifth goal. And so I think that's kind of our guiding principles and as we look at the mission statement, that helps feed and inform that process. And now to go over our operational plan objectives, I'm gonna turn it over to Deputy Director Hurley. Good morning, board. So for the County's two-year operational plan, we have a numerous amount of objectives for the Parks Department. Some of those objectives, our goals are slated to be done in 2023 or have already been completed. One of them is opening our aquatic facility back to seven days a week when it had to unexpectedly close due to life part shortage. As well as Director Gaffney stated, it's updating our strategic plan, which we anticipate finishing in the next month and bringing back to the board in the fall. Other parks' objectives include making our programs in places more inclusive for all communities. One of these objectives is to remove the sand play servicing at at least five of our play areas and to replace with more inclusive play servicing with either woodchips or in place for a brice play servicing. We also wanna increase the amount of recreational programming that we provide to underserved communities by bringing back our mobile recreation program, which we had about 15 years ago. This is a program that goes and takes mobile recreation programming out to communities that can't come and access the currently provided programming and we have facilities. Another objective that we have is for the rail trail project. Currently housed in parks with co-sponsorship for the CDI to complete the environmental review documents for the segments 10 and 11, which is a project funded by the $68 million ATP grant. Lastly, parks has an objective of aiming to find more sustainable and dedicated funding for our department, so that we are not reliant on general funding to meet the needs of our community moving forward. So a little bit about our services and what we provide. We are the parks open spaces and cultural services department. We provide community outreach through cultural services such as the County Public Art Program. Like seen in the picture here is the new mural by Taylor Rainhold. We're needed by the NRG and County Park Friends group at a county park site in Rio de Mar. We also provide outdoor education on trails and in our open spaces through interpretive programming and signage. And as recently we have brought back all of our interpretive programming at Quail Hollow Ranch County Park and are seeking to mimic the same programming in South County at Penalink County Park in the next year. We operate and manage one of the largest aquatic facilities in the Tri-County area open year round, seven days a week providing swim lessons, recreation swim, adult lap swim and therapeutic recreation opportunities in warm water. We have our own planning and development team and plan to manage our own parks project within the parks department when we renovate playgrounds or put new amenities into our county parks. We also provide recreational programming for all ages throughout the unincorporated areas which is unique for a county parks department, however appreciated by the large population that participates in them. Okay, so as I'm sticking with my theme of looking back a little bit as we move forward, I wanted to draw your attention to the map of the county here with our parks in them. They're highlighted in green and just talk a moment about our redevelopment agency and how the allocation of resources for parks were often determined by that over the last couple of decades. And so you'll see a large number of parks that may be in the center of our county and actually right there in the Live Oak area. I also wanna point out that a lot of the parks because of the type of parks department we are and the size we are end up being regional parks. They have a draw to them that are more for every resident in the county and or maybe even people who come out of the county. We have parks like the Aquatic Center at Simkins. We have the Energy and Cummins. We have a Moran Lake or a Pleasure Point, the Hook, you have a Quail Canyon. You have a Quail Hollow, I'm sorry. You have also Pinto Lake. So these are our regional type parks and the focus of those parks at times may have been inequitable. And so as we continue to move forward, we're looking at opportunities and how we can more evenly distribute parks both geographically and for also the recreational opportunities to provide. As I talked about a little bit about our regional parks, I just wanted to highlight a few of those as well. So some of the parks that we are probably not really aware of being, oftentimes people within our county, I should say, aren't aware that there are other county parks. There are the Highlands Park and as I mentioned Pinto and Quail Hollow and also Moran Lake. And so then the Simkins Aquatic Swin Center, they are distributed throughout the county. We have Greyhound Rock as well that we've been taking care of for a number of years. They provide so many opportunities for people, whether it be recreational opportunities or outdoor spaces or trails to hike on or just the opportunity to get to a place of quiet serenity for a peaceful bit of meditation. We also have playing fields. They also are quite involved as far as it takes maintaining them, whether it's large tree maintenance, fire protection and fuel break, shade of fuel breaks, maintaining a large aquatic center like we do at Simkins. The sensitive habitats that we have along lagoons like Moran Lake or Quail Hollow that has the Sandhills habitat. So all of those things are things that we take on willingly and also just a reminder to the board of how expensive and time consuming and difficult that could be. And that said, I think it's well known that we're a very innovative department and we often go out and find a lot of revenue that is external and not part of the county resources and definitely not part of the general fund. This year we'll actually be using more money than 56% of our funding that will be going into the budget will not be general fund money. So that's the highest, since I've been here that we've been able to bring external revenue in from. In particular, if you look on this screen or if you look on this slide in the green and the external revenue that we're looking at there, a lot of those dollars aren't grant dollars which is another creative way. We've continued to find collaboration and partnerships, things like our mitigation program at energy and Cummings where we're not only planting trees, helping with carbon sequestration, we're also generating revenue and staff time to be able to monitor our natural resources at the park, something that was very much needed. So overall, adding the grants and external revenue just in this fiscal year alone, we brought in 3.27 million. This does not however include the $68 million active transportation grant for the rail trail segments, 10 and 11 will be starting to fund parts of our budget in 24, 25. As I continue to talk about some of the things from the past, as I mentioned, I wanted to quickly highlight a fee update that we brought back, we brought to this board in June of 2021. It seems like just yesterday, but this was five years in the works and we had a very complex funding process for what's considered park dedication at that time and now we call it Park Impact Fees. And it was in 15 different development buckets and very difficult to utilize. We consolidated it all into one bucket. Thank you supervisors, that was very helpful. It was a very difficult process. And as we navigated through that this last year, actually last fiscal year, we were finishing the final bureaucratic processes and we've been actually this current fiscal year, 22, 23, able to start to see the revenue in one single bucket that we can expend for infrastructure. It's solely used for improving facilities, adding new facilities, acquiring land. It has a very limited use at times, but it's been life-changing for the department to be able to actually have resources and we're just now realizing that and this board is gonna be very fortunate to be the beneficiary of that in the coming years. So I look forward to that. It was very inequitable as well. And so that was one of the big reasons we felt like it was important to change. It allows for this board to make decisions and where resources are distributed and they're not determinate on incomes and or where affluent areas are in the county or only places that can be developed. So as we look towards our budget goals, we're gonna continue to establish our relationships within the community as we have. And then we're also gonna focus on achieving equity in South County and with both parkland and programs and especially in populations that have been historically underserved and they have not had the same opportunities to engage in programs and open spaces. As far as long range opportunities, we're gonna continue building parks and connecting our outdoor communities. I think this is something that was really obvious during the pandemic, both from an environmental protection standpoint, climate adaptation aspect as well that we need to have more connectivity to our open spaces, pathways and trails that connect high density neighborhoods to communities in general. So they can get to the open spaces without having to get into their cars. We're continuing to strive to make that happen. And then also we wanna provide more programs to help people understand how they can provide less waste, do more recycling and lower their carbon footprint. We also really are excited about the natural resource management programming that we started last year and to do that program and expand it out through all of our county parks. We're preparing and getting ourselves used to the idea of having to respond to natural disasters and or be prepared for that as we look at things like armoring up some of our coastal accesses. As I mentioned, shaded fuel breaks earlier and also some of the work we need to do in our lagoons and waterways, protecting our water and natural resources. And we also have to think about our response to sea level rises in regards to those access points. And we also are continuing to create more natural resource management programming for kids. So they understand what the world is that is going on around them or what happened there. We may have lost, sorry about that. What you would have seen on this slide that's not on here is we're asking you to approve our 23, 24 county parks requested budget and there'll be no net county costs, no new net county costs. It's got three additional positions. It's just around $7 million. And as I said, no new net county costs, three additional positions. I'll come back to that in just a minute. I also wanted to go back to the beginning of when I started this presentation and we talked about the free lessons and programming that we're doing. Our request to approve the proposed budget is adding the staffing so they can continue to support these partnerships and programs like the outdoor equity program that I mentioned in the beginning and with county park friends and also allowing us to expand these efforts throughout the county, especially for the most disadvantaged communities where youth that do not have regular access to the outdoors and nature or programs about the environment or learning how to swim ending up like these two participants that you see on the screen who successfully graduated from their 16 lesson program this past April. And the data and studies continue to show us that the more money and resources we can put into our children early and often the less we will need to spend on them in their physical safety and health later in life. So I also wanted to just share with you that July is Parks and Recreation Month and don't forget that. On July 29th, we'll be doing Family Fun Day at the Simkins Swim Center. It's a free fun family day for all of the parks departments in the county coming together and providing resources. We've done this in the past. We take over a large piece of land next to us that's got the school district property thanks to the Live Oak School District and it's a great event on July 29th. We also have on August 19th, we have the Parks and Recs Day out at the Simkins Swim Center as well. It's been a fundraiser between with us and the Animal Services Shelter. It's been a great and successful event. And then lastly, I just wanna thank all the partners. As I mentioned earlier, we're always finding ways to bring in revenue from other jurisdictions and or partnering so we can combine resources. And I'd ask for your approval on the recommended budget action. Thank you, Mr. Gaffney. Thank you, Ms. Hurley. Are there questions or comments from board members? Supervisor McPherson. Yeah, you can start with somebody else maybe next. I just wanna say there's one big lesson we learned with the pandemic is how critical our parks is to our Santa Cruz County community that really contributed to the overall health and well-being of our community. And that can be overstated. It's taken for granted. And when we couldn't get together for activities, people would get outside to go to their parks, take their walks, whatever it might be. I don't know what we had done without it. I think it would have been really detrimental to our community possibly, but we're fortunate to have a community that really does have many beautiful places as we all know. And we were just reminded to how vulnerable our parks are in the recent past and open spaces. I think in the atmospheric river storms, parks had about $8 million worth of damages that was done and you have a $7 million budget. I think it goes out to you, Mr. Gaffney and your staff of how successful you have been in getting these grants that really stabilized our park system in Santa Cruz County. It's really remarkable what you have done to and to allow our 43 parks. I think that's what we have in the county system to go on pretty much business as usual, as quickly as possible. So a huge amount of credit. And I really am pleased to see the increased investment in our outdoor equity program that we have. I think we've been trying, no question that we've been trying to serve everybody in this county throughout the years, but to have a new focus on that is really great. We know the community appreciates your work and I'll share one recent example of how quickly you get on it. When a vehicle crashed into the Felton deck in my district just about two weeks ago, just a few days before the Memorial Day Parade of which I was in Marshall, as a matter of fact, park was up and running, you rebuilt it. I mean, that is quick action and you got right on it and it's a gathering spot for people in the Santa Rosa Valley at Felton and very much appreciated. So I think what you have done with what you, the amount of funding that you have is truly remarkable and to be given credit to everybody and your staff for really doing a job, having done a job well done. Thank you, Supervisor. Supervisor Cummings. I just wanted to thank you for that presentation and then also just thank you for all the time that you and your staff have taken that helped me get on board with learning about the park system and all the different issues that are facing the parks in particular. I know there's been a lot of issues with Greyhound Rock and I know that we're also working on the North Coast kind of master plan and so just want to appreciate all the work that's been going into those efforts and just looking forward to seeing the plan in particular is I know there's been a lot of folks who are eager to see that North Coast master plan, but I just want to express my appreciation for all your work and look forward to continuing to work with you. We look forward to the future. Thank you. Do you want to come in? Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Director Gaffney and Deputy Director Hurley. And I really want to thank you guys for getting Simpkins back open seven days a week. It's such an important facility as you highlighted in the presentation and I think also as the many happy faces of the moral day swim over the long weekend demonstrated. So thank you for, we're getting that lifeguard program together and getting those positions filled. And like you said, hopefully all those kids that are learning swim for the first time will be our future lifeguard force. I'm also really just excited about all the parks work that's happening in the first district in general, the planning work happening at Morrin Lake. We mentioned replacing some of those different sand areas, play structures, Felt Street. Obviously I think this year we're going to hopefully get break ground and leverage all those funds that the community raised with some public money as well and get that park a nice face lift. And I think that park also demonstrates really well. I mean, the importance of working with county park friends as you highlighted at the beginning of the presentation but also how a lot of the parks in the first district serve very diverse income categories. I mean, we've got, yes, some folks with high-end homes there in Pleasure Point but also not a good number of mobile homes up 38th just a block and a half that use that park a lot as well. Also really appreciate how creative you guys are in terms of identifying other revenue opportunities. To have one question about that which was similar to the second largest revenue source or sort of alternative revenue source that you listed was the coastal encroachment program at $550,000 in this next year's budget. What was it, what did we take in last year? I was trying to find that in the line item I'd have to get back with you on the number but I know it was less than $100,000 probably last year. Right, yeah, so I was wondering. So some potential changes in the program there that you're planning on. We've had some successes and I think the program as endorsed by this board we wanted to come and bring, revisit some of the aspects of the program anyway. So I should be coming before you and within the next six months with an update to that but I think that will be more effective and efficient. And I think more people have bought into the program, understand the program and appreciate it. So we're proud of that. Okay. Just taking a couple of years. Yeah, four or five. We'll look forward to discussing further. I know there's definitely some opportunities along East Cliff too, we're discussing with CDI as well maybe some great opportunities to really improve the public facilities there, for sure. Some more questions? Yeah, thank you. Thank you. So who is Hernandez? You know, thank you for the tours as well and I really enjoyed visiting the Semkin Swim Center. I've been there for community meetings but never really seen the pool and all the activities that happened there. So, you know, I think it's gonna be a good opportunity when it comes to the equity and bringing students out there to the Swim Center. You know, I didn't have that growing up as an asset. And so I'd never learned how to swim. It's kind of got thrown in to learn how to swim as an adult once I was in the military. But it's great that we have those opportunities now and I'm really happy to hear that equity is now gonna be part of the mission statement as well. Thank you. Thank you, supervisor. Thank you, supervisor Hernandez. And I just wanna acknowledge how much your entire team does with very little contribution really, quite frankly, from the county. I think that you've done a, it's kind of a double edged sword. You've done a really good job with public private partnerships, public nonprofit partnerships, telling a narrative and a story that compels the community to give it as a result that means that the county ends up not contributing probably what it needs too long-term to make for a sustainable parks world. And I think that, you know, I know that there was a line and a slide from Israeli about by December of 2025 on a more sustainable funding and I'll be interested to see what ideas you have moving forward on that because I think that it wasn't just the pandemic, it was just the fact that, you know, that our community really does value outdoor resources and given all the other health challenges that people are having, not engaging in these kinds of resources is very important that we do these investments in particular in the South County. I'd like to say that, and we've done it together. I mean, just in the last few years, we've done more park investments in the second district than have been done in the, in two decades before that. And it's pretty amazing to see what's still coming online. So I'm proud of that work that you've done, but to the degree that even from a positional standpoint, you think that greater management on the grant side or the nonprofit side should be in-house is the discussion that I'm still open to within your department. I recognize that you have fiscal staff already, but I mean, people that are more specifically focused on some of the partnerships would say the park friends example might make sense. And anything that can continue that outdoor, excuse me, the outside revenue streams would make sense, but we do need to look internally about how we're gonna increase these revenue streams because it's really not sustainable with some of the lack of investment in general infrastructure. So again, just as appreciation of your work, we'll open it up now for the community. Is there anybody in chambers that would like to address us on the parks budget? This would be your opportunity. All right, good morning, welcome back. Thank you, Becky Steinbruner. Thank you for the report. I'm surprised you didn't mention the county's focus on acquiring the 188 Whiting Road South County Park. That's one of the top legislative priorities that the board has identified and it's a big piece of property. I have a lot of concerns about that property being a public park, although I think South County needs more because of the access. It's way out by the fairgrounds. How are kids gonna get there? Go along 152, that's not safe. Even with some of the bike lane things, they're not gonna be building a separate bike lane with the Caltrans Improvement Project out there. So I would like your department to really consider looking at the piece of property that the county already owns within the city of Watsonville behind the county clinics. I bring it up a lot because it's behind Crestview on Freedom Boulevard. And I always think it's a good place to do emergency housing as the county did do after the 1989 earthquake, but the county seems reluctant to do so. So let's make it a park. Let's put it where the people are and on the transportation line instead of way out by the county fairgrounds. You mentioned a pot of money. Well, that was measure G. And in that pot of measure G money, $425,000 was earmarked for Aptos Village Park. I haven't seen any plan of what's gonna happen at Aptos Village Park with that money. There's no play structure there. You've let me know in correspondence there are no plans to put play structures there. And I wanna know why. The Cabrillo host Lions built and donated that community center to the parks in the 70s. And that's a gem and brings in a lot of money. So let's support that. What is the Quimby Act dollar amount with development? That will be huge coming in with arena numbers and let's build some community gardens around. Thank you, thank you. Thank you, Ms. Seinbrunner. Is there anybody else in chambers that would like to address this on the parks budget? Is there anybody online that would like to address this on the parks budget? Okay. So now we'll bring back to the board. Motion would be appropriate. The recommended actions. The motion from Supervisor Koenig is second from Supervisor McPherson. If we could have a roll call, please. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Hernandez. Yes. McPherson and Friend. Aye. And that passes unanimously. Thank you both for your work on that. We'll now move on to item eight, which is to consider approval of the 23-24 proposed budget for the community development and infrastructure department, including any supplemental materials and take related actions as outlined in the reference budget documents and recommended by the CAO. We have the budget hearing board memo, the line item detail, the supplemental budget, the fixed assets, the continuing agreements list, the unified fee schedule, the proposed capital infrastructure budget. And we have Mr. Ant Machado, who's our Deputy CAO and Director of Community Development and Infrastructure. And happy birthday, Mr. Machado. Thank you, Chair Friend and Supervisors. Matt Machado, Director of Community Development Infrastructure. I want to start by just saying that I'm happy and proud to present this combined budget for the second year in a row. You all actually, CAO Carlos Palacios, merged the two departments together and I thought it was a great plan and we're a year and a half into it. This is our second presentation. So I'm quite excited to do that. Let's see if I can make this work today. So today I'm going to cover these agenda items. I will actually cover each of them closely to each division, the division of public works and the division of planning. But before I dig into those, I want to just start by thanking the board for your continued support. Oftentimes you're the front line to our community and so members come to you and you filter it and you assist them and then you direct them our way and we continue to assist and it's just a great partnership. And so I greatly appreciate your support and your hard work. I'd also like to thank Carlos Palacios, their CAO, even considering all the responsibilities and duties he has, he still finds time to really engage in our department and our issues. He's very hands on in a very positive way and so I want to thank him for that and thank him for his leadership. And so we've got a great team. So I will start here with our public works division. So the services we provide are listed here. This is a $227 million proposed budget. We'll talk more about that in a bit. Some of the services here include 600 miles of roads. And then you look at those 600 miles and the type of traffic we have in this county. And this is kind of an approximation, but we see about 300,000 vehicle miles traveled every day on county maintained roads, just in our county and just on county maintained roads, which county maintained roads only make up about half of a road system in this county. A lot of them are privately maintained. So just a lot of traffic we deal with. So the traffic management is a really a big deal. Under the sanitation area, our group manages the operations and maintenance of eight systems. And that's in addition to our large sanitation district, which is not a part of this budget, but I mentioned it because it really speaks to the amount of work that our staff does and responsibility and it's just a great program. Under our recycling and solid waste, we provide curbside service for all the unincorporated area and we provide many services for the entire county, HHW, the landfill, the transfer station that's open to everybody that lives in our county. And so it's a great service. Every single resident of our county uses multiple of these services every single day. These are really life essential services. On our planning, in our planning division, this is about a $16.8 million proposed budget. Actually, you know what? I apologize, I'm gonna back up because all these services are provided by a great team, a great leadership team. And so I wanna recognize the assistant directors in this area. They're Kim Moore, Kent Edler, Steve Wiesner and Travis Kerry. It's just a great team of leaders to implement these services in the planning area to propose $16.8 million budget. And I'd like to acknowledge and thank the leadership in this area. They are Stephanie Hansen and Carolyn Burke. They work so hard and they provide so much guidance and they're very hands-on. And so it's a testament to them, the good work that we're able to do as a department. In this area, we're really focused on housing. Most of the services you see here support improved and increased housing, which as you all direct us to know, it's just such a high priority for our community to have more housing, affordable housing. Additionally, most of our community relies on these services on a very regular basis. And a lot of these services is really an effort to implement state and federal regulations. And our team is good at it and they're really trying to continue to improve upon some of these services with very limited resources. Next, I'm gonna cover some of our operational plan. So in the Public Works Division, we're really focused on storm damage repairs. This seems to be an ongoing struggle for us, but operational plan includes some significant elements here that we're focused on, bridge repair, managing our solid waste, continuing to wrap up our library construction, continuing to focus on road resurfacing, sewer replacement of our aging infrastructure, and then finally, development of an organic facility or another organic solution. And we're looking at multiple ways to reuse, dispose of organics in our county. In our planning division, some of the focus for our operational plan includes our website redesign. And it's actually a combined effort, but there's a lot of leadership coming out of our planning division to work on the website, which will mean a consolidated pages reformatted, improved. To begin with, they had 700 pages of data and that's the two departments together. And so the goal here is actually to, we're hopeful to go live the end of this calendar. So really excited for that. I think it'll be a real helpful tool for the community and for you all as well. We continue to pursue streamlining for our subdivision approvals. We're working hard on our housing element update, developing a homeless encampment team to address some of those needs. We're really working hard to reduce our building permit review. We're trying to make that a timely effort. We continue to focus on vacation rental enforcement and developing more equity in our community outreach. So a lot of exciting operational plan objectives. Some of the focus and highlights of our budget goals are here. And so in the public works division, we continue to maximize the benefit while still being physically responsible. We still are pursuing grant funding opportunities and we'll see a little more about some of our successes there. We continue to focus on a fully staffed operations and continue to invest in fleet assets which results in improved efficiency and effectiveness. And then lastly, we're really focused on improvements that provide public safety. Safety really is the name of the game when you're talking about infrastructure, roads, bridges and all the sort. So safety is everything. Some of our budget goals in our planning division include the continued focus to stand up the unified permit center. This is one of the primary objectives of merging the two departments together about a year and a half ago. We continue to support the recovery permitting. We're really focused on permit streamlining and we're working hard to reduce permit application review timelines. Some of the community benefits and focused first on the public works side, we see the benefits include the local road network, collection and treatment of wastewater, the responsible solid waste management and growing our alternative transportation networks. And so those are direct community benefits that many people use every single day. In our planning division, some of the benefits that we wanna highlight include protecting life and safety through the implementation of the building code, and providing environmental stewardship, conducting long range planning, supporting the development of housing for all income levels and improving equity and public outreach activities. We're really trying to capture the voice of all the people of our community so that we can develop guidance and policy that serves everybody equally and well. Digging into a little bit of the numbers in our public works division, I just wanna highlight a few things here. At the top, you can see just some slight fluctuations in our transportation and special services. What's really driving the change is the timing of project delivery. And that's what causes the fluctuation in our budget. And then the administrative services, really the change there is our employee or labor contracts that are in place that include some costs of living increases. But if you look at the bottom right, the change from our current year into our proposed year, it's just a 1% change. It's a very slight change, even though there's some significant changes in our project delivery just due to that timing. But overall, it's virtually a status quo budget. Just a few more highlights on the public works proposed budget. We are recommending nine full-time equivalent additions to our staffing. There's actually a typo on this page and I apologize for that. I can't believe it's actually been here for some time and for some reason I just didn't catch it. But you can see in that recycled solid waste, three added FTEs is actually two. And it's two transfer drivers. And the goal here is to really increase and get ready for the future of hauling a lot of our waste to Marina. We have a contract with them. It's a good contract. It's the most cost-effective way to deal with our solid waste. And so this is adding two transfer truck drivers. And then the third position there of the three is actually a engineering aid to assist in our transportation group. Their workload is immense with the storm damage. We'll talk a little bit more about that storm damage. And then the five in the far right column is in our construction engineering group. And for the past five years, we've spent more than a million dollars on consultants, which is necessary. Consultants are a really key part to managing the workload, but this is an effort to reduce that spin to have overall savings. These positions are fully funded by projects so they're not a cost of the net county cost side of our budget. And then the last position there is really a staffing structure change to promote career development and succession planning. It does not result in a new body. Overall though, all that said in terms of our staffing levels, we do have about a 15% vacancy rate and our public works division. It's just a real challenge to recruit and retain employees staff of all types. Certainly in some of the unique positions it's extra challenging. In the planning division, we're really very little change here. It's actually a net zero staffing from a staffing perspective. There's funding of one new position but there's also unfunding of another position so it's a net zero. And this is really due to limited budget capacity. It doesn't mean that there's not a need. There is a significant need to add staffing resources yet without significant or adequate revenue to support. It's just not in the cards for this year. And we'll mention a little more about that here in a second. I do wanna highlight a few of our larger more critical projects. And so we've been talking a bit about storm damage and here's some quick numbers. So from the 23 storms, January, February, March, 184 damage sites, roads, road damage sites. Our goal this year is to have 71 of those complete. That's a really tall order. So the team is exceptionally busy and at great costs. And we'll talk about some of those costs here in a bit. Additionally, projected for this proposed budget year are some really critical projects. So-called drive has five and a half miles of improved signal timing, improved bicycle lanes, improved pedestrian facilities. It's a project that'll serve the entire county. Additionally, the emergency route resurfacing that includes the roads Alba and Jamison, some great projects there, especially considering the necessity of solid reliable evacuation routes. Green Valley is a really exciting project. That's a $5 million grant to build a dedicated bicycle and pedestrian facility on Green Valley Road. The 2023 pavement management project, that's 16 miles of resurfacing. One of the biggest resurfacing projects we've ever pulled together is got all kinds of funding sources. We dug into the couch, found some pennies and nickels and pulled it all together to deliver this project. We're really excited about it. And then I went 152 at Hollahan. That project's finally going to construction. I think it's been decades. I know some folks, actually Steve Wiesner, one of our longstanding staff members. He's been here 20 years, by the way. We gave him an award this year. He's done some great work for this county. And he told me recently that one of the first projects he worked on was this project 20 years ago. Actually more than 20 years ago, he said. So finally coming to fruition. So we're very excited about that. In our special services, just one quick highlight. We've actually, you've heard me say, talk a bit about freedom, sanitation in the past. So I won't spend time on that. But I do want to highlight a really great project up in Davenport. We have a water storage tank project. It's two new tanks that include a $2.5 million grant. So a really great grant for a community that really needs that support. They can get cut off from water pretty quickly because it's surface water. So tanks will provide emergency supply.  I'm gonna end on the storm damage point. That's clearly the biggest lift that we are undertaking right now. Storm damage does continue to deplete all of our resources. And for quite a few years now, SB1, which is a gas tax, has been overwhelmingly dedicated for our local match. It's a challenge and it's even been a challenge for a general fund. The general fund has had to contribute some funds for storm damage local match. And it's just a burden on this county. It'll continue to be that way. And it's such a depletion of our service or funding that we're projecting in this current fiscal year to carry a negative fund balance of about a million dollars. And even in next year, we expect a negative $2 million fund balance to end of the year due to all the storm damage needs and repairs. And so that will continue to be a struggle for us. On the, some of our requests and current projects in our planning division include our UPC remodel. This has been taken to some time, but it's a big lift and so there's a co-location or there's a emerging of people and emerging of office spaces. So we've been working closely with general services to implement this project. A couple of other projects I want to highlight on the right column there, some of the new projects. We're kicking off a digitization project. Currently we store paper files off site at significant annual costs. And so we're starting the process right now to digitize those and at some point to eliminate that cost of offsite storage. The fee study there is really an effort to maximize cost recovery for the services that we provide. And hopefully this results in some increased staffing in the future. That's the staffing comment I made earlier. And then the third party plan check is really a significant increase in budget for this to address our overdue plan check reviews. And we're already seen some great gains in this area. In terms of some fiscal sustainability, we continue to maximize leverage grant funding. You know, I just mentioned the fee study in an effort to maximize cost recovery. And then within budget constraints, we continue to use data to make good decisions and continuous process improvements. On the state front, we continue to watch, track and pursue all things that affect us both on the planning and the public works side. And so we're very active in the legislative world to monitor those changes and the effects on our department. Some future considerations, I'll start with the public works side. On that top left, that FEMA process, we've talked a lot about that recently. I just wanted to share one number. In our current budget year, we're expecting to spend $150,000 on interest payments for monies that we've had to borrow to complete some of these federal aid FEMA projects because of the slow reimbursement from FEMA. And this proposed budget year, we're expecting to spend $300,000 on interest payments only because it takes so long for FEMA to approve and reimburse this county. This is something you've heard a lot about, but this is how it affects this one department. And it's a big effect. A couple of other highlights here. You see the continued deferred maintenance in roads and in culverts. We do plan to bring together a program on our culverts to systematically make repairs and investments. And we'll share more about that with you. For the past couple of years, we've been gathering great data so that we can take some small steps forward to start solving that problem. On the planning front, we continue and we've talked a bit about this, but we continue to work on our UPC, our Unified Permit Center, both the front counter and the office space. This is a big lift, but we're working steadily on it and we're looking forward to that conclusion in the next year or two. Also in our recovery permitting revenues and third-party plan check services, we're seeing great progress there. I've shared with many of you that progress. Historically, it's been a challenge to keep up with those plan check services with the staffing levels that we have. We've used third-party plan check services and we're reducing that as we speak today. The satellite service counter, certainly an exciting time for the future. It'll be a staffing challenge, but it's also exciting to be able to provide services where people live and where they want those services and need those services. And then of course, housing is continued effort, especially with regard to affordable housing. So today's item includes a proposed budget that includes a few of these elements. In our public works division, it does include a $2.9 million general fund contribution to address the storm damage. It also includes the nine full-time equivalents added, fully funded of course with projects on the planning side, really no change with staffing, but the budget does include those few contracts that I described earlier. The recommended actions today are to approve the 2324 proposed budget for the Community Development Infrastructure Department, including any supplemental materials as provided in the reference budget documents. And here today, our leadership is here in the chambers and between them and myself. I hopefully we can answer any questions you may have. Thank you. Thank you, Director Machado. We'd like to open it up for the board minus Supervisor McPherson for questions to start. So Supervisor Cummings. Thank you for the presentation today. And just wanted to start by just appreciating the work of your department, especially as it relates to the storms that we've been experiencing this past winter, some of the damage that we saw just, I don't think anyone anticipated how badly we'd be being impacted by the storms and your teams were out 24-7 trying to make sure that people were able to get to and from their homes and able to have access in case of emergency and just wanted to appreciate all the work that your staff has done. And especially as it relates to fixing potholes throughout Empire Grade and other parts of my district, because I know that was the big issue for us, but there were more pressing issues for other areas. And also the work that went into securing the Pajaro River Levy, as it relates to potentially having threatened the wastewater treatment plant in Watsonville. I know that making sure that that didn't happen was a huge priority. And it was great to see that we were able to, that your team was able to get out there and really do such amazing work during a really challenging time. And in addition to that, I also do want to appreciate coming in as someone new, the work that your staff did to address a lot of the concerns related to for-leaf that we've been hearing. And I know Supervisor McPherson had been hearing similar concerns and your staff really stepped up to try to address those concerns. I just want to also express appreciation on that front as well. I did have a couple quick questions and a couple other comments. I was looking through the budget and I know you mentioned encampment cleanup and I was just wondering what that amount was or if you don't have those numbers right now, maybe offline, if you could provide those. I just wanted to see and better understand what funding was available for encampment cleanup. Sure, absolutely. So I don't have the number off the top of my head but I will share with you that we're planning and working hard to put together a committee that would include multiple departments, multiple funding sources. So as we put that together, we'll bring that to you. I'll share the numbers that I have offline but it'll be, we plan it to be a mix between our solid waste group, the housing group in our county, the sheriff's office, environmental health. And so we're gonna try to put together a team and leverage all those resources into one concerted effort to get the most out of those funds. I'm certain it won't cover all of our needs but I think if we can consolidate those efforts into a focused way, we'll get more for our money. So I'll share offline with you. Great, I appreciate that. The other question I had, I know you mentioned the vacancy rate for public works but I was wondering if you had the vacancy rate as well for planning? I do, it's about 9%. Thanks. The next comment I had, I noticed on the agenda packet that there was kind of a breakdown of the different years of storms and the road projects. I think it would be helpful if there's maybe another column added where you could have that by district because since I don't know all the roads that are listed there, it'd just be helpful for me to be able to communicate back and probably for all the board members to be able to give a heads up to our constituents around which r