e experienced chronic homelessness which means they've been homeless for cumulatively for a year and also have a disability and then here's your breakdown by jurisdiction again from the point in time count just I don't think not surprised anyone to see that the city of Santa Cruz has the largest number of people counted followed by the unincorporated county and then Watsonville. And the blue bar is the unsheltered the red is the folks in shelter so the unsheltered numbers are the more relevant in terms of thinking about jurisdictions because of course the people in shelters are in the places where shelters are and then the last slide here just again a little context about household type so this shows that of the 2,100-ish people who were accounted that was 1,440 households 90% of which are adults so either a single adult or two adults in a household and then 8.5% were families with children and almost 3% were people under the age of 18 who are homeless by themselves. Okay so now we'll get into the performance data so I think the pit count data is probably data everyone has seen is pretty familiar with the kind of data work that a lot of communities are just starting to think about doing and that is what you really need to be able to design a system instead of just thinking just about who is experiencing homelessness and what does that population look like? What are our programs and what is our system and how well is it helping us reduce homelessness? So if you look at the why of looking at performance data is it tells us how effectively the system is helping people move from homelessness to housing the relative effectiveness of individual programs and then it gives you the data you need to make decisions about where you wanna target your efforts or do you wanna target your investments? How do you wanna prioritize your resources and how do you keep improving? So the how or how we went about it we use a tool that we built a few years back in partnership with the National Alliance to End Homelessness. It pulls your own local data from the Homeless Management Information System which is your local data collection system that it's mandated by HUD. There's also a housing inventory that's mandated by HUD which is a listing of all the programs in the community and how many beds they have. And then we also gather data directly from the providers about their program costs to help us think about cost effectiveness. So the tool produces this analysis and it gives you an idea again of what you're accomplishing and then moving forward now that we have this baseline set of data we'll be able to use it to make projections and do some predictive modeling in the action planning phase which I'll talk about in the next section of the presentation. So as I mentioned this has been this work start in July the initial data gathering takes a while that was done in September. We did generate the initial set of results in October. What we typically then do is we meet individually with each provider organization. So we did that at the end of October and that's to show them their own data and identify where there might be some data quality issues or things that we might have misinterpreted. We also presented a high level summary of the system results in December to the providers. What we found was because there was a kind of a significant amount of data that needed to be cleaned up we decided to do another round of data work so providers were given the opportunity to clean up some of their data in January and so that's why we're now coming to you with the revised results now. So what's included in the analysis just so you know we're only able to analyze projects that put their data into your HMIS system and those are kind of defined by HUD. So it includes emergency shelters which are divided into shelters that operate year round versus seasonally. In your community it was a little tricky to make this distinction because you also have some shelters that open and then close and you have temporary shelters that are moving around. So we had to kind of decide whether to categorize them as year round or seasonal. Transitional housing is as I think came up in the last agenda item around fit are also temporary situations but of longer duration. You don't have very many of those projects in the community. Then rapid rehousing is a housing intervention which is a short term rental subsidy so people are assisted to move into a unit in the private rental market they get their rent subsidized for a short period of time and then they assume the rent themselves and then you have your permanent supportive housing which are units that have an ongoing subsidy and intensive supportive services. So you'll see what we were able to analyze was 35 different projects and about the vast majority of the beds in those projects were for single adults and then you see there were 158 units for families in the analysis. Okay and so then these are the measures we look at and these are really the key things you need to be able to think about and understand to be able to drive towards improved results. The ones that are bold and italicized are the ones I'm gonna actually show you some data about but these are all the measures that we look at. The first one is what's the quality of your HMIS data? If you don't have good data, it's still good to start and I'll talk a little bit about some of the data issues that we encountered here which were fairly common but you should not do performance analysis until you're waiting for your data to get better, better to just get started and then see what it tells you about what you need to improve. We look at beds and unit utilization which is are all the units in the system actually being used to their full capacity? The third one is really important when you're thinking about ending street homelessness which is we look at whether the programs in the system that you already have are accessible to people who are living outside or are the people who go into those programs actually coming from other kinds of situations like they might be housed but at a risk of homelessness. We look at the length of stay which is how long do people stay on programs and of course you want them to be as short as possible so that they can serve more people and then related to that do people when they leave a program, when they leave a shelter or a transitional housing or a rapid rehousing program, are they housed at the end? And then the cost for permanent housing exit is what did it cost you to get that result? Number seven, we actually weren't able to do in your community because we only had a year of data but we also would wanna look at whether after people get housed do they come back to your system which is an indicator that the placements that you're making into housing aren't sticking. So I'm gonna run through those four measures that are on the highlighted slides. So first on HMIS data quality you do have some challenges around this. They're not at all uncommon but this is really an area that it's gonna be important to keep improving on and I'm not gonna go into all the different details. There's some particular fields that are really important to know and capture accurately have to do with where people live when they come into a program and when they go and they exit. The other thing is not all of the programs in your system are entering data in your HMIS system which means that you're not really getting a full picture of what's going on. And then another thing that I think is particularly gonna be frustrating here is the way the programs are set up in your data system doesn't align to how they really work on the ground. So if you were to ask, well where's the such and such shelter in this data it might be merged with another shelter and you can't pull it apart because of the way it's set up in there. And this just tells us that you haven't really been using the data because if you had been using it to really look at performance you would have the project set up in a way that maps to the kind of reality on the ground so you could really understand a little bit better what it's telling you about your system. So the first actual measure I'm gonna show you was the living situation of people who enter homeless programs and we're really looking at are the available beds being filled with people who are living outside or art in a shelter bed. So these are what in the federal definitions is called literal homelessness. And this really measures whether your system is accessible to folks with highest needs who are living outside and are actually targeting those folks. So if you have a lot of unsheltered homelessness you really wanna high performance on this measure. And so if you're having low performance it means that you have people who maybe they have their own unit but they're on the brink of losing their housing maybe they're couch surfing and they don't know where they're gonna go next and those folks are entering your programs. Sometimes for good reason and often particularly if there's a domestic violence situation or some other situation you're gonna wanna allow people to move from a housed situation into a shelter but at a system level you really wanna kind of have that be as limited as is possible. And often people who are housed can be served in a different way than giving them a shelter bed. So that's where targeted prevention and diversion comes in and I'll talk about that a little more. So here is the first bar chart. So you'll see the bottom of the chart shows you the four primary types of programs you have. So you have shelters, THS transitional housing, RRH is rapid rehousing which is a short term rental subsidy program and PSH is your permanent supportive housing and these are the percentage of people who entered who are actually what we call literally homeless. So you'll see only 52% of the shelter entries as captured in the data and again there could be some data quality issues there were actually people who are coming from outside or possibly from another shelter and I'll show the detail on the shelter one on the next slide. Transitional housing had 79% coming from either a shelter or a unsheltered situation. Rapid rehousing only 53% and PSH 84%. And here's your shelter. This just breaks down the shelters. So you'll see again the 52% of people came from another shelter or were unsheltered. 9% came from an institution which could be they came out of jail and went to shelter. They came from a hospital and went to shelter. 20% of people were housed and 13% were living with family and friends and then you have another 7% unknown. So just again some folks are gonna need to come into shelter from those situations but if you could divert all those or the vast majority of those entries not have them go to shelter you'd have free up a huge amount of capacity for people who are outside. Magically you've now served a lot more unsheltered people and you haven't even added a shelter bed. So this is really important data to be thinking about. Is this similar to other places? I would say it's on the I'd say the... Let me just go back. The shelter data is a little low relative to other places. The others don't look too different. On the rapid rehousing it's low but a lot of your rapid rehousing is the VA funded rapid rehousing, SSVF which has a little bit different rules. So it's a little hard to say about the rapid rehousing. I would say the shelter is on the low side particularly given how many people you have who are outside. Following up on that it seems odd that the shelter has the lowest percentage of people who are literally homeless. And I guess is that normal in looking at these kind of metrics or is Santa Cruz different? Well no I mean I think so it's important to remember that when you look at the other three bars the transitional rapid and PSH. So they would be taking people both from the street and also from a shelter. So in other words folks might be going from shelter to transitional rapid or PSH. So that's why you'll have higher results. It doesn't necessarily mean they're taking more people straight from the street. But yeah this is not an unusual distribution across the program types. All right thanks. People rarely will go to transitional housing straight from unsheltered situations. They typically come from shelter. But I mean the measure about shelter is usually eye-opening in most communities because you would assume if you're running an emergency shelter everyone who goes in is coming from outdoors but it's not the case. And again there can be perfectly good reasons. Again unfortunately this data element in HMIS doesn't capture whether the household is categorized as fleeing DV, domestic violence. And so often those families, particularly families will be coming from a housed situation. So that's certainly a reason you're not gonna see 100%. Okay I did this slide. Okay so then the other one that's really important is what we call in our homeless jargon exit rate permanent housing but to put it in friendlier language. People who leave programs and enter housing. So when people leave your programs are they securing housing when they exit or are they going back to being homeless? So this really helps you understand the degree to which your programs are helping people and their homelessness. Helps you identify program and system design challenges and identify opportunities again to reduce homelessness without adding more beds. And so on this one we only show shelter, transitional and rapid because of course in permanent supportive housing you're not exiting there's no goal to exit people out of permanent supportive housing. It's a permanent intervention so it's not really that relevant to think about an exit rate for that intervention type. But these are your rates for the other three and these are on the low side and I'll talk about that more when I get to the end of this section. But shelter, 9% of people who leave are known to go to a permanent housing destination now. Again this is where data quality gets really challenging because you have a fair amount of unknown destinations which is typical because people might go into shelter and the next day they're not there and the staff doesn't know where they've gone so they can't enter a destination. But also a lot of, particularly when you operate a lot of seasonal shelter people will often come for a few nights and then they go and they go back outside. So if you're gonna invest in shelter of course you're investing in shelter because you want people to have a safe place to go but if you wanna actually end homelessness or at least reduce it, you have to be driving towards an ever-increasing rate at which people leave shelter and actually get to housing and don't come back. The other two are definitely on the low side. Transitional housing 42% is low. The HUD benchmark for this is closer to 80% that they think you should hit for transitional and for rapid as well it should really hit closer to 80% of people who exit those interventions. Those take longer. The links to stay are longer. The services are more intensive and you'll see when we get to the cost effectiveness they cost you a lot more. So you would expect a higher rate of a successful outcome. Can you tell us why? Do you have any sense? I mean that's to be at half of what the benchmark is. So it's, I would say it's a combination of, there could be a little bit of data issues here where the successful exits aren't being captured. It could be, it's likely that there's some degree to which that the programs are not, not as aligned as they could be with best practices around housing focused case management and really knowing how to get people out to housing in the most efficient way. It I'm sure is related to the challenges of your housing market although pretty much every community has challenges. And those would be the two main reasons. It's just really being able to be, deliver really those high quality housing focused case management services and then having some resources for people to make the transition out of programs to out of transitional to permit housing. Okay and then here's the cost effectiveness measure which is the last one I'll show. So you wanna know if your programs are yielding strong results in relation to the investments and a lot of times when communities think about homeless programs they'll just look at what is each bed costs. So what's the cost for each bed? We recommend that you also look at or more importantly look at the cost for each person or household that secures a housing exit. So that's a little bit more performance oriented and it helps you see whether your resources are being invested effectively. Now I will say that this is another place where I think another round of, as you continue to improve data quality these numbers might change quite a bit. So the budget information comes directly from providers and we try to get them all to provide it in a consistent format. It's the first time they've done it. So I think there could probably be some refinement around the financial data. But you'll see here again you have to start somewhere with data. So your ES is emergency shelter. We should have actually spelled that out. So for each person who exited shelter to housing it only costs 3,154 dollars. Partly because not very many people are exiting and partly because your shelters aren't super well resourced and don't have a lot of services in them. Your transitional and rapid rehousing are actually pretty expensive per successful exit. And particularly the rapid, in most communities it's not that expensive to get someone from homelessness to housing through rapid rehousing. Again, you have a lot of SSVF rapid rehousing which tends to be better funded. They just have more resources. Can I chime in really quick? I think these are the kind of data points that are really important to be using with our partners. It is the question of why? And for us to unpack this collectively and start to understand what could we do different? And that's the beauty of the data. It allows us to have these conversations in a focused way with a clarity of what we wanna look for at the next point of analysis. And as I mentioned, the interest of our partners in those kinds of conversations is extremely high. And that is, of course, then driving their interest in increasing data quality. So that is why, as Kate said, there's no point of waiting for the data to be perfect. It's much better to get started and have people start using the data to inform their behaviors and how they're running their programs. And us providing that framework for those conversations to happen. So I'm just gonna do just two kind of summary slides on the data section and then we'll take a question break. So these are just kind of the high level areas in need of improvement. So as I mentioned, you gotta increase your program participation in HMIS and improve data quality. The rate at which literally homeless people are accessing homeless programs is gonna be critical if you wanna get your unsheltered numbers down and then improving your ability to help people in the homeless programs to cure housing when they leave. And then I think this came up a bit as I was talking, but how do you compare? The things that we found that were quite similar to what we see in a lot of places is the challenges with access for people who are literally homeless. We do see in a lot of places similar, lower than expected numbers of unsheltered people who are accessing programs. And then another thing, which we're not showing the slides of the individual provider performance, but when we look at it provider to provider, you have some that are much more high performing than others. So that's very typical. Things that were a little more unusual here, as I mentioned, your exit rate to permit housing is pretty low across all the types, which was a little surprising. And then usually when we run these measures in other communities, it shows you that rapid rehousing is a more effective intervention than transitional housing on all the measures, which we did not find. Now, I will say you have a pretty small number of transitional programs and a pretty small number of rapid rehousing programs. So it's always hard when you have very small sample sizes, but most communities find that investing in rapid rehousing is a more cost effective intervention and gets better results. So we'll have to kind of try and help you unpack what's going on there. Okay, so other data questions? We'll open it up to the board. There's a couple of things here. The use of HMIS, I don't know the exact number of programs that don't use it. I'm sure it's like this in other communities where some use it and some don't. How do we encourage or how do we mandate? I mean, what are strategies that communities have used so we get better data, which will help inform this? So any program that receives the HUD Continuum of Care funding is under a mandate to participate. So there in the ones that don't typically would be programs that have a lot of private funding or they might have other sources of public funding that don't mandate. So there's a few ways to think about it. I think the stick method is if you have any program that gets any of your local dollars, whether it's from the county or a city, you should really require it as a contract requirement. So that's one way to think about it. The other way is just, again, this sort of continuing doing system planning work using data and talking to your partners about the importance of it and explaining to them why their lack of participation is sort of getting in the way of you're really being able to understand what the system's accomplishing, I think is really more the carrot way to go. And some providers won't participate because it's considered to be a staffing burden. So you also have to think about providing training and maybe some support to help people start getting up and running with HMIS. The other question I had is it was dispiriting to see those numbers about moving people into housing and recognizing that we don't meet those national standards by a great deal. You talked about there may be some housing case management that's maybe not following best practices or everything. And maybe this is how you determine the superstars versus the lower performing programs. But you also talked about small sample size. And I'm trying to figure out whether this is a red alert on working with our providers or whether we need to expand the resources to get a better sense of it. I think it's a combination of things. So I think of course it's very hard to get people into housing in any place in California, right? It's expensive. There aren't enough, you don't have enough permanent supportive housing, you don't have enough rapid rehousing, which is one of the reasons that people who leave your shelters aren't getting to housing, right? So I think providers typically they're very oriented around trying to help people who come into their programs get some kind of a placement into the next program that's gonna get them to housing. And the place where typically there's a lot of opportunity to improve results is all those sort of more intangible ways that we support people to figure out a housing solution just through their own acquaintances and friends and family and other ways or maybe there's some resource that they can tap into that's not part of the homeless system. So just sort of creating a system-wide value in culture that everything we do is around figuring out a housing solution for people whether they do or don't get a rent subsidy. And so that is partly working with providers on their capacity, but it's also thinking at the systems level, how are you gonna help them? Like there are gonna be folks who really can't get to housing without some kind of a financial support. So are there some kind of lighter touch things you might wanna create at a system level or anybody who gets into shelter has access to some dollars maybe for security deposits or a first month's rent. Maybe it's not a full on rapid rehousing six months subsidy, but something small. So yeah. I think actually C's getting into the next section of the report and what the work groups have come up with, so. I wanna not put a damper on your question. I think I just want, the last thing I wanna say, I think it's important to work collaboratively with the providers because it's not, what doesn't work is just to go to them all and go, okay, you gotta increase your exit rate or we're not gonna fund you. Like it has to be one of the reasons the results- It has to be a sense of intervention, not just- Well you have to, you know, collectively they make up the system so each of their individual performance is the system performance, but the system has to figure out where resources are needed to get the overall performance jump. Well we hire, I mean we fund a number of housing navigators, right? So we want them to be as effective as possible. Right, and maybe you just need more of them and maybe, you know, it might not be that they're not doing what they can but they aren't enough. And so actually when I get, that's actually the one thing we heard and a lot of the more qualitative work. Right, well then I'll wait to see. You're telling me to keep going. Okay, keep going, all right. So the second piece of work that's happened since we last saw you is we've been facilitating these work groups that started in September and these were convened because we had some interim recommendations in our baseline report and the four recommendations were to implement system-wide diversion practice and refine your coordinated entry system which is SmartPath, to build the capacity of shelters to deliver housing-focused services, to coordinate and standardize your outreach efforts and think about how to make them more results oriented and then to complete the work of the governance study group. So there's been one group work group convened on each topic. The diversion work group has been kind of co-convened by HSD who will run SmartPath. It's been a really great group. We've made a huge amount of progress. They developed a whole proposal about how they wanna modify the SmartPath process so that the first step is not that you get assessed for a housing intervention that you're never gonna get but the first step is you get what we call a diversion conversation and they don't wanna call it diversion. They're gonna call it a SmartPath conversation where you work with each person to sort of figure out if there's some path to housing you can identify that does not involve a housing subsidy because you don't have enough of those subsidies. So that proposal was presented in February to at a big convening of stakeholders we got some input about it on it to help refine that. We also did an introduction to diversion training in February so that group's been cooking. There's a lot of interest in integrating this practice this diversion practice into your system. The housing focus shelter work group convened and we had representation from I think every emergency shelter in the community maybe close to every almost 100%. That's also been a really great group and we really tried to focus with them on what are you doing now that actually works so that people leave your shelter and get to housing and how can we build up what you're already doing. We also did some focus groups with the folks living in the shelters which is a slide that'll come up later. So the things that the shelter providers and the shelter residents identified the top priority was more housing focus case management and advocacy in a shelter. So there's a lot of variability if you get into a shelter whether you have access to any kind of a case manager or even or more importantly a case manager that has the bandwidth and the expertise to help you figure out a housing solution. And there was just a lot of the word advocate really came up a lot particularly in talking to the residents and the shelters that they it's kind of random luck or just persistence if you're able to connect with a staff person who can really advocate on your behalf to get the things that you need particularly to get to housing. There was some interest in a flexible funding pool to support people to leave shelter to get to housing and then the shelter providers talked about needing more training and they were really interested in a peer learning collaborative around case management and housing focus case management. The outreach group has a little bit less intensively but that's also been a really good group that's been really talking about the mobile outreach you have which you have a there's a huge number of mobile outreach teams operating through a variety of different funding sources. The county funds quite a bit of outreach but there's also city generated outreach and also just nonprofit volunteer groups that are doing outreach. So that group's really been talking about what is the what makes outreach effective and what are we trying to accomplish with outreach beyond the obviously really important goal of just engaging with people and helping them meet their basic needs but then beyond that like what are you what are we trying to outreach them to what would be a strong result. And then the last group is the planning governance and communications work group which is picking up the work that happened a couple years back with the governance study committee. They've developed a proposal for a new governing body to design direct and evaluate your regional response and includes a whole set of proposals and that's a whole another PowerPoint but here's one slide from it which is this kind of sketch of what the structure would be that you really need some kind of a regional homelessness response body which we're calling a commission that holds the authority and accountability for the regional homeless response sets the overall policy, sets the priorities sets the targets and evaluates the results and then is informed by this what we're calling the community and technical advisory committee which is your experts in your community representatives who would make recommendations to the commission and then cannot emphasize enough the importance of the red box down below which is you can and I really have seen this in a lot of different places where we've tried to help with homeless system governance you can spend a lot of time trying to decide what tables you want and who sits at which one and what is the structure and if there isn't any staff to support it it's gonna be a lot of wasted energy because the folks who are making decisions need people to do all that legwork of kind of figuring out what are the priorities and bringing you things to make decisions about. I'm gonna chime in on this one a little bit so there is gonna be in your recommended actions an item about returning on that red box and how we are doing that just so we are looking at how different counties across the state are looking at staffing compliments in this area of work and so we have some comparative numbers and right now currently I'm working with Health and Human Services on developing an alternative county organizational structure for that red box and a key part of that out of the gate is developing sort of that job description and responsibilities for the director of that new entity and that we will be coming back to you pretty quickly asking for approval to go forward to classify and move forward on that position so we actually can get a jump on this and then we'll also be in one of the recommended actions is with your guidance coming back as part of the supplemental with a reorganization plan and a funding proposal for a stronger staffing compliment to support this work moving forward. Okay so the last slide on this section is just to recap what we heard from the people experiencing homelessness and we did focus groups in May and then again in December and this I think some of it's in our baseline report definitely heard from the people who are experiencing homelessness this sort of increasingly unwelcome feeling I'm sure also related to the fact that those numbers have been going up. For people who got into shelter the two really main things that they had to say that they really wanted us to hear is they don't feel like there's good information available to them about resources that they can access and that they really felt like case management or advocacy to help meet needs was inconsistently offered and available. Finding someone to help with advocacy seems to be based largely on luck or persistence and we really heard that kind of across all the different focus groups. Okay so the last couple slides are just about the next steps for the action planning but take a pause here. Keep going. Okay so we're almost to the end of our engagement the last phase will be this action strategic action planning process which is kicking off at the end of this month. We hope with some in-person convenings. Yes we are. COVID-19 allow planning for virtual convenings but. So that'll be the kickoff in April we'll be doing some predictive modeling which I'm gonna show a slide about and meet with some ad hoc planning groups. We'll have the draft plan completed. The goal is in May and then bring it back to you all to finalize in June. So the strategic action planning goals I just wanna sort of I think this came up in the last time I was here is you all do have a plan the all in plan is a terrific plan actually and really what it's the main component that's missing is it's a little thin on the implementation steps. So our recommendation is you build upon that plan you affirm the need for a coordinated regional homeless response system you integrate the work that your implementation work groups have already done and then oh two to three years plan, sorry that you really kind of develop something that's gonna be a two to three year timeframe that's very focused on actionable steps prioritized actions and assigned leads driven by data. So those are the two bullets about that really the goal is to take all in and do an overlay that's data driven and identifies some key action steps and that this would be a bridge plan that would get you through until your new governance structures in place and up and running and can do a new plan. So one of the key elements of this and kind of deciding on the action steps and deciding on the priorities will be doing this modeling work and again now we have your baseline data even with all the caveats about some of the data quality issues we feel like it's important to get started. We can take your the baseline swap data information about resources you have in the community and your priorities and we can model the relative impact of doing different things. So, for example, what happens if you add shelter bed capacity? What happens if you add targeted homeless housing programs like rapid rehousing? What if you added diversion? And what if you improve performance on these different measures? So this is just in a scenario that shows you just an example of something you could do and these are totally made up numbers. But in the first scenario you say, well let's add 40 shelter beds. And this is also illustrating that when you think about inventory and capacity you also need to connect it to these variables about who enters and who exits and where do they go and they exit. So you could add 40 shelter beds and you increase the rate of entry from literally homeless people by 5%. So instead 50% are unsheltered, 55% are unsheltered. And then the rate at which they leave shelter to housing goes up 5%. So it goes up from 10% to 15%. Those are kind of modest increases. And so we put that in the model and we'll tell you that that will result in a 3% decrease in your unsheltered population. The other scenario is maybe you add fewer shelter beds, 25, but you actually get better performance out of them. So you say we're gonna increase the rate of serving literally homeless people by 25% and the rate of exit by 15%. Well, that might result in a bigger overall increase. So these are the kinds of things you need to weigh, the relative value of adding beds, what are some reasonable targets to increase performance and not to set yourselves up with performance targets that you can't meet, but things that take a nice next step towards better performance. And so these are some of the questions that we want to engage at the convenings at the end of March. Like what do people want us to explore in terms of modeling to sort of inform that list of priorities as we move forward? And then this is just the timeline again. So this is just kind of pulling back in that the modeling will help really inform the action steps as well as the input from the stakeholders. Okay, I think this is you. So I'm gonna really quickly review the recommended actions before you today. As you can see on the page, one is just conducting this study session today. Then coming back in May with a progress report on the work of the work groups and actually sort of check-in on the drafting of the action plan. So you see that sooner than later. And then as I mentioned earlier, that presentation of a supplemental budget proposal with an alternative organizational structure to support the systems approach we are talking about today. And then there's as you guys know in your agenda packet, there's also an item within the staff report around homework bound funds. And this directs us to utilize the existing unallocated or unspent portion and trying to get that spent as quickly as possible through some additional work with other community providers. But just again, laying that out. So those are the actual actions before you today. Now we can pause for your discussion. Any further questions? We do need to do public comment and action. Okay, I'm gonna ask some questions for Supervisor Coonerty. Thank you for the focus strategies report. I like the direction we are headed and appreciate your efforts. As the modeling work gets underway, it would be helpful to know what would need to be done from a policy and operations perspective to end homelessness for families with children in 18 months. Yeah, I think that we can definitely look at that. I would say that the challenge of that will be deciding what ending family homelessness means for the community. So the numbers of families that we would characterize as the literally homeless families is pretty small. And I think you could definitely come up with a plan to end unsheltered family homelessness in 18 months. If you're gonna use the slightly more expansive definition of families that are couchsurfing, I think that's a bigger lift. But this is where some of that work around diversion and engaging your mainstream partners could come in and thinking about partnering with the school districts to do some diversion problem-solving work with some of those families. It's something you could also think about putting in your action plan. With regard to the work groups, how and when will the work group recommendations be implemented and when will they report back? So the work group recommendations, the current plan is that those are gonna roll into the action plan. So those would be action steps that you put in your action plan. I think the only exception being potentially the diversion and smart path work could kind of already maybe launch all on its own, because that's kind of the furthest along towards implementation. The outreach and shelter recommendations, I think need some further actioning. So they figured out a direction, but I think the actual action steps are gonna require some resources, which will roll into your action plan. And I'll just add to that. I mean, as we develop the action plan, as you know, we are doing our planning for our HAP funding from the state and aligning it with this work. So there will be some of those resources available. But some of the ideas around really examining and expanding our case management, our advocacy, our housing navigation capacity and understanding how it's functioning today. As we can see, it's not functioning as well as we hope, and we have some inconsistencies across our system. So I think it's probably realistic, as Kate has mentioned, that the articulation of those steps will be in the action plan. We're doing a lot of the preparatory work just by way of the work groups. We're not surprising anyone. In fact, this is coming from our system partners, asking for us to help do this lift. But so I think it is probably most realistic with the smart path diversion a little bit ahead of everything, but the other ones will really be fully fleshed out in the action plan. Okay, regarding the homework bound, I would like to add a direction requesting a report back in June during budget hearings, covering where this year's funds were reallocated and whether they were utilized. Got it. And then one last thing is in the staff report, it mentioned that the report back would be, sorry, May, but now it's in June. Our June agendas are really full, so we might have to schedule a special board meeting to have your recommendations because otherwise it'll get lost. Got it. Good, thank you for that report. A lot of work has gone into it. And I really think this is really the beginning of a concentrated effort that's really needed, has been needed for a long time among our departments in the counties and our partners, the cities and the nonprofit agencies that we have here. Historically, we've been working in silos and it hasn't gotten very far. And I really want to thank our CAO and the county for saying that we're going to lead this issue. Doesn't mean that we're responsible for the whole thing. And I think those participants ought to know that we're all, this is a team effort. But one thing, when does the reality check with funding come in to saying, when we're setting our goals, I mean, the governor Newsom has put out 1.4 billion he once committed to now there's a piece of legislation as well. And that was for one year or one time. And now somebody wants a couple legislators want to have $2 billion a year permanently. I'm trying to get a sense of, do we say this is what we want to do under the parameters with our clientele that we have with what is, we can anticipate coming from the state or do we say this is what we want and this is how much it'll take. And then fill in the blanks about where we're going to place our priorities. The funding mechanism is going to be obviously critical. And it's uncertain. So I want us to be realistic. I want us to be aggressive, but I want us to be realistic too about how much should we be asking for? Or I don't want that to limit our ideas, but I just want to try to get a sense of reality in this whole thing. As you can imagine, I can't speak to what the future ongoing funding from the state will look like. I think everyone is wanting something that's ongoing. So we have some level of stable planning assumptions as we build a system. From my perspective, as we go into this period of improvement and growth, we're not going to transform it overnight. And we are approaching this from an incremental, what can we fund? What can we support? And probably most importantly with work from focus strategies and what makes sense.  It takes time. It takes time to develop partner capacity. It takes time to bring skill sets here that we don't have. So I do think we have time to sort of work through that. And we're always in that balancing game of what can we afford? What makes sense? But what ultimately will it take to solve to end homelessness? That's a much bigger question. The way we're approaching it, I think is in a stepwise fashion. So we will make smart investments as we move forward, less fragmented investments. And hopefully we'll have something on going to support it over time. Well, yeah, I can understand that. And I just think it's great that we're at this point and we're being aggressive and getting off the framework of what we want to do and how we want to get there. But it's all gonna get down as we know. And understandably so. I'm just, do we project this is what we want or this is what we can afford under $1.4 billion or what we can afford under $2 billion? This is statewide money, of course, a year. I don't know how that fits in the process. So I just, you know, maybe we should say this is what we can do or what we wanna do with this much money or approach it that way. I'm not sure of how we should do that. But it's gonna get down to that in the end. Absolutely. Thank you for the presentation. I appreciate the way we're looking at this because so often we only talk about money. And we just say we need more. And it's illuminating to look at some of the data here in a way that we haven't looked at it before to show whether we're effectively using the dollars that we have, could we be more effective and be able to make some difference within the constraints that we have, but by using our dollars more effectively. And so if nothing else happens with this, we at least are put on a different pathway to evaluate how we make decisions with the dollars that we have. One of the things I'll also know is we could take all the state money and just build more housing. It wouldn't build a lot of housing, right? I mean, $10 million seems like a lot of money, but when you actually try to build an affordable housing project, you know, that doesn't get you very far. And given that we have over 2000 people that we've identified in the point in time, homeless census, to build that many units of housing, it would take many multiples of $10 million in order to make it. And so we have to be smarter with the money that we have. And I like the idea of a non fragmented system and that we're really looking at the next level of investment because right now there is a focus from the state legislature and there will be more money coming from the state. We would hope that they would replace what we had when we had redevelopment, which was putting about $8 million just into the unincorporated area a year that we don't have anymore. And that would really help us quite a bit instead of these one time funds. And then you have to wonder how you're gonna keep it going. I also think I appreciate she's left now, but city council member Donna Myers with here, that interest from our partners about this process. And you talk about the governance structure about how we as a community, right? As Santa Cruz County is working on these problems and that we have a shared strategy that it isn't just one jurisdiction addressing an immediate need and then someone else doing something else. But we have agreed upon shared strategy will actually help us leverage the dollars that we have a lot better. And so I think that this effort will be helpful in that. And I'm glad to see the idea from the CAO's office that we have to add staff so we can effectively support it and take the leadership role that we've always had more effectively to be able to support these strategies into the future because we know that there are lots of parts to this. And we shouldn't be about building bureaucracy but we do have to staff things at a level to be able to meet the needs of the four other cities as well as the unincorporated area. So I appreciate that work and commitment on the part of the CAO's office. I think when we get this meeting that happens at the end of March in whatever form it takes, I hope that there is active participation from our other elected colleagues because I do think that having us to have that shared understanding about where we're, what we know, where we wanna go, what we need in order to get there, will ensure that there's this collective effort instead of episodic pieces. Because the idea that I think you have charitably called it a loose collection of funding and program and one of your early slides that we need to be sharper on using our money and delivering the services that we need so we can move people out of unsheltered and into housing makes a big difference. This is important work and there's gonna be a lot of push from the ground up from the community who's demanding that we do more. And there's gonna be a lot of push also from the state down saying that we need to do it. And we see this with the responsibilities about building housing and ensuring that there's, I think it'll fall to us unfortunately to make sure that we have a good amount of affordable housing that more housing doesn't necessarily address the needs of this group that we're trying to move into housing because we know that that housing subsidy support won't, you can't get enough housing subsidies to move people into $2,300 a month apartments. That just isn't gonna work. And it's gonna take a community effort that's spread out across the county to be able to build things like permanent supportive housing to have more affordable housing complexes throughout the community. So it's a shared responsibility to not just fall on one part of the community but it falls on us all. So I look forward to the continued work that we'll have here. Thank you. Thank you for your good work. Board action. Oh, thank you. Public comment. Thank you. We're gonna start here with comment here. We'll go to the community room next. Yes. Good afternoon. My name is Ralfa Sonnenfeld. I serve on the city of Santa Cruz's community advisory committee on homelessness. First, I just wanted to thank the county and the CAO's office and focus strategies for putting this initiative together and helping our community move forward to solving and ending homelessness. I think I support all of the ideas and really appreciate that we're trying to be more effective with how we're spending our limited resources. One of the things I wanna talk about for a minute was essentially the scope of this effort. It's really been focused on our shelter and supportive housing services. And one of the things I think is important to keep in mind is that the indirect costs of unsheltered homelessness are incredibly high in our community. We're estimating tens of millions of dollars a year. The US Interagency Council on Homelessness is actually developing a methodology that will be standardized for all communities to be able to calculate what those indirect costs are. They'll be publishing that, I believe, in April. And that's a tool that our community can use to help evaluate effective programs. One of the effective programs that I believe will be instrumental in reducing the costs that homelessness have on our law enforcement jail system and even on our health systems is the outreach first model of law enforcement. And I would hope that the county moves more towards supporting this model in collaboration with all of our local jurisdictions to utilize outreach to increase the rate of our homeless people accessing our programs prior to enforcing laws on people for doing nothing other than sleeping outside. There are more effective ways to get people into shelter than by arresting or citing them. We're actually regressive in our approach by criminalizing the sleeping of people sleeping outside when they have nowhere else to go. So whatever our county can do to work with our partners in the cities to push forward that sort of model will make a big difference in the effectiveness of our overall system. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Marilyn Garrett. Criminalizing the poor is really unconscionable. You spoke a lot about funding mechanisms. In some localities, elected officials are adopting resolutions for a peace budget to fund social services and take money, a small percentage from the military budget. And I got sent this actually from my sister in Nevada city of what they're doing up there. But there's this pie here that shows the military budget about 54, 4%. And then all these little tiny slices of the pie for other services, education, housing, parks and recreation, et cetera. And you talked Supervisor Leopold about using the money we have more efficiently. But if you only have crumbs left over, you can distribute the crumbs as efficiently as you can, but it's gonna be inadequate for the needs. And I think this is worthwhile for the county to look at. And I remember years ago hearing someone from Share the Wealth campaign, we have growth and equity in this country, billionaires and people in poverty. It's a real, you mentioned system. We do have a system problem. As I see it, it's capitalism. And I'm gonna submit this again because it illustrates it so well. This young medic says feeling sad and depressed, are you anxious, worried about the future? Feeling isolated and alone. You might be suffering from capitalism. Symptoms include homelessness, hunger, unemployment, poverty, incarceration. It's a long list. We need a change in the system that makes it more equitable and human and so that people can live well throughout the society. And I referred before to when I visited the former Soviet Union in 1966 and visited my mother's cousin who paid about 5% of her income for rent, no homelessness, problems in every society. Of course, I walked the streets alone. I did not feel like I was in danger, free medical care. We could learn from some others. We have a system problem. Thank you. Okay, we're ready for the community room. How are you? Okay. Thank you. Becky Steinbruner, it's lonely down here. But a nice facility. Thank you. I wanna thank the consultant and CAO's office for this good work. The data examination is really illuminating and a bit shocking. So I really wanna thank you for bringing this good information to the public as well. What I'm not hearing is any discussion about the student population that's homeless. We have UCSC and Cabrillo College that have students that are homeless. And we need to bring them in as our partners for this solution just as much as we need to bring in the city of Santa Cruz, Capitola and Watsonville. So I hope that in this work group that they are also at the table. As well as the churches, the faith-based organizations are very willing, able and ready to help with any of our solutions and have a lot of very good ideas that don't cost a lot of money. I was curious about one of the earlier slides that showed the sources of the different jurisdictions that had homelessness. There were all the cities and the county, but up on the slide was the office of education. And I didn't understand why the county office of education was included in a slide with the jurisdiction. So I would like some explanation of that, if you would please. I'm wondering if the jail population was counted in with the homeless population. We've just heard a report from the FIT program and many of those people in the jail are homeless. It is a bit disconcerting for me to hear that the homeward bound funds have not been used and I would like Supervisor Leopold, I would like some discussion about that and look forward to hearing more about that, especially as budget time comes about. I am concerned that our county has been giving out a lot of money to organizations that are not providing back the data that we need as an organization as that the public should expect for what is happening. How effective are their programs? And so I think it would behoove the county administrative office to let those organizations know now, before budget hearings come about, I know the discussions are happening now, that it will be expected and demanded that they submit proper data entry to help us better run the problem, come to solutions in our county that are working. I think that we need to be including also the homeless themselves in this work group moving forward. I am reminded of the women's task on homelessness and domestic violence, nothing about us without us and we've got to carry that through with the work here. Finally, I will just say that we need to move the recommended actions with additional direction. You have a motion to second. Any opposition? There is none passes unanimously. All right, thank you. Now, is there a council? Is there anything to report out of closed session? No. No. And then we will now go to closed session and we can have a break after that, maybe for a few minutes, but yeah. Mr. Chair, we'll come back at 1.30. Thank you. And certifying CEQA negative declaration, determination to consider four ordinances to amend Santa Cruz County Code chapter 16.10, geologic hazard 16.2, all grading regulations 16.22, erosion control and adopt a new chapter 16.13, floodplain regulations as outlined in the memorandum of planning director. And I didn't say conservation and open space element. We're ready to go. Okay, thank you, chair. My name is David Carlson. I'm a resource planner with the planning department. I'll be given the presentation today. The county's local coastal plan is integrated with the general plan and was adopted by the board of supervisors and certified by the coastal commission in 1994. This project would amend the safety element of the general plan and local coastal plan, which addresses hazards such as earthquakes, flood hazards, fire hazards, erosion and coastal hazards. Provisions of both state and federal law require that the county update the safety element to address climate change and sea level rise. And the coastal commission has published the guidance document to aid local jurisdictions in these updates. What we expect to see in the future is a result of sea level rise and climate change is more coastal bluff erosion and more wave impact events and more flooding at beach level. Public interest in this project is focused on the amendments to the existing rules in the safety element for building on coastal bluffs and beaches. And that will be the focus of this presentation. The existing rules for building on coastal bluffs and beaches apply county wide and basically require new structures or major remodels of existing structures to be set back an adequate distance from the edge of a coastal bluff. And for beach level development, they require that new homes and major remodels be elevated above a predetermined flood level to be protected from floodwaters. Sea walls are allowed in order to protect existing development from a significant threat of coastal bluff erosion. So compared to the existing rules, the proposed amendments would take a different approach depending on geographic context. This slide shows the urbanized areas of the county coastline, including the shaded areas between the Santa Cruz city limit at the small craft harbor and the Capitola city limit. And then the shaded area between New Brighton State Beach and Seascape Resort. And then other urbanized areas in South County are shown outlined in green. In area number one, the proposed amendments would designate the area between Soquel Point to the Capitola city limits as a shoreline protection exception area where sea walls would be allowed throughout the area. For area two, for coastal bluff properties between the harbor and Soquel Point and the South County urbanized areas, the amendments would allow one future major project, either a new structure or a major remodel of an existing structure. Coastal bluff armoring would be allowed to address a significant erosion threat to an existing structure. And these rules would remain in place unless a future LCP amendment in the form of a shoreline management plan establishes a comprehensive plan for a given area that would guide how these areas should evolve in the future in terms of shoreline protection, public access and future development. In area three, for beach level development, the same one-time allowance for a new or major remodel project would apply. A limit would be placed on how high structures could be elevated on the beach and no new sea walls could be placed on the beach. And then in area four, outside of the urbanized areas in the rural areas of the county where very little development exists on coastal bluffs and beaches, the amendments would adopt a managed retreat approach. This means new structures and major remodels of existing structures would have to be set back an adequate distance from a coastal bluff without reliance on any existing or proposed sea wall and no new sea walls would be allowed. And so this slide shows an example of the existing county projects in the shoreline protection exception area at Pleasure Point and at the hook at the base of 41st Avenue, showing the type of sea wall incorporating public access that would be preferred throughout this area. And then this slide shows an example of how a simulation of how modern sea wall structures may look for two different properties in the shoreline protection exception area. Significant amounts of rubble from previous failed sea wall structures would be removed from the beach, increasing public access to the shoreline. The simulation on the right incorporates potential public access from the street and a stairway down to the shoreline. This table shows how a major remodel of an existing structure is evaluated to determine if the remodeled structure must also meet the required coastal bluff setback, triggers the one-time allowance, triggers evaluation of the existing sea wall, and also triggers the requirement for the deed recordation. So this is our existing, there's an existing web page on our website that explains how to do this calculation. It divides the structure up into four components. We evaluate the percentage work on the structural parts of those components. We apply weighting factors to those four components and we come up with a total modification percentage. And in this case, based on that percentage modification in column two and doing the math, this project would calculate out to 45% project. And then here's another version where I've switched up the percent modifications, a little bit greater scope project calculated out to 62%. So under current rules, a new home or a greater than 65% structural modification of an existing home must be set back from the coastal bluff a distance sufficient to provide a stable building site accounting for 100 years of projected coastal bluff erosion or a minimum of 25 feet, whichever is greater. There's no exceptions to this requirement and existing homes that do not meet the required setback and no room to relocate are limited to less than 65% structural modifications. The amendments would lower the structural modification threshold to 50%. However, the 100 year period would also be lower to 75 years and provide for a possible exception to the 75 year setback while maintaining the minimum 25 year setback. Such an exception would represent a potentially shorter lifespan for the structure depending on how rapidly the coastal bluff erodes. Compared to coastal commission guidance, the amendments would be less restrictive in terms of how the structural modification threshold is calculated. Referring back to those previous two slides, the coastal commission looks at each separate component in terms of their 50% threshold. It's not a whole house approach. If you reach 50% structural modification to any one of those four structural components, you are at the threshold of having to meet the coastal bluff setback and other requirements. I'm gonna come back to this slide and continue talking about coastal bluff setbacks for a second here. So currently the coastal bluff setback is calculated based on the current site conditions. If the bluff is armored, the armoring and the condition in the armoring is taken into consideration when calculating the projected 100 year coastal bluff erosion rate. The amendments would continue this practice and would apply the erosion rate to a shorter time period of 75 years to determine the required setback. Compared to a coastal commission guidance, the county's proposal would be less restrictive when the coastal commission processes a coastal development permit, they require the setback to be calculated without consideration of any existing armoring which increases the required setback compared to the county's longstanding practice. And so now I'll talk about the one time allowance. Currently the county threshold is defined to include all projects that cumulatively exceed the 65% threshold within any five year period. And every five years, the calculation would reset to zero theoretically. The amendments would limit the number of major projects that exceed the 50% structural modification threshold to one time only. There would be no limit on the number of projects that do not exceed that 50% threshold. Compared to the coastal commission guidance, again, this amendment would be less restrictive. Their calculation includes all projects since the adoption of the coastal act in 1977 cumulatively. And when the threshold is met, no more structural modifications are allowed at that point. Much of the armoring out there is degraded to varying extents because of wave attack and corrosion and settlement and other conditions along the coast. The amendments include new policies requiring evaluation of the condition of existing armoring in conjunction with a greater than 50% project. Necessary maintenance and repair would be required in conjunction with such a project. And updated monitoring maintenance and repair programs would be required to outline the ongoing work that would need to be done and what kind of permits would be required for that or not. The impacts of armoring on the coast include loss of beach sand and loss of public recreational beach area. The sand content of an eroding coastal bluff is prevented from reaching the beach when the bluff is armored. And the footprint area of an armoring structure takes up beach area that would otherwise be potentially available for public recreational use. The amendments would require for a greater than 50% project, these impacts from an existing armoring structure be mitigated. However, effectively adding sand to the beach or increasing the area of the beach is difficult to accomplish. The mitigations could involve other in lieu activities such as directly fixing or contributing to the repair of a coastal access facility such as a stairway. The amendments propose an option of paying in lieu fees to satisfy the mitigation requirement. The Coastal Commission has been doing this for years and we are proposing to continue this and adopt this practice in the county. The Coastal Commission has developed an equation for sand loss and the amendments propose using the same calculation, which is based on site specific characteristics where the armoring exists. The county has established a fee for coastal encroachments that currently applies to encroachments on county property along the coast. And the amendments would adopt this same fee for encroachments by armoring structures on non-county owned beach area as the recreation area in lieu fee. Many factors are considered in the calculation of the in lieu fees, including the sand content of the bluff material, the amount of armoring, the type of armoring, its footprint area on the beach. These sample calculations on this slide are for a typical 50 foot wide lot with varying amounts and types of armoring. These sample fees do not necessarily define the whole range of potential fee amounts. It's ultimately a very site specific and project specific calculation. Compared to the Coastal Commission's methodology on the recreation area in lieu fee, these county calculated fee amounts would be lower. Their methodology involves calculating the recreation area impacts based on real estate value of coastal property, which has resulted in much higher fee amounts compared to what the county is proposing. And now discuss beach level development. The one time allowance described above for greater than 50% structure modification would also apply to beach level development. However, because the county participates in the National Flood Insurance Program, we apply FEMA standards in the flood zones, including the coastal high hazard area on the beach. And we do a separate calculation to determine whether such projects need to be elevated above the flood level. So for an existing house on the beach, the calculation involves looking at the value, the cost of the project, the projected cost of the project compared to the existing value of the house minus the land value to determine whether that project, to that existing house would trigger a requirement to elevate that house above the predetermined flood level and on that section of beach. Once the structure is elevated, it meets FEMA requirements. However, the elevation project may or may not trigger that one time 50% structural modification threshold. Again, there would be no limits on the number of projects that do not exceed the 50% structural modification threshold. And that also applies to coastal bluff projects. The same requirements for evaluation of existing seawall on the beach would apply. And the primary method to mitigate the flooding and wave impact hazard to structures on the beach is elevation of the structure. And so once the structure is elevated, armoring theoretically is no longer required. So that is the basis for our proposed amendment of no new seawalls on the beach because over the long term, we project that as homes on the beach are remodeled and upgraded and elevated above flood levels that eliminates the requirement for that armoring. So the proposed amendments would continue our existing practice of requiring a deed recordation on the property deed for projects that exceed the threshold currently at 65%. So the proposed amendments would apply this requirement to greater than 50% projects. It would also expand the existing language by adding additional statements on the recorded documents. The statements include acknowledging the hazard, accepting the risk of building in potentially hazardous locations, waving liability against the county and indemnifying the county. The document would also alert property owners of potential future conditions that could impact future occupancy of the structure, including lack of functioning infrastructure, migration of mean high tide or other hazardous conditions. This is a key requirement in the county's effort to put current and future property owners on notice of potential scenarios and responses in the future in recognition of the potential impacts of sea level rise. So the next steps on this project after the Board of Supervisors approves it at some point is we submit it to the Coastal Commission and the Coastal Commission has a hearing on the project and may modify the proposed amendments. If that occurs, then it would come back to the Board of Supervisors for a hearing to consider any modifications. And so lastly, our recommendation is to conduct a public hearing today on the proposed amendments to the public safety element and the conservation and open space element of the general plan and local coastal plan, the proposed amendments to chapter 1610, 1620, 1622 and of the county code and the proposed addition of chapter 1613 to the code, adopt the attached resolution, adopting the CEQA negative declaration and updating and amending the general plan, local coastal plan safety element and conservation and open space element. And direct staff to submit the local coastal program amendments to the Coastal Commission for certification, adopt the attached ordinances amending the county code and local coastal implementation plan, including chapter 1610, 1613, 1620 and 1622 and direct staff to implement amendments outside of the coastal zone 30 days after adoption and within the coastal zone upon final certification by the Coastal Commission. That concludes the staff presentation and I have myself and the planning director, Kathy Malloy here to answer any questions. Questions from comments? I'll go with you first. Okay, well, how many people would like to speak on this? Okay. If you could just so that we get out in time, if you could hold, you do have three minutes in the beginning, but if you could do it in less, please do it so everybody can speak. Does that sound reasonable? Okay, go ahead. Hello, I'm Ali Chair of Sir Frider Foundation, Santa Cruz chapter. I'm here to touch on some additional problems that we've identified with the currently proposed update. I recommend you read the letter that we sent yesterday for more details, but just a few points now. The shoreline management plan between pleasure point in the harbor should be restricted to a timeline instead of being left open-ended. We prefer the implementation of recurved sea walls over revetments, which take up massive portions of the already shrinking beaches. Additionally, the shoreline management plan should include evaluation of managed retreat and relocation of structures and identification of funding mechanisms in order to facilitate these processes. We support the repetitive loss one-time rebuild allowance inserted elsewhere in the update and encourage it be implemented into the shoreline management plan as well. Please don't be bullied into removing these terms. As our shoreline weather and wave patterns change, it would be foolish and irresponsible to allow repetitive rebuilding in these high-risk areas. The update must also require that soft armoring and living shoreline adaptation solutions be evaluated. These are the long-term solutions that you are responsible for considering now before we enter emergency mode. Finally, I must again stress the importance of defining existing development and redevelopment as described in accordance with the Coastal Commission's definition, built before January 1st, 1977. We talk a lot about sea level rise in terms of homes and private property and public infrastructure because that's an important part of the policy work. But the beaches are a part that everyone in Santa Cruz values. We are already seeing spots where there is no beach at high tide. If this high tide becomes the norm, there will be nowhere to go. The beach is the part that belongs to everybody. Think of the tens of thousands of county members without private coastal property. The long-term decisions being made about our changing coastline should be something that every member of the community is made aware of and feels empowered to weigh in on. I must ask, if primarily homeowners associations and individual property owners are consulted, is it any surprise that the drafted LCP changes may skew towards their needs and perhaps the safety of their money and property? Thank you for your time to get today. We will be following the issue to the Coastal Commission with the full support of Sir Fryder Foundation headquarters. Good afternoon. My name is Steve Ray. I'm president of the Coastal Property Owners Association of Santa Cruz County with approximately 600 members, including 12 HOAs, representing over 1,000 parcels along the coast of Santa Cruz County. I'm here to speak to Consent Item 14. We have negotiated with the county and county staff and provided thoughtful input and reasonable input on changes which we feel are needed in order to clarify these documents. We've hired a use, a land use attorney, Derek Oliver, who will speak in a few moments and to advise us and assist us on how these LCP is potentially affecting the property rights of homeowners. Given the one-time limitation on major redevelopment and its significant impact on coastal property owners and its lack of clarity and inconsistencies between chapter 6.4 and 16.10, we're opposed to the Board of Supervisors moving forward with the document at this time without modification. Instead, we urge the Board of Supervisors to direct county planning staff to make, to take more time in refining these documents and to make our requested changes as outlined in the letter, the CPOA letter on 3.7 and letter from Derek Oliver, dated 3.6. Specifically, the one-time major limitation to redevelopment greater than 50% of major structures needs to be modified in the land use section. These also need to be moved to the one-time exception area or potentially delete this entire reference. The county staff has failed to adequately justify the need for the inclusion of this one-time only limitation on major redevelopment and structures. What CPOA has been told during in-person meetings with staff are inconsistent with what appears in the LCP. Therefore, we cannot support the document as it's worded presently. Thank you. Good afternoon, supervisors. My name is Robin Bolster-Grant. I'm a local attorney and have worked in the planning department for over 16 years. I realize the enormous time and energy that has been expended on this project, however, as you have all heard and will continue to hear from many of your constituents, there are serious concerns regarding the implications to property owners up and down the coast. It is not at all clear that everyone so impacted has been given the opportunity to weigh in and make their concerns known. I'm here today, however, to speak about the basis for delineating the shoreline protection exception area and what I believe to be a somewhat arbitrary process in developing such an impactful distinction. I represent the owner of the property at 2866 South Palisades Avenue, which sits immediately adjacent and outside of the mapped boundary, meaning that his next door neighbor can significantly modify, repair, or even replace his house as many times as he or she wishes while my client and or future property owners have a single opportunity to make such modifications within the next 20 years. I submitted a letter to your board along with an analysis prepared by a licensed geologist demonstrating that my client's property was improperly excluded from the exception area, notwithstanding the fact that his property meets all of the stated criteria put forth by the planning department, matching the pattern of urban development, protecting county infrastructure, development prior to the Coastal Act, similar geology and erodibility, seawall protection, and location within the SoCal Point area. Again, as noted in the letter prepared by the licensed geologist. It is noteworthy that the published county criteria do not appear to be supported by any substantial scientific analysis of the geology of that area or mapped flood hazards. Indeed, the county geologist's name does not appear or does not seem to appear anywhere in the county supporting documents. At last week's live vote community meeting, Kathy Malloy accepted the fact that the analysis may have been off by a parcel and invited my client to make his case to your board. Here we are. My client's property at 2866 South Palisades Avenue has been improperly left out of the exception area, although it does meet all of the stated criteria in the county's documentation. The county has already revised the exception area mapping once. I hope you will review our letter and supporting analysis and act to correct this mapping error. It is my further hope that you will allow for additional time before the amendment and zoning changes are approved. The stakes are simply too great to move forward, considering the nature of questions and concerns that have not been adequately addressed. Thank you. Hi, I'm Keith Adams with the Coastal Property and Partners Association. I wanted to clarify that there's many inconsistencies between the language included in the public safety element relating to coastal bluffs and beaches, land use plan section 6.4, and the implementation of the plan relating to geological hazards, chapter 16.1, which must be corrected and clarified. For example, in 1610.40 N2, it states allow a one time only modification, reconstruction or replacement of greater than 50% of the major structural components of an existing habitable structure within any consecutive five year period. In 6.4 safety element, it states allow only one major redevelopment replacement activity of greater than 50% of structural components due to damage from coastal erosion, without reference to within any consecutive five year period. These inconsistencies between the safety elements 6.4 and safety hazard code amendments, chapter 16.10, must be corrected. So there's no room for misinterpretation. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, board members, my name's Jeff Romundo. I'm president of the Pajaro Dunes North Association. We think we're almost there. We appreciate that the planning staff has been willing to work with us for over more than a year now to accommodate our concerns, while still taking needed steps to address sea level rise. We believe this local coastal plan and safety element is very close to something we could support. However, one issue remains that still causes us concern, and that is the proposed one and forever rebuild provision that we believe goes too far and is unjustifiably restricted in light of remaining uncertainty over sea level rise impacts and dynamics. We believe that there just isn't current justification for such a draconian limitation. We would prefer that the LCP allow for review of current conditions at some future point before imposing a permanent one and done limitation on reconstruction. Now, while most of Pajaro Dunes would be bound by FEMA floodplain restrictions under the LCP, a number of homes in the south portion are outside the flood zone and floodplain and would be bound by the county's ordinance. So it remains an issue for us. We therefore request that the Board of Supervisors continue this item and direct staff to work with coastal homeowners on reaching an accommodation along the lines recommended by the Coastal Property Owners Association that recognizes the realities of sea level rise while protecting private property rights. We believe it can be done and we look forward to supporting the county's final version. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Brett Sissney. I own a house on the coast, 4660 Opal Cliff Drive. In 2018, my project was approved by the county and then appealed by the coastal staff. The appeal was based on differing interpretation of the LCP. In 19 places in the amended LCP IP, the LCP addresses existing conditions first proposed shoreline armoring. The coastal staff interprets where the LCP says shoreline armoring to refer to all shoreline armoring. The county's intent is for the provisions only to be applicable to new or proposed shoreline armoring. The county has inserted new at three of the 19 locations. I request the board instruct the county to include new in the other 16 locations so that there's no misinterpretation by the coastal staff. I have a list of those locations if the board would like. Honorable Chair, supervisors, I'm Mark Massara. I'm an advocate and I work with property owners and your county staff on planning issues in the coastal zone. I support the LCP and the effort that your staff has gone to and urged that you vote to approve this. There's three big points that should inspire your support. First is just routine maintenance of existing seawalls. The second is you've heard about remodels and the third is the redevelopment of coastal properties. And I'll emphasize that since it's come up several times just in the last few minutes. Right now, the reality is you can't redevelop coastfront property in Santa Cruz County without waiving all future rights to your armoring or any future armoring. And that just underscores the delta between what the existing LCP appears to allow for and what coastal staff and the commission will ultimately approve. And this effort by your staff is to try to provide a level of certainty and assurances to property owners knowing what coastal staff is going to ultimately approve. And while it's true that the existing LCP provides for this appearance that you can do up to 65% of a remodel. The reality is very much different. Today, right now, coastal staff adds up all the remodel work ever done on a house. And if it exceeds 50% from 1977, they won't allow you to move forward because they're gonna call it a redevelopment. Your LCP will clarify that and provide certainty for all of the property owners going forward, but it does a lot more than that. It invites public access improvements. And that's the whole point of this thing. I represent, and I'm very sympathetic to the aspirations of property owners, but the reality is that the Coastal Act prioritizes maximizing public beach access, not residential real estate development. This LCP gets the county a long ways down the road to improving the current dynamic. Thank you. If we can have like the next two speakers up in line, we'll save some time. Co-Britain, that's a Britain Eye Critics, also president of the Pacific Coast Protection Association. The fact is is the Coastal Act states specifically that you can install a seawall to protect your property. Also, the state of California's legislation specifically requires you to protect your property, both for the safety of the homeowner, but also the people surrounding them. What's clear is that this is a huge overstep by the Coastal Commission staff and the Coastal Commission. They are essentially asking you to violate building standards, federal law, and the Coastal Act itself. What this should have started in the conversation from the very beginning was these people have the right to put in a seawall to protect their home. It shouldn't be the County of Santa Cruz being to make the determination that the Planning Department has the right to take people's property away or not protect it. Never should have occurred that the Coastal Commission found various jurisdictions that would do that is frightening. What's clear is gonna happen is that litigation is gonna occur. There's no two ways about it. So the question is here, is this board gonna violate various legislation, federal law, basic concepts? Doesn't mean that sea rise is not occurring. It is, but who addresses it? Is it FEMA? Shouldn't be the County. And one of the things I find very disturbing and occurs even now is that the County Council is being put into the position of defending the County at the public cost for things that are against public interest. Much of your code is not followed. Permit Streamlining Act is not followed. But instead of the County Legal Council being told by you all, follow the law. Follow these requirements because that's the public interest. Instead, I know they're put in the position of we're gonna be forced to defend at the public cost something that is against the public interest. So I would actually send this back with the discussion about with County Council, how can we follow state legislation now? And also tell the Coastal Commission they're violating, their policy violates the public interest. Their life safety, their economic benefit, just fundamental concepts. The federal government came in here with some policy that you all disagreed with. You'd push back on them because it'd be their policy and not necessarily legal. Well, it used to be pushing back in Coastal Commission not negotiating with this going, these people have a right to protect their home. They should protect their home. Thank you. Mr. Chair and members of the board, my name is Thomas Jameson. I'm a lawyer and I am representing William and Susan Porter.  I don't know if you got it. I didn't find it online. So I'd like to resubmit it. There are copies for all of you in case you did not get it or weren't able to read it. But in any event, what I'd like to do is present a different perspective than what was stated earlier. And that is that there is another alternative to this ordinance and what you're considering. And that is to do nothing. And what I'd like to do more than anything, I think, is just to issue you a warning about the terms of these amendments. And let's be, first of all, let's be clear about this. Really the county is doing the Coastal Commission staff's bidding and the Coastal Commission's bidding. The Coastal Commission has taken a position that many consider unreasonable. I personally consider it to be unconstitutional in three ways. And that doesn't matter. I'm not, the Coastal Commission staff and the commission is very aggressive in what they do and they've done many good things for the coast, but they are aggressive. So what I would like to say, I think that fundamentally in our constitution, there is the constitutional right to protect one's property. Now, if it's threatened by erosion, then there's a right to protect it with a sea wall. If it's a residence, let's look at it that way. And it can't be denied. Now it can be regulated, but not denied. The third, so that's one. That's a basic constitutional right, I believe. Another right is that anything that is exacted from a property owner has to have a reasonable relationship to the harm that's being considered. The beach mitigation fees and the so-called public recreation fee, which really when you look at it are the same fee, have reached, can reach egregious proportions. Your $500,000 sea wall may cost you a million dollars in mitigation fees and it's like you're buying your own property back for an inflated price. So I would like to suggest that the highest court in this state and no federal court that I'm aware of has decided the issue of the constitutionality of what the Coastal Commission is doing. And they don't always do things right. I know because I've won at least one case against the Coastal Commission. So what I would like to suggest is, let the Coastal Commission handle all of these appeals. I think there will be a number of challenges on constitutional grounds and that's gonna save you guys a lot of trouble when and if they're found out to be wrong. Thank you. Mr. Chair, supervisors, my name is John Erskine. I'm a partner in the statewide law firm of Nassaman LLP. I chair our Coastal Law Group. I formally served on the South Coast Regional Coastal Commission, albeit way back in my youth when they had regional commissions. And I served on the city council in Huntington Beach. For the last 30 years, I've been a boring land use lawyer and coastal lawyer. I represent the Rio del Mar Homeowner Association. Our firm represents several other associations. I personally represent the Solana Beach and Tennis Club, the Sunset Beach Beachfront community and a number of other property owners up and down the coast from Eureka down to the city of Coronado. We also represent the city of Coronado on Coastal Matters. I wanted to come up here today.  I think what everybody is telling you is this whole issue of sea level rise policy guidance and sea level rise LCP amendments is in a great deal of flux. I walked in a little bit late because as I was coming up your steps, I got a call from one of my San Diego coastal clients who just met with Senator Atkins staff. You probably are aware that SB 1100 has been introduced by Tony and that's gonna change the whole landscape of this whole process. So I would echo what others have said. I think there's no upside for you as a county to be the canary in the coal mine, if you will. Thank you. Good afternoon, I'm Charlie Edie. I'm a land use consultant and I represent Paaro Dunes, home owners association. I just like to say a couple of things. One is that we've had a really difficult time trying to understand all the nuances of this particular set of proposals. It's kind of like reading the Old Testament or something. Every time you open it up, there's something coming at you from another direction and it's very complex. And I think what you've heard and what you've seen, for example, in the letter from the Fenton and Keller attorney is that there's just a lot of things that aren't fully matriculated yet to a level that they need to be. And so we really strongly urge you to continue to work on this, but also to give your staff the direction to really incorporate some of these changes. I feel like they've done what they can do, but they've been trying to walk a tight line between what the coastal staff wants and what people like my clients want. And I think if you give clear direction to your staff, they can feel like you've got their back and they can go a little farther than they've been willing to go so far. The one and done is something that just continues to evolve. And I'd also like to just speak from the perspective of somebody who's written ordinances, zoning ordinances, and has spent a lot of time trying to figure out what they mean and implement them. Not the ones I wrote, but others, of course. And when you don't have something right, it's an absolute nightmare. And we see this all the time with various regulations. If you don't really have them crystal clear, the staff is never quite certain. The applicant doesn't know what's going on. Nobody can really change anything because you have to go back to do another general plan or ordinance amendment. So you gotta get these things right. And there's no rush here. And I think that there's a lot of good minds that are working on this. And I think you could take advantage of that to try to get something that really is a lot clearer and easier to understand and to implement. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Derek Oliver. I'm a land use attorney at Fenton and Keller. And I'm here today on behalf of the CEPA Santa Cruz. There's been reference to the two letters that I've submitted. And I wanna focus my attention as many others have today on the one time only rule. The Coastal Act certainly doesn't require that. And while I appreciate the comment about coastal staff appealing projects and what they will or will not appeal today, let's be very clear that the legal standard of review in an area where you've got a certified LCP is that certified LCP. So to the extent that coastal staff can point somewhere else and say that that is precedent and therefore you've got to do it here, taint so unless you make it so here. So just because the Coastal Commission may appeal a project doesn't mean they're going to prevail on that in litigation when the standard of review is the LCP itself. Again, that one time limitation doesn't make sense in the context of if a homeowner on a bluff can meet all of the LCP requirements and conditions such as the proper setback and sand mitigation fees and all those things that would apply, why is there any need for a one time rule? And Ms. Malloy and I and CPOA members discussed this and it was confirmed that yes, so long as a property owner can comply with all those requirements, they can tear down and build a brand new house as many times as they want under the County LCP. So there is actually no need for a one time only rule. So when pressed further, we talked about what she said she intended it to mean and the explanation was, well, this applies only in repetitive hazards areas where a property owner needs to recognize that after we've built and replaced and torn down a house that's fallen into the ocean or sustained significant damage due to other coastal bluff or geologic hazard related issues that they shouldn't be able to rebuild. That makes perfect good sense. There is a code section proposed for that in the updated LCP. Next, the explanation was that this one time only was to provide an exception where a property didn't have a sufficient area to meet the necessary setback. That again makes sense. So I left that meeting scratching my head as to whether the language truly intended, truly reflected what the intent was or not. And now as I sit here today, I see that the language does truly reflect what was intended, which is not at all the message that was conveyed to us. And so I think this needs significant cleaning up. Otherwise you're going to put a development ban where it ought not be and apply a one size fits all to a County that in the LCP itself recognizes, I think very importantly, that this is not a one size only County. So I would urge the board to recommend that County staff keep at it and to not approve this as is today. Thank you. Good afternoon supervisors. My name is Sam Blakesley. I recently wrapped up a year long fellowship in Sacramento working on statewide sea level rise legislation and planning with the state lands commission. And I felt compelled to comment today. I'll start by saying that if there's one thing I've learned in the past year, it is not that the hardest part of sea level rise planning is whether or not it is happening or how much and by when, but it is how to deal with the ambulatory nature of the public trust boundary and the high water line, which marks the boundary between public and private property in California and with which there is very little precedent to rely on. That said, I want to commend the County and the city for taking up these questions today and their proactive efforts to address sea level rise. But I do think the LCP as it currently stands is inadequate. My first point is there is not enough money to go around when it comes to holding back the ocean, especially if we respond in a proactive or a reactive way and while I appreciate the inclusion of mitigation, the County must make it clear that mitigation may be used only in cases where it is pre-coastal structures and those fees must directly benefit public access to the coast. Furthermore, I think we need to explore other creative mechanisms to fund adaptation and resiliency measures. I was recently shocked to read that of the 1,100 coastal properties, Blufftop and coastal properties in unincorporated Santa Cruz County, 90% or 990 of them are unoccupied for at least part of the year. I won't get into the fact that we're passing policies that favor the interests of people that may not even live here because I understand the implications to the tax base, but I am asking you to further consider creative funding mechanisms such as a vacancy tax for vacant oceanfront properties that could go and do a special fund. Not only could this help offset impacts to access and public trust resources that are being degraded by coastal armoring and sea level rise, but it could also supplement the sales tax that the county is not receiving due to the fact that those people may not even live here or spend their money here. My last point is that within the next few months, the State and Ocean Protection Council are going to roll out new statewide sea level rise planning principles in an attempt to foster consistent responses across the board. These principles essentially take the 2,100 projections for sea level rise and make it the new resilience seagull for 2050. This is because the sea level rise projections continue to get more extreme every year. The science surrounding the extent and severity of the impacts continue to evolve. And also because the state has a vested interest in upholding its obligations to the public trust doctrine and the Coastal Act and the values that support coastal access for all. And I suspect, as we've heard today, that specific legal and policy precedent for how to respond to sea level rise is not too far off in California and this response will likely favor and prioritize adaptive and sustainable approaches that do not involve any further armoring of the coast. In closing, I want to say that I understand the sensitivities around such important and long-term scenario-based planning and I hope that Santa Cruz County can get ahead of this issue and be on the right side of sea level rise like it's been on the right side of so many issues in the past. Thank you. Okay, we'll go down to the community room. Go ahead, sir. Is there anybody else after him? Hello, thank you for hearing. My name is Paul Coglin. I'm not a lawyer. I don't represent any homeowners association, but I'm a property owner here. I think what I've heard today here is that there's a lot of uncertainty about where this proposal will take us. I think that uncertainty carries with it a risk of a lot of litigation fees that our community, the five supervisors here will be involved in paying for. We have schools that need money. We have social obligations to homeless people that need money. We have a lot of reasons to spend the money we have rather than be chasing litigation that's probably better suited on a statewide level. So we've had someone from Sacramento talk here today. We've had many people that make me believe this is a grander problem than our small community here. It does impact our small community here, but whether we should be the lead person taking on the legal fees and the issues around this, I don't think's correct. I would advise you or recommend to you, the supervisors, that you have a choice. You can vote for it against it, or you can say that it really isn't within our venue to be incurring a legal cost that would be involved to pursue this to its end degree. Thank you for listening to me. Have a nice day. We'll go down to the community room. See if anybody's there. Mr. Chair, I'm told there's nobody in the community room. Okay. So no one to speak. We'll bring it back here. Back to staff for discussion. We'll start with, okay, sure. Thank you, Chair. Thank you to everyone who gave testimony. This has obviously been a subject in which there's been a lot of discussion at our board, at the planning commission, at public meetings. I know at my constituent meetings through my newsletter, a whole bunch of different ways that we've talked about this. And the, I appreciate the work that staff has done to try to wrestle a difficult issue because I think there's likely unanimity on this board that we believe in the impact of climate change. We recognize that the sea levels are rising. We're trying to craft a policy that reflects the unique nature of the geology of our community. And I know that when the coastal commission first came out with their sea level rise guidance, there was a lot of concern about what it means and what it would mean for communities. And I know I participated last July in a workshop with coastal commissioners to help them understand that one size did not fit all for the coastline of California. And we know even here in Santa Cruz County, the coastline looks different depending on what part of the county you're in. And we're the smallest land mass county in the state. So the pitch that I made then was that we need to look at the geologic conditions and be able to make a policy guidance that reflected that the different geology and the different issues. And I believe that that staff has done a good job in creating a nuanced policy document that reflects that different parts of our coastline require different kinds of treatment. And so I wanna thank you for all the work that you've put in. I know the two of you have put a lot of hours into this. And I'm appreciative of the conversations that have been taking place. I think that this nuanced land use reflects that the balance that I talked about with the coastal commission because we're trying to acknowledge. So for instance, on the sand mitigation fees, we, you know, this was a big issue when we first started talking about it. But when we look at the geology of our coast, sand is different depending on what part of the county you're in, in the district that I represent on the east side of Santa Cruz, the Live Oak Pleasure Point area. You don't get a lot of sand from the coastal erosion because of the nature of the geology. In the southern part of the county, that's all they've got is sand. And so we shouldn't have a one size fits all. We're also dealing with the impact of voter limitations that such as Measure J, which said we're gonna concentrate development within our urban services line. And we're going to not allow development or we're not gonna provide services to limit development outside that urban services line. And as a result of that, the urban core, which is a good part of our shoreline that is in the unincorporated area, there's development. And on the ends, which are outside that urban services line, there is not much development. And this policy reflects that because it says that outside these urban services line, we're gonna allow a natural process to occur. We're not gonna include armoring. We're gonna have that managed retreat that makes sense in those area. And it's along with what the voters defined as the limits in our community. I'm appreciative of the creation of the shoreline protection exception area because I think it does reflect both the historical use of armoring and the nature of the coast. In the case that we brought up about Opal Cliffs, there is never gonna be erosion where we're gonna get more beach there. What we're the sea, this as a sea level rise, it's gonna go up that large cliff and it won't result in more beach, but we can do things that support the idea of increased coastal access, which I also think this policy does a good job of because whatever we do, we can't restrict coastal access. We should actually be doing things to promote coastal access and support coastal dependent resources. And so the shoreline management area that we talked about in the other part of my district, which it says we need to do a little bit more study to sort of figure out what's gonna happen there and what kind of work could be done and what are the issues around the natural formations there, I think are important. I agree that we shouldn't have it to be open-ended. We should get to work on working on this shoreline management plan as quickly as possible. And the county has committed to seeking out the grant funds and we have already talked with the Coastal Commission and others to figure out where we can get the money to be able to do this shoreline management plan. So this isn't something that's just gonna lay out there not to be done. This is something that we're all interested in taking care of. You know, the biggest area of concern beyond those who think that we shouldn't have a policy at all. I respect that. I disagree, but I respect it is what happens on the euphemism of one and done. Because I think that becomes important. I do believe in the repetitive loss language that we have in here. Those properties which are degraded or eroded or destroyed because of coastal processes and waves, you have to acknowledge that the world is changing and that those properties you can't endlessly rebuild on. But our general efforts of this board has been to allow people to remodel and maintain their properties. When we did, when we changed our policy around legal non-conforming structures, we changed our policy in part because we found that people were not maintaining their properties because of the difficulty of getting it done. So we changed our policy because we think that's a community benefit to maintain those properties. When we recently did our permanent room housing policy, changes in our policy, part of that was to take these dilapidated properties that had fallen out of their originally intended use into another use and create a zoning designation so they too could be upgraded and maintained instead of left to deteriorate further. So when I think about our coastal sea level rise policy, I think we should allow people to maintain their properties as long as the sea level rise does not contribute to the degradation of their properties. So coastal processes or coastal erosion or waves that knock out houses, that's a different category than someone who wants to change their windows, add a story, add a room or something else. So I think this one and done policy is should, is really about those that are directly affected by the coastal processes, not just something that, because they happen to be on the coast, we're not gonna allow them to maintain their properties because I've heard a lot of testimony from homeowners who say, we might do something to our house, but in the future, someone else is gonna wanna do something to the house and we've basically limited them. So I think that we can find that balance about allowing people to maintain their private property but also protect the public access because I think there's language in here that is good and there's some support out there that when we allow things like armoring to take place that to create some kind of public access is a way to actually deal with the changing nature of the seas and the changing sea level rise because you can create different kinds of platforms for people to still be able to experience the ocean in a way that they wouldn't as the sea level rides and wipes out the beach. And we have some good examples where we've already seen that right down a pleasure point where we've created sea walls that have additional structures to allow people to enjoy the coastline in new and different ways. And so I'd like to make a motion and maybe I'll give out a copy of this if you could hand one to Susan that I'd like to add an additional goal to our public safety element that the county seek to ensure that public access to the coastline and coastal dependent resources is preserved when the loss of access and resources is due to inaction on the part of private property owners. Second, I'd like to modify the second paragraph in the public safety element section 6.4.1 to acknowledge that we may have more information in the year 2040 that would cause the county to change its land use goals and development criteria or allow for further refinement. Three, amend the public safety element section to eliminate any confusions in subsections A and C concerning when shoreline armoring will or will not be considered in allowing new construction or placement of a habitable structure outside shoreline protection exception areas. For amend the third paragraph of the public safety element section 6.4.1 to provide more flexibility in allowing property owners to rebuild or remodel non-coastal protection structures. For example, habitable structures if those structures have not been the subject to damage related to coastal processes such as wave action, sea level rise, inundation or erosion, unless it's subject to an approved shoreline management plan and make similar revisions to the county code 16.10.070 H1L. Five, amend the language on the public safety element sections 6.4.14, 6.4.19, 6.4.22, 6.4.24, and 6.4.25 to reflect changes outlined above or other sections as appropriate. And six, amend the language of the county code 16.10.070 H1 subsections B and C to eliminate confusion as to when and how established shoreline or coastal bluff armoring will be considered in determining minimum geologic setback. I think these are important changes that could really make a difference. I guess I would make one more addition to this is that the county staff consider the question of the exact location of Soquel Point based on the information that was provided here. First to second, and we've had public discussion and we can bring it up for a vote. All those in favor? Let me clarify now, so you might understand like the number four, to provide more flexibility that would mean that the one and done is not part. Okay. It would only happen when the property was affected by the coastal processes like wave action, sea level rise, inundation, erosion. That if someone has a property that is not affected by that they can remodel then based on these structural elements that we that are in the code. That's an important element to me. And I agree that's a, you know, it's just as one size doesn't fit all. I don't like, you know, the one and done for that. So I appreciate that. And I just want to make a statement that this has been a really difficult thing for our planning staff to go through two. And I think they have really made a great outreach effort to try to get agreement as closely as possible as we might expect to make this happen. So I think they're there to be commended for that. I was ready to continue this, but I to go for continue this, but I think this reaches the issues that are concerned to me. I do think what we do here in Santa Cruz County, the coastal commission is going to say this is how they did, if they accept it and they haven't accepted two of these previously, I guess it'll be what we do in the state. So I would, I see this as same what we think we need as you have proposed. And so I'm pleased with that and not I would rather have us set the policy rather than have the coastal commission do it. So I'll be supporting this motion. Yeah. And it would be helpful to have this come back as soon as possible so we can move on to other pieces of the county planning business, preferably by June. The question I have is it completely undoing everything you've done? If you don't mind, can I take this opportunity to clarify something because what was said in a public informational meeting did add to some confusion in terms of the one and done policy. So just going forward since we've got everyone in the room to so that they'll know what we meant, I'd like to provide that clarification. So we know that it's very complicated. There is a lot of nuance. That's why we put the guiding principles in there to sort of explain the approach because every single situation is a little different. We've had a lot of projects on the bluff since the recession and every single one of us different. So we're trying to provide a framework that works. The one and done is obviously it's outside of the shoreline protection exception area. So it's structures that are on lagoons, beaches and in what we're calling the shoreline protection management plan area. The whole idea is to try to come to a common understanding of what the word existing means and what the word new means. Because under the coastal commission, as we've stated, since they'll tally it up since 1997 and if you change over 50% of one component, they're gonna call you new. And you can't rely on shoreline armoring to protect new structures. So our policy is significantly different than that. We would wanna start the clock upon certification of this element and everybody gets a new structure. So it's greater than 50% of major structural components or complete redevelopment or replacement that counts toward that one time. You can do as many as you want, less than 50% of work on the major structural components. So lots of repair, lots of maintenance, lots of remodeling could happen. But if you ever went over that, then you would be a new structure. So for that new structure in the future, you could not rely on shoreline armoring. So that is what we, when we crafted that, we thought it was significantly different and more accommodating of new homes along on coastal bluffes than what the coastal commission is currently doing and what they seem to want to do. And so we crafted something that we thought was context related and nuance and different areas of our coastline and that's what we came up with. So clearly we haven't met the mark. I think it's gonna take quite a bit of time to come up with something that maybe we think the coastal staff and coastal commission might accept, but we'll certainly try to, I haven't seen what your motion is, but we'll look at it and we'll go to work. Okay. Vice, I'm ready to vote on, you're already, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposition? We have none, passes 4-0. Supervisor Coonerty went home sick. We were happy with that. Not about him being sick, but we had a COVID announcement this morning and so we were glad that someone who wasn't, well, was not here. Okay, now we go to item 15, which is considered mid-year financial update for fiscal year 2019-2020, as outlined in the memorandum of the autumn. Pardon me, I'm sorry to interrupt. Treasure tax collector. I just passed. Could you, I didn't hear the motion.  That's correct. The direction was to come back in three months with these revisions. Okay, thank you for clarifying that. Excuse me, I have another question based on what I just asked. Will there be another public hearing after in the three months? Did I hear a yes? Up in the revisions. Are you gonna have another public hearing? The process, it will have to come back to us. They may determine that needs to go back to the Planning Commission as well. Okay. And so it'll be a publicly noticed meeting. Okay, and you'll send it out to all the property owners and everybody else. I can't guarantee that we will send it out to the property, what kind of outreach we will do, but it will be a publicly noticed meeting. Okay, thank you. We're supportive team, we're team finance. Okay, item 15, we're ready. We're ready to go? Great. Good afternoon, Chair Caput and members of the board. Edith Driscoll, Auditor-Controller, Treasurer Tax Collector. The agenda item is the Midyear Financial Report for the County of Santa Cruz. I'm presenting this item in compliance with the county budget principles, which outlined that the county should regularly monitor budget conformity. The report provides information on the status of the budget at the mid-year of the fiscal year. It's a brief, high-level review, and I'll have time for questions at the end. This report, combined with the CAO's presentation later in the agenda, will provide a comprehensive mid-year fiscal update. Brief overview of my agenda, we'll look at general fund revenues, general fund expenditures, general fund reserves, and talk about where our fiscal reports are. So first, let's talk about our complete adopted budget. As reflected in the adopted budget book, page one, this mid-year report focuses on the status of the general fund. During your board's budget hearings in June 2019, you adopted a spending document that encompasses many fun types besides the general fund. To re-familiarize yourself with the various elements of this entire budget, I am highlighting them here. We've already spoken about the general fund, and then for special revenue funds, that includes housing, roads, fishing game, parks. Then we have library and county fire. They are the less than county-wide funds. We have board-governed special districts and other agencies that include flood control, mosquito abatement, and park CSA 11. Your internal service funds include fleet service center, information services department, duplicating and risk are all considered internal service funds. And then enterprise funds, which includes CSA 7, Buena Vista post-closure expenses, as well as those at the Davenport and Freedom Sanitation. All right, switching focus to just the general fund, I wanna highlight the sources of the revenue for the general fund. As you can see on this slide, the county's largest general fund revenue source is Intergovernmental Aid. Makes up 47% of the revenue, or $269 million. We have received to date 44% of this revenue type. Intergovernmental revenue traditionally is received later in the year, as it's primarily paid on a reimbursement basis from the federal and state government. This revenue type is monitored by my office as the level receipt of these funds help keeps the county maintaining a strong cash flow. If everyone awaits and does the reimbursements at the end of the year, it's a struggle for me. Intergovernmental Aid, since I just spoke about that being our largest fund source, occasionally I'm asked who makes up that fund who gets most of that money. Intergovernmental Aid, as I mentioned before, is our largest general fund source. For your reference, human services and health services combined receive 65% of this aid followed by public works at 16%. General fund total tax revenues. Taxes in total are the county's second largest revenue source. As you can see, the actual receipts of the different tax types are slightly higher than this time last year, which is positive for county cash flows. However, the amount that the property tax increases each year is limited by Prop 13, which was passed by the county voters over 40 years ago. However, as you know, Prop 13 limits the tax growth on many properties. Once a base year is established for a property, the growth is limited to no more than a 2% increase each year. This property tax growth is kept low until there is a change of ownership. When the property is sold, the sale price becomes the new property tax base that the county can receive taxes based upon. The base may be higher or lower depending on the real estate market at that time. What does not change is the percentage of property taxes that the county gets to keep. I'm asked this question periodically, how can it be that the county only gets 13 cents on the dollar for every property tax dollar it receives? This fixed percentage has been in place for 40 years as a result of Prop 13 passing. By comparison, our neighboring counties of Monterey keep 15%, Contra Costa 13%, El Dorado 23.5% and San Luis Obispo 29%. I take advantage of San Luis Obispo a lot because we're both combined offices and they get a lot more money than I do. All right, tax delinquency rate. Since taxes are a significant revenue source, a review of the property tax delinquency rate is important to estimate when the taxes will be received. Currently, the county's delinquent rate is 2.2%, up slightly from last year, 2.1%. A property becomes delinquent when taxes are not paid for a year. You can see on the chart that during the recession, when many properties were in foreclosure, we reached a high of 5.6% delinquency. 5.6% of the properties were not paying their property taxes. Unpaid taxes affect cash flow as those general fund dollars are not received when budgeted. In addition, Santa Cruz County is on the teeter plan for apportionment of property taxes. If a property is in default, the county fully apportions the money due to the special districts in the cities giving them a smooth cash flow. In exchange, the county gets to absorb the cash shortages and the penalties and interest later earned. If a property remains in default for five years, the county may auction off the properties. The tax sale auction for this year was completed this morning. As of about one o'clock this afternoon, 65 of the properties were sold, bringing in $617,000. Of that, only 287,000 pays off taxes and the remaining 331,000 is returned to the property owners. TOT rate, one indicator of our local tourism economy is the county's TOT collections. As you can see, our TOT revenue has increased each year. We have exceeded the prior year's collections to date by $82,000. Remember this chart, the amounts on this chart do not include city TOT. The county's current TOT tax rate is 11%. Now, I also get a lot of questions about TOT. So I tried to provide more detailed information this year for you, giving you a 10-year comparison where we were and where we are. The 10-year comparison provided here reflects that our number of providers has increased and so has our TOT revenue. In 10 years time, revenue has increased more than 255% and the number of TOT certificate holders has increased more than 400%. With the category of unmanaged properties showing the largest increase in both the number of properties and in the tax revenue. As the report outlines, unmanaged properties includes Airbnb customers and all property owners who make their payments directly to the county. As opposed to managed properties which include properties listed and managed by companies such as Bailey properties. Management companies pay the county directly on the owner's behalf. The county has a revenue collection agreement with Airbnb and receives a monthly check because Airbnb collects that TOT on behalf of the customers and provides it to us. They're unmanaged. We have to draw the line somewhere and we were trying to provide as much detail as we can and so we tried to differentiate the two. The county has one business tax, cannabis business tax. Cannabis business tax receipts for the last three and a half years are reflected here in this chart. The rates in effect during these years were 7% gross receipts tax. The cultivators and manufacturers also pay a gross receipts tax that was reduced from 7% to 5% commencing January 1, 2018. The county's interest rate has begun to decline from our high in late 2019. Not reflected in this chart is our February rate which was down to 1.95. The county investment pool is a short-term liquidity pool that functions as a buy and hold fund. As the report reflects, our pool high was 913 million with a low in the last 12 months of 726 million. My fiduciary responsibility when investing funds is to look first at the safety of the investment, then the liquidity of the investment and then third the yield. Investments are made to align with the county and the school's cash flow needs to meet cash outflows for bond payments, payroll wires, other large transfers. I would like to address the uneasiness we are seeing these last few days in the fiscal markets. We see concerns about potential economic slowdowns, oil prices and the effects of the coronavirus. Stock market investors are fleeing stocks for safety which often means buying US treasuries. Although we do not make stock market purchases, we do invest in treasuries. These investments are currently providing a very low rate of return because of their great demand. However, they do offer the safety and liquidity the county needs. We purchase and own US Treasury notes, two to five year notes, as well as US Treasury bills, 12 months. We will continue to market the markets closely and to keep the CAO informed as the county goes through this time of financial market changes. When monitoring budget conformity at the major report, you must also examine expenditures. A high level overview of the expenditures are provided here. Souries and benefits as the county's largest expense is at 56.5% spent, which is very similar to last year at 56.4% spent. Because of controls in place with the county's fiscal system, departments are not able to expend beyond their budgets without board approval. Reserves, your board adopted a fund balance reserve policy of 10% to be reached by 2021. This goal was achieved early and is expected to be maintained into fiscal year 2019-20. The major report includes a detailed chart of the various categories of reserve funds you have and the amount of each, totaling $56.7 million of reserve funds. Your board's commitment to maintaining a 10% reserve helps us maintain a strong fiscal position as we continue to weather these unexpected fiscal challenges. As a reminder, the county continues to emphasize transparency and making financial information and reports available online. So too has the auditor controller, treasure tax collector's offices and the CAO's offices. More than 10 years worth of annual county financial documents, budgets, proposed budgets, et cetera, are available on the main county website with links from my office's website. We also provide investment reports if someone wants to do research and look at previous years. Specifically on the auditor controller's website, we have a data tool to access current financial information on various tax receipts that are updated monthly and summarized in quarterly reports. In summary, general fund revenues are at 44.15% of budget, which is slightly more than this time last year at 39%. General fund expenditures are at 50% of the budget, which is similar to last year at 51%. Property tax delinquencies are low, interest rate earnings are decreasing slightly and the future of those rates are unknown for the next few months.