Good morning and welcome to the September 28th, 2021 meeting of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. Clerk please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Here. Friend. Here. Coonerty. Here. Hoppet. Here. McPherson. Here. Thank you Chair, you have a quorum. Thank you. We'll now have a moment of silence and then the Pledge of Allegiance. Mr. Chair, if I may dedicate the moment of silence for one brief second to the passing of Bill Matthews and absolutely wonderful, wonderful person, kind, gentle, soul, brilliant, loving father and husband who just recently passed away. Please keep Cynthia and the entire family in your prayers and thoughts. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Here's a pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic before we stand by nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The consideration of late additions to the agenda or the Santa regular agendas. Yes, Chair McPherson and members of the board on the regular agenda item number nine. There's additional materials. There's a revised attachment A, which replaces packet page 74. On item number 12, there's additional materials. Atkins Degree Results Memo 2021 attachment A. Insert after packet page 163. There's an addendum to the regular agenda. Close session and addition of one matter. Conference with legal counsel. Anticipated litigation. Initiation of litigation pursuant to paragraph four. Subdivision D. Section 54956.91 case. And then on the consent agenda, there's additional materials on item number 26. ADM 29 attachment C. Insert after packet page 317. That concludes the corrections and revisions to today's agenda. Thank you. We, item number four announcement by board members. If they want to have any items removed from consent to the regular agenda. No, I'll make a quick comment though on number. We'll wait until after the public comment. Just just for a minute. Do you have any in saying none? We'll now move to public comments. Stephanie, do you want to go ahead? Now is the time for public comment. If you wish to comment and are joining us through zoom, please find the hand icon at the bottom of your screen and click the icon to raise your hand. This will place you in this line to speak. If you're here in chambers, please line up at the podium. When is your turn?  This is if you're on zoom and you'll need to unmute yourself. Please accept this and start speaking. Your microphone will mute automatically at the end of your two minutes. Yes. Thank you. This is. the transition that's available for assist. If you want to comment and join through Zoom, search the icon in the bottom of the screen and click to raise your hand. This will be placed in the queue to talk. When it's your turn to talk, I'll call you by your name or your last four digits of your phone number. You'll see an emergency window on your screen asking if you want to turn on your microphone. Please accept it and start talking. If you have joined by phone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. She has unidop, atraves el teléfono por favor marque estrella nueve. Your microphone will meet at the end of your two minutes. Al final de tus dos minutos, tu micrófono será desactivado atematicamente. Thank you. I'll make a comment too. Comments must be directed on today's consent or closed agendas and yet to be heard on the regular agenda. On atomic, not on today's agenda, but within the jurisdiction of the board of supervisors. We'll take comments. This is going to be a little different today. We have a California Senator John Laird just going to address this at exactly at 9.30 and probably we'll be speaking for 30 minutes or so. He has to leave by 10. So we'll take public comments now. And if necessary, we'll just add on after Senator Laird has finished his comments. Thank you. Go ahead. Well, good morning. I'm Nancy Macy and I'm today speaking as chair of the Valley Women's Clubs environmental committee. It's great to be here in person. It's been a long time. I'm here first to thank the board for their formal complaint to the CPUC regarding PG&E's destructive tree clearing far beyond this right of way without notice to property owners immediately after the CZU fire lasting for months and leaving the mess behind. We appreciate the courage and concern that demonstrates and command the excellent work by the County Council's legal team. We wanted to be sure that you and the members of the public made note of the fact that every formal complaint that gets docketed by the CPUC's administrative judges is assigned to one of the five commissioners to oversee the complaint proceeding. And Santa Cruz County's complaint is being overseen by the president of the CPUC, Mary Bell Batcher herself. That means they're paying attention. We thank supervisors McPherson and friend for their requests now on the consent agenda that the board enlists the CPUC to investigate the dozens of recent power outages. Is PG&E simply trying to retrofit the old equipment? Oh, excuse me. It's important to investigate the, to do this because we wonder if PG&E isn't simply trying to retrofit old equipment when modern computerized equipment should be used as happening in Southern California. This is important to ask and you may want to state that you will no longer tolerate the antiquated distribution system that is the fundamental reason for PG&E's destructive deadly wildfires. I brought you a couple of pages from PG&E's website entitled Community Wildfire Safety Program. You'll see that in the previous three years PG&E hardened 24 miles of Santa Cruz County's electric distribution system, some of which actually burned in the fire. PG&E hopes to complete nine more miles this year but wait the poles are being replaced with wood poles and the new wires we've seen are bare wires, thus still vulnerable to almost all wildfire ignition drivers. This piecemeal effort is not the comprehensive overall modernization needed in this county's high utility associated wildfire threat areas. That should include steel core, triple insulated conductor, not bare wire. And this is being done in Southern California by Southern California Edison, successfully preventing wildfires. Thank you for the opportunity to be here in person. It's a pleasure to see you all. Thank you. I thought I was waiting for a mother may I hear? I have us an article, Gary Richard Arnold. What I have is an article here in Wall Street Journal by Joe Biden in which he says he learned to love the new world order and how he's going to replace a world order on the ashes of the United States. And that makes sense since the borders are wide open and the COVID scam is really exercising communism. The COVID is communism. The community foundation is a matter of fact, which has a justice foundation named after a highly famed Chinese communist by which you have, which you still maintain the blacks out here on the courthouse steps because you're so in ideologically together with that. The community foundation had a lady decide which one fourth or one third of businesses crashed inside the Santa Cruz County. She was paid by a secret donor. Carlos Flosio is the California, the County Administrative Officer. As a member of that board and his picture is taken next to I think Margaret True or I forgot her first name.  Zach Ren worked for two people that are former that are red Chinese lobbyists. Mr. McPherson, of course, got $30,000 from a triple spy front page, US News and World Report. McPherson was also involved in creating a alternative, a counter government, a parallel government called AMBAG, both the Pajaronian and the Times in Optos reflected the authors said it was similar to something they would see paraphrasing that gobbles would have done inside the inside of Nazi Germany that people were taking literature out of other people's hands, the promoters, which was Sam Farr, staff and Bruce McPherson staff. Anyway, there's a full intelligence report on communist activity in the state of California. It includes the attack on the police, both inside this magazine here when it names those police that are endangered by antifa indivisible and a bunch of others. It includes California forward of which Bruce McPherson has been a proud member of and was founded by Leon Panetta, who gave military and policy information to a Chinese communist spy that you continue to honor. Anyone else would like to finish by being timed? Yes, it's just broken. So it'll actually be the time that's coming from my phone. Okay. Morning, my name is James Ewing Whitman. Today is September 28th, 2021.  International disease codes where law enforcement can bill for choking a community member to death. And the military can bill for providing an injection that kills the community member. And that at the time about a year ago, where any two medical experts can provide the ability to lock up anyone indefinitely. I've spoken about the contact tracing. I've spoken about the August 2021 CZSU fires where I have proof that these are from directed energy weapons. I'm afraid only to be silent. Maybe sharing tonight on a radio program, certain details about how to detox from these kill stings, which we are breathing, drinking and eating for decades. What does the Bill and Melinda Gage Foundation, Community Foundation Santa Cruz County and the Aspen Institute doing playing a role in Santa Cruz County politics? Simply planning to profit heavily off the genocide of 95% of the world's population by 2030. This may be accomplished much sooner. Who are the leading mass puppets in this county besides the three men in front of me, the two that are speaking on Zoom, and John Leopold. To my left is Carlos Pinedas, a violent hired gun who used to be the executive CEO of Kaiser Permanente, Margaret Lopez. Susan Tru is the CEO of the Community Foundation, Santa Cruz County. What role then does Gail Newell play? And what role then does the sheriff corner Jim Hart play? Thank you. Any other comments from the public? There are five speakers. Thank you. Carol, your microphone is available. Good morning. My name is Carol Bjorn. I'm here to ask you to oppose any COVID-19 vax mandates in this county. I hope you all have had a chance to see the affidavit by Lieutenant Colonel Teresa Long M.D. She was a field surgeon for 10 years. She holds a master's degree in public health. She's been trained by the combat readiness center and has trained in medical management of chemical and biological casualties. She is also a board certified in-flight aerospace medicine and board eligible and occupational medicine. Based on observing, studying and analyzing available data, information samples, experiences, histories and results of treatments and inoculations provided, she has formulated a professional opinion documented in her affidavit. In the affidavit, she said, the shots carry mRNA that causes the recipient to create trillions of spike proteins. This is a problem for five reasons. First, it turns out the spike proteins are not remaining locally in the injection site but have been found circulating in the blood and virtually all organs of the body. Second, the spike proteins themselves have been shown to be pathogenic, attaching to endothelial, pulmonary and other cells, forming clots and attacking heart cells. Third, the spike proteins and their lipid nanoparticles cross the blood-brain barrier with unknown long-term effects on the brain and high concern for chronic neurodegenerative disorders. Fourth, these spike proteins interact with many signaling pathways which may trigger tumor formation, cancer and other serious disease. Fifth, according to Pfizer's Japanese distribution study of LNP accumulation, unexpected sequestering in reproductive organs and spleen raise very serious long-term concerns. Further, the labels for commonarity and biotech clearly state that the vaccination should not be given to individuals that are allergic to the ingredients. One of the listed primary ingredients of these injectables is PEG which is closely in molecular makeup, color 2915 or microphone is available. Good morning, this is Becky Steinbruner. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. I want to speak first to Consent Agenda Item 36 where the board is going to finally and thank you for taking this action demand that CalFIRE issue an after-action review of the CCU fire. CalFIRE has not done this. It says in the report, the county has done your own study regarding county fires interactions. I would like a copy of that report and request that you make it publicly available as an attachment perhaps to this agenda item. I have filed my application and I have filed many public records after requests trying to find the after-action review and that's how I determined finally it had never been done. And I appreciate you including the CalFIRE after-action report there as a model. Thank you very much. I hope that you will pursue this and give CalFIRE a deadline. Otherwise, I think they will continue to ignore this very important piece of work that needs to be done to improve future responses in any disaster in the county. I would also like to speak to item number 45 regarding water. I'm confused why Mimi Hall wrote this rather than our county water resources manager Sierra Ryan. That needs to be explained. There has already been action by your board to require metering. I don't know if this is about perhaps this is the time to do that in the staff analysis. But on August 4th of 2015, your board already required that and that was supposed to have been completed by October 1st, 2017. So I would like to ask your board to request a status report of the metering action. All in user one, your microphone is available. Allowed in their sentence anyway. This is Marilyn Garrett. Can you hear me? Yes. How rude it is to cut off people in mid-sentence. And I notice you don't do that to those who are there in person. Very discriminatory. I did appreciate Nancy Macy's excellent statement as well as James and Carol Bjorn. When we have declared emergency, it's the architecture for oppression with this permanent emergency. And we have destruction of livelihoods and destruction of democracy. I want to read an excerpt from Children's Health Defense. This is a notice for employers, universities and other institutions mandating COVID-19 masks. And it's from July 14th. This serves as notice that the mandate for any individual to wear a mask against COVID-19 as a condition of employment or attendance at a university or other institution violates federal law. All COVID-19 masks, whether surgical and 95 or other respirators are authorized under an emergency authorization only. They are not approved or licensed by the federal government. You can see this from Children's Health Defense. I'll just a little bit more here. In a letter dated April 24th, 2020, the Food and Drug Administration stated that authorized face masks must be labeled accurately and may not be labeled. Caller 1965, your microphone is available. Is star nine to unmute your phone. Good morning. Can you hear me? Good morning. I am honored to voice my support for the CZU fire victims. I ask the board to please reconsider the mandate that's going to require them to put the covenant on their titles. It seems that it is harder for them to rebuild than it was initially said. I am honored to voice my support for the CZU fire victims. Caller 5907, your microphone is available. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes. Hi, this is Kristin Sandel. I'm a resident of Ben Lomond. We have had nine non-PSPS power outages since September 7th, each lasting between three and 18 hours of fire. The fire is extremely difficult and it's a stop gap measure to avoid updating their infrastructure with lines which would not be tripped by a scurril or stray branch. It's dangerous for people with medical equipment needing electricity. It's devastating for local businesses and costing hundreds of dollars in gas and electricity. I'm very happy to be able to address this very dangerous situation. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. Thank you for all of your work on this issue. Dahlia Eperson, your microphone is available. Hi, yes. My name is Dahlia Eperson. I am running for Congress in November 2022 against Manetta, by the way. I'm going to introduce the mask bandits. Everybody who wants to mask, God bless them, let them mask. But those of us who don't want to mask or don't feel the need to mask should always retain the choice not to mask. We've already seen some devastating effects for children who are being some effects for adults including pneumonia, bronchitis, and of course there's always the exceptions, always the exceptions. My sister has extreme asthma. She can't mask.  That is such an overreach of government. Any kind of mandates like that where a freedom of choice is taken away is not the American way, it's an overreach. And so I am really speaking out against it and really pleading with you guys not to do another mask mandate. Okay, thank you very much for your time and God bless you. Thank you Chair, there are no other speakers. Okay, I'm going to go to I think I'll go ahead now and introduce. I just want to make clear that we do not have a mask mandate in the county. We request that our county employees do be vaccinated. I think about 90% of them have been. They need to have a weekly test but we do not have an outright mandate. Now it's my pleasure to introduce my friend and colleague Senator John Laird. John is not a stranger to most of us or you. He has endless energy and worth ethic and makes friends everywhere he visits. He was elected to the state senate last November and serves on 11 legislative committee almost unheard of. John served as the secretary of natural resources under Governor Brown for eight years and prior to that represented the Monterey Bay Area and the state assembly for six years. He was a trustee of the real college. He was a council member of the city of Santa Cruz and he has made public services calling since graduating from UCSC in 1972. After John's presentation he will leave for time for questions but the senator has a busy day and has to leave by 10 o'clock. So I welcome you. Senator Laird, it's great to have you here. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's great to be here. It's the first time I've been in the room since you've been socially distancing so it is an interesting setup having spent an incredible number of hours of my life in this room.  We were not allowed friends or family at the swearing in. Only 33 of the senators were there. They didn't even allow the chaplain in. I gave the prayer for swearing in this entire time. We've never been allowed more than three staff members in our Sacramento office at the same time. In fact I got an award from California a few weeks ago and it was the first time my nine staff members in Sacramento had all been in the same place together since I had been in the Senate. And as chair McPherson said I'm on an incredible number of committees and it has really helped represent this area. I'm on the rules committee which does confirmations and when the state parks director came by I walked them all the way through a big basin planning to do. And there have been a whole host of confirmations like that where that's been good. I'm the senate lead on the joint legislative audit committee which has put me in the middle of the EDD meltdown and I have a bill that will really address that. The chair of the natural resources committee socially distanced for four months so I ended up chairing that committee even though I'm not the chair for four months which put a lot of issues here. And I chair the education budget subcommittee which is half the budget and I was working with leaders in Santa Cruz county and education and county superintendent and it was one of the lead negotiators in the school reopening issue so I hit the ground running and this budget was different than any budget I've ever experienced because I was budget chair in the state assembly and we had $75 billion above revenues that were projected and so half of that or the equivalent of half of that went into reserves or was returned to the public and then the other half was used to address real long-term intractable issues. We lowered the age for Medicaid to 50. We added 300,000 students to grants in the higher education system we increased childcare slots and increased rates for the reimbursement there's $12 billion over multiple years for homelessness and K through 12 budget is just higher than it has been at any time in the University of California CSU of real concern to our community which was cut during the initial COVID budget not only was brought back to its pre-COVID levels but had a 5% increase so there have been major things that were addressed as part of that budget and I think there are some that are a real effect locally obviously there's a tremendous amount of money for fire prevention and there's a number of us that had an effort that that go locally that there be grants and that go to local areas across California there's a water package which addresses a lot of issues with regard to water and it's the one disappointment I had in the budget I had a special pod carved out for Central Coast route projects and it got moved into next year it is in the budget but it is next year and I'm working with the finance department to move that up it's eligible for projects would be the pipe from the big basin water district of the San Lorenzo Valley water district would be upgrade of wells in the Santa Cruz system there'd be projects in the Pajaro Valley Monterey Peninsula Southern Monterey County in San Luis Obispo even though this isn't within the purview of Santa Cruz County Lake's Nassimiento and San Antonio are at 9% of capacity one is a dead pool and the other one is not allowed releases unless it's an emergency and that goes into the Salinas River basin and so everybody that's on Salinas River water is tremendously hampered right now we're at the second year of this drought where we were at the end of the fourth year of the drought that was in a few years ago so that's dramatic with the partnership of Mark Stone there's 14 .5 million dollars of course the Santa Cruz area to address homeless issues and my real point was is that if you look at the homeless programs across the state it's done on a per capita basis and it's really targeted to the urban areas and if you look at the homeless population in the last census that was full in Santa Cruz the per capita population of homelessness was higher than Oakland San Francisco Los Angeles and San Diego and yet the money does not come to the area so we did a slug of one time money with the idea that we tried to budget for impact and hope in a year when we absorb the other money that's coming from the budget that real progress can be made and I know there's a meeting being set up between the city and the county and some of us to talk about how it's implemented and so that is coming and another thing through the education budget subcommittee the University of California funds cooperative agriculture extension which provides research and assistance to our farmers in the area and that has been contracting and contracting over 15 or 20 years we did a huge slug of an increase to bring it back to where it was 15 or 20 years ago so cooperative agricultural extension can be of two service to the farmers in the state and the region and I really work on that personally to make that happen if you look at the bills fortunately everything is timing and it's nice to be here on the day that the Sentinel has a headline about the Pajaro River bill that the governor signed on Friday and SB 496 and I worked with supervisor friend on that and have been working with congressman Panada it is big because if you look at the Pajaro levy project where there is five year flood protection right now and the project would bring it to a hundred year flood protection and as a county employee in 1995 I had to go down and to shift to the factoring the hundreds of people that were dislocated and housed at the fairgrounds and that is literally what we face if we don't upgrade this and they are historically disadvantaged communities and the state share was capped at 70% and so additional money kept being gotten for the project and all it would do is displace other money and not get to the 100% so what this bill does is allow the state to pay 100% and in reality in implementation you can even technically get to 109% if there are overruns or other things so this is big because that 30% is a charge that will not fall on the farmers or residents of the Pajaro valley that will now be done by the state so that is really good news and I think it really will help and it was a hard bill and I had to take amendments or negotiate amendments that really said this was unique in a way to get it signed and to insert the department of water resources director in the process who coincidentally I appointed in a past life so that is a very good thing additionally I have a bill on the governor's desk with regard to fire and I have not appeared in front of you since the CCU fire a year ago which was horrific in which we are all still bearing the brunt of trying to bring people back trying to deal with all the impacts of that and at the state level there were force practice rules and the initial draft wouldn't have allowed people to rebuild and we worked on that I have been working with PG&E as I mentioned to the valley women's club over the weekend helping to a not popular thing the only meeting I took the last week of session when we were just meeting 14 hours a day and really busy was with the new CEO of PG&E and she came to my office in the capital and I met with her for half an hour I was encouraged by one thing she headed up the utility in Michigan and she has that midwestern sensibility and affect that I think is good but as I said to the valley women's club she is taking over a ship that is sinking and pointed in the wrong direction and while there is commitments to do the right thing she is going to have a tough time making good on them and making them happen but we as an office have been working with PG&E for a number of months and we have pressured them into agreeing for more notice in cutting down trees in the emergency and for taking the trees away if it is okay we are trying to let the county in a settlement make sure that is there and enforceable and then we can move on to vegetation management and we can move on to public safety shutoffs because what has been going on in the last few weeks has just been a hardship to anybody in the Santa Cruz mountains and so I wanted to bring that voice to that meeting and make sure they knew and the fire bill that I have on the governor's desk when we do fire prevention we basically at the state level do whatever we put in the budget for a year for prescribed fire or fuels management and this would say we would have a five year or more plan we would know what we exactly have as targets for that period of time in fire prevention we would have a transparent public process a report on exactly what has happened so it is not up to the press to dig it out and I think that will be great progress and I am hopeful the governor will sign it additionally I have a bill on his desk with regard to the Williamson act and even though I would like the state to be a full partner again in the Williamson act with local governments and since before I was even resources secretary and after I left the legislature the state has pulled back this relieves some of the reporting requirements and other things to make the current system manageable and we put money to a program that I started at resources for agricultural conservation easements to try to deal with prime ag land and preserve it in that use and then the employment development department has been a complete meltdown and we during the COVID crisis and we received an audit from the state auditor and it is interesting because one of the recommendations was there would be a recession plan that in fact the minute a recession is tripped there is a plan completely in place on how to expand and deal with the increased needs that people have when that happens there was an audit recommendation in 2010 to do that and it wasn't funded by the then governor or the next governor and now the thing has happened under a third governor and so I have a bipartisan bill that is on the governor's desk that requires an ongoing recession plan updated public participatory so that this never happens again in this way I also have a bill in the governor's desk about cannabis testing and having equal standards and it comes out to a lot of entities here so that there's not a disadvantage I have a bill that's already been signed with regard to when I headed the Santa Cruz 8th project it was our dream that people would lift to old age it was not happening now 50% of the people with HIV in California over the age of 50 and so the bill and the governor signed it already puts as a category of special need older Californians with HIV and make sure services are informed of services and there's outreach under the older Americans to deal with that and then I had one very fun bill which is the governor appointed the first woman to be ahead of the highway patrol and yet the entire statute refers to he and him as the commissioner of highway patrol so I have a bill that fixes that and once I got into it I said all our statutes say firemen so I threw a cow fire in all the conservation core statutes say core men I put that in and then I worked with the general of the National Guard and it turns out their statute is so screwed up that we just agreed to do a bill next year and not mess it up with this so the governor has signed that bill as well and then maybe two other issues before when one other bill that really directly affects the task is that there's a mandate for landfills to move to organic waste and it has been considered our cities and counties have been really stressed by it and so I have a bill that does a one year holiday on enforcement of that mandate given what's been going on even though people still move toward it and that was used to leverage money so there's 70 million dollars in the budget to implement that now so it is great on both scores I got an award from the league of cities last week for doing it and we're confident that the governor will sign that and then the two sort of high profile bills this year both had to do with housing SB 9 and SB 10 and they both had some measure of overriding local land use to allow for additional units of housing SB 10 they took amendments to make it voluntary but it also has a provision that allows boards of supervisors and city councils by two-thirds vote to override citizen approved measures on housing and then SB 9 allows for 80 years additional to be built on single families owning and the amendments were taken in that bill that allowed local governments to override this requirement if there's health and safety, historic or other things and so when those came to me for the final vote given all the amendments I voted for SB 9 but I voted against SB 10 because I thought the override of local ballot measures was a bridge too far and I had conversations with the author about specific local initiatives about Measure J about the Watsonville initiative about annexation about Measure O and the Greenbelt measure in Santa Cruz and the author said that it had to be uniquely about housing but I was still concerned that that wasn't tightly written and so I am concerned about that provision the governor has since signed those bills and then lastly and I know this is of great interest to Supervisor Coonerty I sent a bill to the regents on Sunday about the Long Range Development Plan it seems like it's relatively short notice that it was just going on the agenda because I think it was hard for the city and the county to take formal action before the deadline for letters last weekend and in my letter I deferred to the city on the practical issues of transportation housing, water, fire the things that I think are the granular issues that are most at issue and I held two up for the regents and the first one was I tried to set the context for this because I sat next to a regent at an event where he said everybody knows it's just a nimby thing in Santa Cruz and I said wrong wrong wrong it is much more nuanced and complicated than that you basically have an exemption from local land use, no requirement to mitigate and you have a university of 20,000 people within a city of almost 60,000 people which creates amazing problems within that lack of requirement to mitigate and so and I said this does not exist this way with any other of the other nine campuses that aren't here for UC and I think that has to be recognized and then secondly that given the constitutional exemption that the University of California has they have no requirement to do what they say they're going to do and so I really urged the regents I did something when I was in the legislature the first time that if a university campus got bond money for a building I have language that's still on the books that say they have to mitigate all the impacts from that building before they can get money for the next building and that sets up a framework that should work for this plan that they really should face this lay out what they're going to do each phase and not move to the next phase until they've mitigated it and have a major of enforceability in that and it this is not just the issues of growth this is the issues for faculty and staff and students of having academic infrastructure in place and not just grow so that they don't have an experience that's appropriate in this either so I have personally sent that to individual regents I filed it with the entire board of regents and I have been working with them the housing project it's proposed up there there was a split photo approval and I just don't understand why in a 3,000 unit housing project can't take the 150 units that are controversial and move them to another place in the project it would make the opposition go away we support 3,000 units because they need it but just don't do it in a way that causes opposition and leads into the LRDP with bad feelings and so I am uniquely positioned as chair of the education budget subcommittee the chancellor of the USU system and the president of the UC system are my new best friends and I have been using these conversations to raise these issues so that they are clear on what it means I went on a little longer than I wanted to but I wanted to give you a comprehensive update on what's going on and how it fits here and in whatever times remain happy to have you I just want to thank you for everything you are doing in so many ways it's very much appreciated and I know you are highly respected and people listen to you up at the capitol for all aware of that I want to thank you too for supporting the expansion of broadband a high priority in the legislative list of this county and of the county state association of California state association of counties expanding broadband and these fire threatening days is going to be critical in the rural areas one thing I just saw I was watching 60 minutes and they were talking about these new helicopters that can see at night where the fires are and they can pull 3000 gallons of water in minutes and for some reason or other they haven't been able to transport them they are headquartered I think in Orange County the way I understand it I just wanted if you could look into that to get the department of forestry and the local fire agencies to get there and see as you see you happen there was the fires going on all over the place I understand but they weren't used to their full ability let's put it that way so let me just speak to that for a moment yes happy to look into it and and when I was resources secretary the entire fleet of helicopters was Vietnam era helicopters and we went through an arduous process where I think we might have even been sued it took years to basically come up with a new RFP and start the process of replacing every helicopter and so before we left the administration we bought the first ones and then Gavin Newsom to his credit got there and realized he had a little bit of a surplus and the best thing to do is to spend it for one time things and not build ongoing expenses so he took the helicopters that were supposed to be purchased over five six or nine years and moved them all forward and so it's just a question of when they're delivered and and to be honest I am not sure of their capability with regard to night flight because that was not an absolute requirement at the time but I think that they can be fitted for that to happen because the issue the other issue that you mentioned that's worth talking about is when the CZU fire happened a million acres were burning across the state and they did not commit resources here for three or four days what was burning through rural residential areas and even though I was a private citizen I was pounding people in Sacramento about it and we have a mutual aid system that relies on fire departments across the state responding and a lot of them were holding their fire units because they felt like they were in danger and so the real question is as well is making sure that never happens again and we have already approved additional conservation core additional firefighters we're trying to rejigger the prison firefighter issue but that is front and center so anyway didn't we but I'm going to go to supervisor friend and community first for brief questions because you have some issues that were in their districts specifically supervisor friend thank you Mr. Chair thank you Senator Laird thank you obviously for everything you've done in regards to the Pajaro one thing you didn't mention is this was a continuum actually you were building upon work that you had done when you were in the legislature previously that really had set the stage for the possibility of even what you were able to get through the governor most recently to underscore what you were saying fundamentally changes the trajectory of what's possible in the Pajaro River removing a significant burden from two disadvantaged communities in both counties it allows me to work more with the Biden administration to show that we absolutely have the wherewithal to make this project happen because of this state investment in previous meetings with the office of management and budget in previous administrations just even having the 70% was clearly a unique identifier for us being able to now show that we have 100% of the local share because they have a lot of projects army core projects where the locals are unable to actually deliver on their end of the deal even after congressional appropriation so this really does show that we're in a very unique position across the country to do it and it's due in no small part to you as well as just some of the members Rivas and Stone we would like to invite the three of you and anybody from the new some administration to be interested we'd like to work with your team on setting up a tour not that you need to know more about the Pajaro River but we think it would be good to bring you out there again with anybody that you think would be useful from the administration to really continue to highlight this project and as well as anything that you think would be useful from the governor's office in regards to the Biden administration we do have obviously a congressional and federal delegation on board but having that the governor's taken a position on this individual project if he has interest in or your recommendation of the administration reaching out to our federal administration on this that would be useful too thank you I'm just happy to do that happy to tour and reach out on tours and in what he was referring to is in 2006 I did to build that allowed for a share at all from the state for this project and then his budget chair made sure the money was in the flood bond that went to the voters that year so it's been a very nice continuum and nobody ever thanks the department of water resources had for anything so my guess is she would jump at the chance to tour this and do that thank you thank you Supervisor Coonerty thank you Mr. Chair thank you Senator Laird for joining us and thank you for your work and the most difficult of times it's usually very difficult to govern in the state of California the last year and a half have been extraordinary and I appreciate your focus both on statewide efforts but also remembering where you came from and helping the communities in your district all your bills have been and work and advocacy has been tremendous and as you mentioned we really appreciate the money that you delivered for us to address homelessness which is as you pointed out a far proportion to many communities our size and I appreciate your efforts to say that the city and the county need to work together to find solutions and we will do that and then we'll be looking for longer term funding to ensure that we can continue these efforts and make sure we're doing the problem solving that is needed at the individual level to address each person experiencing homelessness their needs and the opportunities we have to help them out of that condition and then reduce the impacts on the community but I'm just so grateful for your constant communication advocacy and recognition of the real issues we face on the ground thank you and let me say we've been working closely together on the north coast issues and due to both of our advocacy the coastal conservancy allocated $100,000 last week to that process. I wish it had been a little more but it was enough to really launch it in a way that we can address those issues absolutely and actually and thank you to state parks for partnering to get us the rest of the way there and thank you for your advocacy and your letter on Thursday as we just move forward I share your desire that we have to have a binding enforcement of growth to provide the infrastructure necessary so that students can be successful you're not creating educational access if students show up and they're experiencing homelessness or skipping meals struggling to find housing or classes it's imperative that if we're going to create educational access and we're all committed to it as you pointed out in your letter this is not a NIMBY the community is not taking a NIMBY position we understand the need for growth in an economy based on a knowledge based economy but it has to be real access which includes building appropriate housing and infrastructure as well as reducing water and traffic impacts. I was surprised at the level of hunger that was an issue among students and you just mentioned it and one of the things that hasn't been heralded in this budget is institutional meal sites couldn't deliver meals at the time of COVID food banks stepped up and the National Guard came in and did it and in this budget we got 300 million dollars to go directly to food banks to continue that efforts into the next fiscal year and when I was up at campus it turns out that the Cowell Coffee House is now what they refer to as a non-transactional cafe where people have the ability to eat and when I was there I said how wonderful it would be to serve in the legislature with somebody that was non-transactional and it went right over the head and so far with students. Thank you Chair, thank you Senator Laird your experience and it really shows in the way you've been able to address so many of these issues in a very tactical way and bringing more resources into your district and specifically our county addressing many of the environmental challenges we're facing today and I just wanted to ask you briefly since you have dedicated so much of your career to our environment what are you currently pursuing or some of your colleagues pursuing proactively to help reduce our emissions statewide? That is a great question because this budget did great things for water and fire to deal with the impacts and the governor just signed a bill that set up collaboratives up and down the coast to take the next steps to deal with sea level rise but that's all on the adaptation side and resiliency that's not on the emission side and the legislature did not do a good job this year on the emission side and the Air Board is doing its next scoping plan in the next 12 months which is to line out the ways that we will meet our goals we had a goal of 33% electricity in the renewable portfolio by 2020 we met it and the next goal is 50% we had the Coyote Accords put on California in 2006 and so we went back to the emissions of 1990 by 2020 we met that goal but then we have a next goal and we have a series of other ones wind energy was just signed into law and added as a goal and the question is what we do on the granular level to meet those goals and one of the hardest ones is the transportation sector is where a significant amount of the emissions come from so I think that that's where we're going to spend a bunch of time on additional charging on additional subsidies if possible for electric vehicles are different things to help us move to the next stage but stay tuned because in the two weeks we've been out of session that's the one thing about next year that I've started to talk to stakeholders and colleagues about because we have to be ready so I look forward to working with you on that. Thank you Supervisor Caput, any questions? I'd just like to voice my appreciation for all the work you've done for the residents that live near the Aho River 100 year flood prevention project this has been many years people have been looking forward to getting something done and your work on this has been a major push forward and I can't thank you enough Appreciate that very much I don't know if there's any questions from the public but he does have this 10 o'clock and he has a deadline is there any questions? I have two speakers on Zoom How many? Two You have to go I'll do it as long as I have brief questions I'll do my best brief answers Colin user 1, your microphone is available Yes This is Marilyn Garrett Hi John I applaud your heroic decades-long efforts on behalf of democracy in the context of what I think is a corporate dictatorship Please help stop AT&T corporate plans to end copper landline safe and reliable service we depend upon copper landlines for our lives basically it's the only thing I have and my second question is are you speaking and how can we contact you during this time you're in the county or are you speaking elsewhere Thank you I'm speaking all over the place and you could go to my web page and call Santa Cruz office if anybody was listening there's also one in Monterey and San Luis Obispo or the capital office and they'll let you know of places I might be speaking or I don't have a question so thanks for calling Your microphone is available Hi I've been reading and researching that our power grid is already lacking brownouts blackouts so if we're going to increase our electric car production I don't see a path I don't hear a plan about how we're going to fix our current grid situation we can't handle what we have right now and sun panels aren't really a long term answer because sun panels every time it rains you there's an ingredient in there that has it leaks arsenic into our soil every single time it rains that's what sun panels do that's a side effect of sun panels can you let me know about the electrical grid what the plan is for this yes let me speak briefly let me speak briefly to what is a very complex issue and there are plans to make sure the grid would be resilient and would handle those needs and there are really long term goals of micro grids to try to on a more regional basis make sure that there's enough electricity regionally and there are different things that are being added to balance everything so with wind and sun then batteries are required to be able to cover the time when they are least providing things into the grid and I think over time it's going to be the opposite of what we've come to be used to because if solar is really available during the sunlight hours we're going to be asking everybody to use electricity during sunlight hours as opposed to putting it off with fossil fuel until such time because it's dark or light at night and so there are real plans to meet the need through very complimentary alternatives in a micro grid and it will be a transition but that's where we need to be anyway I know we've run out of time so thank you thank you Senator Laird for everything you're doing we'll keep in contact with you whether you want it or not but you have been very receptive to it this is Santa Cruz County you don't have to ask people to be around okay thank you senator have a good day thank you okay we will maybe I should go back are there any other public comments yes there was one one more okay Becky your microphone is available thank you this is Becky Steinbruner can you hear me thank you I will follow up with senator Laird in his quarters but thank you for having him here this morning I appreciate that overview very much I would have asked him if he would help support your effort to get Cal Fire to provide an after action review of the CZU fire that's important and he can use his influence to make sure that it happens so I will follow up with him on that I'm concerned about the lack of Cal Fire resources in this county as of two weeks ago there were only seven Cal Fire engines in this county most of them had been sent out to strike teams elsewhere when Cal Fire goes most of our type 3 fire engines that are the best to take up into the rural mountain areas with substandard roads those leave they take them with them on the strike teams County Fire only has two type 3 engines so I am concerned and I hope that senator Laird will help get more resources that can stay more locally in our area to help protect our citizens thank you very much again for having him here and I will follow up privately thank you very much okay thank you there are no other speakers we will now go to the consent agenda item number 6 are there any remarks from the board members yes thank you chair of course on item 36 I just wanted to thank you chair McPherson as well as supervisor Coonerty for bringing this forward it's been mentioned several times but the after action report on the CZU complex fire is definitely much needed and then on item 45 acknowledging the drought emergency and requesting a 15% reduction in use I just wanted to use the opportunity to make it perfectly clear what situation we're in I think senator Laird mentioned it as well but we saw 77% of the average rainfall two years ago 53% last year and our drought today in the second year of the drought is already worse than it was with four years of drought previously and we are expecting 70% percent chance that we'll see another dry year this year so please please I hope everyone will do their part and reduce water use at least 15% we've been historically very good at that in our county and I hope everyone will continue to carry that forward those are all my comments thank you chair thank you supervisor friend thank you Mr. Chair briefly I'd just like to welcome Dr. Billisich Nancy Billisich on her appointment on item 35 on item 37 I appreciate the chair joining with me and the comments from so many letters in regards to the PG&E issues not just to my district but in Supervisor McPherson's district we held two town halls although to be fair they were really controlled by PG&E and so there was a lack of back and forth quite frankly at those town halls but there was a remarkable turnout I have to say that these two rural portions of our district to have that level of number of people turnout on these webinars to show the import of this issue less than 24 hours after PG&E held the webinar at least in my district explaining that they had made significant changes to the fast-trip sensors and changing their how sensitive they were that area lost power again so clearly what they're doing isn't quite meeting the mark at this point and as Chairman Ferson and I believe that realistically the only way to amplify the voices of the CPC involved at this situation to actually look into this process PG&E's got a lot of challenges throughout the state it's no different here but people rely on this power I received an email from a constituent yesterday who has cancer she requires an in-home treatment that requires power the power has been so episodic it's been unreliable for health reasons at home people are losing food to spoilage they're unable through their septic as well as their well system to operate either water or any sort of sewer-based system because of loss of power people that have been working remotely which is something that this board has been encouraging I've been unable to do so at this point the average power loss in my district anyway is almost seven hours at a time that it's gone and there's absolutely no notices to when it'll occur and if you look outside we don't even have the weather that normally causes these kinds of power losses at this point so I can only imagine what could happen not just with PSPS moving forward but just with the winter in general so it's a really problematic situation with no solution presented quite frankly from PG&E yet at this point so we're encouraging our colleagues we've been absolutely so supportive in the past on this to help us work with the CPC to do some sort of additional oversight thank you Mr. Chair thank you Supervisor Coonerty thank you Mr. Chair I have no comments today Supervisor Caput thank you number 35 I want to welcome Nancy Pillisich to the Buhro Valley Public Cemetery Board and also number 47 the repaving of the Green Valley road to Eastlake Avenue Hula Hand Road that's going to help out a lot in the traffic and then this is related to item 47 item 50 the intersection at Hula Hand and Highway 152 near the Lakeview Middle School that'll be a great improvement there for the traffic also thank you I have a couple items I wanted to address item number 24 the new updated operational plan for fiscal years 2021 through 23 this is a great pamphlet the importance of this operational plan really cannot be overstated it's really the roadmap to what this county is going to do effectively guiding what the staff has we get community input and staff input of what are our priorities and it's really encouraging to see that we're able to complete 73% of the objectives that we've had for the past two years that we set for ourselves I think it's a tremendous accomplishment I want to compliment the CAO for putting this in place to begin with when he became our CAO Carlos Palacios and every one of the county employees who has participated in this it's critical and if people want to know where the county is going or what its plans are this operational plan will give you a great idea and it's not a long read also on the autumn or 36 Supervisor Coonerty and I brought this forward because we need to be fully prepared to learn for our lessons from the last fire and what we can do to learn from what happened to CCU complex fire we have the county fire has conducted an evaluation of the local collective response for the CCU now we're requesting Cal Fire to conduct a similar review of the state's response they did have a town halls but it wasn't what they called the conventional hot wash and we think we deserve that and we want that and we thought that we were going to get it in the first place but we're requesting it again now to have them come before us on item number 37 the CPUC to investigate the fast trip outages thank you Supervisor Friend for bringing this item forward with me to work on with my office to get PG&E to schedule a community meetings which we did but as you said it was on their terms but I think an investigation by the Public Utilities Commission could provide more information and perhaps some requirements of how PG&E manages the wildfire prevention efforts I don't know I think there's a lot more answers we need and what they're seeing how they're going to correct some of the issues we're facing now on item number 41 Housing Matters I want to thank the Housing Matters they're really providing some critical sheltering in our community they're sheltering 125 people in one year and that may not sound a lot like a lot when we have identified in the last census I think there are a hundred but the amount of work it takes and the amount of cost it takes I don't think people understand how costly and how dedicated an organization or the county has to be to make this happen just for 125 people but it's too many return to the streets and as we know but we appreciate the good work of Housing Matters their team and investment from their campus to provide these additional 125 units it's very much appreciated they had a great effort to raise funds to address that and as was mentioned by Supervisor Koenig on the drought we're in a deeper situation than we have been ever and the impact it has on the groundwater levels we have now some groundwater agencies Mid County has completed its plan now we have one it's going to be completed for the Santa Margarita and we need to have that done by the first of next year so the state doesn't come in and tell us how to manage that so we are very much impressed and really hopeful that we can have a plan that meets our efforts and we do encourage you please reduce your water usage by at least 15% what we save now will be so much so valuable if we have another drought come December January we need a lot more help in that so I do appreciate that the I think that would do it for me and thank you for that with that I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda I'll move Chairman McPherson just a small modification on your item with Supervisor Coonerty on item 36 per the speaker Ms Steinbrenner's comment maybe we just also direct the Board the chair to write a letter to the Department of Forestry and also just CCR legislative delegation or state legislative delegation in case they can help with that process so hopefully you consider that a friendly amendment to just add that CC on to that letter I certainly do because I think people don't know how much we've communicated so to speak with PG&E and CPUC and others to try to get more answers thank you yeah I'll accept that amendment for sure I'm sure we'll too okay so the maker of the motion are you okay with moving the consent agenda as amended then yes I am yes I think the motion was from directly from Supervisor Caput so just confirming you're okay with that amendment to the consent agenda that minor amendment that's okay he said yes okay thank you okay any other comments alright and for clarity Supervisor Friend is the seconder Supervisor Koenig friend Coonerty Caput McPherson thank you motion passes unanimously to the regular agenda Senator Laird having already addressed us item number 8 is a public hearing to consider the report on the year 2022 growth roll adopt a resolution establishing a 0.25% for the year 2022 in the unincorporated portion of the county and authorize the planning staff to file the CEQA notice of exemption as outlined in the memorandum of the planning director we have a resolution to adopt the growth roll for 2022 CEQA notice of exemption a year 2022 growth roll report planning commission resolution and planning commission staff report of September 8th 2021 and here to present to this will be Natasha Williams a planner sustainability and special projects for our planning department good morning Supervisors the county's growth management system was instituted in 1979 following the adoption of measure J to address the resource and public services impacts of population growth in Santa Cruz County as part of the growth management system each year the county is required to set an annual growth goal for the upcoming year that represents a fair share of the state's growth the 2022 growth roll report is before you today for consideration this report examines various factors used in establishing the year 2022 growth goal for the unincorporated area and includes analysis of population growth trends resource constraints the status of this year's allocations the county's housing needs including progress towards meeting the county's required regional housing needs allocation arena a review of the demolition permits and density bonus projects approved in the past year as well as the ADU annual report this year's report also includes a discussion of the permanent room housing project applications as well as impacts of recent state law on the county's growth management system as noted in the growth goal report the unincorporated area of Santa Cruz County had an estimated negative 0.43% growth rate last year all jurisdictions except for scott's valley also saw negative growth rates and the county as a whole has seen declining population totals in recent years the state this year also decreased by negative 0.46% sorry in 2020 and that is the first annual decline since the state population estimates have been recorded population estimates for cities and unincorporated counties are determined using the housing housing unit method which means that the number of new housing units constructed each year plays a large part in determining annual population estimates the DOF also notes that the state's unprecedented negative growth rate last year is the result of three major factors the first is continuing declines in natural increase which is births minus deaths the second is continuing declines in foreign immigration which were accelerated by recent federal policy and the third is deaths associated with the COVID-19 pandemic which increased deaths across the state last year by 51,000 or 19% above the average death rate as deaths related to the pandemic decline and with federal policy changes it is expected that the state will return to a positive annual growth rate in coming years recent population estimates for Santa Cruz County indicate a continuing downward trend of population growth rates in the decades since the 1960s and 70s when the county grew much faster than the state the 2020 census is expected to provide more precise and up-to-date population numbers for our county however as sufficient data is available at the time that the GOF population estimates were prepared so these figures will be included in next year's report the growth goal report also summarizes the current status of the 2021 residential building permit allocations this year 21 allocations have been granted as of July 1 if demand continues at the current rate 42 allocations will be granted by the end of the year this is comparable to last year 2020 building permit allocations had been granted by July 1 2020 demand for allocations has remained low compared to previous decades and staff anticipates there will be more than enough permits available for the remainder of this year in accordance with the housing crisis act of 2019 senate bill 330 Santa Cruz County will continue to not enforce the measure-drake growth goal limit on residential allocations within affected county areas while it is in place originally this was from January 1, 2020 to January 1, 2025 but the recent passing SB 8 extends this to 2030 in Santa Cruz County this includes the following CDPs Live Oak Casa Tiempo Paradise Park and Amesti as shown in blue on this map all other aspects of measure-j unrelated to limiting building permit or population such as the county's affordable housing requirements are not impacted by this bill and staff will continue to track measure-j allocations and subsequent building permit issuance for reporting purposes the TZU Lightning complex fire is another aspect that we've analyzed in preparing this report in addition pursuant to Santa Cruz County code section 12.02 all residential units impacted by the CSU August lightning fire complex fires will continue to be exempt from the measure-j residential allocation system based on the analysis detailed in the report staff recommends that the growth goal be set at 0.25% for calendar year 2022 in past years the county's growth goal has been consistent with the state of California's growth rate constituting our fair share of population growth dictated by measure-j however as noted earlier there were a number of anomalies in the state's recent 2020 growth rate that contributed to population decline and state population estimates are expected to show a return to positive growth in coming years setting this past year side if you look at state population growth over the last three years the state grew by an average of 0.25% which is commensurate with our recommended growth goal it's important to note the county of Santa Cruz is in the final few years of the 2014 to 2023 rena cycle but currently more than half of the units allocated to a region have not been built also important to consider is the recent state housing and ADU laws that continue to be refined by the state including the recent passage of SB 9 that increased infill development in our area and in addition both DOF and ambag population projections forecast growing populations in our region and in light of all of this staff is recommending a 0.25% growth rate for calendar year 2022 as required by the county code representing our fair share of population growth this growth rate would result in an allocation of 130 market rate units available for the year 2022 allocations will be distributed between the urban and rural areas of the county at a 75% to 25% ratio in order to recognize the greater potential for infill development in urban areas the 2022 growth goal report also recommends as in previous years that the unused market rate allocations from 2021 be carried over to 2022 in accordance with policy 3.2 of the general plan for the year 2022 growth goal is exempt under the California Environmental Quality Act and a notice of exemption has been prepared the year 2022 growth goal was also presented to the planning commission on September 8th and wrecked the year 2022 growth goal was also presented to the planning commission on September 8th and wrecked the year 2022 growth goal was also presented to the planning commission on September 8th and recommended for approval staff therefore recommends that the board of supervisors conduct a public hearing to consider the report on the year 2022 growth goal and close the public hearing adopt the attached resolution establishing a year 2022 growth goal of 0.25% for the unincorporated portion of the county and authorize the filing of the secret notice of exemption with the clerk director. To answer you might not be at the table. Thank you for the opportunity to answer any questions. I think I will open it to the public. I would like to address this on this issue, I want to make a couple of comments myself. Pardon me Chair. I do have a public comment on Zoom. I'm happy to see the good growth goal report here. I was concerned at first that it was much shorter. What I don't see is any address of the impacts of dense infill on infrastructure, road improvements, mass transportation to serve those areas, especially with new legislation that exempts parking requirements for infill development within, I think it's a half mile or so of mass transportation lines. So we do need to look at that. I'm curious why MBeg still feels that this area will have an increase in population when clearly the trends are going down. I would appreciate that discussion on that. I also note that Measure J will not be enforced in areas due to SB 330 that are considered disadvantaged. You may be interested to know that recently the state water board added Capitola to the disadvantaged communities. So I think that that should also be included in those areas where Measure J will not be enforced. Finally, I'm concerned about the counties not meeting the Rena numbers. I appreciate that there are projects coming along, but the state is moving to penalize communities, counties and cities that do not meet those Rena numbers. And I would like a discussion by the board what they see as being able to ward that off. Can we put in those pallet shelter communities that the board has set money aside for and really get moving on affordable? Colin, you sir, one, your microphone is available.  My basic comments are, I understand that the county has lost population by about 3.4%, but there are still increased building permits. I would like to see Measure J enforced, not exempt from enforcement. And also we need public housing, low cost housing for everyone because we're going to see massive numbers of people out on the streets as unemployment has been taken away and their livelihoods destroyed. Where are their efforts for public housing instead of big development like for Spenson and what's going on in downtown Santa Cruz? Where is the housing for the poor people who is helping food, not bombs? That's what is needed. We need a change of structure that provides for the poor and working class people. Thank you. There are no other speakers on Zoom. Okay. I'd like to make a couple of comments. Thank you for that realistic overview of housing. And it's unrealistic to think this county honestly is going to meet who and I used to serve on AmBag and do not now at this point, but to meet the housing demands of the state.  And if they penalize this county, they're going to be penalized in every city and county in the state probably. It's really a frustrating situation. Everybody sees the need, but let's get real. It's not happening. I would like to say that since Measure J was passed 42 years ago, it was a requirement for 15% of the housing being affordable. And as a matter of fact, 15.6% of all new residential development has been affordable housing. So that part of the goal has been met with Measure J that we, the voters passed in 1978, I believe it was. But these growth goals are difficult to meet given the challenges we face to construct new housing units, especially affordable units. And in light of the water and transportation limitations that we have as we speak and the droughts staring us in the face, we need new sources of funding if we're going to have these affordable units. But another challenge historically has been our own system for processing building permits. And I'd like to ask a question. Do we anticipate that the new permitting center might encourage more permits year to year that's going to be in place, I believe, by the first part of next year? Do we expect the consolidation to set targets for getting closer to the growth goal? Thank you, Chair McPherson. Perhaps I can help with that. Yes, the intent of the UPC is certainly to streamline the permit approval process so that permits that have historically taken a long time will take a shorter period of time. And therefore more permits can be. That's probably the most welcome news we've heard today. That is the intent. It may take a little bit of process improvement to get there. Right. Thank you. I'll entertain questions from board members, Supervisor Koenig. Yeah, thank you, Chair. You mentioned that we hadn't met our rena goals in this cycle. And as Chair McPherson alluded to, the numbers from the state in the next cycle are about triple what they have been in this cycle. So it does appear like it'll be a serious challenge to meet those, whether it's possible at all. We, if, well, first of all, have you done the math? I mean, would even meet the next rena cycles goals on market rate housing? Is it possible that this growth goal, assuming we continue it at this rate, which is required by county code, is it at some point going to come into conflict? Yeah, that was one of the factors that we used to determine our growth goal. Mike, on the mission. Yeah, we looked at the rena numbers and ensured that the growth goal we're proposing would not prevent us from reaching our annual rena requirement for market rate. Okay, right. Because I mean, I understand that we've really fallen short on the affordable, or I should say low income and very low income number of units in those growth goals. So that makes sense. And if you've done that math for the next rena cycle, and I know that it hasn't actually been allocated to our specific area, but if we were just to say triple the amount in the current rena cycle, would this come into conflict? You know, the growth goal is set based on kind of the recent trends and then what we see coming forward in the next year. We do not have our rena numbers yet for the sixth cycle. We have an inkling given that, as you know, the overall rena number was about three times the fifth cycle. So as we continue to absorb that, we'll work on our housing element next year. We'll really try to figure out how we're going to accommodate those units and the growth goal will kind of track that and follow along. And if we can possibly get to a point where we are accommodating more growth and are able to meet that rena, then you'll see those adjustments in the next couple of growth goals. I see, so you're suggesting that because the state has basically troubled the rena goals for most of the jurisdictions that have received their numbers statewide, and because the growth goal is tied to overall state growth, that we might see the growth goal just continue to increase. The growth goal is quite low and it's been hitting in that trend for a while. As you know, we'll try to adjust our policies and regulatory environment to allow better use of our urban lands. And that along with the legislative actions that have been taken this year or the past couple of years, we'll continue to see openings and hopefully if the economy sticks with us, we'll see that growth level rise as it will in the state and other jurisdictions. We're hoping. Okay, thank you. And just one last question. Maybe for a county council actually, I mean, is if there were to be a conflict in the future and someone didn't receive a permit because of the growth goal and the number of permits that already been given out, is it possible that we could be sued for this? And would this even stand up? Is this limit legal? Well, we were sued a number of years ago back in 2005, actually, around our housing element associated with not meeting our rena goal. So the answer to your first question is, can we be sued? Is yes. And we can be instructed by the court as we were in that case to adjust some of the things that we were doing at the time. This is a growth goal. And there are mechanisms in place to address when we don't hit our goal, so can we be sued? Yes, we can be sued. But other than that, it gets to a level of abstraction in concept that I wouldn't probably really wanna go into at this point or it just wouldn't be reliable. Let me reframe the question. Have other jurisdictions been challenged on growth goals like this and lost? I have not heard of any lawsuits around growth goals or being challenged on it and governments losing. But we have a, with Measure J in place, we have a pretty robust and specific code regarding how we address growth in this county that a lot of other jurisdictions just don't have. So. Okay, all right, thanks. Maybe one last point of clarification. I know that the CZ rebuild are exempt. If someone were to choose, maybe this is five years down the road, we've seen worse case scenario. We continue to see natural disasters and someone who chose not to rebuild in the exact same location, but rather in a different part of our county, would that still fall under the exemption from the growth goal or would it then count as a new unit that marked the right unit? You were saying it would be outside of the CZU impacted area? Yeah. Based on the way our resolution is worded, I don't think that that would apply. I think it would, if it's outside of the CZU area, it would not be exempt. All right, well, we'll cross those bridges when we get back. Thanks. I think before going to Supervisor Friend, I need to formally close the public hearing. There's nobody else on the phone. Is that right? That's correct. We'll close the public hearing and then continue our comments from board members. Supervisor Friend? I'm Mr. Chair. I just appreciate the presentation. I have no additional questions. Actually, Supervisor Koenig asked a couple of things that were of interest. So I appreciate it. Thank you. Supervisor Koenig. Sure, thank you. And thank you for the presentation and the report found it very useful. Just two quick questions. One is it seems pretty obvious that at least in the city, there were like 5,000 students or so who probably undercounted because of the pandemic. So the population numbers may not reflect the reality we're back into. Can you, do you have any idea or sense of how the pandemic may have affected other population counts? Yeah, I know specifically, like you mentioned, we saw a negative 13%, I believe, population growth in the city of Santa Cruz. And that was, I did reach out to the DOF to kind of better understand where those numbers come from. And that was mostly attributed to the pandemic and then the reason that the students weren't here like they normally are. So they attributed that to the UCs, the students being missing. I don't know of any other, besides the increased death rate that they mentioned in the report, I don't know of any other specific populations that were impacted by COVID that might have changed these numbers in the DOF estimates. No, I appreciate that. And my secondary question was about the number of ADU applications. Given that the state has liberalized rules and we at the county have also tried to liberalize the creation of ADUs, the numbers of ADUs didn't seem to reflect that. Do you have a sense as to what's going on and what we can do to increase ADU production? Yeah, I know that we saw, yeah. I know that we did see a slight increase in the last couple of years. You know, and since our rates now are in the high 30s and that's commensurate to what we saw before the 2008 to 2010 housing crisis. So the rates have increased significantly. And I would say that we will probably continue to see that increase as permits move through our permitting system. Okay, but there's nothing you're hearing that is a barrier probably other than high materials and construction costs right now. I know everyone's fighting for the same limited number of contractors, but is there anything else that you're seeing? You know, I think we'll be returning with the revised ADU ordinance next week to the board and whatever actions the board can take to help keep these permits ministerial to help make the application process as easy as possible will help to eliminate some of those barriers. We'll also be returning to the board, believe in December to look at the three year report on the fee reductions that we did back then and the board will have an opportunity to look at whether to continue those exemptions and reductions. So all those things could help, but we just recommend not adding to the process in any way, if at all possible. Thank you. Supervisor Caput, any questions? Thank you for the report. Pretty much everything. I think your mic's on, is your mic on? Yeah, thank you. Okay, we've closed the public. I entertain a motion. Thank you for your presentation Ms. Williams and entertain a motion. I'll move the recommended actions. Second. Seconded. Please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Trinity. Aye. Caput. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you, motion passes unanimously. We will move to item number nine to conduct a study session on the core investments stakeholder engagement and a request for proposals framework recommendations direct the human services department to include associated allocations in the fiscal year 2022-23 proposed budget and take related actions that's outlined in the memorandum of the human services director. We have some funding areas, a core engagement meetings and survey, initial proposed funding allocation methods and distribution, core hybrid tiered funding description. Thank you. This has been a really successful program. Mr. Morris, our director of human resources. Good morning, chair McPherson board members. I'm Randy Morris, director of the human services department and I'm gonna be giving this morning's presentation but I wanna recognize that I'm joined by Emily Bollie, our deputy director and sorry to spring this on you Emily but I think with her retirement in December this might be her last public presentation perhaps. So I just wanted to take a minute to thank her. Especially- I just wanted to talk her out of that. Well, personnel told me I don't have any authority to do so despite my efforts but anyhow, I do wanna, Emily is here to help with question and answer cause she has been involved every step of the way in this process before I got here and since I've been here is real link to the history. So thank you, Emily. And before we bring the PowerPoint slide up I wanna make a few introductory comments. This effort in front of you today is the first time we've been in front of you since February when we gave a study session update on this program and there's been a tremendous amount of work that's been done by a lot of groups and I wanna recognize within our human services department a lot of the administrative staff particularly our finance staff and contract staff who have done a lot of work in the COVID environment the fires and with all the complexities what played the last few years and there's a lot of work they do to help this program move forward. I also wanna recognize this as a collaboration with the city of Santa Cruz so the city of Santa Cruz I believe is gonna be watching in today and I will be watching in at their council meeting this afternoon because we intentionally coordinate our efforts with our legislative bodies because this is a collaboration with both bodies but I mostly wanna highlight and recognize any of our community-based organizations that are listening in today and might choose to make public comment because as you will hear in the presentation today the last many months we've spent a lot of time engaging in conversations with the providers to receive core funding and those who hope to apply for might not receive today and hopefully the spirit of that collaboration is woven through this presentation. A few quick comments I wanna make I'm very mindful that I sit here a year and a half in as the human services director and this is a program that's been in existence for over three decades so I think I'm probably the fifth director who has had a role in this program and I just wanna share some of my observations over the last six months when I've really dug into this preparing for today and the actions in front of you today. Most communities, most counties do not take all of their general fund money and organize it in one big bucket and put it out to community providers. So in many regards this is quite a gift to this community many communities spread it out so it's more diffused but I also learned in the last many months what how many inherent challenges there are in trying to figure out how to take a bit of money that's not enough to help the most role in the broader community and put it out in a way that's most helpful it's been very challenging and hopefully what you're here today is our best efforts to make this some make sense. So what this topic is about is the program core CORE is the acronym that refers to collective results and evidence-based investments. This is the first effort after 30 years of a program called community programs that shifted to in those words collective results and evidence-based identify that it shifted to a collective impact model trying to get funders to all work under one framework to build in more results and to have the programs built on more evidence-based and best practice programs. Today this program it represents $4.4 million of county general fund money. There's also an additional one million plus of city of Santa Cruz money that lives in 83 different programs through 44 different agencies throughout the community. So it's a fairly large broad-based funding to help community-based organizations help the most vulnerable in Santa Cruz County. I would like to put that $4.4 million in perspective. Our department human services is about $175 million organization and we have outside of core $34 million of contracts in the community. Why I'm sharing that is I feel it's really important to set expectations that as much as $4 plus million is we are by definition a safety net program and there are still a lot of unmet needs. So there's a lot of amazing things that our community-based organizations do but I think it's very fair to respect the work they do that this isn't enough money to solve all the issues but again I think it is a great opportunity to have this money to put out into the community. So today when we start the presentation I wanna share with you that we did our best effort in a very complicated time with a lot of crises going on to have a very robust and dynamic stakeholder process to get a lot of feedback from the community-based organizations so that what's in front of you is a representation of our best efforts to think through how to move this effort forward based on an informed by conversation with the service provider network. So with those comments, Ms. Carrera if you could load up the PowerPoint and we'll sort of walk through and if you can just confirm for me to be able to move forward, let's see. So like force yourself with the wheel. Like it first. What's that? The wheel? It's not moving. You're gonna help, thank you. Okay, so today's agenda we're gonna do a brief review of the process and timeline that's played out before we got here today and what we're looking at on the horizon. We're then gonna summarize the stakeholder engagement process and highlight who has participated and this all funnels into what's really in front of your board today which is our recommendations for how to frame the next public procurement process to get feedback from you which then leads to the next steps which is to come back to your board in early November with the actual RFP to be released. Next slide. And thank you for the help. So here's the summary of the time from I'm not gonna read all these but in the spring, we had agreed to move forward with your board support after we gave the study session to get ready to release the RFP upcoming and we spent the summer going through the stakeholder process which I'll describe in more detail in a minute and today is the beginning of in the upper right of fall which is September 28th we're in front of your board today and the city will be in front of the city council this afternoon. We then in one of the things we heard loud and clear from this from our community-based partners is to really create a reasonable amount of time for them to apply for these funds. And so we are recommending that we release the RFP pending your board's approval in early November and ask for responses to be in early mid February to give a reasonable amount of time given the struggles the community-based organizations are going through we'll then spend the spring reviewing them and then coming back to your board and the city will go to their council with recommendations hopefully to start the contracts July 1st for a new contract term. So that's the basic timeline. Yeah, next slide. Thank you. So this is a picture of a core the picture of what the model is and this is something just as a reminder your board has approved as a framework to use through the study sessions over the last many years so we continue to use this. This was the level set that we use for all the stakeholder engagement to remind everyone that these are the core conditions of wellbeing that we wanna organize the programs around. We highlighted that these are all interconnected since you can see all the dotted lines and that equity is of course front and center in this network to help make sure that we have a healthy and thriving community. The next slide. So this is a little bit more information for your board and for anyone listening there is an attachment to the materials which gives a great summary of all of the stakeholder work that was done over the last many months.  Also foundations we had meetings and you can see the numbers that were here our partnership with the city of Santa Cruz they have a community program committee that they work with a subset of their elected officials three council members that we met with as well. We then had a number of community partner meetings and you can see the number of participants that were involved. We then had a combined community partner and funder meeting and we also put out a survey to get responses for how we should prepare this framework that's in front of you today. And then in September, just before this presentation the core steering committee which has existed throughout the life of core in the last three years met. We gave a presentation to the human service commission and then we went back to the city of Santa Cruz committee in prep for their meeting today. So this is just to let you know that we have spent a lot of time trying to get feedback and weave that feedback into today's recommendations. So next slide. These were the two main questions we asked. These are sort of at the center of what we're gonna be presenting to you today which is how can we use this framework, the core conditions of wellbeing to make decisions about how to put this money out into the community. And second, how can we make sure equity remains at the center and how do you actually operationalize that? So that was what was discussed in all of these stakeholder efforts. So next slide. What we heard, the first one, a variety of ideas that might be a little bit euphemistic for it was very, very difficult to find consensus. I think we walked away with an understanding that there are many ways to look at how to recommend to your board to put money into the community given there's so many unmet needs and so many populations deserving. And I appreciated the many comments from our community-based providers recognizing that this is not an easy task to organize this to take four plus million dollars to help the community. Some of the detailed feedback we got is there was a great appreciation of community organizations who experienced philanthropic foundations creating more streamlined applications. I would say every service provider was all in on the issue of equity and very eager to work with us and be a participant in this conversation so that any of this money helps address inequities in the community. There was a very strong push for as much transparency and clarity as possible and a request for technical assistance so that the playing field is level when CBOs are applying for this money. So next slide. Okay, so I'm gonna pause because all of that was build up to say to give you history and background to say this is what we as staff are recommending to your board and this is what we're asking you to say yes or no to today and this is what we're inviting the community providers who might make public comment to share their perspectives on this. And then after today's presentation we will then work on writing the RFP based on if this framework is agreeable to you. So the first recommendation is we wanna have a contract term of three years. This allows us to reset this funding cycle to match with the county's two-year budget cycle and then core funding. So I mentioned in my introduction we currently have $4.4 million and these are four specific actions that we're recommending your board take which are kind of the ins and outs that then move the base funding from 4.4 million to just shy of 4.8 million. And I'm gonna take just a minute to talk through each of these. So the first is your board prior to my appointment here had directed the county and the human services department to allocate $150,000 to have a program called Set-Aside and it was small grants through a different process in the actual procurement cycle. So we are recommending that that money be reallocated and built into the core base funding. And you'll see when we get to the tiered investment strategy how that sort of folds into what we're recommending. Number two is a very specific action because right before this presentation a couple of months ago a program ran by Encompass the core housing pathways program shut down. It's actually ran at River Street. And so we've coordinated with Encompass and they're welcome to make comment if they disagree or agree during public comment if they'd like, but we are recommending because the program no longer exists that $75,000 be put back into the core funding base at $25,000 a year. Number three, the seniors council is the local nonprofit organization that runs the area agency on aging. We have detailed in the report the specifics of why and I'm not gonna go through all of them but it has been my experience that this is an absolute orange compared to the apples of all the core programs that we run. It is a 100% administrative program. It is a federally and state mandated entity and it is required to draw base funding to draw that federal and state money. So it just sits aside and different from all the other programs. So we're recommending the current contract that seniors council has of $131,000 be removed from the base and be reallocated to human services for a direct contract to work with them. And then the final is in collaboration with the CAO's office. We have been authorized to share our recommendation. This would all be pending your board's approval during the budget cycle, but at least for planning purposes that we increase the core base by $500,000. Like most grants we receive as human services when we apply to federal and state grants we're used to getting grants that stay flat for two or three or four years. So this is kind of the normal way funding works. But we also recognize a program that's been up and running for five years that has had no increase to the base that is reasonable to talk about a meaningful base increase. So $500,000 is our recommendation. So next slide. So this is where I mentioned the set aside reference. We are recommending that we use the current spread of core funding grants that we have today which fall into kind of small, medium and large buckets if you will by keeping a tier of small grants in the five to $25,000 range for the procurement. But that's where we fold the set aside funds into and then maintaining a tier of medium sized grants and large sized grants. One of the things we heard from the stakeholder efforts was that the community-based organizations appreciated particularly for small grant amounts having very small streamlined application processes. And we do want to disclose, we mentioned it in the board memo that we are in conversation with the community foundation and we have a meeting later this week to explore whether or not we have a sort of an alignment of some of their funding to add to our funding to work together on these small grants. And if so, we'll be able to increase the amount of money. And we won't know that until we go through our process but hopefully when we come back to you November we'll be able to confirm if we indeed have some augmentation through community foundation partnership. So we'll go to the next slide which is where we're gonna recommend how we organize the funding. And if your board approves this approach it would not only be a small, medium and large but I'll call it an extra large by adding one $750,000 deeper investment opportunity. I just wanna take a minute to explain why we've listed these three options here. These three options are representative of the dialogue with our community-based partners and funders. And I just wanna take a minute to name each and tell you why we're recommending the hybrid approach. Targeted, there was some appetite in the conversation about looking at switching from a broad base funding approach where there's a lot of money spread out in a lot of ways and a question whether or not that's really having an impact even if it's not enough money and whether or not we need to really just get bold and just shift to just two or three very, very large grants to really make a dent on some very serious issues in the community. But we sort of agreed as staff and with our partners that we're sort of not at the place to really be able to recommend to your board where would we target such small money and the impact that would have on a lot of these community-based organizations who from these small and medium grants it's very meaningful for them. So we are not recommending this but we wanted to share that this was a topic of consideration. It actually feeds into why we have the hybrid approach as our recommendation. The second is to really sort of keep the funding as is keep the funding very broad. And we as staff felt like that is not moving the effort forward. We understand and appreciate that a broad-based approach is helpful but there's also been plenty of recognition that we really need to consider targeting money to have a deeper impact in some places which leads to why we're recommending number three. And number three, the hybrid approach keeps the broad approach spreads the money around in small, medium, large but sort of carves off a little bit of money to create one large $750,000 deeper investment. We would look at this as an opportunity to let our community partners tell us where they think some of the biggest issues are where the biggest need is through the application process. We'd encourage collaboration. This wouldn't have to be one organization. We'd be much more specific in this approach to having equity and racial equity be at the center of something that this money would be worked on and really look at root causes of issues. And Ms. Cabrera, if you could click on the blue hyperlink because this takes us to, this is in the attached materials but we just wanted to let you see visually that this is how the money would be spread around if your board approves this approach and this would then be built in the RFP we'll bring back to you in November. Small, medium and large, it shows how much county funding which totals to our 4.799 and then you can see the city's funding which in their public materials for their meeting this afternoon is at 1 million plus and you can see that taking $750,000 leaves the amount of monies that are listed here. So just wanted to highlight that for the community and your board. That's what we're recommending for your consideration and if so this is how we'll organize the funding in the RFP. So if you could, yes, thank you. So then the next slide, which is our last slide. So here are the proposed next steps. I specifically wanna make sure any of the community-based organizations listening that have a lot of outstanding questions about how are we gonna recommend in the RFP the application process will look like, how will we make sure it's very clear what sort of TA is gonna be available to them, how are we gonna organize rating panels and make sure the award funding decisions are fair. We will build all of the answers to those questions in the RFP but we want to create a stakeholder process one more time to hear from the community-based organizations directly. We also want your board to know that if you get calls and if there's public comment today this is a place we say, we see as an opportunity to sit down and talk this through. We think we've developed some very good conversations and a good spirit of collaboration in those stakeholder meetings and we see no reason why we won't work together to come up with the answers to those questions and build those into the RFP itself. We are proposing and it's one of the recommended actions for your board to direct us to return on November 9th with the actual RFP itself that gives your board one more opportunity to give us feedback before the RFP is released. And I do wanna let your board know when we return to your board to accept the recommended actions in the spring that's yet one more opportunity for you to give direction and make adjustments. So just wanna be clear today does create a trajectory but it does not limit your opportunity as our elected officials to make recommendations and adjust where things are going throughout the process. I mentioned earlier the proposals do early mid-February and then we would be back in front of your board in May and the city council in May with the recommendations and then start contracts in July. So I believe that ends the formal presentation and I turn it back to your board and we Emily and I are here for any questions and look forward to public comment and your questions. I'll ask for any public comment. Is there any public comment? You're seeing none, is there any on the phone? Yes, I do have several on Zoom. Ellen, E1 Story, your microphone is available. Thank you. Good morning chair and supervisors. I'm Helen Ewan Story, Assistant Director for the Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County. As you know, CAB has been the county's designated community action agency tasked with eliminating poverty and creating social change for over 55 years. We serve over 10,000 low-income individuals annually through youth and adult employment services, immigration legal and advocacy services, community building and homelessness prevention and intervention services. CAB has been actively engaged in the evolution of the core investments framework over the last four years. With our Executive Director, Marilena de la Garza sitting on the core steering committee and I and my CAB colleagues with me today attending many core conversations and partner meetings over the years. We've greatly appreciated the level of stakeholder engagement in the process as well as the attention and commitment to increasing equity through the core framework. CAB supports the HSD staff recommendation including to increase the overall level funding for the core base allocation and the option three allocation method that will support both broad safety net service funding as well as a deeper investment in an equity initiative. CAB looks forward to continuing to partner with the county and our many fellow community-based partners through the core process in order to support a more equitable community where all can thrive. Thank you. Please come for your microphone is available. Hi supervisors. I wanted to say thanks to staff and for your consideration of the recommendation to fund the AAA through a separate process. You've heard me talk about this before. If we don't do it, somebody else has to do it and really the Board of Supervisors become the default entity to look at. So we think this investment is a good one. It saves the county a variety of funds and expenses but also allows us to react quickly if there's community needs or needs facing older adults. So if there's any questions about that I want to be here to answer those and also just share that this is the perfect time to do this that as most of you know the senior population over the last decade is grown by about 50% in the state and even greater in Santa Cruz County and the under 50 population is grown by about 1%. So we truly are at a just explosion of older adults right now and with that goes more demand for older adult services. So the timing fits perfectly and it goes a long ways towards stabilizing our organization and our role. So we're thrilled about it. And also I just want to echo and support the things that Helen even story just said but just add that age is also an equity issue and looking forward to working together with all of you and staff to address those challenges. Thanks. There are no other speakers on Zoom. Okay, I'll bring it back to the board. The assistant supervisor, Coonerty. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to appreciate staff's work and the outreach they've done across the community in a challenging time for both our partners to provide providing services for those in need as well as for county staff to respond to COVID and fires and everything else going on. You know, when we were formed this process there were essentially three goals. One was to get to more outcomes a better outcome driven process for both these funds as well as Director Morris mentioned the other millions and millions of more dollars that the county spends. The second one was to be able to evaluate and fund new and emerging needs instead of just sort of rolling it over on a more ongoing basis. And finally, the last piece was to coordinate across jurisdictions as well as other funders. And I think I appreciate the work that's been done to reach those three goals. This is an ongoing process and we'll need to be updated, you know, every cycle in order to make sure we continue to reach those goals and more importantly meet the needs of the community. But I want to appreciate the efforts that have been done thus far. And I look forward to supporting this going forward. Thank you. Supervisor Coonerty, or excuse me, Caput. Thank you, Chairman. You know, you put a lot of work in this and I think we've improved it a little bit and I want to commend you on that. Well, thank you. I've gotten community input and people seem to be like accepting the reallocation and everything's going pretty good. So anyway, thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Coonerty. Thank you, Chair. I just want to express my appreciation to Deputy Director Bali and wish you well in your next chapter. And thank you, Director Morris as well. It's clear that the two of you have done a great job listening to the community. I totally agree with all your recommendations to diversify about the size of the different investments. As well as to separate out the one that doesn't look like the others, the Area Agency on Aging. And I look forward to supporting this. Thank you. The Board of Supervisors four years ago approved this approach to begin a process of really aligning the investments to the real needs of the community-based programs and the county strategic objectives. The staff proposal to evolve the core funding model in the next phase is really, really welcome. I really want to thank you for your outreach efforts and I want to also commend the community-based organizations who've participated so much in this. I know they're invaluable what they have. And I also want to thank the CEO and the Director of Human Services for creating a regular budget line to provide a local match for the Area Agency on the Aging. One question I have, equity is a real big issue today. I'm just concerned. I mean, I think equity and age is one of them, as was mentioned by Mr. Kemp. But how are we going to measure if we're doing a better job in that regard? Is there measurements that we were only giving so much to seniors and now we're giving more? Or what's, I'm just, it's probably, it's going to be in the process that you're going to be going through in the next few months. But I just want to, I think we have tried to be equitable in the first place. So I just want to know how we're going to improve on that. The excellent question. It's a necessary question and question of the moment that I think all public systems who put public funds out are being challenged to be more specific. It's an easy word to use. The short answer is we will talk about how to operationalize equity and track equity in what we bring forward to you on November 9th. I do want to give some recognition to the community-based organizations who, I didn't say in the presentation in the interest of keeping it kind of succinct. That was a very active part of the conversation, which is how do we operationalize equity? And we've got some great feedback from them. So part of what we want to do is strike the right balance of listening to our community-based organizations tell us in the application what they see as inequities in the community, how they see they will address those inequities and how they think is reasonable with whatever funding they're awarded to be able to show progress on addressing inequity issues. So I think we just want to have a reasonable respect and deference to our service providers who know the answer to that question from what they're seeing in the community. I think what's at the guts of the challenge here is, and the reason I gave the numbers that were $175 million organization, by definition, we are completely a safety net program and there is still suffering in the community, is to try to be realistic that if this is what goes forward, $5 million isn't going to solve the issues of equity in the community. So I think we're just going to have to be realistic, concrete and respect the perspective our service providers have in their experience in the application process and setting up the scopes of work so that we can track that answer to your question. How is progress being made? Yeah, I want to thank you for doing that. And it's a big issue county-wide, statewide, nationwide. And I think it would be good if we come in with the final report just to specify how we're trying to under these hearings that you're going to have and recommendations that you're going to receive that we're fulfilling our obligation for more equity, the best of our ability. And I appreciate your efforts, but it would be interesting. And lastly, I just want to thank Emily Bolle for her services for so many years for the county. It's been much appreciated. What a professional approach that you take to so many different issues and human services. So thank you very much. Yes, Mr. Friend, Supervisor Friend. Yeah, thank you. And thank you also to Ms. Bolle for your outstanding service for so long. And I appreciate this presentation. We've come a long way in the last four or five years compared to the previous 30 in front of that. And for those of us that have served on the board for a little while, I think it's very telling that we don't have a room full of community service providers disappointed with the approach that the board is taking right now, which I think is very telling in the fact that the modifications that we made to the program, there's a lot of concerns four or five years ago when we went through this process. And valid concerns, understanding that the change could be hard as Supervisor Coonerty noted, the board had a set of goals and I believe that we're getting closer now to those goals with what's being presented today. I also appreciate the tiered system. I think it cleans up from the set aside to what the board's real goal was was just ensuring that some of the smaller or greater change programs that may not have either the resources for an application or maybe they just need a small amount of money or maybe there's a small emerging need can be addressed more quickly. It seems like that this provides greater flexibility than the board had actually done previously by locking in a very specific number and a very specific process. I think that having that flexibility to emerging needs, having the flexibility that you can base the amounts that are being awarded functionally on not just need but the number of applications and the amount that people are asking for is important. And I think this overall shift meets the board schools but more importantly, the board schools were always tied to the community need and just ensuring that this might help address that. Recognizing as a director Morris said, there never will be an investment that's enough. And as I've said in every budget meeting in regards to core, I think our goal should be one day where such funding for programs and these programs themselves aren't needed because ultimately they're providing a safety net because we're failing in other areas in our world. And so ideally we'd be able to invest in a way on the front end where these wouldn't be needed but I definitely appreciate those that are doing the work to ensure that we can prop up that net for those that desperately need it right now. I'm fully supportive of this and appreciate the work that's been done. Thank you. This is a study session, but I think it'd be a formal, we should accept the report that from human services to have a motion to accept or move the recommended actions. Second. Second by Coonerty. Please call the roll. Supervisor Koenig. Aye. Friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye. Abbott. Aye. McPherson. Aye. Thank you, motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much for your hard work and outreach. Item number 10 is to consider recycling and solid waste services progress report on zero waste planning and direct public works department to return by September, 2022 with a recycling and solid waste long-term planning progress report and direct public works to return by February, 2022 with recommendations for proceeding with a protest vote to increase the county's CSA 9C assessment and to return with a report on the community support for allowing the county to collect a percentage of single use cup and single use bag charge fees as outlined in the memorandum of the deputy, CAO and director of public works. Today we have Mr. Kent Edler, the assistant director of public works special services. Mr. Edler. Good morning chair and board members. Like chair McPherson said, I am Kent Edler assistant director of public works. I have with me today to my right, Casey Colasa who is the recycling and solid waste services manager for public works. And also to my left is Bill Hawksford who is our recycling and solid waste analyst. And so we're gonna give an update today on the recycling and solid waste program. There's a lot of things going on with recycling and solid waste. So we wanted to come here and provide an update. So quickly our outline, we're gonna go through some of our accomplishments over the past few years, current programs, future initiatives. We'll talk a little better about SB 1383 implementation, which is really affecting all recycling and solid waste agencies throughout the state. Talk about some planning for the eventual closure of the landfill, get some current expenses, then we'll get into future needs and some future revenue options. Next slide. Casey is gonna go over the accomplishments. Get some of the accomplishments for the department. Sure, I'm right there. All right. Regarding the accomplishments, the board has approved ordinances to reduce single use items such as bags, cups, takeout wear, which is to skip the stuff ordinances and the personal care items at hotels and motels, plus a ban on polystyrene cups, plateware and coolers. Also an ordinance that required certified compostable takeout cups, plateware, cutlery, clam shells, be used at restaurants. And the board has also approved an ordinance for three drop-off of sharps and pharmaceuticals through an industry-funded program called the Santa Cruz Med Project. The county's franchise agreement provides two program coordinator county staff positions to do outreach and education to increase diversion, recycling, including food waste at businesses, multifamily dwellings, and at special events like the Santa Cruz County Fair. They have also made efforts to address illegal dumping and littering, which has recently been focused on the North Coast beaches. And Bo can provide some more information on the illegal dumping accomplishments. Thank you. Yes, in addition to our road special crews, we have collaborated with community partners, Santa Cruz County Parks, downtown streets team, Save Our Shores, Watsonville Works most recently, and Clean Team to coordinate litter and illegal dumping abatement efforts, which includes also syringe litter. We have seen an uptick in illegal dumping, this in general over the last half year and a half, due to more daily visitors to our community and to our region from COVID. Illegal dumping has actually arisen throughout the state on the same time scale. On the North Coast, we've installed five signs at five of our most of our hotspot areas, including Scott Creek, Bonnie Dune, the Davenport beaches. We work with parks and downtown streets and both have commented back that they have seen the reduction in the amount of litter that's escaping the parks and we see on the roads. We've also increased capacity and number of pickups per week at all of our public receptacle pickups along the beaches and coastal access and such as those. And now Casey will bring us back and talk to us about current programs. So the Green Waste Recovery Franchise Agreement allows for three bulky item curbside pickups for residential company or customer. This includes items such as furniture, appliances, mattresses and barbecues. This has been effective in reducing illegal dumping along county roads of these items. We have community partnerships. We work with the parks department to provide public carts for trash and recyclables at parks and beach access areas. The Coastal Watershed Council and O'Neill C. Odyssey for the county's green school program, downtown streets team and save our shores for litter patrols of public space and beaches and the gray bears that operates three recycling centers in the county. There are also three household hazardous waste facilities located in the county that provides safe and legal disposal of hazardous waste for residents and small businesses. Green Waste Recovery provides mixed recyclables and organics curbside collection service. The county disposal sites provide recycling for yard waste and wood waste, tires, mattresses, carpet and electronic waste. Gray bears operates recycling centers at the Buena Vista landfill and Ben-Loman Transfer Station that accepts scrap metal, bottles, cans, glass, cardboard and paper. And the gray bears Mid County, Shannon Clear location also accepts electronic waste and polystyrene foam. And Bo can talk more about the educational and outreach efforts. Yes, as Casey mentioned, recycling solid waste services does manage green schools and green business programs. For the green schools program, we contract with the Coastal Watershed Council and they do education outreach at all county schools, K through 12th. And also for the elementary and middle schools, we collaborate with Banana Slug String Band as well as Zoom-Zoom that do musical assemblies that have environmental messaging. For the, we also contract with environmental innovations that conducts education and support outreach to current recognized green businesses, as well as doing recruitment outreach efforts to businesses to bring more businesses into the green business network. This year, environmental innovations is partnering with Coastal Watershed Council as well to help bring some of the schools to become green businesses as well. The county is also a member of what is the Central Coast Recycling Media Coalition, which is, it's a coalition of local jurisdictions from Monterey, San Benito and our county and all of the local cities that we pool the money so that we have more money to advertise for common environmental interests along the coast. And Casey will now discuss some more of our future initiatives. So we track a federal and state extended producer responsibility legislation and work with our Santa Cruz County cities through the Integrated Waste Management Local Task Force to create ordinances when needed to address difficult to handle and of life products. There is existing EPR policy for paint, mattresses, sharps and farms, electronic waste and carpet. Extended producer responsibility policy is needed for batteries, plastic, treated wood waste and mixed material items such as solar panels that are very challenging and have houses components and need to be recycled. We continue to monitor plastic reduction legislation and we'll bring ideas to your board for guidance. Funding will dictate the pace of these efforts as having resources to do outreach, implementation and compliance enforcement is critical for an effective program. There are several free drop-off sharps, kiosks in the county, locations are available on the SE Med Project website. Public Works is working with health services to evaluate, improve and expand this program as needed. Public Works is increasing efforts to divert food waste from the landfill. This requires amending our Green Waste Recovery Franchise Agreement to include residential food waste pickup and Keithay company contract for increased costs to process and compost food waste. Residential food waste collection service is planned to begin end of 2021 with the initial start of a few select routes and gradual ramp up to full implementation. Public Works is working with Green Waste Recovery to provide customers with educational information to place food waste in the existing green organic scar. Next slide, please. So as Casey alluded to, one of the biggest things that's affecting the recycling and solid waste group is implementation of SB 1383, which is legislation that was passed a couple years ago and it takes effect beginning of 2022. So SB 1383 at its core is really climate change, legislation that's aimed at reducing greenhouse gases. And one of the biggest focuses on SB 1383 is methane, since it's significantly more potent than carbon dioxide. And the state has determined about 20% of the methane that's released comes from landfills due to the buried organic waste. So SB 1383 is going to affect our program financially in two really big ways. First is Casey mentions that all customers are going to have to start separating food waste from their garbage and put those in the green bins. And secondly, we're going to have to process all of this organic waste. So we're going to need a facility to do so and we're looking at a location at the Buena Vista Landfill where we can do this. And related to this, we're going to have to amend our agreements with our franchise dollar green waste recovery and also our another consultant that we had Keith Day, company who currently processes our organics on a much smaller scale. Next slide, please. So currently our most recent survey of the Buena Vista Landfill shows that there's about eight to 10 years of life left at their capacity left at the Buena Vista Landfill. All of the recycling efforts and initiatives that we've done obviously affects the life of the landfill. On average, we're currently doing about 100,000 tons per year is what we put into landfill. But that can fluctuate. Some years we do as many as 120,000 tons and other years we do 60,000 tons. So all the efforts as far as, you know, diverting recyclables, some of the SB 1383 requirements if we're diverting more, keeping some of the organics out of the waste stream. Those efforts will all help to extend the life of the landfill. We're also doing efforts such as our Ben Lohman transfer station. We're taking that, the waste that comes up there and we're hauling that directly to the marina landfill. So that extends the life of our landfill a little bit longer. And I should also mention that there's some areas that all affects the length of the landfill in probably a negative way is that we're planning for a future transfer station. So as part of that planning process, we're designing where the transfer station we're actually probably going to need to at the point of this landfill. And that's going to take up some of the capacity that we have there at the landfill due to roads and siding and so forth. So we are currently working with the planning department right now to work on the rezoning efforts. Right now the landfill is, it has a split zoning. Half of it is appropriately zoned as a public facility and the other half is zoned as commercial agriculture which is inappropriate for that location. We just, we want to get the zoning to match the existing use. And so we're working at the planning department and the coastal commission to write those before we get into the permitting process to start constructing the transfer station and really moving forward heavily with the planning and design and so forth. Next slide, please. So these, we want to get into some of our, the numbers of as far as kind of costs and so forth. So on the operational side of things, we spent about $15.6 million annually just to operate the landfill and the point of this, the transfer station. About a million dollars is spent on recycling, graffiti abatement, street sweeping, litter cleanups as well as illegal dumping. There's about $800,000 we spent on engineering for our consultants for designing and so forth. Green schools, green business programs, some of those things that what Bo was talking about about $200,000 a year. And then there's miscellaneous capital costs that would include things like equipment and then upkeep of our facilities. Next slide, please. So I talked about the need for a transfer station as well as an organic processing facility. So you can see as those numbers, those are really high numbers that we're gonna need to figure out how to pay for. We also have some needs at the Ben Lohman Transfer Station. That's about a 30 year old facility. So it needs some upgrades out there as well. I should also note that on the back with the previous slide about the current annual expenses, we expect those costs to be going up as well due to SB1383 and we'll have to hire additional staff and so forth for that. Next slide, please. So what this all means and is that, so this slide shows the projected revenue and then what the expenditures would be if we're going to bond for some of the costs to do the transfer station as well as the improvements at Ben Lohman Transfer Station and the Organics Facility. So as you can see as it projects out, it gets pretty dire and so there's a large funding gap. Next slide, please. But we do have a plan. We've been working with our consultant on a revenue measure which will increase our nine C funds. That would bring in close to $5 million in additional revenue which would get us close to where we need to be. What that means for an existing single family dwelling is that the current nine C charge would go from about $57 a year to about $140 a year. We plan to bring, to come back to the board in February, 2022 with more details on this. The board has also expressed interest in a possible ballot measure to bring back a portion of the single use cup and bag charges to the county. We estimate that this would generate on the order of about a million dollars annually and we have a consultant who's just about ready to start pulling on this and we'll bring back the results of the pulling efforts back to the board for additional direction on whether or not we want to move forward with that. I mean, I'd also like to mention that in addition to these, the green waste recovery customer fees are also expected to increase about 68% in the upcoming year. Next slide, please. And we'll have Bo go over some of our operational objectives for the department. Thank you. Everything that you've heard from us today feeds into the smart objectives developed for the recycling and solid waste se